Ep 118 - "Transforming First Impressions into Lasting Success in Restoration"

0:07 Welcome back to the Head, Heart, and 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. Man, I love this industry. Hey, good morning. Well, sir, how are you? Good. Good morning. I don't know. Is it morning? Yeah, it still is. It is still in the AM time frames, my friend. Yep. I think we're getting tactical today. Yeah. We're going to get into some nuts and bolts. I'm actually excited to talk about this one. I don't know why, but this topic just always gets me kind of fired up in a good way, I think. Yeah. I don't know. I think so. Most of the time. In there. But yeah, let's rock some sponsors and get into this bad boy.

0:48 Let's do it. Hey, so first of all, let's talk about answering your phone. Do you have a plan for when your receptionist, your call intake person is out to lunch? Like where do those calls go? And we all know how valuable those inbound calls are right to our business. But do you have a plan? Well, if you don't have a plan, if your only plan is to just have your phone system kind of hunt for the next person that picks up the phone to randomly take in that customer job opportunity, you owe it to yourself to go to answerforce.com forward slash floodlight. Right. AnswerForce as a call intake partner is an incredible solution, one that can flex up, flex down. Right. If you've got a regional storm event or your receptionist is out for maternity leave or whatever.

1:34 Or, I mean, here's another practical reason. Right. What do you do when you have an all company meeting? Do you have your wireless phone, your receptionist is holding in their lap and then they have to get up and leave and step out every time the phone rings during your all-company meeting? Well, if you had answerforce.com, you just simply select it in your app to have them take the calls while your receptionist is in the all-company meeting and then unfoward the phones when the meeting's over. Right? So everybody needs a redundant call-and-take solution. And if you don't have that in place, you owe it to yourself. Check out answerforce.com forward slash floodlight. Bingo. Bingo. Liftify, liftify.com forward slash floodlight. Guys, we're just such huge fans. I mean, literally any business endeavor that Chris and I consider or think about even for ourselves, I think one of the first toolkit items or one of the first teams we consider is how do we incorporate Liftify into this mix so that we can be generating those those five-star reviews, right?

2:27 Consistently, we want them recent, we want fresh, and we want to maximize the exposure that we have to every relationship so that we can leverage that in our favor and get more business. So anyways, Lyftify.com, they are your bolt-on partner for gathering and systemizing the way that we gather those five-star Google reviews. Obviously, if you're getting lots of them, their return rate is somewhere north of 20%, 20-25%, which is just massive. If you're getting that kind of engagement, and then on top of that, they're consistent. Week in and week out, you're getting these fresh Google reviews. Google will prioritize you. You will, from just an organic SEO type byproduct, you are going to be ranking and you're going to potentially be outranking your competitors if, for instance, they haven't had one in weeks or months.

3:14 Even if they have more than you all in. If they haven't had it recently, it's like kind of old news, right? It's got an expiration date, if you will, in terms of how it's weighted accordingly. And where it ranks you. So again, get them all the time, get them consistently and get them recently. And those combinations are going to be in your favor. And that's what liftify.com will help you actually do. You know, Chris and I talk often about this idea of, in order to get consistent process, right, we've got to be careful how dependent that process is on someone's current workload. We see this in sales, for instance. An organization is really keyed in on sales and then they get a little busy and then that cadence drops off. Well, we can do the same thing with our Google reviews.

3:55 But with a partner like Liftify, it's consistent. It's the same methodology. It's the same pattern. And there's wins in that. It's good. And seeing our magazine, you know, recently, actually our business manager, Wayne Hudson, had his debut, his first article published. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Building trust with the inside our company. And Wayne is, well, up to this point, our experience, he's a subject matter expert on it. He does a great job of building trust, right? He talks about some really practical best practices and leadership behaviors to build trust within your company. So I highly recommend you check it out. It's by Wayne Hudson. I really should have the actual title on Quick Draw.

4:35 But Google or search Wayne Hudson at cnrmagazine.com and you'll see his article. And anyway, it's great. We're excited to see him publish more stuff. But CNR Magazine, a source of great, not just industry information, but leadership and personal growth and professional growth. There's a wide variety of content that Michelle and her team are cultivating on the site and also helping us keep our ear to the ground. to be up to date on the latest stuff happening in the industry. So check it out, cnrmagazine.com. And it's AND, A-N-D, C-N-D-R. All right, last and certainly not least, Actionable Insights. As you guys know, 501c3, very different business model.

5:17 As a nonprofit, basically, they got a primary mission, and that is helping us... be more equipped as a professional restorer. And they're assisting us in training content that ranges all the way from the highest-end tech that we're deploying in the field all the way through estimating best practices. And right now, one of the most powerful tools and resources they have available to us as restorers is that profile, that actionable insights profile, and the fact that it literally is an AI partner helping write that estimate right alongside of you. So as you're entering in line items, it's monitoring those line items and helping you think, Hey, there are some items missing here. Is there potential line items that we should be adding to ensure that the scope is more robust and that it's more concrete in terms of scope?

6:01 And it's one of those tools where not only is it going to help you onboard and bring up a new estimator to speed in a significantly finite timeframe or faster timeframe, but on top of that, as veterans, man, we just begin to kind of forget things, right? Like there's kind of that saying around those grizzled dogs that have been doing something for a long time, they've forgotten more than we know. I feel like that can happen to us on the estimating side and that actionable insights profile really can just ride alongside of them and make sure that we're not missing the The stuff that over time adds up and it becomes real concrete dollars and cents. So actionable insights, what an outstanding training and support partner. And then in addition to that, really keying in on the fact that they've got this actionable insights profile that we can partner in our Xactimate best practices.

6:46 So pretty powerful stuff. Okay. All right. We have an interesting topic that I wanted to dive into today. Okay. really falls into our nuts and bolts series where we get a little bit tactical. One of the things that as we've worked with teams, and of course, we've had struggles and wins in this category across the board is there's this constant need to grow. Many of us who are in business want our top line revenue to grow. We want our exposure to new markets, to new relationships to continue to expand. And our default mechanism or thought process for that is hire more salespeople, spend more on marketing. Now, That is certainly part of the strategy. And those are items that we can key in to have a profound effect on our business.

7:29 But what's interesting and something that I see a lot of us making the mistake of is we get keyed in on that, yet we're not doing something very critical. And that is measuring our success rate of closing a lead when it locks in the door? And maybe just as, and if not more important, then what are we doing to convert that initial relationship into a construction relationship, right? So if we're getting some kind of EMS work, What are we doing to successfully convert? And so that's why we look at it in two different methodologies or numbers is closing rate, which is a new job gets called in, a new relationship. Did you get it? Yes or no.

8:10 And or a conversion rate where we're moving that from one division into a second and we are taking care of more of that process. Yeah. Which can be confusing. I think it's maybe important at the outset because we're going to be using these terms probably interchangeably. It's like conversion and closing are essentially the same things. We have at different intervals an opportunity in front of us, right? Like when we're on the phone, when our receptionist is on the phone... We got to close that call. Well, we're also converting. We're converting that call into a new job opportunity, right? And then when our technician arrives on site and is face-to-face with the client, right, the opportunity there is we need to convert that face-to-face opportunity, right, into work authorization.

8:55 Yeah. And then eventually, right, we hopefully, in most cases, we want to convert that mitigation job, demos complete, into a restoration or recon, repair job. So I mean, the terminology can really be used interchangeably. I think the thing that always surprises us when we start working with companies is how easily jobs just get lost. Yeah. They slip through the cracks. They just slip through the cracks. Yeah. At each of those different intervals, right? Like, certainly, we miss jobs on call intake because calls go to voicemail. right? And the moment a call goes to voicemail, there's a lower percentage of conversion you're going to get on there, period.

9:39 End of story. I mean, by probably at least 50%, your opportunity has gone from, I can book it and get a technician out there to it's 50-50. How fast do you get back on the phone with that person, right? And then when our texts show up, there's a whole variety of things that potentially affect whether or not that technician is going to collect a work authorization or not. Yeah. And then again, there's a bunch of factors that happen between that interval and when we go to secure the recon that affect whether or not we close and we get a signed contract on the recon, right? And so hopefully it'll be helpful for people for us to kind of walk through those different decision points or those moments of truth.

10:21 Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think again, just sort of the sake of clarity, I think what let's do this as we're talking through this episode today. Closing rate is first call. Did you turn it into a job? Conversion is, did we transition that from one phase or division into the second? So let's just kind of hang in that pocket for the sake of understanding as we go through this. People probably are not seeing... There's a new side of Brandon that he brought to the episode today. And I just feel like it's worth mentioning. It's a little bit distracting to me, actually. Is it my flowers? Yes. It's the flower cup. Yeah. You know, I'm going to be really transparent here. There's a lot more flowers going on here than I paid attention to when I first pulled this out of the drawer.

11:02 But it's a bit of a work of art, actually. It really is. And it's a side of you that I don't think many people get to see. I've seen it. I've seen the flower part of you. I'm curious as to what that means. Well... Maybe I don't want to ask that question. Well, there's a... Probably a lot of people are acquainted with your fiery sort of former army paratrooper. Like, you know, that persona, you know, there's some of that. The commander's intent, you know, and then there's this flower covered coffee cup. There's flower guy in there. Please tell me you don't have like green tea in there. No. I mean, that would really... No, this is... No, I'm not even gonna... No, this is just straight Joe.

11:43 Straight cup of coffee. Okay. Which I feel like I actually need a whole lot more. We'll see. We'll see how this episode goes. Where do we want to begin? The brain's firing. All right. So here's my thought. Let's just kind of walk through these project lifecycle. And as we're doing that, let's just kind of think through and highlight some of these opportunities that we have to either think through some tools and resources and or adopt some systems and processes that are going to continue to affirm or reflect. I guess, give us the highest chance of closing and converting these opportunities. The very first place I want to start with is that if closing and conversion rates is not a core metric that you and your team are tracking at a very high level, Meaning that it is so important that all your key leaders in your organization have some kind of responsibility in terms of their performance and their tasking that is addressing and or monitoring closing and conversion rates.

12:41 There's a real opportunity for improvement there. So I think right out of the gate, it starts with, this number has to be considered important enough that it is one of the very foundational and core things that you track, measure, and talk to on a regular basis. And so the way that we think about that is that it's important, we think, for a team to have a running window that they're tracking their current closing and conversion rate. And the reason that we say start with a running window is because we all know I could get 50 jobs on a Tuesday. And as I'm working through that, beginning to move them into production, beginning to get work authorization signed, I could have this super dynamic closing or conversion rate for the week.

13:23 Yeah. Okay. All right. So what do you think is good? Like a three-month look back? Yeah, I think 90 days to 180 days. And it sounds like, well, that's a big difference. I agree. But I think at minimum, we need 90-day window that we're monitoring in terms of looking at our actual closing rate. But then what we need to do is we have to marry that with the kind of behavior that is looking at it in a small enough time frame that we can still affect change. So think of it that 90-day to plus window is our real hard score. It's an accurate current score. But then what we do on a weekly basis as part of even in our production meeting and our leadership meeting is that we are discussing our current closing and conversion rate based on the work that's in front of us that week.

14:09 Okay? I think also too, along these same lines, this stuff is super obvious when we take the time to step back and look at it, right? But we talk about the leakage. And I think some companies suffer on their conversion rate because they aren't looking at the inbound jobs on an often enough basis. Like some of the best operators that we see... They're watching those inbound jobs daily and like a hawk. So if a job comes in in the morning and it hasn't been touched or somehow responded to by the end of day, like that's a huge, that's a huge alarm bells going off, you know, kind of scenario. So some of the most effective teams we see, they're so tightly connected to jobs that are inbound.

14:54 Where are they at in the process? What comes next? That it's next to impossible for those jobs to... fall by the wayside, not get put into production, right? Some of the most effective teams we see, like looking at their pre-production jobs, jobs that are sitting in pre-production, is at the very least a weekly part of their production meeting before they go into their WIP, right? Another example of sort of how to monitor the jobs that are flowing through your system. Yeah. I think you bring up a really good point there too, as we're starting high level, is we've got to be... In my mind, okay, I think it's important for someone to own a client from the moment they call.

15:37 So we see a lot of round robin programs where companies just take the phone call like Next in Line takes the phone call. I'm not necessarily in love with that model. I'm not, but that's not our job to critique that right now. But the idea is that no matter who takes that phone call, we want that project now, that client to be assigned to somebody. Somebody that understands I have a working relationship in front of me. Part of my responsibility now is to continue to steward that relationship through the project lifecycle. And so anytime we have scenarios where someone doesn't own that client from the moment that they make a phone call to our company, we are running a risk. Yeah. Because we get we mentality, right? So if we're not tracking this and we're not speaking to it and or oriented around inspecting it on a regular basis.

16:24 And then thirdly, if we're not assigning ownership of this client as soon as they hit the phone or hit the door, we are running a risk of greatly reducing our ability to close and convert that project. Yeah. So I think that's just some high-level stuff that we own right out of the gate. Here's some additional things to think about just as we start a project lifecycle. I think it's important that we script out the way that we take that phone call and what it is that we talk about with the client. And the reason I say that is because I think it's important in order for us to get a consistent product to engineer that experience. And the way that we engineer an experience is we set standards. We set a process for how we take the call, how we record that call, and what it is that we say and do with the client as part of that receiving the call.

17:12 When we do that, we can engineer an experience and we can ensure that that experience sets the stage for a client that feels welcomed, prioritized. and committed to, right? Right out of the gate. The way that we interact with them, they understand that time's of the essence, that they're important to us, and that we're going to do what is necessary to help them and to take care of them. And so the best way to do that in my book is let's engineer a call intake, scripting and what it is that we're asking and why we're asking the information. I think one of the things that if we're just in terms of leveraging opportunity exposure... We really under-prioritize gathering good information in terms of why did they call us?

17:57 And I'm not necessarily looking for the heartsy-feely. What I'm looking for is this concrete piece of direction that they got. And that's why they called us. Whether it was a referral partner like an adjuster, an agent, you know... a previous client, whatever. If it was just a generic Google search, I want to know. I want to dig into that. And so again, it's not necessarily directly related to the closing, but it is absolutely directly related to us leveraging the exposure we get into more opportunity. We have to prioritize that intake as part of that intake gathering. How did they call us? What prompted them or put them in a position to call us? Okay.

18:38 So let's say we move through the first process. We've got a client that's now ours. We're dispatching our team. So now we have this opportunity to set, if you will, I would call it our second best first impression, right? Like first impressions legitimately just happened over the phone. And if we engineered that experience so far, we're pumping. We've got some momentum in our favor. Well, real quick, one thing that I think during that call and take that we're setting the tone for, we coached to this quite a bit, and I think we've talked about it in previous episodes, answering the three subconscious questions that every consumer asks, which is... You're a big cheater. I was going live with that one. He and I... Stepping up to the door. Yeah.

19:18 Oh, well, but I think it starts, right? I think it starts with the call intake, right? Love it. The person is trying to answer the question, is this person on the line, can they help me, right? Do they have the competency? Are we conveying that we have the credibility and competency to help them in the way and manner in which we take that call and walk them through an intake process Can I trust them? Right? Which really, in a lot of cases over the phone, it's really what's the tone of voice? What's my sort of... What's the posture and tone of voice that I take with that customer? Am I building trust? All of that stuff begins at that call intake. And I think it's just important for us to underscore. I think we generally take our call intake constantly.

20:00 way too flippantly. We've commoditized receptionist work in our businesses to where often that receptionist role is one of the lowest paid roles on our team. Often. Yeah, it can be. Often. And I think they also tend to be the least trained and developed. We tend to, once somebody is, quote, trained up on call intake, we never really talk to them again. We just expect, we just, it's just one of those things that's in place. And I think it's one of the biggest errors that we make. is not observing, is not checking up on that person's skill base and continuing to help them refine their ability to show empathy and communicate that in that initial call and take and do all the things that we want them to do as part of that customer experience.

20:47 Yeah, I think you're spot on. And I think the three universal questions and our ability to answer those... with the way that we behave just continues right on to that first impression when we show up for the first time. So just really, again, we'll just touch those. So it's, do you care about me? Can I trust you? And can you help me? Those are the three questions. And so our job, because most of the time, these are not questions that people say out loud. These are subconscious thoughts that 99% of the time all of us have when we're about to meet, get introduced to, and or hire someone for the first time. So we carry those on, right? So when we show up for the first time, we have like this saying, check yourself before you wreck yourself.

21:27 When I was in the military, there was a mirror that was in front of the barracks exit. And there was in the whole point of that mirror, and it was written in massive letters over the top of it. This was my first duty station at Fort Bragg. Check yourself before you wreck yourself. And the idea is get your shit together before you go jump in line into formation. Because if it's not, you're going to get wrecked when they figure out that you're not checked. Let's put it that way. Well, this is our opportunity as a team too. There's this whole saying that we can adopt in our business. Check yourself before you wreck yourself. And that's that mental body check we go through. where we're preparing to go introduce ourselves to the client for the first time with the goal to answer yes to those three questions with the way that we act, behave, and carry ourselves.

22:11 And so for instance, and we've talked about this before, and I'm not going to go into it in depth. If you smell like a carton of cigarettes, you're in trouble. We're setting the wrong tone right out of the gate. If you look like someone just dumped you out of a military duffel bag, that's a problem. you're going to set the wrong impression. You're not saying yes, right? So our uniform, where we park, the current status of our vehicles, are they dented, banged up, wrecked? Do they look like they've been in the fleet for 25 years and that's on its last leg? You need to realize that all of these things are setting the stage and all of those examples are making someone less likely to say yes to you than not.

22:55 Right? So it's, let's go in the opposite direction. We want to maintain our odor, be present, be aware of the fact that we may stink. And so we need to be addressing that. We need to ensure that our uniform is prepared in such a way that we can look professional, clean, and approachable. And so one of the things that we teach a lot of teams is have a t-shirt policy, meaning we do a polo over top of a work t-shirt, a correctly labeled company t-shirt. We introduce ourselves in our polo. And once the introductory is done and we begin the work, I can take that polo off and hang it in my cab so that I can put it back on when I go to present myself to the next client. that afternoon.

23:35 So there's this purpose behind the way that we show up, where we park, how we carry ourselves, our hair's done, we're shaven, we're trimmed up, we're well kept. When we show up, we have a business card in hand that we can hand to our client. We step back from the door and give that client room as we begin this dance of introducing ourselves. One of the things that Chris talks about often in this first introductory experience that we have with the client is asking that question of, Hey, sir, ma'am, have you ever been through something like this before? And the opportunity that we have in that in terms of setting the stage and building rapport with the client. Yeah, it's huge.

24:18 All right, Head, Heart & Boots listeners. Want to stop here just a moment and thank our underwriting sponsor, Bloodlight Consulting Group. As all of you know, right? You know, Brandon and I, this is our passion project, Head Heart and Boots is. But it's also a way more and more that our consulting clients find us. And in effect, they interview us, right? Those of you who've been listening to the show for a while, you get to know who we are, right? What we're about. So if Head Heart and Boots is valuable to you, one of the best things you can do is share it with your friends. And it's been incredible to watch just the audience grow. And we still get text messages from many of you about shows that you really like and impacted you. So that's number one. And please keep doing that.

24:58 Many of you have been huge advocates of the show. We also just want to remind you too, if you're a restoration company owner and you're interested in a partner in your growth, you want some help building out systems, developing your leadership teams, helping set up the infrastructure for you to scale and grow into the company that you're trying to build. That's what we do. That's what we do is we come alongside restoration company leaders, we help equip them and we help support them in that growth trajectory. So if you're looking for that, go to floodlightgrp.com. Potentially we could be a great match for each other. Another way that we really do serve our client base and our sphere of influence is through our premier partners. We work really hard to vet those folks that we believe bring a level of value to the industry, that it can really be leveraged in a way to have a sincere positive impact on your business.

25:46 We take that very seriously. The folks that we create those kind of ongoing partnerships, that's not a check-the-box kind of scenario. We really see strategic alignment in the value that they bring. We see value in the way that their leadership teams and their partners are developed. And we've done very sincere work of ensuring that these folks that we introduce our clients and our sphere to can actually create vetted value. So go check out floodlightgrp.com forward slash premier slash partners and see if we can. and see if there's some folks on there that you can connect with and begin developing some other resources to support your growth and your business. The other thing too that I think we have to coach and develop our people to bring to that initial interaction is a certain level of assumptiveness.

26:34 I think this is one of the bigger mistakes that we make as restorers is we show up thinking that we still have to sell the job and we approach it in that way. when we forget that we're emergency service professionals, right? Once somebody has called us out there, certainly we have to prove ourselves. We have to answer those three universal questions. But I think one of the things you and I discovered over the years was the more assumptive we were about the nature of that visit, the reality is they called us, they invited us out to their home we are largely an insurance-driven restorer. And speaking specifically to when we were working with a residential homeowner, I think one of the things you and I discovered in terms of conversion is just how important that assumptiveness is.

27:18 And how we coached and developed our people is, hey, we're here to help. Let me explain the process. Help me understand what your past experience has been. And then I'm going to walk you through. And part of our role as a company is to assist you and walk you through the entire process that's ahead. I love that. Have you been through this? You understand how the insurance process works because this is what we do. Okay, I've got answers for all those questions. Yeah, I think what you're alluding to there is this idea of when we walk in without that assumptive posture, we don't lead the client. That's exactly right. They don't, it's very... it actually is counter to establishing confidence and establishing their trust.

28:02 The more assumptive we are about the nature of the process and us leading them through the processes in front of them, the more it puts the customer at ease. That's what we found. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And just for the sake of clarity there, we're not saying make assumptions. What Chris is referring to when he's talking about the assumptive closing is, they called us out. Our assumption is we are going to help this client. So let's begin acting, behaving, walking, and leading the client in a way that gives them the confidence that we are the right fit for them, that we have the capability to lead them. So that's what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. And in no way am I implying that we push, we gloss over, we shove that work authorization in their face, like sign this and then I'll, you know, like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

28:49 It's just, we're showing up understanding our role as a restoration professional, which is, and this is really true, whether it's commercial or residential, but the point is our objective is to solve their problem and meet their need that they have. And we know what that is. Nine times out of 10, We know what is going to follow that initial greeting and we need to lead them through that. So it puts them at ease. It calms some of the anxiety and stress and frustration and uncertainty that they're feeling, right? And as we do that, and the customer is able to sort of calmly interact with us and navigate with us, it just unfolds really naturally. I think one other piece too about that assumptiveness is if you're a full service restorer, we ought to be conveying right from the initial greeting, the full service nature of our help.

29:42 There you go. Yeah. I think this is another really common misstep or blind spot that a lot of restoration companies have is that because we internally think of the different steps of the process as being different departments, different processes, different science, different process outlines. A lot of times we inadvertently train our people to talk about the business that way externally. And it really confuses people. I think we forget. Customer doesn't really understand the difference between mitigation and restoration. And we so often use all these terms interchangeably. Like we call ourselves a restoration company, but then we refer to the reconstruction as the restoration part of the business.

30:28 Like there's all this interchangeability that we do when those of us in the industry talk about what we do. But to the customer... All they realize is my house is messed up. I think I'm going to need somebody to also rebuild it. To the customer, it's all one problem. Yeah. And yet, we can tend to confuse the customer and complicate the process by the way we talk about it instead of just saying, hey, Mrs. Jones... Have you ever been through something like this before? No. Okay, let me walk you through the process because there's a lot to it, but it's what we do every day. So let me explain the different ways that we're going to help as we go through this. And as we talk about it, we can talk about it as a seamless, continuous process that we're going to be with them for every step of the way.

31:17 With the intent of calming them down, to let them know by the time they're done with that initial interaction with the technician, okay, we don't have to worry about calling more people. Yeah. We don't need to figure out anything else about this. They are going to help us figure this out. Super important. Yeah. And I think specifically when we're talking about that conversion from EMS or emergency services into the construction or whatever, additional phases or divisions that we get to get engaged in that, that's the magic is that we're very clear from the very beginning. We will not allow an air gap to be created where they then feel like they have to go out and start solving this problem on their own.

31:58 because that air gap is where we lose a lot of opportunity. We will lose the client when we haven't done a great job of preparing them and letting them know, just as Chris articulated, that we, hey, this is one size fits all. We are going to take care of you from beginning to end. We're going to introduce specialists within our team to hold your hand during those phases. But we're here. We're here from the beginning until the final phase. Yeah, the recon is sold in the first 20 minutes of us showing up to that customer's home. And worst case, they're going to tell you very specifically they have another plan. Well, that's great. If that's the plan, we can prepare accordingly. But losing someone because of that air gap that we accidentally created just sucks.

32:39 And it's absolutely preventable. So I think you're spot on. So again, just kind of hovering in this building rapport element in our initial... meeting with the team, right? We're asking those good questions. We're presenting ourselves in a professional way. But then here's this. This is really important. I've seen some teams do this to varying degree. And I think those that do it consistently get a lot of success from it. And that is I will normally ask or teach teams, ask them to walk you to the point of damage. Have the homeowner take you there. And this sounds kind of like, duh, but man, this is our opportunity to ask more questions, to engage the client with a sense of purpose, not just bullshitting at the front door. We have a sense of direction and purpose with the conversation, but it is giving us time and grade with our clients.

33:22 Hey, would you mind showing me where the damages are as far as you understand. So then we go through that process. Then I want to be really proactive with my communication and something to the extent of, okay, this is great. I'm going to ask some questions like, is there anything specific that you're nervous about or worried about in this space? And that gives us the opportunity to hear directly from our client, hey, there's this piece of personal property or there's this piece of furniture, whatever it is that they're extra nervous about or... Maybe some kind of gray area in the process that now we can speak to. And again, we're answering yes to those three questions when we have an opportunity to do that. So another thing that I like to encourage our teams to do, and it's mandatory in our system, is that I am going to wrap the stage for my client from the sense of, hey, I'm What I'm about to do now is I'm going to walk through this process where I use my moisture meter and my tools and I'm going to determine the extent of damages.

34:18 And then I'm going to take some time to create a plan on how to best take care of your situation. What I will do is once I've had a chance to do that and outline the extent of damages and come up with a dry plan, I'm going to meet with you and review that with you. Are you cool with that? Great. Because what I've just done is said, hey, homeowner or business owner, I need some time to do my job. I don't want you hovering over me, but I want to be clear with you what I'm doing so that you can be confident enough to give me the space to do my job. And that is, before I walk out of here, I'm going to meet with you and walk through my plan as I see it. Okay? So it's an important phase that I think we gloss over. Then speaking of that, that walkthrough of what we plan to do.

35:01 This is all of us doing what Chris said, assumptive closing. I'm leading the client. I'm teaching them how to say yes to me and inevitably let us start working on their behalf. I'm teaching them what they need to do to walk through this process. So then I stop. I'm done. I have a dry plan. I know what I need to do. And I just walk through it with them. Hey, here's what my plan is. Here's how we're going to take care of this loss. Good to go. Great. So what I'm going to do today is I'm going to start the stabilization. And I set the path or set the tone. How long am I going to be on site? What all will I be doing? And I'm getting these verbal agreements with me as I'm leading the client through this relationship and teaching them how to buy from me.

35:43 Now, obviously, we get done with outlining with the client what we're going to do, what's expected, the extent of damages, and then we can walk through our documentation. But I've now had an opportunity while I've been on site to give them the buying signal, to teach them I'm answering yes to these three questions by the way I act, the way I behave, the way I talk to them, the way I've led them through the process. So when it comes time finally to get those signatures so I can go out to the truck and begin doing work... I've had lots of opportunity to warm my client up to just saying, heck yeah, let's go. Okay. Now, that's a big obstacle that we've just overcome at that point. So at least we've got an agreement.

36:24 We're now producing the mitigation work. So now our opportunity is to continue to set the tone and move the client into this transition where our recon team, as an example, begins to hold their hand and lead them through that second phase of the project. And there's a few things that are really important in terms of timing. One is, I think it's absolutely mission critical for our recon division, that part of the team to begin engaging the client while demo is being done. Now, I do understand from the sake of efficiency that it kind of sucks to go out to a job more than one time. Totally understand. And however... I think a combination of experience and technology and clear communication with our mitigation teams, even if demolition is not completed 100%, I really don't see any reason we're not capable of gathering scope data and beginning to build our plan and start those negotiations with the carrier.

37:22 The reason I want to do it then, one, again, I'm removing an air gap where my client is left in confusion or left to create this question mark of things they need to address on their own. But more importantly, I'm getting a jump because I now have three, four, five days of dry time that I can begin my negotiations with the carrier. All of us that pay attention to this show and that are restorers, you know that one of the biggest bones of contention or pains for us is how long does it take us to get the carrier to come to an agreement on our construction scope, right? Especially in a residential environment where it's not a direct out-of-pocket direct pay. Right.

38:03 Three to five days is a lifetime if your house is tore up. So us being able to compress that timeframe and engage immediately as soon as we can, it's massive. And it does an absolute ton to help us secure that second part of the process, right? And it's a perfect opportunity for what we refer to as the restoration checklist meeting. Mm-hmm. It's where, first of all, to the customer, when we do it on that timeline, they don't experience that massive gap of what's happening and all of the stress and anxiety around that. So we keep that ball moving. I totally agree, man. And I think the earlier that we sit down and have that comprehensive conversation and get them oriented around the things that are going to affect the timeline early and up front, you know, things like when we go through the checklist, we explain the material selection process and just how important that is.

38:55 I've stayed on top of that in terms of the timeline, explaining the silent phase, which you're actually working to shorten by getting in there while demo is potentially even still underway. Yeah. All of those things serve to make it really easy and comfortable for the customer to continue saying yes. That's the thing about this. Like we talked about, Recon is sold at the very beginning. Hey, look, we're going to help you from soup to nuts, right? From now taking care of your initial problem to the final post-construction cleaning. It's just a process of them continuing to feel safe and comfortable with the process that you've already laid out for them, right? Yeah. And I think a lot of people, they get to that point where demo is complete and they send out an estimator or they send out a PM to go get the recon business.

39:41 It's like, no, no, no. That's already the wrong thinking. Yeah. Like the customer, as far as the customer is concerned, they never thought there was another decision to make. Yeah. Is the way that we want to treat that, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think another part that you're alluding to that I don't want to jump over because this is that other breaking point where we will consistently lose a client as well is what he referred to as the silent phase. And you guys know this. You can feel it in your guts. That is that place and time in a project's lifecycle where we've just gone into the paint. Time is of the essence. Move, move, move, move, move, right? Right. And then you run into this point where we start this negotiation phase on the scope of repairs, and then it gets just quiet for weeks at a time.

40:26 We can be in this position where very little work is being done on the project because we're negotiating and getting an agreement on the repair scope. Now, for some of you that run as a bank and you do all the repairs and hope to get paid later, maybe you don't run into this. We don't believe that's a good best practice. We believe that you should negotiate scope, get an agreement, and be sure that funds are being sent on that particular project before you open up your checkbook. So in my mind, that silent phase is very real for most professional companies. And we can win when we can talk about it openly before it starts. So again, Chris is right. We get in right away. We shrink that timeframe. But then on top of it, as part of that handoff, as part of us continuing to guide and lead the client through the buying process and through the project lifecycle, I'm going to talk about that phase.

41:15 And I'm going to be very clear with them. It's going to feel like nothing's happening. But it is absolutely critical that we proactively negotiate this scope to be sure that we can get you back to a pre-loss condition without you having any out-of-pocket expenses that aren't appropriate. There's a reason that it's going to be silent for a while. And that's because we're negotiating on their behalf to protect them. And so by us talking about that as part of that recon review or that recon checklist, again, think about the signal that you're sending them. You're saying yes over and over to, can they trust you? Can you help them? Do you care about them? And we're saying yes by the language that we're using, the leadership that we're displaying, the questions that we're asking, the way we carry ourselves.

42:01 And that is just one more example of how you're saying yes to that by the way that you behave. So kind of a flyby here, it's all about engineering that first call. It's about engineering the feeling or the impression that we want that customer to have when they talk to us. It's about engineering and experience when our people show up at the door that we're able to answer yes to the three universal questions by the way that we act, by the way that we behave, by the way we carry ourselves. And we repeat that process when it comes time to convert that into a recon lead. All on the basis of this assumptive closing, meaning that we're leading the client from the place of, of course, they need us to do it all.

42:41 Yeah, and we're leading from... I think this is so important too. We talk so much about this when it comes to commercial sales. Is that we need to be more about the customer's experience and what the customer feels like they need and want than our process internally. So all of our... So some of us need to update our language about the way we talk about jobs, the way we talk about the process, because we've lost track of the fact that... our clients, including even many of our commercial clients, if we're honest, they don't think about the business the same way we do. And it's important we speak to their language, right? In order for us to put them at ease, in order for them to recognize us as, hey, okay, these guys are here.

43:26 Problem solved. I can go back. I can be about my work and the things I need to do because they're going to help me with all of this stuff. 100%. That's the impression we want to leave. And it forces us to talk about our process a little bit differently each step of the way. So that has to do with how the person that's doing the call and take talks to the person, asks the questions, explains what's next. Same thing with the technicians that are responding. Right. Same thing with them when they have their first conversation with the job file coordinator. Same thing when the project manager takes over that file and has that recon checklist meeting. Everybody's referencing back to this holistic start to finish help that they can expect from us.

44:12 Absolutely. And if everybody is pointing back to that role, that really important, specialized, complicated, like unique role that we have, There's never a point at which the customer steps back like, oh man, I need to fend for myself or I need to protect myself or I've got insurance questions. I got to call my agent. No, no, no. You call your job file coordinator or you call your PM and they'll hunt down that answer or they'll connect you to the right person. Yeah. Right. That's all what we're trying to do is, hey, problem was solved the moment you called us. Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's the right mentality. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. All right. Last piece here, guys. And we'll close this one up. And that is we're not done continuing to earn and hold on to that client just because they've now agreed to and we start the construction services.

45:01 As you guys know, that's just one of those really important critical relationships. We're exposed to that relationship for an extended period of time. And we can have moments where we could potentially lose that. that yes. And so examples of that where I tend to see these things show up, it's going to be based on the communication cadence that we hold with that client. If we have project managers that continue to struggle to give consistent feedback and communication and updates to our client... we're going to open up another air gap where they then feel the need to continue to fight for themselves or fend for themselves, inevitably putting them in a position where we could potentially lose them. So maybe we got the initial yes.

45:42 And instead of doing a $100,000 job, though, we break up, unfortunately, and we only get a portion of that job. And worst case scenario, we have a broken relationship who then goes out and proactively speaks on behalf of the fact that it was a broken relationship. So I think the communication cadence ongoing in the construction side is so critical because we're exposed to that relationship so long. And at any moment, we could create a scenario where that client now has buyer's remorse and we ultimately lose them. The other thing that I would say, and this can really be driven by our coordinator staff, our in-house staff is, there is nothing wrong with having a weekly check-in call where someone through an unfiltered method is checking in with that client, asking questions and making sure that we do a pulse check.

46:31 Because the reality of it is, is as project managers, we can run into moments where, where we drop the ball, we lose our sight on the target, our communication's not as consistent as it could be. And we could save that by having that redundant backstop of someone just checking in with the client. And we tend to see coordinators doing that and doing it in their role very effectively. And so that combination of things tends to put us in a position where we have the strongest chance of earning that business and getting the green light and then maintaining that green light through the entire customer lifecycle so that we get the entire project in scope. All right. Here we go. Kind of a beans and bullets. Hopefully there was some content in there that you guys can leverage in your favor.

47:14 We'll see you next time. All right. See ya. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart & 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.