Ep 164 - "Driving Sales Through Customer Experience"

0:00 Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast? I can't tell you that reaction, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours. I'm noticing that and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose. No, I don't. I didn't. And I am not happy with it. How are you doing this morning, man? You know, I am... Welcome. Yeah. Oh, you know what? Fathomed. Trying to jump into our show here, my friend. Yeah. We don't really need... Get that out of there. That's not how it works. I'm good, actually. I'm pretty darn good. I'm back on the mend, on the old back deal.

0:41 I'm feeling less old and more hopeful. Yeah. That's where I'm at. Dude, you were out of it for a little bit there. Got ugly. Just worried about you. Got ugly. Messed with my head quite a bit. Yeah. But I got some good news this last time. Talked to the doctor. And do a little injection action in the back. And then I got... Starve you haven't built them. Yeah, PT. And I got kind of an inside connection on somebody that's actually a trainer that works and is associated with my doctor. Yeah. Just happens to be. And so I think what I'm going to be able to do is actually work, not just do PT, but I think that I'm actually going to do PT with a fitness trainer. Oh, yeah. That can help me then really build, identify what my future routine will be this year.

1:21 But not just heal, but to continue to make gains. Going to maybe do some BPC-157, some peptides for healing? You know, actually I am. I have a buddy who tore his Achilles. Yeah. And that's part of it. He's getting ready to start a BPC-157 stack as part of his rehab. I think I will be doing the same thing. I don't know that number. I can't remember the name of this one, but it starts with an S. Ah, okay. But it is a peptide and it is specifically. I'd be using it to help get the old healing going. Yeah, yeah. In the zone there. So yeah, the main thing, I just got to get moving again, dude. I've already put on some weight and it's driving me crazy. And it just, in full-blown transparency, as we always do, it just makes me feel super old and I'm not ready for that.

2:02 Yeah. Like I did. I really had a head game, bro. Yeah, I feel you, bro. It was super depressing for a hot minute, but we're all good. We're coming around. Totally get it. Yeah. Well, so I'm going to be speaking at Access this couple of weeks. No, no, no. More than that. May. It's actually a little ways out. Yeah, slow down. Yeah, so Alacrity's conference, Access, heard really amazing things about it. Some of you listening, no doubt, have been to that. It's supposed to be a really, really fun show, great hospitality, all the things. But I'm probably most interested in the subject matter. So one of the things that they were really eager to incorporate into their agenda was more high-level thinking about customer experience. Oh, yeah. And that's always something I've really nerded out on and that you and I've nerded out on just how big of a point of pride, like a legitimate customer experience strategy can be for a team.

2:53 Yeah. And so I'm leading a panel with some really cool people. Oh my gosh, if my panel comes together, it's just some really epic, iconic restorers that are going to be at the table talking about this. Which is fun. Yeah. And then I'm doing a breakout and I was thinking about my breakout session. How do I build on this topic after people have already sat through a panel discussion? Yeah. And something occurred to me that I think I haven't spent enough time on yet. And that's this interplay between sales and customer experience. I mean, we actually talk about it a lot, but there's a particular angle here that I think is really important for us as leaders and owners.

3:33 and operational leaders to think about. One of the exercises that we do with our clients regularly and in workshops that we put on is the pain solution table. And those of you that have been to one of Brandon and I's workshops or seen us speak on stage or in a breakout session, you've no doubt seen us go through this. But the basic premise of it is... We have a simple tea table. I think it's the Benjamin Franklin tea table. And usually we think about it in context of pros and cons. But anyway, just think about a napkin drawing, right? And on the left-hand column, what we do is we ideate. We think through what are the most common frustrations, irritations, pain points within our customer experience chain?

4:14 You think about from call intake, somebody has a water loss in their kitchen or a commercial property manager has a loss in one of their units, all the way up to the post-construction cleaning and the signed COS. Like what are all of the moments that can be so dang frustrating for our customer in our business, right? And we know what those things are. And I think oftentimes when we kick off this exercise with a client or in a workshop, people just go straight to, well, it's all communication. But it's not. Like communication is at the heart of so many of really any service company's delivery failures. But it's not the only thing. And I think that's one of the things we encourage our clients as we do this exercise to go through is, no, no, no, no, okay, yes, yes, and what are all of these frustrating and irritating moments that can occur?

5:04 And one of the examples I always give people to get them thinking a little bit outside of the box is... how many of our Mr. and Mrs. Joneses will tell us, do not let the cat out. We have an indoor cat. Do not leave the sliding glass door. This is very important to us. They could get hit by a car. Our last cat did. What, you know, right? It's like, we hear these things. This is a very common issue when we're dealing with Mr. and Mrs. Joneses. And of course, we still fail at that sometimes. And many of us have experienced those consequences before of a team member not heeding that request, et cetera. Well, that is a pain point. That's an example, right, of what might show up in this list, okay? Another example we've given for context is how many of you who service commercial and multifamily have either heard about or been guilty of one of your technicians on site doing a mold job and mentioning what they're doing to another unrelated tenant.

6:00 And that subsequently blowing up into drama. Sure. at the job site, drama for the property manager to solve for, etc., etc. Of course, most of us have either heard about or been guilty of that. That's another example of a common pain point that shows up in our process, right? And so this pain solution process, we list all of those. And then on the right-hand column, we think through as a team, what person on our team process or procedure do we have in place that solves for that pain point, specifically and concretely? It's a really helpful exercise because one, it really helps us get right thinking about customer experience and sales, about what we're actually selling to our clients.

6:42 But it also helps us identify gaps. And we've had many, many times where we've done this exercise and people are like, you know what, really? We actually don't have anything in place. Yeah. It's a throw of the craps of the dice, whether or not the customer is going to get a good outcome in that particular thing. What system could we create for that? We help clients fill their gaps that way and perfect their processes. But anyway, so I was thinking about this relative to customer experience. And at this panel, we're going to be focusing on call intake, initial customer response and project wrap up. Okay. Yeah. And just thinking about how understanding these moments in the customer experience timeline and then going through that process of identifying strategies and tactics for minimizing or completely eliminating those things in the customer experience timeline is an incredibly powerful exercise and conversation, I think, for our leaders to go through.

7:35 An example of how you and I have leveraged this in the past is really tackling the silent phase. Yeah. And a lot of the work we do with clients, coincidentally, has to do with us maximizing our conversion from mitigation jobs to getting the recon. Yeah. Which can obviously have an enormous impact on a company's growth and revenue, right? Sure. But part of that maximizing that conversion rate is solving for that silent phase. That's where people get antsy. Why is nothing happening? Yeah. This is pissing me off. In some cases, they've still got equipment that hasn't been picked up in their property. There's this really frustrating and irritating moment. And we got through client feedback and us not getting recon jobs and stuff.

8:20 We finally took a really hard look at that. God, okay, this is what's happening. This is irritating to a customer. How do we solve for this? And there was a number of things we did. One of them, we created a visual roadmap, almost like a Monopoly board looking cartoonish roadmap that we began providing to our estimators and project managers to show the customer, hey, FYI, this is what you're going to experience. This is what you're about to drop into. Yeah. We call it the silent phase. It is really frustrating. Yeah. But here's what's actually happening. Here's what's actually happening. It answers the question of why is nobody here? Here's why. Yeah. And once we started doing that, what we found is that it either dramatically minimized the negative frustrated feelings and the number of calls we were getting like, hey, nobody's been here.

9:03 What's going on? It could be a week. It could be two weeks. I'll update you. But here's what's happening during that time. And it's solved for that. And I think there's an opportunity for us to do that same thing at all of these critical points. Call intake, really helping put the customer at ease, answering the question, is my problem taken care of now? And they can stop worrying about it. Right. The initial response when we go see Mr. and Mr. Jones for the first time. FaceTime. Yeah. First FaceTime. Yep. And then project wrap up. Yep. So I don't know what your thoughts are on that. Maybe I'm just regurgitating something that we've talked about before, but it just seems like a disconnect for a lot of companies.

9:44 We have our sales and our sales strategy, which many of our clients and in the industry have adopted, Floodlight's Pain Solutions Selling methodology. But there's still this disconnect between what we're doing with our customer experience and maximizing our service delivery. It just feels like there's an opportunity for us to dig deeper as leaders on that. You know what's kind of interesting about this? And this is where my head went immediately. Am I navel gazing too much here? No, I don't think so. Actually, this is where my head went. Tell me what you think. So as an organization... Internally, we've been going through a lot of our own internal training and develop our own training to onboard and scale with new consultants this year.

10:25 We have a goal of hiring six new consultants this year. We're well on the way with that target just in terms of our process and our systems. And one of the things inevitably that we're highlighting right now or hyper-focusing on as an organization is just talking about our own sales and our own sales processes. Mm-hmm. And one of the things that comes to mind when you say that is, I think that we often can forget that the selling never stops. Right? I think there's like this fictional division that we create where it's like, first you do selling or prospecting and you're selling. And then after that, you do account management. And I think what I don't like about the term or the theory of account management is it feels a little bit like the work is done.

11:10 Yeah. And now you're just kind of continuing to dot some I's and cross some keys. Yeah, you're just maintaining. And I think one of the things that we realized us as an organization doing this internal training is, holy cow, man, as consultants, as strategic partners to our clients, we're we also have the responsibility of continuing to sell. And I don't mean that tongue-in-cheek, snake oil, car salesman. Yeah, now pay us to go to this workshop. No. We're not talking about that. No, it's not the a la carte. It's not the getting you to choose other items to upsell you. I'm talking about it's our consultants' responsibility in their partnership with our clients to continue to earn their trust.

11:53 To do this thing that really is what we're living out with the pain solution selling is this idea of find, place, and feel. Here's what we're referring to. And again, this is training our team's been doing internally right now. Yeah. Find the pain. Yeah. Okay. Place the solution or what people may commonly say, place the feature. Yeah. Like don't feature preach. Don't just blast them with everything that we do. But it's this idea in that moment currently, what is the known or perceived pain? Yeah. What can we then place in that? Yep. What are we going to do as a consultant, as a strategic partner, as an alliance with you? Oh, here's the thing. Here's the feature, the solution. Yeah. Right? And then the feel.

12:33 Like, if we do this, this is what could happen or be experienced by you. Yeah. And it got me thinking about this whole customer service thing. And I'm thinking to myself, how many times have I been on a job and when I have done some kind of after action review, ultimately what I learned is the reason that job went well is that with behavior, with types and elements of communication... We were actually doing that the whole time. We were continuing to find place and feel. Meaning, okay, as of today, in the current state of the job, based on new knowns that we've identified as the job has progressed, are there any known pain areas?

13:18 Is there a solution for us to place? And then if we do, it should change or give our client this kind of ongoing experience. So that's where my head goes. It's like this idea of, I feel like in many ways, once we've earned that client, that first phase of them saying, hey, they're going to give us a shot and they do call us that first time. Yeah. What are we doing to continue to teach and train and equip our team that it's our job to continue to earn that sale? Yeah. We have to continue to hear and listen for the pain. Mm-hmm. We have to continue to hear and apply the solutions, the benefits, the feature that our relationship can provide.

14:00 And then we need to constantly be guiding that client into recognition of, is this making it a better experience for you so far? Is this a better experience? Is this experience meeting your need? And I think if we do that, that's that intersection that you're talking about. Where it's not only are we doing a better job of selling them in the first place, but then it's iterating and it's modifying the customer delivery, the service delivery, excuse me, to continue to earn that customer experience in the process. Yeah. I think that's a really key point is that sales is something that is part of every single customer relationship forever. And the moment we lose that element of proving ourselves, right...

14:40 communicating and validating the ongoing value that we're creating is the moment we start to lose that customer. And I think that's true, not just in a consulting relationship. It's a very pure relationship in that way. But I think the same thing is true of our relationships with adjusters and with end users, Mr. and Mrs. Joneses. And certainly on the commercial side, as more and more companies start to transition to that, it's like, man... we have to always be iterating, checking in on the value, right? And like you say, identifying pain points and then presenting our system process or person that solves for that, right? And then gaining agreement that, yeah, I agree, that'll be much better.

15:23 Or yes, that would be better for us. Or yeah, we would like that outcome instead of the one we have now. Gosh, I think that's so key. One of the questions that I teach, and even as I'm saying this, We're constantly learning, iterating on this stuff. But even as we're having this conversation, one of the quality assurance questions that we build into our system, that one of the follow-ups that a sales rep does at the very end of a closed job is they go in and ask the question, How did your experience with my team compare to other restoration companies you've worked with in the past? It's such a beautiful question because there's some vulnerability in that that I want you to compare us to what you've experienced in the past.

16:04 And I want to know if it was actually better. Yeah. or if it was meh, the same, right? Or if there were aspects that weren't as good, I want to know. Because at least then I have an opportunity for us to improve what we're giving you. Yeah. Right? And it occurs to me, that's actually... Now, of course, a lot of our jobs are three-day jobs in and out, right? In this industry, three to five-day jobs. And it may or may not make sense to pose this question after 48 hours inside their building or their home, right? Yeah. But I think it is likely a very powerful sales question to ask that midstream. Hey, just quick check-in to that chief engineer or that hotel executive housekeeper, that GM or that administrator to senior living property.

16:47 Hey, I know from our previous conversations that you guys have gone through stuff like this before. But so far, we're three or four days in. How's my team doing compared to what you've experienced from other contractors in the past? Great. Yeah. And being able then to modulate our behavior. So if it's super rad, well then reaffirming and reselling, hey, the reason why is because of this system. It sounds like you guys are really digging the 24-hour job updates. That's again, that's why we put that in place. You know, it's not always easy to get our PMs to do that. It's another thing, but boy, it sounds like you guys are really appreciating that. Right on. Yep. I'm going to give that feedback to the team. And I know that that'll mean a lot to them because it takes a lot of effort.

17:27 Yeah. Right? But that's selling. It is. But that's selling that our PMs should be doing. That's selling that our department managers is they're walking jobs on the random, right? Keeping track of the quality and the adherence to our systems and processes. That's the kind of question that if they add... That's sales. It is. Yeah. It's re-earning the business. It's re-earning the business. And that's the thing. It's like, and I think when we're smaller entities, we remember that. And it's like, I remember when, you know, in our previous years, we were building a restoration company as part of that process. We actually kind of got identified and then adopted it as a point of pride of scrappiness. There was this mentality that...

18:08 around our shop of we were hella scrappy because we were the no-name independent coming up in a market that had every name brand out. And big franchise operators. And they were fairly good size. I mean, for industry percentages, a lot of our competitors were the bigger entities outside of the norm. And so it was this scrappy fighting mentality of you got to earn it that really helped us see a ton of success in the early years of that business. But it was crazy how quickly you begin to forget that. And now all of a sudden, somebody owes you something. Like all of a sudden your entity, because you've been around for a while and developed a good reputation now, your clients and your participants and your future relationships and stakeholders somehow owe you something.

18:53 And you begin to forget the demand on you to continue to fight and earn that relationship. It's interesting because I think part of what we're talking about too is... there's this idea of we all kind of have looked at our companies and identified that there's a way that we do things, in quotes. You and I use the terminology like it's still pretty predominantly, though, tribal knowledge. It's being passed down orally, but there's no... system or formalization. And I was even thinking about this in reference to selling and customer experience in general, how I've been in a selling customer service delivery type position now for... I mean, we're talking about nearly two decades.

19:33 And although I know this stuff, there's a lot of people listening right now that know this stuff. But then what I honestly get shocked by is how often I begin to deviate though from using it consistently because I'm not making it a mandatory element. I'm not making it as I think we talked about this morning, a non-negotiable. It's a thing that works pretty good. And we've even experienced it working well. And so we have confidence that it works well, but we never go to the next layer and make it a non-negotiable, meaning it gets built in and memorialized into our systems and our processes. Yeah. You know what's interesting though? I mean, if we're honest, I think that's probably true of dang near every owner and entrepreneur.

20:18 And it's why we've had, we've seen dramatic change in our own business as we've begun paying a mentor to drill into these. these things with us. Yeah. Draw attention. There's the account. And it's like, and I think ultimately, right, this is, this is what our floodlight consultants, the role, like mentor. It's not something we sort of build into our advertising. We're mentors. We think of in terms of consultants, but there is something about having somebody outside of your business poking at these things. That's really valuable. Yeah. And incredibly, it's been an accelerator for us. Yeah. Because it is true. It's like the cobbler's children have no shoes. Yeah. Yeah. That is like a universal thing, right? And I think the other thing too, and this is always interesting to me, is how large companies can get while being incredibly dysfunctional on the inside.

21:11 And AnswerForce. We tend not to give the attention to our call intake that I think we really ought to have as restorers. And of course, one of the biggest challenges we have with our call intake, whether it's an in-house receptionist or a service like AnswerForce, is what do you do when your receptionist goes out to lunch? Well, AnswerForce makes that very easy to solve for, right? They're 24-7. You have a receptionist or a call intake person that's out for maternity leave, out on vacation, etc., etc. AnswerForce has a solution to all of those things. And I think, too, it also solves for us having a very consistent, repeatable call intake process. We all know how important that is. 100%. And the cool thing is actually we just hung out with these guys and they let us know, let us in on some big feature updates that have recently been pushed through the system.

21:56 So first, verified contacts, right? So verified contacts, basically it allows the system to understand that this is a repeat caller. And then it allows them to auto capture and fill those details as part of the intake process. So smoother, more professional intake. Much easier to kind of give that client that impression that, hey, this isn't the first time you've called, right? Yeah, and we'll listen to the rest of these sets because I think they're super applicable to our commercial opportunities. So specialized scripting, okay? This is great because this is everything from holiday shifts, after-hour shifts. I mean, you name it, there's different reasons, right? Or different layers of the cake, if you will, just based on... what's going on in terms of call volume, what's going on time of day. And so with specialized scripting, the script then will match that.

22:39 And so it's shifting live, if you will, along with that kind of richer context of what's actually happening in the business. Then this other thing, I thought this was super cool, is dedicated phone numbers. So going back to that repeat client or that key client or customer, we now can associate a specific phone number to them. And so what happens is they get received very quickly. very uniquely, right? So I can imagine creating a custom script for that client. We now can recognize a repeat caller and autofill and speed up their intake. And then on top of that, there's a specialized number that's dedicated to them. So you really get to marry up that professional service offering, right? That we're promising, if you will, during the prospect And right from the jump, if you've got a commercial client with specific needs or specific expectations, build that into the script at call intake.

23:28 Yeah, it's super powerful, super powerful. Another one is just access to information wherever you are. So I don't know how many of you are already currently using AnswerForce. You should take it seriously in terms of getting a demo and checking them out. But if and when you shift over to them as a partner, the cool thing is now is that you've got access to all this data, all this information on the go from anywhere on your mobile device. And so... You can literally check inbound, outbound calls. You can listen to recordings. Actively coach the team kind of like midstream, right? And so again, just a ton of efficiency, a ton of automation, and just higher levels of customization coming out of AnswerForce. And it is so stinking affordable.

24:09 This isn't just for big, multi-million dollar companies. This is for you that's still working out of your home shop, your garage. And it's also for you that are running a $25 million operation with four locations. It's just, it's pretty extraordinary. They work with some of the biggest companies in our industry and many of the smallest ones as well. Okay. Actionable. So guys, we have talked about our friendship and relationship to these guys for a long time. Many of you know, in the recent probably year, and over the last several months, just this hyper focus on the efficiency and quality of our At the end of the day, our cash flow is heavily impacted by our team's skill and competency around writing a really comprehensive sheet and really making sure that the scope is accurate.

24:53 One of the powerful things that Actionable has is their actual Exactimate profile. This profile is a live AI tool that's monitoring you as you write the estimate and as you're implementing specific line items, it's helping you be sure that you're doing it. that you've really taken into full account all the individual elements and line items associated with this element of the scope that you're trying to accomplish. And I'm not going to highlight any specific teams, but we have heard robust numbers from teams using this. We're hearing anything from 5%, 6%, even 8% top line growth, specifically from the quality of their estimates increasing. I remember when they rolled this out to you that one of the use cases or part of the value that they were trying to hit on is the ability for us to bring up a new estimator quickly up to the standard and competency and the results ultimately of the more experienced estimators on the team, right?

25:50 So this is an incredible onboarding and training tool to get somebody up to where they're very, very competent and producing quality estimates just that much faster. Way faster. Yeah. And just one last thing I kind of want to hyperindex on is they have just an absolute boatload of white papers and F9 supporting notes. And so this is something that you could participate in being a member with Actionable Insights. But guys, we all know that getting our estimates approved in that negotiation phase is hard right now. It just feels like every carrier is significantly understaffed. They're fighting for error. We're fighting for error. And anything we can do to reduce that friction is better. And so the better we are at providing really good support for what we're calling out in our scope and why we're calling for it, the better.

26:34 And so these white papers, these F9 support notes are super powerful. Man, it's been a little while, but we've been kind of refueling the relationship with CNR quite a bit lately. And that's been good, man. I think both teams got so dang busy. We had a tough time kind of locking in and getting some face time together. But the team over at CNR has been great for our industry, you guys. You know, we've often referred to Michelle as a friend of the industry. She really is keyed in on giving us what we need in terms of tools, communication, intel on the industry. And so we just continue to encourage you guys, participate, make sure that you're receiving your quarterly copies and that you're getting all the online content that just comes in boatloads from their team.

27:17 So CNR Magazine, guys, pay attention, make sure that you're participating and getting your intel from that team as well. Liftify, bro. Yeah. Liftify, you know, it's interesting. Yesterday, I was just seeing one of our clients was getting awarded their 750 Google Review trophy. And they were already talking about hitting a thousand. A thousand. That's right. Which somebody has done. Yes. One of our clients has done. It's remarkable. And I think the most remarkable thing that people are discovering, and we're seeing this every single day with our clients, is that when you start upping the volume of Google reviews you're getting consistently week after week, the recency, when you're getting the recency dialed in and just meaning every week you're adding Google reviews to your profile, dramatic jumps in organic results.

28:04 phone calls and lead gen. And of course, who doesn't want that? Every single one of us, including Floodlight, we want that. And that's why we've indexed on, we use Liftify to build up our Google reviews. So it's a simple turnkey service. They've really created a process for capturing the most quality Google reviews from the jobs that you're already getting. So if you want to get more work... grow your revenue just off of the existing work you're already getting. Liftify is a big part of how to do that. And it's simple. It's very, very cost effective. From our experience with Liftify and what we've seen with our clients, significantly better value and better results than many of the other platforms that some of you might already be trying.

28:45 So if you're not happy with the number of Google reviews you're getting, you need to reach out to Liftify. And I think as a point of reference, it's worth us saying. Liftify expects 20% to 25% conversion. So think about that within your own numbers. If you're doing 1,000 jobs a year, you should be adding 200 to 250 Google reviews to your profile every single year. If you're performing under that, You owe it to yourself to reach out to liftify.com forward slash floodlight. You know, one last thing to add to that as part of their kind of more recent integration of AI or advancing that integration of AI. One of the big focuses for their team is gathering more live project data and analytics for you guys. And so really what this is focused on is equipping all of us to create better customer experiences.

29:30 so not only are they keyed in and driving google uh reviews for us but now they've actually turned the corner and began developing toolkits for us that use lyftify to actually be getting information that can help us modify our service delivery to create better client experiences super powerful midstream we're talking mid-job yeah wow super powerful all right lyftify.com all right guys thanks for hanging out with us let's get back to the show I was talking with somebody yesterday and they work for a very large team. They're very, very large and they're growing. And I'm talking like, you know, $100 million, you know, kind of large.

30:10 And I was talking to an operational leader inside this business and they just said, look, are we successful? Yes. A big part of our success when you pull back the curtain is we do some really big catastrophe jobs and we know how to bill for it. We know how to get paid. And so I said, but what happens every single time is when we go off to do these cat jobs, You know what completely dies off is our organic local business. Because we have no systems. We have no process. There's almost zero accountability within the company. Nobody knows what the heck they're doing. This is a $100 million team. Yeah. multiple locations, et cetera.

30:51 And I think that's actually probably more universally true than not within our industry. And to those of you that are struggling to get your first million, 2 million, 5 million, you're like, it's almost sacrilege that somebody could be that dysfunctional and be making that kind of money. And I get it. It is puzzling sometimes. And so I think there's some people listening to this, potentially, we can buy our own story. It's like we can read our own news we have these numbers we're hitting. And for you, it might as well be 5 million. Yeah. Here in a hundred million dollars. Because for you, 5 million at 20% EBITDA, it's just like, oh my gosh, numbers that, how can anybody ever need anything more than that, right? Yeah. So whatever your number is, you may already be there.

31:32 And I think the temptation sometimes as owners and as key leaders is, this is just navel gazing, thinking about this stuff. Look at how successful we are. We do X amount per year. I've got this much in the bank. And I think the big question that we help our clients ask and that you and I are always asking is, okay, yeah, we have a relative level of success that we're already experiencing here. And how much more successful could we be if we dialed in on this stuff? Right? Yeah, this is spot on. There's these four... That $100 million company, why could they not be a $150 or $200 million company? Yeah. Like how much of that dysfunction that exists... What does that cost?

32:15 Has slowed down. What's the opportunity cost associated with it? And again, like we're not saying this like holier than thou. Not at all. How dare them. No. That's just the reality. I think if anything, it should be affirming for all of us that we're all a work in process. Big time. Like, and we have these kind of moments where we can reevaluate and say, where do we want to spend more time and attention? I think this is what this reminds me of those is like the difference right between the two. So... Like when we think about this idea of investing more time and energy into, you know, in quotes, this customer experience and how that ongoing selling process lends itself to helping us grow and scale. And we can say, well, we would tribally like, yeah, we have a system. We know what we're doing. We've done it a lot.

32:55 Okay. Okay. But does what you've done to date consistently create growth, freedom, control, and stability? Yeah. Right? And I was wrestling with that this morning, man, because we're startup mode. We're only a few years old. And so, you know, everything still is kind of an upheaval in terms of system and change. constantly modifying. We are in heavy modification right now. We just want to make sure that we are absolutely not buying our own bullshit and we're providing the best partnership that we can. But in the midst of that, the more consistent we get with the system, with the process, in terms of defining how we create this consistent customer experience...

33:39 then it helps the growth and the wins be repeatable. Because the reality of it is, is that many of us have found ways to succeed. We've talked about this so many different ways. And it's great. It's good. And all of us have like a different threshold of how far we can take the machine and chaos and still survive. And we have met some people that honestly, man, I just tip my hat to them. They blow my mind. It's extraordinary. I can't even fathom. I literally couldn't put myself in their shoes if somebody paid me. And it's unbelievable. I admire the hell out of these people. And I go, what if? Like, what would be possible if they weren't depleting all of that energy through grit? You know, just kind of holding on to the sheer chaos at any given moment.

34:22 There's trade-offs for everything. There's trade-offs, man. And there's like these opportunity costs. And I think that's what an element of what you're hitting on too is this idea of we don't really know. Like even if we get great at this onboarding, prospecting, selling part of the relationship, if we don't then follow and invest and continue to sell and earn that relationship throughout each claim, between claims, in the lulls, in the quiet time, in the non-event time, if we don't do that, we're creating an opportunity cost of what could the business look like had we been doing that the whole time. And I think that's part of the encouragement right now is it's not anybody's holier than thou.

35:06 It's not judgment of how dare you not do X, Y, Z. But it's more like ask yourself the question, what would be possible if we did? Because we're already doing great. We're already winning in so many areas and so many opportunities. What's the opportunity in us digging into this more? Exactly. Yeah, I think it's incredibly powerful. And it's incredibly powerful because a customer experience is one of those things that all of us feel. Mm-hmm. Like all of us have a plumber who shows up to our house to deal with the clogged drain or replace the water heater that we have that just went out or etc. All of us have these kinds of experiences with our service providers. We all feel the difference between a really great one.

35:48 Yeah. And someone that barely met our expectations and somebody who tripped all over themselves. We all understand how that feels. And we all understand what our internal response is. Like every now and then, I have a service experience where I dang near can't control myself. Like I can't keep myself from telling friends about an experience. It was that good. It was that good. Yeah. And I think many of us have had that sort of interaction and we've talked about a particular service provider to other people. And the question is, what if we put more effort into engineering those kinds of experiences? What could that do for our business? And we know because you and I've seen it in motion. When you start to create those kinds of experiences, customers notice and magic happens.

36:33 And not only that too, but there is at times a difficult to quantify effect it has on your team. Yeah, it's very true. Because I think a lot of times we put our team in a situation where they're forced to sort of live out of some bullshit ideas. if we're really honest, we're publicly and in team meetings and all this kind of stuff. And even in their employee onboarding, we're this, we're that. And immediately when they start getting out in the field, they start going shoulder to shoulder with their teams. They sit in on their first one-on-one or whatever. They start to recognize there's a big delta between how we talk about ourselves and what actually happens.

37:14 Yeah, for sure. And you think about the mental friction that that creates for our people. And the exact opposite can start to happen. It doesn't mean we ever reach perfection. No. But when we start to create some really special moments in our service delivery, our employees feel that. And there is a special kind of energy. Yeah. that the employees start to get when they realize, you know what? We actually do, in fact, deliver a special experience to our clients. There's a level of pride and conviction and energy that comes from that that is impossible to replicate any other way. I think it creates a much more resilient workforce. Because mistakes are going to be made. Of course. It's a human business full of humans.

37:56 And so accidents are going to happen. Things are not going to go the way we want. And the workforce can recover from that. They're more elastic, if you will, and resilient when we have a system. The other thing I was thinking about as it relates to this, I think one of the challenges that I've had as an owner, entrepreneur, even just in all my leadership roles, you and I have talked about this quite a bit. And it's common amongst business owners is they tend to be a little bit more comfortable on their feet and in action. Yeah. Not 100% thought through, a little bit of aim later, but shoot first. And because of that, the spirit of that, that's why a lot of entrepreneurs make the world go round. Yeah. Because they don't get stuck overanalyzing.

38:37 They are quick to take action, right? And I think sometimes what I have a habit of doing is relating the willingness to take action without all the facts as somehow me being more intelligent. Mm. or smarter, or more capable than another person on my team. And so I find myself, because that's natural to me, I value it because it's a skill set that I have. And so I assume then, and I think all of this is super subconscious, but I begin to devalue those that need more structure and clarity. Like somehow they're a lesser version of an employee versus the ones that don't need very much direction and they can just go out and rock and roll somehow.

39:18 Yeah. I think there is truth to that. I think there's people that need to literally be told every breath to take. And I don't know that that's super helpful to any team. But people that want consistency because there's an intentional plan, that's not lesser. Yeah. That's just probably wisdom. Yeah. And it allows us to hire and build a team of more diverse folks. Yeah. Because at the end of the day, there's lots of people that are very intelligent, very capable. And it's because of that, that they want the delivery to be consistent. And therefore, they are going to push back when we just constantly tell them, go figure it out. Yeah. And so I think that I just wanted to bring that up because I know a lot of people that listen to our show are entrepreneurs or kind of prone to action, action biased.

40:01 Yeah. And I think that we need to be careful that we don't allow that to come in and kind of taint the water, if you will, in terms of how we're thinking about the requirements or the requests or what's possible from our team when they're asking for more consistency and more of a detailed plan or an action plan, you know? Yeah, it's funny. We talk about the number one reason why sales reps quit in our industry is they lose confidence and conviction in the service delivery. Yeah, right. And you can see how they get there. Yeah, you totally can. And I think too, we counter this all the time in our conversations with job file coordinators and department managers and everything else. They feel it too. Yeah, for sure. Like when they are struggling to deliver on the promise that we make as restoration companies.

40:44 Like... It isn't something that some aspire to and others don't. Like our customers expect us. Like we are emergency service companies. The baseline expectation is that you're going to come in in the chaos. You're going to fix my problem. And you're going to do it in an honest, quality, expedient fashion. Like these are the expectations that customers just... Without even knowing what to expect. They expect of us. And our team... I think carries that responsibility of we're an emergency service company. We should be good at this. No matter how hard it is, this is what we do. And when we fail to acknowledge the details and when we don't work to dial in the consistency and we don't zero in on how we're making our clients feel and solving for these pain points, I think...

41:33 I think over time, our people just realized there's nothing special about us. We talk a big game, but really, we're just... We're selling vaporware. We get it right sometimes. Yeah, that's it. We don't... And there's just... There's a lack of pride. Conviction. The conviction, and that's why there's our industry, it's a big part of why our industry is so prone to heavy turnover. It's so hard for us to pull people into the industry because I think we don't emphasize these things enough. We don't spend enough time on it. You know what? This kind of has me milling around a little bit is the difference. In fact, this, again, it's like so much of what we talk about on this show. It's just, I mean, this is just the stuff that's in our face at any given time, really.

42:14 No different than anybody else, right? Listening to me. And that is like, it's very common for us to identify even in so good, like just to help us kind of stay on course a little bit here. So again, we're talking about like what's happening post selling, like, how do we continue to create and earn and focus on a great customer experience, right? Like, what's the point of that and the value in that? And I think one of the things that will happen, I think this is very common in an environment where it's predominantly done through tribal knowledge, is that we understand what boxes we're supposed to be checking, but we don't understand fully the why or the spirit of getting those boxes checked. So like an example would be, well, we're really good at drying stuff.

42:57 We're a good mitigation company. We can do big commercial stuff. We've done it a million times. We're super comfortable, confident. We know how to manage all the stakeholders. Killer. Get it. And there's massive teams that I honor and respect that do this on the daily. But until we memorialize that, until it becomes a system where we're consistent about training it and then talking about the why that supports it... I think we rob our teams fundamentally of being able to understand and live out the spirit behind why we do things the way that we do it. And I think that that's easier to get lost in a kind of a oral passing on of these processes versus when we take time to really articulate them out and build a map and workflows and all the things.

43:43 is I think that we can lose that ability to just remind our people, like, why is that so important? Why are we focused on that thing? Because when you look at the performance of two different people and the what is very clear for both, yeah. but only one of them really has a connection to the spirit behind why we're doing the thing that we're doing, look at the performance and the outcome, the fruit that they produce. You could look at it data-wise and see that both people have checked all the boxes, but the outcome, the impact on the client, the impact on the team, the opportunities that come from that effort or from that expenditure of energy is not remotely the same.

44:25 When that person is just only fundamentally understands the process step by step, but doesn't understand the spirit of like, what are we trying to accomplish at the end of the day? Their performance is very lackluster in terms of what it creates, the fruit. And here's a real easy way, I think, for folks to kind of like hold on to this. You and I prescribed three universal questions. We didn't come up with it. I'm sure we've said it on the show a million times. And if you could just think about with your teams, okay? Because we haven't done a lot of... You got to say what they are. I will. I will. So just for kind of like disclaimer, like we haven't gotten real concrete, like how do you create these customer experiences? Because I think the reality of it is for most of the people listening, look, between you and your teams, you know, you've bought enough services and enough products in your time.

45:10 You know what a great experience feels like. And so you can take that and you can marry it up to your industry experience and start mapping out how you create these experiences. Do we have some input on it? Of course. Do we have opinions? Love to share them. But we're not digging that hard right now. But here's an example of something that we can hold on to is don't just share with your people the what. Get those boxes checked. but really fundamentally help them wrap their head around the spirit of, what are we trying to accomplish with this action, this step, this mode of communication in regard to customer experience? And here's what I would say. Three universal questions, okay? And we believe that this is a question being asked by our people internally of us as leaders.

45:54 And we believe that every client or prospect is asking these three questions. subconsciously, many, if not all, will rarely have the ability to voice this. But this is what's happening. Question number one is, can I trust you? Fundamental, right? The second one is, do you care about me? And the third and final one is, can you help me? So think about that, folks, as part of what we've just talked about. Everything back to the find place feel, right? This validate, share, ask kind of concept is, does our actions, does the way we're carrying ourselves four days into the job, first day on the job, final day of the job, is it answering yes to those three universal questions at any given moment?

46:35 Are you showing with your actions and your communication methodology that you care about them? Your appearance. That they can trust you, right? And that you've got the goods. You've got what they need. You can help them, right? Competency. And so I think that if you kind of walk away from this episode and you're like, geez, where do I start? Maybe just think through how does your team begin to understand those three questions, understand how they would affect, change or impact the way that you deliver your service. And then allow that to be the spirit of that you communicate with your team so that even when they've identified the boxes they have to check, they understand the fruit that they're trying to create by checking those boxes.

47:17 And I think if you were to kind of wrap your arms around that, you're going to fail forward. Like we're going to get closer to the target and kind of merge this place or this combination of. How do we sell? And then how do we continue to marry that up with a really powerful customer experience to continue earning the client, you know? Yeah. I think one of the biggest failures we have as a business, as like an industry, is that we tend to be feature preachers. We've been learning this. We've been doing this internal training. And one of the concepts we've been talking through is just how... how easy it is to sell, how big our fleet is, how we have this app, how we do these ERPs. We have all, hey, we're full service. We also have a contents division.

47:59 We have these certifications. We specialize in bio. It's like we can be a feature preacher of look how great our offering is while never really connecting with the fact that that customer likely often doesn't care at all about any of the things that we're preaching about. Yeah. They may not very well know why they would care. Why? They don't even have a context for it, right? And I think one of the principles of selling is, first of all, identifying the need or the desire. And like for us, as this is a practical starting point, the three questions, can I trust you? Right? Can you help me? Do you care about me? Do you care about me? Right? Is part of that is trying to understand the customer first.

48:41 And tuning in to creating a safe place for them to ask questions, for them to understand what's about to happen, and then to ultimately let us in. But I think one of the best things that we can do in sales and in customer experience is, first of all, seeking to understand what is going on for that customer. Yeah. And one of the most practical ways that we teach people how to do this on the operations side and on the sales side is, tell me about your past experience. Because somebody's past experience with anything is going to dictate how they show up to this experience now. And I think this is a big gap in our industry, even with Mr. and Mrs. Joneses, but certainly in commercial services, is what experience have you had with contractors or restoration companies in the past?

49:25 You know, the way we ask that to Mrs. Jones when we follow up on her kitchen water loss and we show up at her front door is just say, hey, Mrs. Jones, here's what I understand happened. Hey, real quick question. Have you ever dealt with anything like this before? Because how many times have we run into a situation mid-project where we say or do something that reminds our client of a negative past experience they had and they pull that file folder and they're like, ah, I know what XYZ, I know what you guys are trying to do. So-and-so did this to me last time, right? Yeah. And then we're on our heels trying to recover from a thing that if we'd known that up front, we could have catered our process. We could have explained, we could have talked through that thing with the customer.

50:07 But so often, we don't really know what the customer wants or needs. Yeah. We don't know what kind of past experiences they've had and what they prefer to have differently this time. Yeah. Until we ask. And I think instead, we end up feature preaching. We get to that initial call response with Mrs. Jones on her doorstep and we start rattling off our certifications and hey, don't worry about anything. We know this is what we do every day. And the customer, they don't even know. They don't know what questions to ask us. And so we end up selling them something that they don't necessarily know to care about. Yeah. Yeah, or we don't. Or we don't. And that's why closing rates and conversion rates aren't at a number that they could be, right? Yeah. And that we're letting dollars walk out the back door.

50:48 Okay. So anyways, you want to hear more about that live? Your next possibility is probably May. You want to go to the Access Conference? Yeah, Access. Yeah. This is your first year at Access, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm excited about it. Like I said, this panel is going to be freaking awesome. Yeah, there's some hitters on it. Yeah. Yeah. All right, guys. Thanks for hanging out with us. See you on the next one. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots. And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.