0:00

Welcome to the profitable painter podcast

0:02

. The mission of this podcast is

0:04

simple To help you navigate the financial

0:06

and tax aspects of starting , running

0:08

and scaling a professional painting business , from

0:11

the brushes and ladders to the spreadsheets and balance

0:13

sheets . We've got you covered . But before

0:15

we dive in , a quick word of caution . While

0:17

we strive to provide accurate and up-to-date financial

0:20

and tax information , nothing you hear on

0:22

this podcast should be considered as financial

0:24

advice specifically for you or your

0:26

business . We're here to share general knowledge and

0:28

experiences , not to replace the tailored

0:30

advice you get from a professional financial

0:32

advisor or tax consultant . We

0:35

strongly recommend you seeking individualized

0:38

advice before making any significant

0:40

financial decisions .

0:41

This is Daniel , the founder of Bookkeeping for Painters

0:43

, and today I'm here with John , Jacob , john

0:46

and Grew and sold his third

0:48

generation home services company . From there

0:50

, he started building technology for home

0:52

services . He's the founder of Hoist

0:55

, a sales app that lets painters win more

0:57

jobs in less time . How's it going , John

0:59

?

0:59

It's going great . Happy to be here . Thanks

1:01

for having me .

1:02

Yeah , I'm super excited to have you

1:05

. Can you tell me the story of

1:07

your journey with the third

1:09

generation home services company and

1:11

what led you to sell it ? Can you kind of

1:13

yeah , for sure .

1:15

I grew up in home services . Like I said , my grandpa

1:17

started a company back in the early

1:19

60s . Actually , my dad ran

1:21

it for years . I remember every summer working in the office

1:24

with my parents and even running in the field with

1:26

my dad very involved in the family business . But

1:28

I was always kind of the coder kid , the

1:30

kid up in his room on his computer , not really going to

1:32

be in the family business , Always my big brother who's going to

1:34

take it over ? But he took it over and

1:37

he realized how much they sorely

1:39

needed some technology solutions . There were still pen

1:41

and paper , everything , the entire company running

1:43

six routes , running route sheets back

1:45

and forth . It was just crazy . They didn't accept credit

1:47

cards , there was no website and more Around

1:49

2013 , my brother I remember

1:51

this text I got he's like , hey , you want to help

1:53

me with the family business , Like let's really do this

1:55

thing . And it was awesome because I came

1:57

in and worked with my brother and within two years we

1:59

more than doubled the business . We took it from six routes

2:02

to 10 routes in the LA area . It was in pest control at

2:04

the time and it was just amazing

2:06

. That experience was so transformative for me

2:08

of just realizing how much opportunity there

2:10

is in home services with just some good technology

2:13

put in place , and it was just an awesome

2:15

experience growing that family business . It was a whirlwind

2:17

selling that business

2:20

and my parents got a great retirement out of it . And

2:22

then from there I was able to leverage that experience

2:24

and that passion and knowledge

2:26

and raise some money in venture capital and start

2:29

building software for home services and

2:31

then stumbled into painting as well .

2:34

Yeah , I think a lot of people poo-poo

2:37

the idea of the trades

2:40

. Everyone listening

2:42

probably knows that the

2:44

trades there's riches there , for sure

2:46

. People make millions in

2:48

the trades and I think a lot of people don't

2:50

realize that . I think we're starting to realize that

2:52

as a society where all these

2:55

kids went to college and got liberal

2:57

arts degrees and they

2:59

now don't have any jobs , they don't have

3:01

anything . Now they're maybe trying

3:04

to get a job as a painter or something , but

3:06

if you're so we've kind

3:08

of Society kind of forgot

3:11

. Oh yeah , you could actually have Go

3:13

to trade school , you should go to trade school , actually get

3:15

your hands dirty and

3:17

actually work for a living . But

3:20

I think that's starting to come back around

3:22

and realize people are realizing oh

3:24

, I can actually make some money at this and

3:26

so that's awesome . So

3:28

you guys basically went into

3:30

your parents' company and

3:33

installed some technology and systematized

3:36

it and doubled

3:38

it in one year . Is that what you said ?

3:41

Yeah , In the course of two years we doubled that basis and

3:43

sold it yeah .

3:44

Okay Nice . Was that the goal

3:46

starting out like hey , we want to build

3:48

it to sell , or did that just kind

3:50

of naturally happen ?

3:51

You know it wasn't the goal . In fact my brother

3:54

and I were like let's kind of do this forever . But

3:56

to be totally honest , the ongoing tension

3:58

of running a family business , kind of the old guard versus

4:00

the new guard , was not something we thought would

4:02

keep our families' Thanksgiving still

4:04

tasting good and be able to really push that

4:06

business as far as it needed to go . And so

4:08

we kind of all sat down the table like what's the best course

4:10

of action here , given the differences of just running

4:12

a family business ? There's difficulty and

4:15

we saw that growth curve that we had built and

4:17

saw a great opportunity to sell and we took advantage

4:19

of it . We're glad we did . In hindsight I think it was a good

4:21

move for that business Cool

4:23

.

4:24

So what were the ? You

4:27

were helping install technology

4:29

in processes . What processes did

4:32

you really help install in that

4:34

business to kind of get it to that level ?

4:36

Yeah . So when I came in I didn't have a ton of

4:38

experience directly in the field . So I had all the

4:40

technology , marketing kind of sales experience

4:42

more coming to the table or to corporate job , and

4:45

so we immediately broke up the business . It's like , okay

4:47

, I'm going to be office manager , you be field manager . Like

4:49

that's anything that happens out there you handle that , anything

4:51

that happens in the office I'll handle . Of course there's some overlap

4:53

and so immediately right , they

4:56

had a computer system that they weren't fully utilizing

4:58

. They had redundancies on everything , which is pretty

5:00

common trend . I hear some older businesses

5:03

still running , right , they're like , oh well , we do

5:05

the bit when voices online , but we make sure

5:07

to print everything and file it as well . It's like , okay , let's reduce

5:09

these redundancies . We have a computer system , let's

5:11

actually use it . But there was , you know , the

5:13

obvious ones of overnight , pretty

5:15

much after I came in , we found a field service

5:17

management software that allowed all of our field reps

5:20

to have iPads . So we're no longer using physical route

5:22

sheets , right ? So I was like number

5:24

one let's get everybody away from physical route sheets

5:26

, get one real-time dispatch using iPads

5:28

out in the field . Like it's such a no-brainer and such huge

5:30

efficiencies there . Number two was just literally

5:33

an online presence . There was kind

5:35

of a website but no real SEO

5:37

strategy , no real approach there . And

5:39

in 2015 , which actually 2013 when

5:41

I was there , but 2013 to 2015 , there was so

5:43

much opportunity in SEO by just taking it a little

5:46

bit seriously in SEO . I think more people have come around

5:48

to that . But man did that do

5:50

wonders for us , just making sure we had a website

5:52

with consistent content on it . We had some

5:54

authority built . It just went so long . I

5:57

think obviously we did a lot around . Where

5:59

I put a lot of work in is around our sales processes

6:01

. So when I came on there was no real commercial division

6:03

to speak of and I was able to stand

6:06

up the sales processes for commercial and close

6:08

the Westfield malls in Southern California , which was huge

6:10

customers for us , punching way

6:12

above our weight for a family-owned business like us had

6:15

some real commercial clients come in , which was huge . But

6:17

I think the other piece was around and this is really

6:19

part of what the insights was that led to Hoist is we

6:22

just came up with standardized price sheets for

6:24

most of our services on the residential side and

6:27

for us , when we had been doing only in-home

6:29

estimates for everything we did when we

6:31

actually had the opportunity to sell over the

6:33

phone . It was exponential in terms of our

6:35

growth and just overall efficiency . So

6:38

on a busy week we'd struggle to get reps

6:40

out there to do estimates . So customers were waiting two

6:42

, three days . Often it was frustrating for field reps

6:45

trying to do their other stuff when they couldn't get that

6:47

in . Worse the close rate was like 30%

6:49

. So we'd spend nearly two hours pricing a

6:51

lead just to get told we're too expensive

6:53

or it wasn't a fit . It was constant frustration from

6:55

homeowners , us all the sides . So I sat down

6:57

with my brother , forced ourselves like okay , we're

6:59

literally going to , kind of Steve Jobs style , draw a grid

7:02

here . What are the nine products we sell

7:04

for residential and how do we make sure to fit into

7:06

that and come up with a pricing model that works ? So we really

7:08

hit the books and did that . But committing

7:11

to that price sheet for us , which was ended

7:13

up being more than nine grid I think you had like 16 boxes

7:15

on it that kind of fell into . But committing

7:17

to that standardized pricing for us did wonders

7:19

in terms of the overall sales efficiencies , close

7:22

rates and more and just shifting the

7:24

primary sales method to phone sales

7:26

for that business , which we were in pest control , by the

7:28

way . I don't know if I mentioned that , but shifting that primary

7:31

sales method to phone sales for our pest

7:33

control business , that's really what unlocked our growth

7:35

more than anything else , and just overall efficiencies

7:37

.

7:38

Yeah , that's something I've started to

7:40

see a little bit more as folks actually trying

7:42

out remote sales

7:46

for their painting business . Eric

7:49

, he runs a marketing company , pathfinder

7:51

, but he also has a painting business . That's

7:54

something that he's been testing and publicly

7:56

sharing on social

7:58

media , so it seems pretty

8:00

interesting . I think there's more interest in that now

8:02

and then people are realizing oh , this can actually

8:04

be . An effective strategy is

8:06

to , like you said , not

8:09

go out and spend

8:11

two hours on someone who was

8:14

just tire kicking , where you could

8:16

have just saved yourself that

8:19

two hours and called them

8:21

from the office or from wherever

8:23

, or hopped on Zoom . I think Eric

8:26

is doing Zoom calls .

8:27

Yeah , he's doing Zoom calls . Eric has great stuff , by

8:29

the way . I attended his PCA breakout session on

8:31

remote sales . It was awesome and he's got all kinds of good stuff

8:34

. I was going to make sure to shout him out , because he's really pushing

8:36

this space really far . Some great thoughts on it

8:38

as well .

8:39

Yeah , so

8:42

what are some of the things that you've learned either

8:44

from what makes an effective sales process

8:46

or lead qualification

8:49

, what

8:52

are the key components that you think that some

8:54

folks are missing or what you

8:56

found has really worked ?

8:58

I think that's really the right question because it's not

9:00

about are we selling remotely and what that is

9:02

. That's kind of a whole topic in itself . But if you

9:04

zoom out for a second , it's about having a really

9:07

strong pricing system that's consistent

9:09

, repeatable and a strong sales process

9:12

. So what is that sales process for you and your business

9:14

? And maybe that includes some remote stuff , but maybe

9:16

it's just better qualification . So I think , first

9:18

and foremost , let's make sure to use

9:20

our time efficiently . For most people

9:23

listening to this show , the time constraint

9:25

is going to be the main bottleneck , not necessarily

9:27

lead volume . You can go buy more leads . You

9:29

can spend more money and get more leads in the door . There's

9:31

possibilities to do that , but oftentimes

9:33

it's the time constraint of that

9:35

salesperson , the owner , most times going

9:38

out and selling . That's going to be . So let's work backwards in

9:40

that bottleneck and use the time efficiently . So

9:42

I think , first and foremost , a good sales system

9:44

should include a really good qualification system

9:46

, and this isn't about being

9:48

like , well , I want to make sure it's worth my time . There

9:51

is that element , that's true , but

9:53

I don't think it's in a dismissive way . I think it's

9:55

a disservice to the homeowner

9:57

and yourself to take that time

9:59

if there's really no chance of ever working

10:01

together ? I mean , fundamentally , I

10:03

talk with a lot of painters who don't think enough

10:05

about qualification You'll hear me talk about

10:07

this a lot because they end

10:09

up literally at someone's home

10:12

, having driven out there taking the time to do it , realizing

10:14

like , oh actually , this job is way

10:16

too small , like literally just too small

10:18

. Or they're asking for things that are beyond

10:20

our scope , like we don't do pool coatings

10:22

because the default workflow for

10:24

many painters even they have appointment centers that

10:26

do it . It's just like get the appointment boat , get in the appointment

10:29

schedule as soon as possible , but

10:31

I think that does us a disservice . You might have a higher qualification

10:34

rate and more estimate appointments , but that's going to

10:36

drag on your close rate and , obviously , your time

10:38

. And so I think the first thing I want to talk

10:40

about is how are you qualifying your leads

10:42

? Let's take that seriously and think about what are

10:44

the qualifying questions that are

10:46

really important to you . Obviously , one's service area

10:49

, the services they're asking for . There's

10:51

some other more creative ones , which is like do you have your own

10:53

paint ? Are you looking to paint yourself ? Because

10:55

that will weed out a lot of people who are really looking for someone

10:57

really really cheap , right ? So some

10:59

of these classic qualification questions . But a lot

11:02

of painters are not asking these questions consistently

11:04

. But I think , next from qualification

11:06

, you have this idea of like okay , we have

11:08

that basic information , what is the process

11:11

by which I get that for either an in-home estimate

11:13

or producing an estimate from that point and

11:16

I think that's oftentimes where things are missed as

11:18

well let's say it's a husband wife duo

11:20

, the wife's book and those appointments get them scheduled on

11:22

the calendar . So many times there's

11:24

not really information passed along from

11:26

one party to the next . You show up , you're asking

11:28

all the same questions . I mean , I talk with painters who

11:30

do their own scheduling , and even for themselves

11:33

, right , they get the inbound call driving from one job

11:35

to the next . They're trying to qualify that lead . They

11:37

add them to the Google calendar while driving . They don't really add any

11:39

details . They show up like okay , what did you need done ? That's

11:42

a really poor sales experience from the perspective

11:45

of the homeowners , right ? Talk with a lot of homeowners and that's

11:47

a really common frustration which is , like , I told

11:49

you everything I needed done . I even texted it

11:51

. I filled out the form on your website you show up , you

11:53

have no idea what I need done and we're spending half

11:55

of our time of the estimate just like walking around the

11:57

house figuring out what I need done . So

11:59

it's that process you capture the customer's needs

12:02

Like . Think about this in terms of the buying

12:04

experience and the customer experience , not just

12:06

your goals as a painter and your time , like there's

12:08

so much , but I think it does come back to that

12:10

bottleneck of the painter's time . So the two main

12:13

things I've touched on so far is what is the qualification

12:15

and what is the like ? Information

12:18

flow from that qualification to the point

12:20

at which you're in front of the customer trying to sell them . Let's

12:22

make sure we're not asking stupid questions . I see the same

12:24

question over and over or things they don't know or language

12:27

they don't understand .

12:29

Yeah , yeah , the first

12:31

one , so qualifying . Do

12:34

you recommend like

12:36

a like I have it just a form

12:38

when they're going to schedule on the website

12:40

, where they ask those questions like what's

12:43

your budget or is this a partial project

12:45

? Or do you advocate

12:48

like they should actually call everyone who schedules

12:50

, or make sure you get on the phone with them and then , like

12:53

, go through a list of questions and talk to

12:55

them , or either way you don't care , as long

12:57

as they're doing some sort of qualification .

12:58

I think either way , I don't care as long as you're doing some

13:01

sort of qualification . I think it depends on your

13:03

market and your business and your tolerance

13:05

of what your drop off is going to look like , on what

13:07

you want to adopt . I would advocate for form

13:09

qualifications . Using forms Like

13:12

our software has an incredible way to do qualification

13:14

. It's very deep but even like drip jobs

13:16

has the appointment booking screen that asks you and

13:18

you can kind of customize those , and there's a lot of other

13:20

software that have that , whether it's in your Squarespace site

13:22

or your WordPress Like . Think about those questions

13:25

because they can do a lot for you to filter

13:27

out whether someone's going to be wasting your time . I

13:29

would say I don't think it's a good idea

13:32

to have a raw calendar or a QT schedule

13:34

on your website . There's going

13:36

to be people booking further out than it's probably ideal

13:38

, going to be people who maybe aren't serious about the project

13:40

. I don't think that's a great idea . I think there's good

13:43

to have another step between that so

13:45

that you can really verify that client and make sure that they're

13:47

serious and that it's a fit . Fundamentally , you're not wasting

13:49

each other's time . I feel like it's

13:51

Carl Utter who wrote a great book on painting

13:54

sales . He always talks about like look , there's kind of these

13:56

third buckets overall , one third of people you get

13:58

in front of just have no chance of closing . You shouldn't be

14:00

in front of them . There's a third that are just kind of going

14:02

to close . Like even a mediocre sales

14:04

person is going to close 30% . There's

14:06

this last 30% . That's up to you and

14:08

I think if you have better qualification

14:11

you can weed out that first bucket . That's

14:13

like shouldn't you be in front of them ? And that to me

14:15

is just a waste of everybody's time is to drag on the

14:17

overall industry . That's what I really want

14:19

to try to avoid for all parties involved . Okay

14:23

. But I think if you think about like qualification

14:25

, then hand off and we think about that flow like an order

14:27

. I think the next thing is producing a price . So

14:30

there's a stat that floats around that if you're not providing

14:32

a bit on the spot , it's you

14:34

are significantly less likely to close

14:36

. Right , it drags your clothes down , right , but like a full five or

14:38

six percentage points on average , which makes

14:40

a huge difference on a painter's bottom line . But

14:43

I think producing a bit on the spot is difficult

14:45

. It's difficult if you don't have the experience and if you

14:47

don't have a software that supports you . Well , if you lean on

14:49

software to produce it . But it makes all the difference

14:52

in the world and I found too if you have the confidence

14:54

to not have to go out to the truck and spend that 15

14:56

minutes to produce that bid and come back but you can actually

14:58

do it as part of the qualification education

15:00

process . It's huge and the number one way

15:02

I've seen people do that really well is that before

15:05

they drive to their estimate they're doing pre-work if they're

15:07

using kind of traditional estimation software . So

15:09

if you're using a drip jobs or paint scout or any of the great

15:11

software out there , right , spend the night before

15:13

hopping on Zillow or the morning before hopping

15:16

on Zillow assessing that home . Start the bid

15:18

, get it 80% done . You have a lot of the information

15:20

you need . You got the basic job breakdown . That

15:22

way you're not trying to go out to the truck

15:24

copying and pasting that information . You're

15:27

there , you already have kind of a ballpark in mind

15:29

and you could produce that bid and just the couple

15:32

rounding out those last little details . So I think really

15:34

think about the process by which you produce a price

15:36

and make sure that's repeatable . Like you know , for

15:38

our pest control business we could boil it down to

15:41

a price sheet . Obviously , painting is

15:43

not that simple . There's

15:45

more nuance in pricing a painting job and I think

15:47

that's important to capture that nuance preparation

15:49

more Like there's so much nuance in it . But

15:52

I think having a strong estimation

15:54

process is huge a part of a good sales

15:56

process .

15:58

Yeah , absolutely , and I like your

16:00

point about doing the pre-work

16:02

. Doing the pre-work , obviously you want to

16:04

try to close on the spot . I think that's conventional

16:07

wisdom , even though a lot of folks don't try

16:09

to still close on the spot , but I

16:11

think most folks are moving in that

16:13

direction . Yeah , I'm trying to close

16:15

on the spot , but I like the point you made it doing the

16:17

pre-work and then , so you don't have to

16:19

like leave and go out to the

16:21

car and then , you know , spend a bunch

16:23

of time outside the home and maybe

16:25

even try to do the quote in the home

16:28

with . And that's something that Jason

16:31

from Contractor Freedom , that's something

16:33

he has his sales team

16:35

do . He does like

16:37

he has a huge sales team . They do like 10

16:39

or 15 million in revenue per year and

16:41

so he trains a sales team

16:44

to actually do the estimate

16:46

in the home . Because

16:48

then you'll have more of those interactions with

16:51

the homeowner and their family and

16:55

they're often offered like , oh

16:57

, would you like some cookies ? Or you're

17:00

kind of at the kitchen table developing that estimate

17:02

and they're kind of hosting

17:04

you almost and there's just more opportunities

17:06

to build rapport and feel

17:09

like you're part of the home , sort

17:11

of thing . So I

17:13

think doing that pre-work , like you said , can

17:16

can allow you to to

17:19

to have more face time with the homeowner

17:22

, so you're not like going off by yourself

17:24

and then it's weird coming back in , you

17:26

know , do you have to knock on the door or do you

17:28

just go right in , and so those

17:31

are awkward moments there . So

17:33

I like that idea .

17:35

And there is this huge burden off

17:37

the salesperson . Like I can speak in experience . If

17:39

you walk in with a ballpark price in mind

17:41

, you understand their scope of work . Like you've done that pre-work

17:44

, you're going to perform better in

17:46

the actual sale . Like the confidence , the rapport

17:48

building , you don't have to focus quite as much

17:50

on counting and calculating , right , You're

17:53

just making sure what you're seeing is aligning with your

17:55

expectations and adjusting accordingly and

17:57

there's just a world of difference when you go in

17:59

with that kind of preparation ready , ready

18:01

for that close , you can focus on that relationship

18:04

instead of counting and calculating . It goes a long way

18:06

and for many companies I've seen the

18:08

really smart ones they have the admin

18:10

side to do that pre-work of building that bid

18:12

out , right . So when the admin is doing that

18:14

booking , they then hop into PaintScout

18:17

or whatever they're using and they go build that and scaffold

18:19

out that bid based on a little bit of information they have

18:21

, and you'd be surprised how much that saves

18:23

you so much time when you're

18:25

out in the field , right ? The average estimate appointment doesn't necessarily

18:28

need to be 45 minutes an hour . You can get

18:30

it down to 20 , 30 minutes , still have a great close

18:32

rate and still effectively be

18:34

closing those jobs . And I think obviously the other piece

18:36

, right Qualification , handoff , that qualification

18:38

, the estimation , and then obviously , last but

18:40

not least , is follow up right . How

18:42

are you asking for the sale ? A lot of painters are

18:44

kind of like , well , this is the price . They don't even ask , like

18:46

, can we paint your house , We'd love to paint your house Like that's

18:49

huge ask for the sale , right . That's more like

18:51

sales tactics I want to talk more about , like the sales process

18:53

. But follow up right . There's

18:55

a huge percentage of follow ups that , if

18:58

you stay consistent , it's amazing how many

19:00

times those bids will actually close . You think they booked with

19:02

someone else but then that fell through when you actually , because

19:04

of your follow up , are able to close . And there's

19:06

a ton of ways to accomplish that . But I think more than anything , it's

19:08

have a system , have a playbook , who's

19:10

doing it , what's the cadence , what's the follow up

19:12

messaging ? And something I've learned

19:14

more recently which is huge is like , do your best

19:17

to have a reason to be following up right

19:19

, Not just like , hey , just checking in , just following

19:21

up . It's such a weak positioning

19:23

and like there's no urgency at all to create

19:26

. But if you can , as much as possible create

19:28

a reason to be following up . So it's like hey , our schedule is filling

19:30

up for March . I know you wanted this project done before

19:32

the end of March . Hit me back , let's

19:34

get this on the schedule for you , Otherwise we won't get the job

19:36

in , as I know you need it done . Or a

19:38

more ideal one would be hey , did you ever get in

19:40

touch with Jimmy , who's

19:43

the electrician on your project ? You know I referred

19:45

him . Were you able to get touch with him ? How did that work

19:47

out ? Right , you have a reason to kind of connect and

19:49

reconnect with them . Another one that I think is great

19:51

is hey , I noticed something on your bid . Give me a ring and

19:54

they're like oh , what did he notice ? And it's like there's a lot

19:56

of things you can come up with to have noticed to

19:58

be able to create some urgency around that conversation

20:00

. So they're wondering is the price still valid ? Is

20:02

it going down ? Is it going up ? Like what does he need to tell

20:04

me ? And it really has worked really well

20:06

for me in terms of follow up . So think about not only the

20:09

cadence , the system , who's doing it , what's ? The

20:11

content of those follow ups is really huge as well

20:13

. So I think , when I think about the fundamentals

20:15

of a good sales process , those are really key pieces

20:17

of that .

20:18

Yeah , and I've noticed

20:20

some folks will also say

20:22

the estimate is only valid for

20:25

30 or 60 days and

20:27

then their follow up campaign will basically

20:30

count down . Like hey , just wanted

20:32

to check in with you and

20:34

let you know that you only have two weeks left on

20:37

the bid On this pricing . Yeah , yeah . So

20:39

I just wanted to get you scheduled so

20:41

we can move forward or whatever . Do

20:45

you have any strong feelings about how

20:47

long you should follow up ? You know , especially

20:50

if you have , like some sort of automation , like

20:52

if you're using drip jobs

20:55

or go . Yeah , that's a great way to do it .

20:56

Hi , lillia . There's a lot of other options . I don't have

20:58

strong ones . I think it's good that , obviously , like , the

21:00

closer to the bid the more

21:02

, and then the frequency ramps down over time , right

21:04

, but in my opinion , I

21:07

think about 90 days they're dead . If you don't have

21:09

any kind of recurring email marketing going on

21:11

or there's not a specialized reason , the homeowner is telling

21:13

you it's scheduled for future date , then obviously

21:15

you know , I think about 90 days is what I would call dead

21:17

, and I think a touch point of like give

21:20

or take every 72 hours after

21:22

you send that bid is probably about right . If you're

21:24

not doing that , it's probably not quite enough . So

21:26

you want to be hitting that for quite some time . You know a few weeks

21:28

and it's it's . It's funny because I thought

21:30

that I'd be spamming homeowners and selling like this

21:32

, but most times they're very thankful

21:35

, like oh , yeah , I've been meaning to get back to this project . I'm glad

21:37

you've been bugging me . Yeah , you got fresh on top

21:39

of my mind , like I'm ready to move forward now , right

21:41

. I do think there's also this idea of really

21:44

listening to your customers needs through your

21:46

process and tailoring your process to the customer's

21:48

need . So if their thing is . I

21:51

want to do this when my kid leaves for college in

21:53

April 15th . You don't really have a reason to

21:55

follow up until after . Maybe you ?

21:56

check in on .

21:57

April 5th and it's like hey , I know that that's coming up on the

21:59

15th . I'll ping you back then . Just know you're on my mind

22:01

, thinking about you . I'm eager to paint your house . Be excited

22:03

to take on their project . People want to work with people who are

22:05

excited to take on your project . Right . The

22:07

phrase I love more than anything is like this job

22:10

is perfect for me and my crew . We would love

22:12

to do this project and homeowners like , oh really

22:14

, my house is perfect . There's something about that

22:16

excitement and genuine enthusiasm

22:18

that goes a long way for people realizing

22:20

OK , this guy's not just in it for the

22:22

money , there's something here that's a good fit , and

22:24

I mean that genuinely Like . I love doing that work

22:26

and seeing the results on those projects . But

22:29

again back to follow ups and your sales process

22:31

, tailored to customers , needs Schedule

22:33

. The next time you're checking in OK , great

22:35

, you really need to get another bid , no problem

22:37

, when's that scheduled ? Great Schedule on Friday , can

22:39

I call you after they come by , and then we can make sure to compare

22:42

apples to apples , right ? And

22:44

then I think , obviously , throughout your whole sales process

22:47

, there is like thinking about the clothes and really building

22:49

the clothes . That gets more into sales process stuff , which

22:51

is a lot of people will write great stuff there , whether it's Hermosi

22:53

or the Carlutter guy . There's lots of great people and it's like just

22:56

pick that system , though I think more than anything , the

22:58

lack of a system is what leads to so much

23:00

bleed and marketing dollars and wasted

23:02

hours . It's just unfortunate in

23:04

the industry .

23:06

No , that's , that's great stuff . So qualify

23:09

, make sure your

23:11

information handoff is occurring , from the

23:14

capturing lead to go

23:16

into the estimate , producing

23:19

a price on

23:21

the spot and also

23:23

in a efficient manner

23:25

, and so you're actually prepared going in

23:27

. And then the last one is making sure you're

23:29

following up . So I think

23:32

that's , I think those are really great pieces

23:34

of advice . Going

23:37

back to the remote

23:39

estimating process , one

23:42

of the things that I'm really interested

23:44

in talking to you about is hoist and

23:46

its ability to facilitate

23:49

that , because one of the you

23:51

know , I was in one of Eric's . It wasn't

23:53

the one at PCA , it was one

23:55

he did before that , but he

23:57

presented on to

23:59

have his sales process and also the

24:02

remote piece to it . Even though the sales process

24:04

really doesn't change when

24:06

you're doing it remotely . It's just the

24:09

technology that you're using is a little bit different

24:11

, but the core of the process is

24:13

the same . Like

24:15

with the things that you just mentioned , it would all be the

24:18

same , but there are some

24:20

differences . Obviously , you're not there physically

24:22

, so one of the

24:24

concerns that people had

24:26

of the remote sales process was

24:29

like how am I going to know how

24:33

big the surface is that I need to paint so I

24:35

can do my production rates to generate the price and

24:38

I think hoist might be able

24:40

to help with that situation

24:42

. Is that right ?

24:44

Yeah , absolutely . So we built a specialized tool

24:47

specifically for remote sales and painting . I

24:50

mean , the biggest thing and how I stumbled on this

24:52

is I've been working for painters for over four

24:54

years now , exclusively building technology , and

24:57

for about two years we did marketing

24:59

and appointment setting for painters all over the country . So

25:01

we worked for over a hundred painters doing their marketing , appointment setting

25:03

for them , and we had

25:05

a full in-house call center marketing team so

25:07

we'd be placing those leads and scheduling those in-home appointments . But

25:10

we found so many times the main bottleneck was

25:13

the painter's time , like we could get more painters , more

25:15

leads , but we couldn't get their appointments to get

25:17

them in home . So that was a big part

25:19

of it . But I met a couple painters

25:21

in that time who were selling over

25:23

the phone and they were doing way higher

25:25

volume , like bananas volume , and

25:28

that's what led me to like , oh my gosh , this is so

25:30

much similar to where I was in the pest control business back then

25:32

. That price sheet and selling over

25:34

the phone and getting that exponential growth and seeing

25:36

that breakthrough , not having that bottleneck , having

25:38

a better consumer experience it was huge . And

25:41

so that's really what we set out to build and the

25:43

main thing is , in the painting industry there's a lot of great software

25:45

. We've mentioned of a couple of them today and

25:47

there's a ton of ways to get leads . At this point it's

25:49

almost commoditized . That's why we got out of that business

25:51

specifically right . Tons of ways to get leads and

25:54

there's a lot of ways to even produce a bid

25:56

pretty well and a lot of ways

25:58

to drip jobs like follow up on bid process

26:00

, do job costing and more , like great production

26:02

tools , huge tools out there , and there's CRMs

26:05

. They do exist right For the follow ups and more . But

26:07

there's this really messy slice . And

26:10

the messy slice for painters is I have

26:12

a lead , I need to gather the needs

26:14

from that customer , build rapport and get

26:16

them to a point where I can produce a price and get enough information

26:19

from that customer that I can accurately produce a price

26:21

. And the way that I solve that problem

26:23

right now , as the average painter is I drive

26:25

, I schedule time with the customer , which customer

26:27

doesn't want to do . They don't want to meet with you for the vast

26:30

majority of the time . They just want to get to a price right . You're

26:32

one of many vendors they're just trying to get a price

26:34

. So I have to schedule with a homeowner , which

26:36

takes its own heavy lifting to do

26:38

, and I lose leads because I can't get

26:40

on the schedule with some people . Then I need

26:42

to drive to their house , which is going to take 30

26:44

to 45 minutes , maybe longer , depending on if you're a spread

26:47

out area . Then I walk around eyeballing

26:49

the rooms and I have either the notes in my

26:51

phone is most common what people use or

26:53

a pen and paper and I'm kind of jotting down right , they

26:56

got two small bedrooms , they want repainted

26:58

, they got a big kitchen and a breakfast nook , right . Oftentimes

27:01

I'm not even measuring , I'm eyeballing , maybe chicken

27:03

scratching a couple of square footages down , and

27:05

then from there I take that stuff and either

27:07

we'll go out to my truck , read that , hop

27:10

in those numbers , ballpark the square

27:12

footage and produce as many come back . So that

27:14

slice , though , of driving to the home

27:16

just to gather with the home that we

27:18

need two things we need the information about the home

27:20

, right . What's the makeup of this home ? What's the condition

27:22

of the home Like ? When was it last painted ? What

27:24

are the surfaces look like ? And then , obviously

27:27

, what work does the homeowner need ? Done

27:29

that I provide ? So sure they need new

27:31

floors and they need all this other stuff . But what can I

27:33

actually provide as a company ? I can do the paint

27:35

and I can do this couple drywall repairs

27:37

. They've got going on right and so , if you think

27:39

about it like , that's actually the only two pieces of information I

27:41

need . Now there's other bigger issues of sales

27:44

process that need to be solved for that . We talked about

27:46

Qualification , handoff , their sales

27:48

, even tactics around rapportability and more

27:50

that are essential . I'm not saying those need to go away , but

27:53

that specific piece of just gathering the

27:55

needs from the homeowner and data about the home . That's

27:58

what we solve for and that's where we fit and

28:00

that's what this tool is . So we do

28:02

that in a couple ways . First and foremost

28:04

, we have incredible data like no one

28:06

else , about the interior of homes . So

28:08

we have room by room square footage and room makeup

28:10

for every home in America . So our algorithms

28:13

and data sets get you 90% accuracy

28:15

. You give me a home , you give me an address

28:17

and I'll tell you that kitchen square footage will be X . We

28:19

have that within 90% accuracy . So that

28:21

one data point alone is huge

28:24

right . And we combine that with

28:26

our qualification process , which

28:28

we use these lead forms to qualify customers

28:30

. You know it's similar to like you would have a Calendly

28:33

booking on your website . You put it on your website . You

28:35

can also share individually , text it to them if you get an inbound

28:37

Lots of different ways you can share it . But it's

28:40

basically a dynamic set of questions that

28:42

starts at their address , augments a bunch

28:44

of data against it and then ask some really

28:46

smart questions that are tailored

28:48

to what they need done . So , for example

28:51

, they enter their address at auto completes for the Google

28:53

right and then it pulls in . It's a three bedroom

28:55

, two bathroom house

28:57

. It's 2200 square feet . It

28:59

was built in this year . It pulls that stuff down automatically

29:02

. Then it asks is it a full repaint , partial

29:04

repaint , exterior cabinetry ? What are you looking to

29:06

have done at your house ? And then , depending

29:08

on the data we get and the answers

29:10

of the homeowner , this is a dynamic qualification

29:13

form and so for them it takes maybe

29:15

two minutes . They don't have to measure anything

29:17

At the end of that process . They have completely

29:19

built their estimate for you . It's done

29:22

. They don't see that price instantly

29:24

. Your phone then pops up and Hoy says hey

29:26

, you have a new customer who wants a bid . Here's

29:28

the price based on your labor rates and labor

29:30

standards based on the geometry . We know the home . Here's

29:33

the actual price that you could ship it out and

29:35

here's why we're confident in that price and what the information is

29:37

. Now obviously it's not going to be for every

29:39

single home and every single project . I would not recommend

29:41

, especially where the industry is at right now , that

29:44

everybody sells remote overnight . The way Eric is

29:46

Awesome . I have so much respect . He's really pushing the

29:48

frontier forward . It's incredible . But

29:50

I feel like overnight there's

29:52

no reason you should be driving to any job below

29:54

$3,000 . That's if you think about

29:56

your time you're investing and how much drag

29:58

that is in your sales process . It

30:00

doesn't make sense Close

30:02

that job remotely . Focus on the really heavy

30:05

hitter job . Spend more time in person with those customers

30:07

. Let's make sure your windshield time really

30:09

makes sense and then if you actually unlock

30:11

this remote sales process that we have in Hoist , you

30:14

have this opportunity to run small jobs really

30:16

profitably because you're not sinking six

30:18

hours . When you think about the two hours

30:20

on average to deliver price with around a 35% close rate , that's

30:23

like six hours to win one job . Are you really

30:25

going to spend six hours to win a $1,200 repaint

30:27

? No , but if you can win that

30:29

without investing any of that upfront time 10

30:32

, 15 minutes reviewing a bid and sending it over that

30:34

could make a ton of sense for your business economically . So

30:37

that's what we built , how it works in practice

30:39

and some of our technology .

30:41

Now that's really , that's game changing . I

30:43

think the good . Because when

30:45

I'm looking at financials I'm

30:48

looking for folks that have an average

30:51

job size of 5,000 to 10,000 . And

30:54

if they have a lower job size I'm like

30:56

, okay , well , that's not good

30:58

, you're probably undercharging or you're just going

31:00

after too many small jobs and you're spending too much

31:02

time closing

31:05

it and deal with the production and

31:09

their margins are usually bad . But with

31:12

this , if you

31:14

can just , like you said , send

31:16

them a form , they fill it out and

31:19

you didn't have to really do

31:21

any work , you get the bid back

31:23

and you say , okay , well , it's only a $2,000

31:25

job , I'm not gonna go out and

31:28

do the full sales process . You

31:31

know , maybe have a phone call or some abbreviated

31:33

process and but

31:35

I'm gonna give them the bid still and that's

31:37

gonna cut , you know , save me a few hours of

31:39

work and so you could , like

31:41

you said , still produce that profitably . But then

31:43

if you get a larger , if they fill out that form

31:46

, you know , okay , this is a five thousand

31:48

, six thousand , ten thousand dollar job . Okay

31:50

, definitely gonna do the full sales process with them

31:52

and do the walk around and and

31:54

be there in person and spend that

31:56

extra time . So I think that's that's a really

31:59

powerful tool

32:01

that you can . You

32:03

can serve that underserved market

32:05

of you know , the folks wanting

32:07

, you know just a partial paint Of

32:09

their home or whatever it is . It's

32:12

also we found like you .

32:14

Like you said it , we found it super underserved

32:16

because of that dynamic you're talking about

32:18

and there's actually opportunity for some incredible margins

32:20

on some of these tiny jobs . Right , like

32:23

really incredible margins , because Oftentimes

32:26

they're not even getting second bids because painters

32:28

just turn them down . Now your property to room repaint

32:30

, just turn them down where we're able to sell those

32:32

remotely at a huge profit margin . They're actually

32:34

turn out pretty , pretty incredible for us . Now , I don't

32:36

get too hung up on the small job component because

32:38

that's only one piece . I think for most painters

32:40

they'll want to actually avoid those jobs , maybe

32:43

not even sell them remotely , which is fine . I

32:45

think what I'm advocating more than anything is

32:47

really good qualification and sales processes

32:50

that take the busy work out of everything

32:52

and make sure you know before you go

32:54

if this makes sense right , like

32:56

, for example , the way that we're running

32:58

it . I sell paint work right . Obviously the

33:00

way we're running it is I come through , leads

33:03

Come through . We just explain . We want to make this as quick

33:05

and painless for you as possible . I'm gonna shoot you

33:07

a link takes two minutes for you to complete and after

33:09

that for most bids we might not have to do

33:11

an in-home estimate , 90% of inbound

33:13

leads fill out that form . For our company 90% , and

33:16

so we have huge uptake and there is . There is

33:18

a drop-off , though I think it's important to call out . And so

33:20

for those 10% who don't want to fill it out , we can still

33:22

run our standard estimate process . It doesn't like

33:24

mean the leads gone and if they balkers

33:27

with great , no problem , we can get over there . We still

33:29

do our similar qualification process , but

33:31

we don't get that same advantage . But obviously

33:33

that's a choice you can make in terms of intent . But

33:36

from there , right , there's that piece of

33:38

. We see that lead come in and we see that house

33:40

is built in the 20s , it's in that historic region

33:42

, it's got a ton of decorative work to done . All

33:45

right , this is an in-person estimate . Right , we

33:47

follow up . Maybe we give a soft range . No , we're

33:49

thinking this is gonna be like an 18,000 dollar job . This

33:51

is a huge house , historic home . I want to make sure to do

33:53

this right and , before we even drive out

33:55

, right , we have that information . And so I think , more

33:58

than anything , regardless of my software built , which

34:00

is pretty awesome I think I'm really

34:02

advocating for really good qualification

34:04

and sales process , regardless of whether you're , you

34:07

know , dabbling in remote or whether that's in person . I

34:09

think there's just huge opportunity there we're leaving on the table

34:11

.

34:12

Yeah , no , that's . This

34:14

is awesome . That's really good . And

34:16

, how you know , we talked

34:18

about data handoff . Does hoist

34:21

do anything to help with that , that data

34:23

handoff between softwares if you're using

34:25

CRM or whatever ?

34:27

Yeah , so we're still we're pretty early in

34:29

our journey , so we haven't built any integrations yet

34:31

, but we're talking with our first users like okay , what are the

34:33

integrations we really need ? What does that look like in terms

34:35

of handoff ? But if you use hoist in

34:37

a vacuum , just in itself it's incredible

34:39

handoff for the piece of the sales process we're

34:41

talking about . So the qualified lead

34:43

comes in , you walk up to the house and you

34:45

have all the information on that home . You know

34:48

every single room , room size and what needs to be done

34:50

in every single room , and you know the price

34:52

already , like you're ready to go and share that proposal

34:54

straight out of hoist . So in

34:56

terms of that handoff , it's incredibly tight

34:58

and clean . Now we probably have work to

35:00

do to think about . You know we have a zapper integration

35:02

for getting leads into hoist , so if you're getting leads

35:05

from anywhere , you can just have them automatically dump

35:07

into hoist , which is huge . So even

35:09

if you kind of use it as a sales copilot for any of your

35:11

lead sources , you never even had your homeowners

35:13

fill out those leads . You're getting all that data augmented

35:16

about every home before you even go . So

35:18

it helps you kind of do that prep work that we discussed

35:20

automatically . You don't have to sit on Zillow

35:23

and think about it and write it down , it just all puts

35:25

it all in one place . So

35:27

I forgot the original question . I'm sorry .

35:30

Dina handoff .

35:30

Yeah , that's that we designed it front to

35:32

back to really solve the handoff between

35:35

inbound lead all the way to the one estimate

35:37

. Now I think there's more work we could do for like

35:39

okay , Do we then trigger back to the CRM

35:41

after the estimates one ? How do we kick that off

35:43

into something like drip jobs or paint scouts to handle production

35:46

and jobs gossing ? We haven't gotten there yet , but

35:48

we're eager to explore that as well .

35:50

Cool . No , but that's good that the

35:52

you have Zapier integration . So if Angie

35:54

, if you have an Angie Lee , come in , it can

35:56

go plug that information into

35:58

into hoist . It sounds like and

36:01

to talk .

36:01

Exactly a lot of our painters do that and to talk

36:03

about that example for a second Thumbtack is a use

36:06

case . That's really crazy . Same with Angie's

36:08

, where , if you're the homeowner , think about

36:10

it for a second . You Google Paint my house

36:12

and you see an ad that says cost

36:14

to paint your house . You click on it , you fill out the Angie thing

36:16

and all of a sudden your phone is ringing with people who

36:18

want to get in person . Actually , what

36:20

I wanted was a price , and if you're

36:22

the one painter reaching out that says , hey , you know

36:24

what , instead of scheduling in home , just

36:26

take two minutes , I can get you a price . The qualification

36:29

rates if you're on these paid aggregators

36:32

like this are way higher using

36:34

this approach , because that's really that

36:36

customer is digitally native . They're looking

36:38

for a price . They're more trying

36:40

to drop by from that perspective , and the number one way

36:42

you build trust with someone there is Starting

36:44

the conversation with a price as soon as possible

36:46

. That's that kind of consumer

36:48

is . What they're looking for is a price . It

36:50

doesn't mean it has to be the lowest price

36:53

either . I want to be clear just selling that

36:55

price and beginning that process doesn't remove

36:57

your quality and differentiator . As a painter , it's

36:59

really important to talk about the overall sales

37:02

process and what that fits into and

37:04

how the idea of a price builds trust right . Tesla

37:06

isn't selling the cheapest cars by any

37:09

margin , but they just put that price in the website . That

37:11

has not created a race to the bottom for them

37:13

and just this inevitability is coming

37:15

. Like homeowners more and more want this . Like

37:17

Since Amazon hit its stride 10 years ago , things

37:20

we never imagined being sold online or sold online

37:22

car insurance . I remember when I was in high school

37:24

I literally went to the guy's office and

37:26

we sat down . I gave him my report card to get my car

37:28

insurance mattresses 70%

37:31

last year was sold online by 65

37:33

year old dad bought his mattress online like a A

37:35

mattress and like that is the trend

37:38

. That's where it's going and homeowners are changing

37:40

quick and I think that's a while

37:42

till it really trickles down to home services

37:44

. But it will go there and I think it's

37:46

important we get ahead of that in a way that's really sustainable

37:49

and that we as painters own ourselves

37:51

, instead of a large company coming in and taking

37:53

this all from us . In some sense , I I think

37:55

there's a really unique opportunity in window

37:57

for painters to evolve with homeowner

37:59

needs , serve them better , really optimize

38:02

our time and just make the industry so much better .

38:04

Yeah , no , that's excellent . I'm

38:07

excited . Where do I sign up ?

38:10

Yeah , happy to . So it's with

38:12

hoist comm to answer your question . W I T H

38:14

O I S T comm . You can email me at John

38:16

J Whn at with hoist comm to .

38:19

Okay , cool . So if you

38:21

are interested in streamlining your

38:23

lead qualification process and Potentially

38:26

dabbling in remote sales or not , but

38:29

just looking to streamline your , your

38:31

qualification process and your estimating process

38:33

To get those , those online

38:35

leads , converted to sales , definitely

38:38

check out with voice comm . I

38:41

appreciate your time today , john . Any

38:43

last words or words

38:45

of advice or anything else you

38:47

want to ask of the audience ?

38:50

Not at all . Thanks so much for your time and thank you for all the

38:52

work you do to help push this industry forward . It's amazing

38:54

to be on the show . Thanks everyone , yeah .

38:56

Alright , thanks , john , and with that , we'll

38:59

see you next week .