Ep 126 - "Sales: Going Back To The Basics"

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 Brennan. 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. Hey, y'all. Thanks so much for listening to the show. Hey, if you're not already following, please do so. And ultimately share, right? The coolest currency that we have in terms of supporting this is share it with a friend, share it with somebody, a colleague, a peer, one of your downline team members.

0:43 Let them be able to take advantage of the information you're already leveraging in your favor. And finally, guys, if you hear a show that really moves you, that really moves the needle, will you please leave us a review? Those five-star reviews help Right on. And listen, if you're trying to grow your business, you might consider checking out Floodlight's Business Opportunity Audit. It's free. We provide it at no charge. It's actually what we use to assess new clients as they come in. It's a 110-point assessment for your business. And we've now decided to give access to the general public for it. So go and take our business opportunity audit at floodlightgrp.com. It's going to help you identify the biggest gaps and opportunities in your business right now.

1:25 And at the end, it'll assign you a health score to let you know exactly where your business stands right now. So go check it out, floodlightgrp.com forward slash audit and take the BOA. It's a great way to get a pulse on your business. Roseph. Yes. I haven't heard you say that in a while, by the way. Oh, I say it all the time. Are your kids like growing out of that? No, no. I use it with my boys all the time. Oh, dude. I got to dime you out on something just because I think it's awesome and I respect you. So I looked at your calendar. I was like trying to schedule something and I clicked on your calendar for a minute. Yeah. And I saw that it said Jack and Dad Burger date tonight. Yeah. That's pretty fucking awesome, dude, by the way. I'm excited about it. He's 16 now and he has really good friends, which I'm thankful for.

2:05 And it's just like, I'm just realizing how easy it is to have weeks and even months go by where like he and I don't really have any extended one-on-one time. Yeah. And I just thought, geez, if I don't do something about this and get more intentional. Time flies, brother. It really does. Yeah. I think it is the most undervalued statement I've heard since I was little. Adult after adult would say things like, oh boy, time flies. And I'll tell you what, that was an understatement. There's like, I don't know what happens, but you hit like a certain age, your kids hit a certain age. And it literally, I feel like I wake up on a Monday and then Sunday is here. And I'm not entirely sure always how we got there. I had a moment last night.

2:47 So everybody's heard me talk ad nauseum about my sauna and some of that stuff. But I had a buddy over and we were in the sauna. My daughter ended up showing up. She was in it for a little while. And then towards the tail end is my buddy was like totally sweated out. And he's like, I got to go. normally I'd get out of the sauna, I'd kind of show my buddy to the door. But Jack, my 16-year-old, had come in and joined us just a few minutes prior. And so I just told my buddy, hey, I'm just going to stay in here with Jack because my thought was, I have a captive audience with him right now. And if I get up and leave with my buddy, then Jack probably a few minutes later might just also be done. And I'm going to miss that moment.

3:28 And so I actually, it's the first time I've I know this seems like just a dumb little thing, but normally I would have just gotten out with my buddies and left. And I told my friend, I'm like, hey, I'm just going to stay in here. Do you mind if you just kind of show yourself out? Get the hell out of here. Because I didn't want to miss that moment. That's smart. And so I had another just 10 minutes with just he and I, and we had this really great conversation. that I probably would have missed. Yeah. You know, we would have gotten out of the sauna and he would have gone back to his phone and his buddies would have missed that moment. Yeah, that was smart, dude. Get the wins when you can. You got to grab them. I was just realizing that, like you just have to grab the moment or it's gone. That's good, man. I saw that on your calendar block and I just, I tip my hat to you. I think that's wise.

4:08 So good job on you. And then I also have to, for those of you that don't watch our YouTube channel for our shows, yeah. Chris has a very lovely shirt on today. Yeah, it's courtesy of George Gutierrez. Thank you very much. A fellow clothes fan. I am a clothes fan. It's Robac. And you know what it reminds me of? Back in like the early 90s when spandex was like, it was really in and hammer pants and everything else. But spandex was just like coming on the scene. Oh, the material? Yeah, the material. Oh, yeah. That's basically what these Robac shirts are. They feel exactly like those spandex biker shorts. Kind of a quick wick. Back in the day. Yeah. Anyways, really awesome. And it's a pattern of mustaches. Yeah, well, that's the thing that stuck out to me, by the way. This is not like some new ad read that we just slid in here for.

4:52 No, I was complimented because the mustaches on that shirt are quite robust. Here we go. Let's get into some content that people give a shit about. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So here's where I want to go today, man. I want to talk sales. I don't want to stay in the clouds. I don't want to talk about couldbes and possibilities and mindsets. How dare you? You're implying that that's all I normally do. I know. I know you could see that maybe I was implying, but I'm not. I want to get brass tacks. I literally want to talk beans and bullets. And I think the way that I kind of want to frame this is, look, this is stuff that we've been using and deploying. I'm not telling you, you have to do these things. I just want to share with you. We want to share with you things that we've done and leveraged and successfully in the past with prior teams that we were building and leading and includes clients that we work with all around the nation.

5:37 But I also kind of want to call ourselves out from this perspective. And that is, you and I's teams got results when we were religious zealots about this. Yep. Talking about these things. Only then. And it's like, you know, you point towards this whole like this idea that you and I have talked about before, like consistency compounds, like when it comes to sales, here's what I feel happens. And I'm going to be very transparent in our consulting relationship as well. Yeah. This is what I feel like happens. I feel like we can meet with teams and we can talk to them and make these suggestions. And we can say, look, and you're going to hear it today. When we talk through some of these items, some of you might even roll your eyes because of how unsexy and sophisticated some of the things that we're talking about.

6:20 But what happens is time and time again, we try things. We do it haphazardly for a few weeks. And at the first sign of friction or inconvenience, we're going to do it. we no longer tow the line. And so teams stop doing it. And then something happens. We get in a call. We talk about something and a team gets re-fired up. And so they go at it again for a while and maybe they get several months of it, if that. But again, it's 70%, not 100% of the tasking or the items or the activities. And they don't get the level of result that motivates them to stay in the trench. And it's funny because I feel like that story parallels everything from physical fitness to mental health to right.

7:01 It's like, it works so good that you don't keep doing it. And I think sometimes, and again, I'm just going full transparency mode here. Yeah. I get self-conscious when I'm telling people about a sales methodology that I know works if you do it. Yeah. But because I can't guarantee their execution, it's hard for me to guarantee the result, which makes me passive in the way that I speak about it or try to hold a team accountable to it. And it frustrates me because we don't get the outputs that we want. So I'm just saying all that because I think one of the things that you and I do, Chris, is that we're not snake oil salesmen. And I don't want to act as if we get certain results if we don't.

7:41 And I also don't want to talk to people as if we don't make our own mistakes. And I think that's a thing that you and I have tried to be committed to consistently. Yeah. You and I only ever share things that either one... We've heard works from somebody that's trusted and a known commodity. Yep. We have done and executed directly Or we have seen firsthand teams around the country, either through our consulting or through our friendships, have done and executed on and found success or results from. That's right. Outside of that, you know, you and I like to bullshit every now and then. Yeah. Yeah, no. So it just becomes guru talk after that. And that's just not what we're doing. And it's not a space that we care to entertain or participate in.

8:23 So... That was a perfect segue. Can I kind of open us up with a story? Yeah, yeah. So yesterday, and some of you may have seen a LinkedIn Live I did, and we're going to kind of dive deeper on some of the things that I covered in that LinkedIn Live. But I had an interaction with a past client. You know, basically, the topic was, we're way down. Way, way down in sales. And it's getting scary for us. You know, this particular business, they don't have the financial bandwidth to... have many months where they're significantly down in their revenue. And I think some people listening to this right now, you're like, yes, I feel this. I think most of us know that we can't spend. Most. You know, we were, takes me back to some of the conversations we had at RIA, where somebody at one point mentioned that Alacrity indicated that their claim volume is down 40%.

9:13 That's huge numbers. Very big number. Yeah. Very big number. And there's been a lot of chatter in the industry, but I think depending on what sort of kind of circle you're in and the current state of your business, you might be largely oblivious to this. Yeah. Because there are winners out there right now. Yeah. Undoubtedly, lots of them. But I think a lot of people listening to this, and we've talked to a lot of people that are in this situation where it's like, oh man, it's getting scary tight. And people have been downsizing their teams anyway. So I'm talking with this past client and their small little restoration company, they are struggling and they're afraid. And so they reached out to me just to talk and whatnot. And early in that conversation, they threw out this idea that they had to try to generate some business.

9:57 Yeah. And it was a new service line, this new clever... That sounded sarcastic. It was a legitimately interesting idea. Yeah. Of how you could add this recurring revenue, a recurring revenue service. And I listened to him and I was like, okay, that is a legitimate idea. I said, but I don't think this is the time for that. I think there's a tendency when we're scared and we're trying to generate revenue... to meet payroll, save our business, rebuild some of our savings and so forth, there's this tendency to go out and find the new thing. And all the while, subconsciously, we've let go of, we've laid down, we've gotten lax on...

10:42 the very fundamental practices that built our business in the first place. Yeah. And I told him that. I said, you have to stop chasing the new, the better, the shiny object, the new clever idea. And you have to go back to the fundamentals and execute right now. And so I kind of led him into a conversation. I said, okay... you are severely down right now in your inbound opportunities. I said, but do you have some opportunities are coming in? He talked to me. He's like, hey, I got, we got this fire in last week. We got this water job. We have this mold thing that we just bid out.

11:22 That's pretty decent. And I said, okay. And we walked through every single job. I said, who is that? Well, one of them was with an HOA. Okay. I said, who else is associated with that HOA? He's like, well, I don't know. I mean, it's just, you know, the HOA management company in our area. It's a perfect, that's opportunity. I'm like, okay, what about this residential fire? What agent is it from? Right? What brand is it from? Right? Okay. How many other agents in that market are captive agents for that brand? Have you ever met the regional sales leader that works with all those agents? Do you know when their next agent group meeting is? Maybe you should buy donuts or breakfast for them, spend a couple hundred bucks and get in front of all of them.

12:04 And we just started one by one with the existing business that is already in their ecosystem. What do we do to exist? What are we doing to maximize that opportunity? What are we doing with the stuff that right now is in our grips to maximize it? And by the time we got done now, and it goes beyond that, right? Because I think one of the concerns that all of us have, I think if you're a good leader and a good business owner is we want to avoid as much as possible laying our people off because talent is so scarce and it's so hard to recruit right now. when times get hard, I think most of us listening to this, the last thing we want to do is lay off.

12:47 Yeah. Right? It was like cut every other cost except our people. And that is smart. That's wise. But the question is, when jobs aren't coming in, what do you do with your people? You can only have them fix so many things and clean so many things and organize so many things in the shop, right? Right. You get through all that and it's like, okay, okay, So like this person, we were actually FaceTiming outside of a job in a neighborhood that they were doing. And I'm like, okay, this neighborhood you're in, I could tell from the background, a really nice middle upper class neighborhood, right? The kinds of people we love to do work for, right? So you get to the recon and maybe do a little remodel and build up the opportunity in that job, right? And I said, do you have handbills in your truck? Sales handbills? Okay. Have you gone to every...

13:29 house in the neighborhood and knocked on their door and introduced yourself as working for the Joneses down the street and giving them your scope of work handbill and your contact information and said, hey, keep this in your junk drawer, throw this up in your fridge. You guys ever need anything. We're 24 seven, dah, dah, dah. And hey, by the way, while we're here, if we park in front of your mailbox, I'm sorry, you know, give us a call. We'll do everything we can to accommodate, right? Did you do that? No. I said, how big is this neighborhood? Well, this cul-de-sac has eight or 10 houses, but there's another 20 or 30 houses nearby. I said, why don't you go knock on every single one of those doors with your technicians before you leave today? Do you have time for that? Yeah, really? We don't have another job to go to today. Perfect. Spend the rest of the day with your technicians, wiring every house in that area.

14:15 Now, even as I say that, as somebody who's led restoration companies and other businesses, on the one hand, you say, well, that's not a good use of our time. There's other things that would be more effective sales like door knocking. Really, Chris? Well, there's 100,000 roofing companies in the United States that are doing that today. There's pest control companies that all over the country that are doing just that right now as a standard order of business. Most service companies canvas. Why would we not, when we're hard up for business, spend at our labor cost... right? To make sure our guys are in a clean polo that they have in their truck because they should anyways, right?

14:59 To spend the remainder of the hour left for the day or whatever in the area where they just had a job. I'm not suggesting we load people in a van and go drive across our market to go do canvassing. I realized that this is not necessarily a normal course of business for us. Yeah. But if you're hard up for business... Yeah. Come on. If you're already in an area of your market, why would you not? Right? And so anyways, that conversation, hopefully it was really fruitful for this client friend of mine to redirect him. I think a lot of times we get stressed. You and I have been through this. Every single person listening has had seasons of desperation in their business. Oh, yeah. And I think every single one of us has felt the instinct to go find the new thing that's going to save our business and get us back in order.

15:43 Yeah. And of course, that is rarely the right move. I think you're spot on. It's interesting too, because as you were kind of talking about that campus thing in the moment, and I get what you're saying. You're saying, let's look at this moment and see what can we do since we're already in this position to maximize the opportunity. I think that's legit. I think what I'd like to do is let's think sales. Okay. And what we're talking about right now is not mindset posture. This is what are actions that our people can be taking. And I would just, let's break these things up into two categories. Let's go operational sales. It'll make sense as we dig into this. And then let's think again, like direct to end user or even route. Okay. BD. Right.

16:23 Right. and we're not going to go crazy on text and scripts and things like that. We're literally going to talk about these actions that we can specifically take because my hope is that these are things that either A, you're going to be like, oh yeah, we used to do that all the time. Okay, cool. Start doing it again. Or maybe some of these items will sound and look a little bit different from what you're currently doing. We just ask, try it. Don't take my word for it. Just try it. And if you do it consistently and you don't get a result, you know what? That's on you. You decide if there's value in these things or not. And some of them, I think sometimes we just want sales to be so much bigger and sexier than it really is, is that we think these things that we do with a handout or a handbill just seem so rudimentary.

17:04 But if you just do it enough, it will yield a result. And I think the more important thing here is, can it just part of our business delivery system to make it super convenient to do that thing time and time and time again? And then statistically, you should yield a result or an opportunity to do that. from that. I think that's where I want to hang. Let's just give somebody something they can literally walk away from and start trying. And again, I think it's all about execution. Execution is going to determine the result, not the information. So we'll share it with you. How you deploy it's totally up to you. So for Chris and I, and again, these are just experiences we have and that we've seen work. We like to think about our sales activity as business development versus operational sales.

17:47 Okay. And when we think operational sales, you and I think you actually came up with this term, every job sales activities. E-J-S-A's, right? Yeah. And so it's this idea of there's essentially five things that we do on a regular basis. Okay. And if we do them consistently, odds are in our favor. And here's the interesting thing about this. And this is why I think this is really important to set the stage. These things compound on each other. So one and done is not the story here. These are the things that look, if you started doing these things today, could they yield an immediate result for you? Always. There's always the chance that something just conveniently works out in your favor. Yeah. But more importantly, start today so that 90 days from now, you're not still worrying about the same problem.

18:34 And the other thing too is, that's a really good point. Because yes, what we're talking about are practical to-do items. Yes. Checklist things that we incorporate into our mitigation process outline, our restoration process outline. Yes. that over time have a scaled impact. But you can also create scaled impact by just doubling down on how much you do of these things in the now time in order to spool up and create more FNOLs in the short term. And so let's walk through it and we'll kind of address that. These are business best practices that you do every single day for the rest of your life in your business. That's right. But then how could you potentially double down on these activities in the short term to stir up opportunity?

19:21 Because we all need more opportunity right now. Probably every single one of us would say, we're not triple what we did last year. Right. Right. So the every job sales activities, the very first one, and I asked actually the client I was telling that story about, I said, hey, do you guys have yard signs? And he said, yeah. Are you putting them out? Sometimes. Yep. Put a yard sign out at every residential job you do. Period. They're like $8 at scale. Yeah. Sometimes even less. Yeah. That's an $8 sales rep that is advertising to everybody else that this Mr. and Mrs. Jones is using your services. That's right. The power of social proof has been proven over and over and over and over again. See the book, Robert Caldini, Influence the Psychology of Persuasion. It is science. Create additional exposures in the markets you're already selling it.

20:05 Put the yard sign out. I know some of you can't because of HOAs. Fine. Put it back on the truck. Yep. Take it out on every job and place it in the yard. Yep. Painters are doing it. Plumbers are doing it. Security alarm companies are doing it. Pest control companies are doing it. Everybody's doing it. Roofers are doing it. Why aren't you? Yeah. Okay. It works. Don't ignore something that works just because you want to be smarter. Okay. Oh my gosh. Like this is my problem. I see stuff like this and I just think to myself, oh, it's so basic. Or it's inconvenient because from time to time you have a homeowner that's like, dude, I don't want your fucking sign in my yard. Okay. But that now doesn't deter us from following this as a policy. It's one person's opinion. Are they going to happen from time to time?

20:45 Especially if you claim volume is high? Yeah, it is. But do it. It's simple. Anyway, so we could dive into that. So let's just close on this though. So yard signs, right? Cheap. You don't go ham putting all the most gross, embarrassing things listed in your service line on your yard sign. Because really it's about the brand, your brand name being respected enough that someone in the neighborhood has hired you. This is not going to necessarily yield you your next trauma job. It's just a matter of the branding consistency. Logo. It's there. Phone number. Phone number. logo, phone number. You make it too grotesque. You make it wind, water, fire, gross stuff, whatever. People aren't going to want that in their yard, right? Keep it simple.

21:26 Logo, phone number. The reality is it's reinforcing, right? Somebody Googles disaster restoration in their market, very likely if you're doing your job in terms of Google reviews or Liftify is for you, you're going to show up as one of the search results. They're going to make an association. God, I feel like I've seen them somewhere. That's what we're trying to create with that is top of mind awareness and reinforcing that buying decision, right? That's right. Okay. So the what we call the five by five. This is so old school. I talked about this in the live yesterday. My grandfather was a milkman and he used to do this. He was a top selling milk guy back in the day. It's just a simple concept of when we land a job with Mr. and Mrs. Jones in a residential neighborhood, I want to take the opportunity to leverage the fact I'm doing work for their neighbor to tell them to introduce our company.

22:10 So I take my sales handbill. Again, does not need to be fancy. Scope of work, phone number, logo, right? Crazy. You can make it a door. Oh my gosh. Whether it's my MIT PM, whatever your roles are that are responding to that FNOL and setting up that loss, collecting the work authorization after they've done that and they placed the sign in the front yard, they walk next door on either side of that business. Okay. Or home. Or home. Right. Excuse me. And they introduce themselves. It sounds something like this. Hi, my name's Chris. I'm with XYZ Restoration. Hey, the reason why I stopped by, I just want to give you our information. We're working for the Joneses next door. Listen, we want this to be a good experience for their neighbors too.

22:53 If somehow a roof shingle flies off onto your backyard or we park in front of your mailbox or maybe we're here too late making too much noise, please feel free to call us. Let us know. We'll do our very best to accommodate that. And oh, by the way, maybe keep this in your junk drawer, on your fridge. You ever need us? We're 24-7 company. And now, obviously, a lot of times during the day when we're typically working, people aren't going to be there, right? And just slide it into the weatherstripping in the door and walk on. We got our exposure. We potentially put our name and our scope of work and our phone number in somebody's hand that could use us in the future. So I do that on either side of that existing job and the three across the street. And then the five by five is the five fingers of our hand. The old school, open the door, shake their hand.

23:34 A lot of times people don't shake hands post-COVID here, but you get my point, right? That's the five by five. Now think about this. This is the impact in the medium and long-term. If you're a company that has 500 jobs a year, which probably a lot of you do, at least that, some of you want to, but if you do 500 jobs a year and you religiously do that, That's 2,500 more high-touch exposures that you may not have right now within your market. It's just built in. What is the value of that potentially? If 20% of those end up calling you at some point in the next year, do the math. Yeah. So here's something interesting here.

24:15 And for those of you that are like extensive digital marketing users, you understand the kind of statistics or percentages that you're talking about in sales and conversion. It's very, very low. It's all about the numbers. It's volume. You do things enough times, a fraction of those will return or yield a result. And so I think what we're trying to highlight here is that sometimes we think about things like a yard sign and the five by five and we just think, gosh, it's just this fractional number of folks that will actually do something with the fact that we stopped in and introduced ourselves. we know. That's sales 101. Marketing and sales are statistics and they're normally very small numbers that yield result.

25:00 So again, this is just a matter of something that we can just do. We do it every day. We do it job after job. And at the end of that year, we should be able to point back and see that it yielded some results for us. And Even if the fraction is small, which it likely will be, if you just do it ongoing and it's built into your system, you're going to get the results. As you scale, your return scales. The percentages may remain the same, but they're going to be on a larger basis. Now, here's one practical bit that bears saying, and that is, if your guys look like shit while they're out in the field... this strategy is probably not going to yield you as good results. Right. This is a great time to do a little self-reflection at your next morning stand to you and say, okay, is our uniform system on point?

25:45 Right. Do our guys have a clean polo shirt for their engagement with customers in their trucks? Right. Right? So get your shit together before you start expanding your customer impressions. Okay? But that's simple. Right? I think most of us, regardless of how difficult business gets, we can afford to have clean polos on our guys. That is important. And they can change one from the truck. But okay. So let's keep down this channel. Well, let's talk about this. So okay. Again, we're talking about businesses down. How do we stir up opportunity? Five by five. It's a great cadence to establish in our business forever for the rest of your ownership of that business. Mm-hmm. But how do you potentially pull on that lever a little bit harder, right? Well, the obvious thing is, think about your next morning stand to.

26:25 You don't have a ton of jobs on the board. People are getting done around 2 o'clock, right? At a morning stand to, guys, hey, this week, instead of 5x5s, we're going to do 5x20s, right? Every single job, we want to hit 20 doors in that neighborhood with our scope of work thing. Right? Don't just put it in the door sleeve. Again, we want to actually say hi to the customer. FaceTime is everything in this business. But at a minimum, we want to hit 20 doors with every single job. All right, guys? And here's what it is. Just put food on the table. You guys tired of quitting work at two every day? You guys want a full load? You guys want to get back into some OT? This is how we're going to do it. Rally your troops. You're the leader.

27:05 Inspire them. This is real. This is practicable. The more FaceTime we have with potential clients, the more times we put our scope of work and our phone number to their hand, the more possibility that we'll walk into a potential mold opportunity. That happens too on these 5x5s. Oh, yeah. Liftify.com forward slash bloodlight. You've heard Brandon and I talk a bunch of times about the importance of Google reviews. Maybe even heard our episode with Zach Garrett, the CEO and founder. Recency, consistency, two of the most important things when it comes to maximizing the benefit from your Google reviews. Why not use an outside partner? Liftify is targeting 20 to 25% conversion, right? So if you do a thousand jobs a year, you ought to be adding right now, 200 to 250 reviews a year, every single year.

27:51 If you're not doing that, you owe it to yourself to get a free demo from liftify.com. See their system, see how it works, see how affordable it is. I promise you, you'll thank us. Liftify.com forward slash blood light. You know, we spend a lot of money and a lot of attention trying to get that first call. And one of the things that we do once it happens is sometimes we leave it to chance, right? Who picks up the phone? How do they respond? How do they walk that client into a relationship with us? Well, one of the benefits of partnering with a team like AnswerForce.com is we can systemize that. We can make it more consistent. We can also have backup for when our teams need that help, right? Somebody goes on vacation. Somebody's out sick.

28:32 You know, we get a storm surge. We get cat event. All sorts of things can have an impact on how we receive that client. But the most important thing is they need to know that they've chosen the right team. And so AnswerForce.com can support you, be a bolt-on partner to help you consistently produce an awesome onboarding experience with that first call with your client. So AnswerForce.com forward slash... blood light. That's great. CNR Magazine, we're friends with all the folks at CNR. Michelle and her team, they do a great job of keeping their ear to the ground and reporting all the important information from our industry, right? You want to stay up on all the M&A activity and what the latest best practices are for selling your company successfully, right?

29:13 She's got that great articles about all the four quadrants of our business, right? CNR is constantly pushing out great material and leveraging great writers and subject matter experts in our industry. Right? It is the water cooler of our industry. So if you're not subscribed, go to cnrmagazine.com, follow them on LinkedIn, follow Michelle on LinkedIn. Trust us, if you're trying to stay on top of everything happening in the industry, your best destination is cnrmagazine.com. You guys, many of you have already heard about actionable insights and the training and the technical expertise that they bring to the industry. But how many of you are already leveraging the actionable insights profile for Xactimate?

29:55 That's the game changers. It's essentially an AI tool that's walking alongside of you as you write your estimate, bringing things to your attention that should be added, that could be considered. All of them items that increase our profitability, increase the effectiveness and the consistency of that scope. And it can do anything from helping a new team member assimilate some estimating best practices. And it also helps the grizzled vets add back that few percent that we've just forgot over time. So actionable insights, get insights.org forward slash floodlight and take a look at what the actionable insights exactimate profile could be doing for you and your team.

30:36 So anyways, double down with your team. Hit extra doors. Do the whole cul-de-sac. Hit the whole neighborhood. If you have the extra time, do it. Rally your team. All right. So there's five by fives. Five by fives. So yard signs, five by fives. Again, this ain't sexy. We get it. Nope. It's not sexy. Just build it into your cadence. Do it every day. It'll yield results like a little robot. Make it fun. Make it consistent. Go to Little Caesars. $6 hot and ready. Have four or five of them ready at the shop when they come back and celebrate that we put out 500 flyers that day. Absolutely. All right. Third one, age and a record. Okay. I like Chris normally does this one, but I'm going to hang in the pocket on this one. So one of the things that we've seen, and we've talked about it, right, at great length is... the relationship opportunities directly with agents has shifted significantly over the years, right?

31:20 Consolidation, all the things, AI-driven call support systems, right? The comp packages for agents, all of it is doing TPAs. It's doing a more effective job at removing the agent from this relationship potential. And so we have to just think, How do we still leverage that potential referral opportunity, that revenue stream, but do it in a way that's maybe more efficient so that we're not just literally spending our hours chasing 100 stop routes where we just know the vast majority of those agents aren't going to be direct referring business. So one of the things that we have leaned into is this idea of capturing agent of record on every loss. And then the follow-up that we do with that is where we make...

32:02 our money. So essentially, we are aggressively pursuing that piece of information. It can happen as part of your call intake process. If we're not able to secure it, then we can do it as part of our client onboarding. When we're there live, we're going to ask and try to secure that again. We collect that agent of record. And here's the way that we have an opportunity to follow up with this. Some teams leverage their GFCs, their coordinators to do the follow up. It doesn't need to be a salesperson. It doesn't have to be. And many will use this as a pipeline builder for their route person. So let's say their route person's really keyed in on plumber sales and agent sales. But we're trying to find the most expansive and efficient way to identify the right agent relationship. So we capture agent of record on every loss, like religion.

32:45 Our team member reaches out to said agency, introduces themselves, and starts the conversation because we have a mutual client. Powerful. Like I'm not just door knocking. I'm not walking into your office to tell you something stupid about whatever I think I think is important. I'm not giving you candy. I'm not giving you candy. I'm calling to let you know, we literally in this moment of time have a mutual client and I would like to express or share some information with you. Think about it. Is there any other time where we get to have that kind of conversation with an insurance agent referral partner? And how much more powerful is that potential conversation? We'll talk here about a script of what do you say when you get that opportunity? But how much more powerful is a mutual client collaborative conversation that than when we show up, interrupt, fill candy jars, stand by their desk while the agent owner is watching us steal their time.

33:38 Yeah. I'm exaggerating, but this is the mentality subconsciously or directly that agent owners have when we come in and interrupt their business and keep them from writing apps and servicing existing clients. Yeah. So we get on that phone call. Hey, this is Chris from XYZ Restoration. Hey, the reason I called is we have a mutual client, the Joneses. Were you aware that they had a loss over the weekend? No? Okay. Well, if you want to pull up their system, I have an update for you. I want to make sure I get that in your notes. Awesome. I paused because I really do want them to actually take the note. Well, we responded. They had a dishwasher supply line broke. And so it's affected their floor and cabinetry and stuff like that. We've begun stabilizing. We're waiting on asbestos samples to come back before we start addressing the damaged material and so forth.

34:21 Once I finish that update. And again, sometimes what I'm about to say, people are like, oh my God, Chris, that sounded so cool the way you said it. Because this is all I do now. And I've been doing this for many years. I make it sound very easy. And sometimes salespeople or resto folks are like, oh my God, I don't think my sales team could say that quite that way. No, they can. And this is a recording. You can listen to this 20 times and practice it and role play it with your team. You absolutely, anybody on your team can have this exact conversation. We just have to discipline ourselves to do it. Here's the conversation. I give them the update and I say, hey, do you have another quick second? And sometimes they'll say no.

35:02 It's totally fine. Hey, listen, if anything comes up with the Joneses, please let us know. We'll do anything we can to help. Thank you. Yeah. Done. But if they say, oh, yeah, totally. Hey, listen, the reason I want to just share why we make these calls, what we've learned over the years working with our adjuster and agent partners is that if this claim goes really well with the Joneses, you and your agency are going to have a customer for life. They're not going to shop statistically. But what we've also learned from our adjusters and agency partners is that if this claim goes poorly, it doesn't matter if it's our fault as the restoration company, the adjuster is having a bad day, or that, God forbid, somebody in your agency set somebody up with the wrong coverages. If they're unhappy at the end of this claim...

35:44 you're going to have a shopper at your next renewal. And our team here at XYZ Restoration, we take that very seriously. That's why we take the time to make these update calls is to try to keep you in the loop. But here's all that I would ask is, promise me, if anything comes up with the Joneses, anything goes sideways in this claim, promise me you'll reach out because we'll do everything we can to brainstorm a way to get that claim back online and create a positive outcome. Okay? Love it. We're able to do creative things that you can't. And we want to collaborate with you to create those positive claim outcomes. Both of us win. We look good. And you guys retain your client. That was a minute script. You're like, oh my God, that's a long... No, it's not. It's like a minute.

36:24 The whole thing is about a three or four... minute phone call, right? And of course, there's a pause break. If they're busy, they got a client in front of them, whatever. We gave them the opportunity to easy exit. But when they have the time, that value message, is any other restoration company having that conversation with them? Not likely. Often not. Often not. But imagine how much more powerful that is than randomly coming in and filling their candy jar and handing them trifolds. Right. And the time spent, like three, four minutes. And there's a couple of things that are happening here. At least this is what we've experienced, right? Again, this isn't have tos. We're just giving you suggestions. One of the things that we've seen over time is when you have a dialogue like that, there's a couple of things that just took place.

37:06 The right agencies are going to take the minute to hear you. Understand what value statement they ultimately have made. You probably, from their perspective, inconvenienced them to give them the information about their client. So again, we're being a little assumptive here. But if our job is to operate off of statistics and consistent behavior and activities, this is a perfect example. They've told you if they're the kind of person that we should be spending much time trying to track down or build a referral source out of. Because the answer is probably 99% no. No. But if they say, yeah, right. And you do your speech and they still don't give you much in response, we've had a second opportunity to learn. These are not folks we're going to spend a lot of time and energy on.

37:47 But then when they respond and they say, this is great. We've not had someone do this before. Or this is awesome. Oh, I know the Joneses, right? And there's some kind of respect or response of gratitude to the fact of the way that you're carrying yourself, the way that you're thinking about them as the agency and what's important to them in terms of value, their response will then tell you, is this someone now I'm going to put into my route and I'm going to now develop this relationship because this thing that we do efficiently, I've done and it triggered a follow-up these people based on their response. Yeah. And that's really what we're talking about here. Because you could talk to hundreds of agents and get null in response because it's just the way their shop is set up.

38:32 It's okay. But I'd rather not spend hours behind a windshield to go do that bullshit. I'd rather do it in three minutes with a phone call. So that's where we're going with this. So do it every time. The fraction of results will be small, but every single one of them could be worth millions of dollars in return, right? So following this pattern, you're desperate for business right now? Okay, a lot of people are. How do you double down on that? You make that agent job update call and they dig it. They're like, oh, thank you so much. Right? They give you a positive cue back at the conclusion of that message. You're like, oh, that's really great. You know, I really appreciate that. any kind of positive cue. If you're trying to double down, you're trying to stir up business, here's what you do. If your job file coordinator made that, your receptionist, whoever made that call, your sales rep, they get a positive cue.

39:17 They bring it up to you as the owner or GM or department head or whatever and say, hey, I think there's an opportunity here. And somebody reaches out to the owner when that job wraps up. Hey, listen, I wondered if we could buy you guys kind of a Subway lunch. And I wanted to actually go through the case study of that Jones's job that we just did and help you guys understand kind of how that claim flowed so that you guys can learn and you guys can better support your policyholders as they go through claims. Do you guys have an appetite for that? I'll buy the Subway sandwiches. We only need about 45 minutes, but I just wanted to walk you through the process of that claim. Is there potential... that they will go out of their way to refer you in future calls that they get in with loss reports?

39:58 What do you think? Right? Yeah. That's a way. Now, are you going to do that into perpetuity? Well, it's probably not a terrible idea. Yeah. But certainly when you're hunting for business, you're desperate for more work. That is one way you can capitalize even further on those conversations when you get a warm response back. Okay. So the next every job sales activity is we need to ask for Google reviews. Now, if you're a business right now where you can afford to spend, I don't even know what the rate is right now, but let's just say 150, 200 bucks a month to solve this problem in a systematic way, well, Liftify.com, you've heard our sponsor reads. They do what they say they do. It's incredibly effective and it's very cost-effective.

40:40 means of routinely gathering on every single job. Google reviews, which is ultimately going to drive your organic search results and organic inbound FNOLs. Simple. Now, outside of that, it's simply a discipline of somebody on your team being in charge of asking for the review directly from the client. I don't know if we need to do much more beyond that. Yeah, I don't think so. Right. But if you've forgotten to do that, you've slacked off during the good times, then, That's important. And it's actually been surprising to you and I when people start getting religious in just a matter of weeks, like three, four weeks, they start to see some lift in their organic inbound just because of the recency and the consistency of them gathering those Google groups.

41:23 That's right. They move up in the ranks, essentially. And there's really no spend. If you want to be crazy and you want to give a little kudos to your team member or something, okay, there's a minor spend there, fractional, right? But the yield is high. Okay, fifth one. Asking for a specific referral. You know, this one's interesting. I was just talking to a team member or a team yesterday about this. And I get this because I struggle with this, right? We're service providers. We need to do the same things, right? This is what turns business for us too, is asking for that direct referral. And just for some reason, it's just very difficult for most of us to do it. But again, this is just like these other things. If we do it consistently, it's so powerful. We are working very hard to produce a really high level of service.

42:04 And at the end of that run with somebody, if we've earned our five-star review, take a minute to just inform them of the space that you're pursuing growth and ask them if they have a connection, a friend or a relative that happens to be in that space where And they could use service like ours based on the experience you just provided. Right? And so in going in crisp form here, a little bit of a dialogue is, Hey, sir, ma'am. Hey, really appreciate you guys trusting us on your project. Thanks again for this awesome review. A lot of people don't know that we actually are very intentional about developing our multifamily business. We do a lot of work in that sector. We really enjoy that. We've got some special service delivery models that really marry up well with that industry.

42:47 I'm wondering, do you have any friends or relatives that happen to be in the property management or multifamily space? It's that simple. You know what? Most of the time you're going to hear, you know, not really. Okay. Close the door on the situation and move out. No problem. But if we do that on every single project, we have teams we talk to that do nearly 5,000 jobs. a year. If we asked for a referral that many times, are we going to get at least a handful? Because here's what does happen. Some percentage of the time is you find out that that homeowner you were working for, they're in that business category that you talked about. And then the follow-up, the way to capture that opportunity is just to say, oh my gosh, that's awesome.

43:30 Listen, would you mind just sending a quick email, copy me on it, I don't want you to be fancy. Don't make it... I don't need a sales pitch or anything. All I want you to do is just write them and just say, Hey, we just worked with these guys. And just share two or three things you liked about our people or our process. Again, don't get fancy. Just share what's real for you that you experienced with us in your home. And just copy me on it. Here's a cheat code. Here's another thing to consider. Okay. So again, this stuff, guys, I think about these kinds of strategies almost like carbon fiber. Okay. Carbon fiber is layers. And once those layers basically solidify, right, it's layer after layer, they work in conjunction with each other to create this very rigid, structurally sound infrastructure, right?

44:17 But it's the layering of these items that give you that result. This is the same thing. We do all these things and we do them consistently. And if we do, we're going to begin getting the results. And the longer out on the horizon, you do these things over and over and over again, they end up self-serving. They perpetuate. It's a flywheel. You get more and more result because of your consistency. Okay. Let's dive into the commercial side. Our direct BDs. Let's keep it real utilitarian. Yeah. So I've got three things, three levers that I want to remind people of, and then we'll close out. Going back to the referral. Here's another thing that we can think through here is your closing process.

44:57 even the documentation that you're using to close a project out, we can ask for this in person. That's the best. Don't hear me wrong here. The best thing to do is equip our team to do this on site themselves. But if there's hesitation, concern, or more importantly, we want to reiterate these things to make sure that they're happening consistently, go ahead and make that as part of your closing documentation process and communication with your client. In the email body, in the whatever that you're sending to formally close out with that client, add that piece in there. Hey, sir, ma'am, thank you again for trusting us on your project. It's been a pleasure working with you and your family. Hey, many people don't know.

45:39 And we do the ask. And again, how many people will read it? I don't know what the fraction is. It's probably going to be small. Don't matter. It's convenient. Do it over and over and over and over and you'll get the result. Okay. Absolutely. Okay. So while we're focused on trying to grow our business, times are tough, things are tight. How do we take advantage of the things that already exist in our business? So first of all, we got to look, if you've got a sales team that's out there going direct after a commercial. What are some things right now that you can focus on? I think a lot of times when times are good and business is flowing in, we often aren't very disciplined with our accountability and our focus and our structure of our sales teams.

46:19 Something comes up, we've got an important meeting, we punt our sales check-in with the team. It's like, hey, business is good, whatever. We get a little lazy if we're honest. I think we're not careful. What are three things right now that you can revisit with your sales team to ensure that you're getting the maximum result out of your sales in this difficult time? The first thing is time management. Your sales team right now, regardless of how much pressure everybody's feeling and talking about, may be killing a lot of time. behind their windshield. Drive time. Super common, major inefficiency and source of wheel spinning in our industry.

46:59 What can you do about it? Implement the anchor strategy and hold to it like religion. Here's the anchor strategy. It's very simple. Grab your pen and notebook, okay? An anchor meeting is the very first meeting that a sales rep schedules for their day. It doesn't matter if it's a job closing, quality check-in with their client. Hey, how did my team and I do compare to other restorers you've worked with in the past? That quality follow-up and check-in. Or it's a brand new business sales meeting. Or it's a follow-up meeting to talk about an ERP. Whatever that first meeting that they schedule of that day, that becomes their anchor. And that anchor sets where they're going to be that day all day. One of the biggest problems we have is we'll start in St. Petersburg, Florida on Monday morning.

47:44 And then we have people driving all the way down to Naples for the next meeting. And they kill their whole day on two meetings. if we adopt the anchor strategy and we're religious coaching our team to it, I'm in St. Petersburg, Tampa the whole day. And even better, if I'm in downtown, old downtown Tampa the whole day, I start with my meeting and then I work. I go into my CRM, my job management software to see what other prospects and clients I have right in that area. And I backfill my day with as much activity in as tight of a radius as possible. The purpose of that is when we're trying to win business, which is all the time, we want to maximize our face time out in the field with clients and prospects, period.

48:33 As much as possible. The anchor strategy is a very specific and concrete way that we can do that across our team. The bigger the team you have, the higher impact on your business this anchor strategy is going to have. But if you've got one salesperson, drill in on that strategy now. Tomorrow, meet with your salesperson, look at their calendar, do a calendar review, and teach them the strategy and let them know that you expect them to move forward using that strategy. And then hold them accountable. Go back and do a calendar review until it's religion. Okay? So anchor strategy number one, a very simple concept, go do it. The second thing is with LinkedIn. you are probably and your sales team is probably not leveraging LinkedIn to maximize the amount of opportunities that are coming through your door.

49:17 Okay. So as I talked about with the story of my client, walking them through this and asking them, okay, talk to me about the business that's coming through now. And what are we doing to capitalize on and maximize it? And one of them was a condo association. Another was a property management company that works with a military base in their region. And I said, have you looked them up on LinkedIn? If you have not looked them up on LinkedIn, you have no idea who they are connected to. So if you have somebody who's already chosen to do business with you, you have social proof. This property management company, this homeowners association or condo owners association is already doing business with you right now. Presumably, you're going to do a kick-ass job for them. And just like that golden referral question we asked at the end of with Mr. and Mrs. Jones...

50:01 If you are not looking up and connecting with every single commercial client that you're doing work for right now, you are potentially missing a whole slew of opportunities. I call it spider webbing. Go and connect with that current customer. When they accept your connection request, you now have access in most cases unless they've locked down their connections, which most people don't. You then can go to their profile and click on their connections and see everybody they're connected to. Now, here's the beauty of it. Let's just say they're a property manager. They sent you a job. Might be the first job you've done. Maybe you've done four or five jobs, but you've never been diligent in investigating this prior. Well, now you can go in and you can filter by current company.

50:43 It's very easy. This will take you 40 seconds. You can filter by current company and they'll show you everyone else that they're also connected to on LinkedIn that works at that property management company. Other portfolio managers, the regional maintenance manager for that company, the vice president of operations. And now you have the opportunity to direct message and do a connection request for them and say, hey, I just finished doing a project at XYZ property for Bob portfolio manager. Yeah. I just want to introduce myself to see if we can potentially be a resource on any of the other properties in your portfolio. Please let me know if I can be a resource. If I don't get a response, salespeople, you're listening, you know what to do.

51:24 I don't have to wait for them to seek me out and say, oh, I'm so glad you reached out because that's probably not going to happen. But I did make an overture to them and I put my name in front of them as a resource that's already worked for their company. Okay? Okay. Then I put it in my schedule and my follow-up, right? My Salesforce or whatever to reach out to them very next week. Hey, I don't know if you saw my LinkedIn message, but I just finished doing a job for Bob down at Whispering Winds property. And from what I can tell, he was pretty thrilled with how we did. We turned that around in three days and got the tenant back in. Hey, can I swing by? I'm going to be in St. Petersburg at the end of this next week on Friday. I've got a client meeting there with XYZ Property Management. Can I swing by your office and just have a quick standup?

52:06 I'd love to introduce myself. We just created a direct line between a job that is already in process in your business to now harvesting more work out of that same company that you otherwise would have no idea about if you hadn't gone to LinkedIn and used that very simple and powerful business tool to identify other opportunities within that customer company. It's beautiful. Let's hang in that pocket for a minute because I think this is kind of an interesting element. One is that I think we undervalue... the leverage of that. I think many of us think about social and our presence or our profile on social media. And we get it confused with what the vast majority of us have social media presence for.

52:46 And that is just kind of a social platform. It's a place for us to kind of connect with people and show them photos of what we're eating. or what we're cooking and all that kind of stuff. So as a kind of a closer to this, just considering like another tool that you could put into place tomorrow is I think it's the behavior around LinkedIn. Like most of us don't intentionally curate our connections around, these are folks I could sell to. Yes. And that's what we need to be doing. And if you're one of those people that hasn't spent a ton of time on LinkedIn, you're on Facebook, you're on Instagram, these other places, and it's the place where you show when your family goes on vacation and what meal you ate. Great.

53:26 That's cool. Yeah. But consider professionalizing that practice and doing it on LinkedIn as a platform because the vast majority of your buyers on the commercial side... Yeah. are there. They use it as a backbone for recruitment, for engagement, for sales themselves, for networking. And it's a great space for it. And you don't have to get caught up in sending pictures of your dinner. We can literally curate a list of folks that we will be prospecting and selling to now and into the future. Yeah. I've got one more and this is less practical, but I think it has to be said. When times are tough and we're hungry and we're desperate, It is a fantastic time for you to lead your team back to disciplines that you always want, right?

54:13 It's like, for whatever reason, that's how humans function. It's like, we don't tend to make smart decisions and changes and behaviors in our life until we have to. It's just the nature of humans for most of us. This is an opportune time for you to look at your process where we've been slipping and been lazy. and to refocus the team. And let me give you one example. I was just talking with a client who said, gosh, our claim volume, our revenue is down for the year. We're scrambling a little bit. They're healthy, but they are realizing the impact of all this reduced claim volume. And I said, talk to me about your sales team. And they said, well, our sales guy, he's a bit of a free spirit. He's doing a lot of things. He's talking to a lot of people.

54:53 Here's the one suggestion I would make when you go into your next sales meeting. Focus your team on one or two verticals. When times are good, it's like, hey, we're chasing everything. We're turning over all the rocks. We've got agents. We're talking to plumbers. We're going after senior living. We're going after multifamily. We're just kind of going after everything. That oftentimes does not give us the results we want, right? Narrowing our focus... and demanding that all the clever social media things that your sales rep might be doing on LinkedIn or otherwise, the networking functions they're checking out and doing, when you're in your sales meetings, make sure that any kind of creative effort, flyering, swag, what trade shows we're going to, there is a direct line towards the two verticals that you're focused on.

55:44 So the first step is focus. establish a focus with the team. No more than two verticals. Now you may at some point decide to expand beyond that, but probably the best advice is expand your team. Don't expand the focus of your one sales rep. No more than two verticals, right? And then anytime they come to the table and we're like, oh, I want to join BNI. I've got this cool thing that my friend at the chamber told me about. Okay. how is that going to put us in front of one of these two verticals? Consistently. Consistently. And if that effort, that sponsorship, that networking function, that swag order, that donut drop, that thing we're going to go do, if there isn't a direct line between that and the two verticals we're focusing on, say no.

56:29 Show me anything that's a clever idea that points towards us getting an FNOL from these two verticals or deepening our relationship, getting more work with those two people. I'm all in. Yeah. I'm all in. Everything else, no. I'm terrible at saying no, by the way. So this is a discipline I've had to learn the hard way. Very difficult. But I just can't emphasize that enough. Focus on creating disciplines and focus and intentionality with your team. Narrow the field of focus. It always will net you more results. So keep that in mind as well in addition to these things we've talked about. Okay, I got one more. I know we're crunching time. Guys, closing and conversion rates. Talk to teams all the time. We all want to add salespeople. We want to grow our top line. We want to do all these things. I love it. I get it. They have long lead times.

57:10 They take time to build momentum. You're closing in conversion rates you can affect tomorrow. So look at it, know the number. And if you're anything in that 50%, 60% range, there's lots of upside opportunity. And we're literally just not maximizing the phone calls we're getting. So hammer down on that first. Then we can start looking at some of these other sales gen, lead gen opportunities. So down and dirty. It was very utilitarian. Hopefully, those are all things you guys can literally take tomorrow and start executing on. It's not rocket science. It's not sexy. It just is. Good times are coming back. There's a little bit of a doom and gloom quality to this conversation, but it's just because we're all feeling it. We're just trying to be real. Good times are coming again. But in the meantime, we just got to get to work and refocus our energy, refocus our teams and lead and inspire, right?

57:53 There's lots of low cost things that we've talked about today that you can implement. Rally the troops. Rally the troops. They are trusting you to do that. They want you to step up and paint the picture of how are we going to get from here to there, guys? I want you back in OT. I want you guys back on a full schedule. How are we going to do it? This is how we're going to do it. Paint a clear picture. Give them clear directives. Hold them accountable. Have those morning stand-to's. Don't punch your meetings. Stay in the pocket. Keep the battle rhythms. And good times are coming again. We'll get there. Love it. Thanks for hanging with us, guys. We'll see you next time. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots.

58:34 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.