Owned and Operated #177 - HVAC and Plumbing Lead Generation Outbound Campaigns That Fill The Board

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Maximize HVAC and plumbing lead generation with proven outbound strategies, utilizing smart software like Hatch and multi-channel marketing techniques. Learn how to attract high-quality leads, increase service bookings, and boost your sales pipeline.

Discover the best tactics to drive demand, enhance team efficiency, and stay productive during slow seasons, ensuring consistent growth for your HVAC or plumbing business

💡 Special Thanks to Modernize

We've been using Modernize for our water quality leads, and it's been a game-changer. If you’re serious about growing your business with better water quality leads, HVAC leads, or home improvement leads, check them out:

🔗 Get Quality Leads Here

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Special Thanks to Hatch!

Hatch has been an incredible partner in our outbound journey. Since starting with them, we’ve ramped up with powerful automations that keep every lead engaged and every invoice followed up. Hatch’s AI Agents, ready to handle follow-ups, reminders, email blasts, have saved us hours.

Check out Hatch Here

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Episode Hosts: 🎤

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John Wilson: @WilsonCompanies on X
Jack Carr: @TheHVACJack on X

Owned and Operated #177 Episode Transcript

John Wilson: [00:00:00] People just don't do whatever it takes because they haven't fully taken on the ownership of this is my problem.

Jack Carr: Ensuring that your team is filled up every day. As an owner, that is one of the main responsibilities. 

John Wilson: What you need to do is figure out how to actually run a fucking business and drive demand. Just pick up your phone. Call people.

Earlier this year, we started an outbounding campaign, and we really didn't know where to begin. So we were using dialing on the phones, we were sending text messages, we were trying emails. Tried a couple different softwares, and ultimately we ended up with Hatch. Hatch has been an awesome service. Awesome partner for us.

We started with them about five or six months ago, and we've just continued to ramp every month We add three or four more automations and my personal favorite thing about working with hatch is hatch comes out of the box Ready to go with hatch you get automated multi touch outreach across text voicemail drop email and a ton more so every single lead that [00:01:00] you have gets worked every invoice that you leave gets retouched and rehashed and It's freaking awesome.

Check out use hatch app. com O A O. Welcome back. Welcome back. We're here. Yeah. Um, all right. So we're early on in March. Um, what is your plan for March? 

Jack Carr: Not to fail. And by that, I mean, exactly how that sounds is I will go out there and knock doors to fill up schedule if I have to, because we're not going to fail.

And as you and everybody else I've heard, my ships are burned. So. We're not going to fail. That's a good strategy. 

John Wilson: I guess that's a good strategy. 

Jack Carr: Don't suck in March. 

John Wilson: We started off this month, uh, you know, last time we talked a lot about our inside sales, uh, strategy. So we started off this month. Like usually we enter code icy blue, which means that we broke our break even for the month and we're officially net profitable.[00:02:00] 

We usually try to cross that on the 15th working day. Um, of the month, but 15th working day. Okay. Okay. So really more like the 20th. So yeah, usually the last week we start ripping anyway. So this month we started ripping just off, just like from the get go day one, March 1st, we are in code icy blue. And what that means.

sell everything that moves basically. And, um, so because of that, we've been, uh, well, we're only three days in, but good momentum for the start of the month. Uh, we've sold. Yeah. Roughly the budget every day. We'll sell the budget this day. So that's our plan for March is off the railing discounts. Take, yeah.

Take a gross margin concession, basically. Um, in order to continue pushing, as long as gross margin doesn't go below, you know, too low. 

Jack Carr: Yeah, I mean, I just, after the last episode, I just sent my HR person. [00:03:00] A notification to post for strongly worded email. We need to wrongly worded inside sales ASAP. Get the post up on LinkedIn now.

Um, yeah, see how that goes. That's definitely part of the plan. I think that you're right though. The plan is we sent out. We also followed up by sending out a, um, starting off March follow up, uh, What are they called? Service Titan has the estimate follow up email thing that they send out. Sure, yeah. And then we have just been slamming down outbounds to do maintenances.

Any maintenance we can get on the board right now is a win. 

John Wilson: Yeah. 

Jack Carr: So, we did pretty good today. We've sold. It's 2 o'clock here. And we've sold, uh, two duct cleanings already, uh, no units, unfortunately, and some, a bunch of plumbing, so we're really, really excited because those duct cleanings, they're not like the best thing in the world, but they keep installers busy, and they, you know, all we're paying is labor, so it's not like, they're really high margin.

John Wilson: Yeah, I think, um [00:04:00] A good use of today, you know, what we spent the last episode on was what to do when install is slow and like controlling costs and how to prepare your installers for the slow season. We've spent a ton of time over the lifetime of this show talking about how to keep your service guys busy.

But I think it's worth another chat

Jack Carr: ready. Let's do it. 

John Wilson: Yeah. When one of the things that was kind of shocking to me over the past week or so, like it's March, right? 60 degrees in HVAC. Now in, in all of our trades, we tend to get slow if February, March, April, and historically we have done some type of layoff, even as recently as last year, we laid off.

people, six people, uh, in electric and maybe one or two in plumbing. Uh, so we've almost always been a layoff once a year type of company. This is the first year we haven't even thought about it very much, but I also think we're, we are [00:05:00] like much more developed in our, our approach to filling the board. And, but one of the things that was shocking about, like LinkedIn yesterday or today or something.

And just like, man, there's a lot, there's a lot of big companies that are just like not putting anything on the board. Uh, like we've got guys starting to come in. I, I don't remember being in a moment in my career where we had a bunch of walk in applicants and we've had a lot of walk in applicants. Oh, no way.

Jack Carr: Like people just showing up and like, Hey, 

John Wilson: you guys have anything? Yes. Like, yeah. Like, Hey, I went to my, I went to my place today. They had nothing for me. They haven't had anything for a week. Are you guys hiring? Like five last week. Yeah. Crazy. That was totally crazy. So we're seeing a lot of HVAC installers.

We're seeing some HVAC service guys. Saw some plumbers the other day. A couple people in excavation. Yeah, really interesting. Um, but yeah, what we're finding is like a lot of these [00:06:00] companies, they are just like, they've been sitting there service guys for like two weeks, which is a long time. Like we get, our service guys get a little bit antsy if we sit them for like an hour, you know, if they're going home and an hour or two early, they're like, man, what the heck?

And like, these guys are sitting 

Jack Carr: for two weeks. That would kill me. I take that so personally, like not having the board filled is my personal. 

John Wilson: Yeah, 

Jack Carr: well, go to, and 

John Wilson: that was the message on LinkedIn too, in these companies defense is they're like, dude, I'm really like these people trust me. And like, we're not doing it.

Right now. Yeah. So I, I think what would be helpful is a here's what to do in a shoulder season, some of it you can do now. And some of it you should have done six months ago. Yeah. 

Jack Carr: I mean, I'll start because mine's a little less sophisticated than you. Um, so in our shoulder season, the main thing we start doing.

It is [00:07:00] outbounding. It is a heavy outbound, two people, full time, and our six months ago, like you mentioned, and like I mentioned before, that's all we do the rest of the week, or the rest of the year, is collect phone numbers, collect phone numbers on every instance we can, at every place, every TikTok lead that comes in, every thumbtack lead, we have their phone number, we save their phone number, and then we reach out to them again.

We have our members, and Who we reach out to for their service, uh, until we knock all those, those, um, membership maintenance is out on both sides. We have our warm leads, which are, Hey, you know that they are, they use us, but maybe not for all services or they use us, but not all the time. Um, and then we have our cold leads in our ice cold leads.

And so that's how we go down the list. We just hit. Members first, warms, colds, ice colds, and the script changes, but not very much, honestly, and that, that's our number one driver. I mean, really, we, we pull a [00:08:00] lot off that and it's just because, right, especially off like the warm leads that aren't our customers, they haven't gotten a ton of.

before. So now they're starting to see and they haven't gotten a ton of stuff from us before a, because we're a young company. So if you sir, got service from us three years ago, we didn't have any of this. It was like me and one other dude running services. I'm just going to change in your capacitor. Um, but now it's like there's a sales process that they're getting in there.

They get to feel some of that. Um, and a lot of that drives new business that we've never seen. Previously, or they didn't know we do plumbing. And so that's been our main one as well as we turn on all of our marketing channels. That being said, we try not to over ramp up our marketing channels. Just because my belief is that in March, there's only a so many amount of those calls that are going to come in.

And you could throw a million dollars at TikTok. And you're not going to get more than the amount of leads that you are going to get anyway at a thousand dollars. [00:09:00] That's just because it's 60 degrees out. So, also the big one I think that people don't do is change your perspective on what you're trying to get.

We want foots and doors. That's it. Feet in people's houses to look for opportunity. Um, we're not going always for the home run, right? It's not always water heater change outs. We'd rather get. You know, a hundred water heater maintenance is because those will inevitably turn into change outs. 

John Wilson: I mean, yeah, I think, 

Jack Carr: I think that's good.

Last one is we also focus on cross sale. I know on the last episode I asked you about cross sale. We just run internal, um, 

John Wilson: yeah, 

Jack Carr: you know, competitions, Hey, whoever gets the most cross sale wins X, Y, or Z gets a hundred dollar Amazon gift card just because, right. We want them searching. The HVAC guys are under the house.

They see the plumbing, say something. Like, don't leave your friends hanging. 

John Wilson: One of the things that has been kind of interesting as I've started paying more attention has been, first off, I'm going to give a [00:10:00] philosophy and then I'm going to tie into this. Our philosophy on the service board and install board is if it is not full, it is our fault.

And that's it. Like, I think that we have been able to grow in a way that a lot of companies have not been able to grow over the past couple years. Because our philosophy is like, weather doesn't matter if the board's empty, it's our problem and we have to go do something about it. Uh, whereas I talked to a lot of people and they just, they know there's a problem.

They know leads are a problem. I'm in a bunch of peer groups and it's consistently coming up. Like we just can't get the leads. I got less calls than last year. I just don't know what to do. And it's like, well, what are you doing? And they're just like. Ah, nothing like yelling at my agency or something like that.

Jack Carr: And, um, which goes back to like the fact that you can't spend to buy those leads all the time. So, [00:11:00] you know, it might not be the agency. It might just be, there's no calls. Sure. So you have to find them in other places. 

John Wilson: But then like, but then what do you do? And I think a lot of people, uh, and I know this was what we used to do four years ago, five years ago, was like, ah, man, we'd call up Scorpion and be like, WTF?

You know, like, where's all our leads? Like, we're slow. And, um. They would do something a week later and it would have no impact. So scorpion sucks. Uh, so yeah, I think people just don't know what to do, but they also don't take it like fully into their heart that like, Hey, this is actually my problem. I need to solve it.

And the reason I know that is because if they truly did, if they actually were like, Hey, this is. Completely my problem, they would physically walk out the door and start knocking on doors to get service jobs. Like, they would do something in order to drive leads. And I feel like people just don't do whatever it takes because they haven't fully taken on the ownership of this is my problem.

Jack Carr: Well, I mean, that's a lot of [00:12:00] the reason that people go out and hire agencies and hire stuff because they don't want to deal with it too. Don't get me wrong, a lot of it's very difficult items. Yeah, the lead, 

John Wilson: I'll plummet. 

Jack Carr: Yeah. And. At the end of the day, though, I think, like, as an owner, that is one of the main responsibilities that you have.

That is probably one of the most important responsibilities you have, is ensuring that your team is filled up every day. And if it's not, it should be stressing you out, because you've promised families. I mean, we had our Chris, I think I told the story, we had our Christmas party this year, and man, that was a rock on my back.

It was a rock this year versus last year. Last year was like three people with their wives, and it was like, eh, you know, a few people didn't make it. And it was, it was a nice little One table get together this year was like 17 people with and then their families and their kids and it's like, man, I'm responsible for all of this.

And I can't imagine how you feel there's so many more people that you have that you are responsible for their [00:13:00] livelihood that if, if I fail, they all fail in the same way that I want, you know, I give them that responsibility. Like, Hey, if I drive you these leads, these are your responsibilities that you don't fail for me.

Um, Um, it's an extreme ownership thing at the end of the day. I think it comes back on my area that I can really drive is that lead generation. 

John Wilson: 100%. Uh, so I think own it. It's a, it's your problem. So that's like our philosophy. I think the other thing that's kind of interesting, people seem to stop at like, what's the easy thing.

Uh, and I'm going to give, I'm going to give a very crystal clear example. Um, we were, I was like scrolling Facebook the other day, which does not happen very often. So this was like news to me. So I, I showed people on my team, I was like, Oh my God, can you believe all this? And they're like, yeah, that's how it always is.

I'm like, well, pardon me for getting on Facebook. Once every year. Um, so, so like I was just like [00:14:00] scrolling and I got served up so many ads from other HVAC contractors and I mean it was like a, it was well over a dozen and I had no idea. I mean literally no concept that people were driving this much paid.

To Facebook and frankly, it was all terrible. It was all like I don't they must not scroll Facebook and See what everyone else is doing because they're doing exactly what everyone else is doing And I think my lesson here is one Don't always go for the easy thing because everyone's already doing the easy thing.

That's how LSA became what it was And two, if, like, look, look where other people are and try to be where they're not. And if you're going to compete for the same eyeballs, you gotta be interesting. Like, I can't see the same ten contractors advertise the same promotion. [00:15:00] Like, you're not interesting. It's all the same thing.

You just gotta do something. 

Jack Carr: Definitely. Yeah, I mean, that's why we got off Facebook. The key right there is, A, we weren't driving any traffic, but B, it's all the same and it's overcrowded. Because it, at one point, there was great, but like, how many times have you, have you, think personally, have you received a door hanger?

And for me, very few in our area. So, if I'm going to look at increasing leads, I'm going to go hang door hangers. Maybe even knock, just because nobody does it. 

John Wilson: We, we had, we, I had some like high school kid or like college kid or something door hang, like put a hanger on my door, um, at home and I was blown away.

Like I caught myself, but I'm like, I'm reading this door hanger and I'm like, okay, yeah, I think I will actually try something here and, and cause it, it solved a bunch of questions for me. Okay, is [00:16:00] he gonna be, is he gonna take care of me? Yeah, he worked hard enough to put this freaking door hanger on my door.

Does he serve my area? 100%. Like, he literally walked up to my door. He serves this area. And then there was a little bit of a, you know, a little thing, and like. A few, a few seconds in, I'm like, Oh my God, that totally worked like that. That actually worked. And then we started doing door hangers. And I think the first day we did door hangers, literally the first day I remember it, cause this was such a win.

We sold a tankless water heater off a freaking door hanger and. It was crazy. And like, again, nobody else was there, nobody else was doing it, but everyone's on Facebook. 

Jack Carr: And, and so it brings up that bigger question too, of like, especially with the social media and, and online ads. It's there, for me, there's two options.

A, you go big, you go big, straight, like, um, who's the Austin group? Um, Radiant. 

John Wilson: Radiant. 

Jack Carr: Radiant. So that, 

John Wilson: that's what we've done. Have you seen any of ours? Outlandish. I 

Jack Carr: saw your videos. They're, they're great. And that's, that's the point. 

John Wilson: Outlandish. [00:17:00] Yeah, the unhinged is the vibe we're going for. You 

Jack Carr: have to, because you have to get people to stop what they're doing and recognize Brandon and recognize you and recognize what you're selling.

They have selling. They have to be 

John Wilson: entertained and they have to be entertained 

Jack Carr: and informed, but you're not going to to stop them if you're not entertaining, and then they're not gonna move forward if you don't inform. So you either do that on social media. Or you get off social media and go, go do it in person, go figure out like, so our slogan at rapid response, which we're planning next year to do is like nobody's faster.

So we, we sponsor the high school team and, um, what we're going to do, and we've already got it cleared. We have the person, we have everything ready. Um, we have the forms, the sign offs. We're going to race, um, at the halftime show at homecoming next year. Oh, that's fine. And if you beat us, you get a free furnace.

Because nobody's faster. So if you, if you're faster, you get one. Um, and so we're going to line up a bunch of people and race are our fastest tech and you know, it's one of those [00:18:00] things where, Hey, I don't think anybody's going to beat our fastest tech. Cause he used to be wide receiver at LSU. So he's very fast.

Um, hopefully still. And, uh, but like something like that, it's so outlandish and gets people and guess what? On the back end, it collects a ton of phone numbers that we can sell to later and people remember the experience. So that's the goal. Um, for us at least is like, Hey, how do we go outlandish online, but also how do we create cool experiences offline?

John Wilson: We're going to hit back on driving leads. Cause I know a bunch of people have like. Ended up on Facebook and it, Ishmael sort of said it when we had him on the show, maybe two months ago. It was like, Hey, you know, social is the new advertising. I think I agree. I think people are just doing it wrong, but then also what, you know, what are all the other ways you can spend.

Like, are you hooked up to a modernize? Are you getting leads? Um, like how, like what lead aggregators are using? Are you using mailers? Are you [00:19:00] knocking on doors? Are you outbounding? And it's, I think the industry, which like still is crazy to me because this is two years ago now. Like we've been having LSA problems for two years.

And this industry still has not figured out like how to adjust from Google. Which I'm pretty sure everyone should have figured out in like 2023. Yeah. Like, hey, LSA's broke, great, figure out how to do something. 

Jack Carr: And in terms of like direct leads, the optionality has almost gone away. It's gone so much less as well.

Like, you have aggregators now, you still have LSA, not as great. You have some LSA strategy you could do that can double or triple it, but still not the, the boom town it was before. And so, where do you go? Branding? 

John Wilson: LSA is still such a big winner for us. 

Jack Carr: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's our second. Yeah, I agree.

Thumbtack now, but like, I've never imagined that an aggregator would beat out LSA. 

John Wilson: We had, uh, we had Angie beat out for like [00:20:00] ROI. But like quantity of leads, LSA is still second to none. 

Jack Carr: Which tells you though, at the same time, like don't sleep on it. You still keep it running, especially since there's really no downside to running LSA.

But man, I just, I'm telling you, I keep coming back to like, I was talking to somebody about from quick through quick staffers and I was on their website. And like for, for, um, Valentine's day that billboards and they have people submit, um, like, I love you, Tracy, to the, to their site and they run it on, on their billboard, uh, cause it's electronic billboard and they just cycle through all these and I mean, how cool is that?

And their branding is so good. It's neon pink and neon green, like that's their colors of their, who is it? It's, uh, Half Moon Plumbing. Half Moon 

John Wilson: Plumbing. Thanks for letting me Google you. Owasso. Oh yeah, that is good. And so Alright, cool humblebrag with the building. [00:21:00] Jesus Christ, that's a nice building.

They must have built that thing like a day ago. But, point being is 

Jack Carr: Yeah, those trucks are definitely Everything is unique. Everything's eye catching. And if you're gonna go branding, you're gonna go Facebook, which is what I consider somewhat branding. It's like a, it's not a direct lead generation. It's more of a passive lead generation.

Like, go big, man. Don't, don't sleep on it. Go big. Even door hangers or Mailers go big because I get so many mailers. I just toss them. I tossed three this morning when I took out the trash. 

John Wilson: Yeah. Mailers are tough. I mean, we've had success off and on. We ended up cutting it this year out of the budget. I know it works like we've had at work.

I think it really is like nailing down the message and design and like what's the QR code, what's the whatever. Uh, but we ended up, we ended up cutting. We were spending about 22 grand a month on mailers and we just. Put it all into TV, but TV, there's no immediate lead gen, but like we don't, we're, we're blessed because we don't [00:22:00] need a ton of immediate lead gen.

And I would say that we don't need a ton of immediate lead gen because all the different things that we've like talked about so far, we do literally every single day. Like we actively manage our board, we run LSAs, we run PBC, we run some social, but we do it well. We outbound like crazy, we text like crazy, we email like crazy.

Um, Like, we don't, we, we miss occasionally, but it is rare. Recently, we've been experimenting with lead aggregators, and one of the ones I'm most excited about is a company called Modernize. So, what Modernize does is they do direct inbound calls for home improvement. So, it's a direct phone call. Booking, uh, which is way easier to book and has a much higher book rate than an ANG list or something like that, where you have to sort of re contact them and try to find that, that customer.

Modernize has a direct connection to our call center, so that's been a huge win. It also has some of the services that we've really struggled to get good leads for. Water heater replacements, HVAC units, and water damage restoration and [00:23:00] water. Quality, those ones have been challenging for us to get leads and modernize has been a really great partner for us.

So make sure you check out modernize. com. 

Jack Carr: What did your, I'm genuinely curious. What did your, uh, mailers look like? Cause the ones I always get that I just like scream at is it'll say new HVAC unit, 32 percent off or whatever, 33 percent off. And I go. That's the worst messaging. If you just have a percentage off.

I don't, if I'm Betsy White, who is a housewife out in mid middle America, I don't know how much an HVAC unit costs. I just see 25 percent off. That doesn't mean anything to me. There's no number there. Right. I don't know what, what I'm actually getting off. So I always look at that and go, 

John Wilson: ah, 

Jack Carr: someone needs to tell them, but maybe I'm wrong because it's never worked for me.

John Wilson: We've tried, we've tried both. Um. I don't remember off the top of my head which one worked better, but we basically ran like 14 months of campaigns on mailers. Some were wins. Some weren't. 

Jack Carr: Yeah, I don't know, man. I just, I always have trouble with mailers just [00:24:00] and everyone else has to understand that my market is so saturated by the 100 million companies that they're all having to send mailers because they have no more channels that they can, they can lean on.

So they send them just because. They have marketing money to spend and they have nowhere else to spend it. It 

John Wilson: sounds nice. 

Jack Carr: Yeah, exactly. So we get a lot of like, 

John Wilson: we keep trying to like, almost every week we're like having this. It's like, Hey, I want to add this other thing. We, we, um, we probably have another million to a million and a half that we could spend inside our market without like going too wild.

Like, we'd have to go a little bit wild, but we don't have to go too well. I think that's probably the fun part about growth in general. Like, we were thinking, we've, we've thought about this a lot. Like, this is our first year doing, like, TV and mass advertising, like, in a big way. And, like, this is our first year.

Like, we're in our, we're in our 20s, right? Yeah. Like, we're gonna hit 30s this year. And this is our first year touching mass media. In a big way, so it's like there's a [00:25:00] lot of lever still to pull, which is, I, I think is like pretty exciting of like, Oh my God. Yeah, we're actually just getting started. This is crazy.

Have you ever done, 

Jack Carr: uh, what, what are those like the, the ads right behind the toilet spaces or the urinal spaces? No, that's what I'm talking about. That gets wild. If you could, that would be fun creative. 

John Wilson: Oh, no. Sorry. No, we are doing that. We partnered with, um, yeah, we partnered with a local, uh, baseball.

Jack Carr: Yeah. 

John Wilson: And we, so our partnership is the bathrooms. So we get behind it's 11 bathrooms, I think and they're like 40 foot walls So we have a 40 foot sticker going into this bathroom and dude, it's gonna be unhinged They said as long as it wasn't straight up profane we could put it on the wall. Yeah, 

Jack Carr: see so that's the crazy stuff We got right up to it.

Yeah, 

John Wilson: we got right up to profane 

Jack Carr: What? Speaking of partnerships, that was my next question, is like how do you view partnerships in that, [00:26:00] that way? Like, I, I always hear about different people partnering. Hey, I put, I think one of our friends did, uh, pizzas. Every pizza you sell, put this flyer on and we'll pay for the box or something.

Um, and so they get a free box and you get a free flyer with every pizza. Like, have you ever done anything like that? No. Yeah, we haven't either. But I think there's a huge opportunity there. 

John Wilson: Yeah, I, I think there is. I think like If I was starving for leads, it's all sort of like what's easy and what's not.

So right now we haven't capped our channels. Like if anything, like I should have hired probably a while ago. I haven't felt pressure and it's quarter one and I sort of woke up thinking about that this morning about how I got weak. I got weak. John, John a year ago would have hired five people last month.

Um, but I'm weaker than him. So, uh, so like we, we actually. Our LSAs don't run for a pretty large portion of the day now, uh, because we're [00:27:00] just like full all the time, so we, like, I should have hired more plumbers, but if, if we were, like, really running dry on service leads, I would absolutely do something like that, um, restaurant partnerships, I would be knocking on doors, um, yeah, I think there's a bunch of different levers you can pull And I'm gonna give people like a rough idea of like the quantity, and I don't even think we're doing that much.

If our board is empty on service tomorrow, we have, I think it's like 26, I could be off by one or two, but 26 different things that we do. To fill the board and it's a literal checklist. It's a, at this point, it's just a standard operating procedure. Like one of our, uh, one of our, like it's so dialed in that one of our marketing coordinators in the Philippines manages it for us because we're just locked in on this thing.

But that's 26 and that's not even including pizza store promotions or anything like that. So we have that [00:28:00] many different levers. So like if you add even more out of the box stuff, you'll probably be at 50. So whenever, whenever we've been in like Pickles for leads, that's usually how we start it, is like, okay, I walk in today and there's nothing on the board, what are the 10 things I can do?

What are the 20 things I can do to make an impact on today or tomorrow? And we started building that list like over a year ago, and we just add on to it every time we have a new idea. Okay, I'm gonna, now we have lead aggregators, which we never used until October. Great, that's a whole brand new tool for us.

We added PPC like a year ago, a year and a half ago. Well, 

Jack Carr: can you walk, um, do you mind walking us through some of that? Cause I think that's what everybody's yelling at their car stereo right now. It's like, okay, John, we get it. You have 26, you have 10 levers. Yeah. What are the first five? You walk in the boards.

Fuckin dead empty. There ain't nothing. No electrical, no plumbing, no HVAC. 

John Wilson: So you gotta roll through, and I will give examples, [00:29:00] but you gotta give philosophy first. What will make an impact today versus what will make an impact tomorrow. Cause those are two totally different things. And so that's why we really, we manage our board three days out.

And I think that that's, that's not a John Wilson thing, that's a Nexstar lesson, and we're super grateful that we got that from them. But we managed it three days out, so tomorrow has to be 75 percent full, two days from now 50 percent full, three days from now 25 percent full. If you are trying to fill today when it's today, that's hard.

Because there are only a few things you can do, but if you manage three days out at all times, which we've been managing three days out for like a year and a half now, you can get on top of it. Because then you're like, today, it's Wednesday. I'm thinking about Friday. I'm thinking about Saturday in order to get our leads.

And today, tomorrow is probably gonna be taken care of because we've been proactive. 

Jack Carr: Yeah, you're helping out your tomorrow self, which makes sense because you, the answer, part of the answer is you can't get ahead of it, you [00:30:00] can't get ahead of 

John Wilson: this. 

Jack Carr: You can't walk in with 15 employees in an empty board and fill that entire board.

It'd be very, very, very difficult. 

John Wilson: It's challenging. Now, sometimes we do miss and we do walk in on a day where HVAC's got half of what it should. So, sometimes that happens. Not very often anymore, but sometimes it does. So, what we did is we made this list. Again, I'm going to give examples. We're trying to cover philosophy.

We made a list of like, here are the things that I can, that I can make an impact in less than 24 hours and here are the things that I can make an impact from 24 to 48 hours, 48 to 72, and 72 and beyond. And the reason that that's important is because if I, if my board's empty, I can't go launch a Facebook ad at 9am and expect results by noon.

Now I could expect results in two days. So that's why you gotta separate it out by like level of urgency. So we have it code red, yellow, green. So green is like we have multiple days to [00:31:00] worry about this. Red is I am totally empty. So for red, uh, we turn on or up all the LSA budgets. That one's pretty easy.

We turn on or up all the budgets for all of our lead aggregators. Angie's Thumbtack, Modernize, all that stuff. We outbound. Outbound really is number one because outbound is the fastest possible way to fill your board. Just call on people, you will fill the board. So when we have We actually don't consider anymore.

We don't consider day of board filling to be marketing's problem. We fully consider that to be call center's problem because they can fill it the fastest. Definitely. With just calling. Texting out. And the reason that's different is because often with With, uh, depending on your software provider, we used to have a software provider where I could, if I created a text.

It wouldn't send until the next day. So you had to have a 24 hour log, which was really painful for us because like, Hey, the board's empty today. I don't need calls [00:32:00] tomorrow. I need calls today. I did need them tomorrow too, but that's not the point. Literally knocking on doors. We had HVAC tech sitting last spring and we ordered door hangers at 8 30 in the morning, picked him up at nine o'clock and he was walking doors at 10 and that's the day we sold a tankless water here.

So those are immediate impacts rehash. Uh, calling your old quotes. That's something you can get on the board today. Sell service jobs. So those are probably the most important. Highly tactical. Very high touch. And I think that's the reason people don't do it. Is they take a ton of energy. Like none of those that I just described are like, Go put an ad on Facebook.

And spend five dollars a day. Like no, you have to go fucking do something. And it's something uncomfortable in 

Jack Carr: most spaces too. Like calling some, like posting an ad on Facebook. Not uncomfortable. You post. You don't know if you even got anything right. You take a 

John Wilson: picture. You put some words. Hey, we got some stuff.

And then, oh, you and everybody and their brothers doing the [00:33:00] same thing. But who's knocking on doors? Who's outbound calling? 

Jack Carr: Yeah, because outbound calling, there's a lot of rejection, a lot of, it can be rough. 

John Wilson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and, and even more importantly is like, you have to build a culture in your company.

The outbound calling is like, no, this is what we do. This is just like a part of what we do. And that is hard, because if your CSRs are not used to outbounding, they probably just won't. Like, they might call 10 people a day, when they should be calling 100. 

Jack Carr: Definitely, yeah. Completely on the same. So, outbounding 

John Wilson: is, uh, so that's like the first, hey, I need to fill it today.

It is very high touch, high energy. This is going to be a lift to get this off the ground marketing effort. It's guerrilla marketing. Like, it's hard. But, it is how you make an impact today. I 

Jack Carr: have a question for you, John. So, there's a few people who I talk to, um, throughout, through the podcast and everything.

And, they bought a company. Million dollar [00:34:00] company. Two million dollar company. No list. Ouch. Day one. Yeah. No list. Because the owner had it all in his phone. Or some other. Yep. Dumb thing that they did lost all the numbers. Have you ever bought a list? 

John Wilson: Sure. Hell. Yeah, we've done it We did this last October through December.

Did it work? Hell? Yeah

Yeah, I'm gonna go do that just pick up your phone call people just call it's just so aggravating It's so aggravating when people complain about leads because I'm like, yo, everybody's got this issue dog. 

Jack Carr: Yeah, 

John Wilson: and like We're like we're figuring out. I don't think I'm anything special here. Like It takes a ton of work.

Like this takes a lot of like hard freaking work, but Boards full. 

Jack Carr: Mm hmm People people are working. I mean the the backside which we we've talked about before too Though is like do you put the cart before the horse in your opinion? [00:35:00] Because if you have a bunch of Leads you're going out or you'd have no leads.

You're going out there. You're hustling And your guys aren't, um, sales trained. They don't have the right processes in place. And then you feel like you're spinning your wheels, getting calls on the board. You're paying for calls. And they're not closing. No closes. No. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's tough. But you 

John Wilson: can't optimize.

It's like you can't, you can't fix the close until your guys have reps. You gotta have something to close. You gotta have something to improve on. Yeah. So like, we see, we see fixing the close and closing rate as a downstream of our marketing and call center teams are effective enough to fill that board every day.

And because we trust them to do that. We can coach that. That was my, uh, 

Jack Carr: you answered the question. That was what I was looking for. So it was a downstream or upstream and, um, I mean, somewhat simultaneous, but yeah, that, yeah. Cause I know that was a big question when I, when I started and it was, Hey, I'm just feel like I'm wasting these dang calls, man.

We're [00:36:00] giving them the calls and nothing's happening. Nothing's happening. I'm now spending money to have them running around all day, wasting gas and not, not selling anything. But you're right. Like you can't fix that. If they don't have an opportunity to be, have that experience and to be teachable. 

John Wilson: So, service boards are fully your problem.

It sucks, and fixing it takes a ton of work. But you build a process, you list out all the different things, ideally by like time frame. I can do this and it will make an, if I started at 8am, I could put a call on the board today. If I start at 8 a. m. today, I can put calls on tomorrow, and if I start at 8 a.

m., I can put calls on the board two days from now. Um, so you list it out, and you make it a process. Hey, if we're empty today, here's what happens. Um, the three day call board from Nexstar has been an awesome tool for us. Again, that's just like, we manage three days at a time. Tomorrow is gonna be, uh, 75 percent full day after that's 50 percent full day after that's 25 [00:37:00] percent full.

Um, and that, that reduces the crises that you face because we're always looking two or three days out. Um, and then what we've also done is we've created accountability behind that. I don't think we said that, but like our marketing team posts and in, in the whole, whole company channels. Uh, like, hey, here's the call board for the day, and we do that three times a day.

So they're like, here's the results we produced, we kept you guys busy, or we didn't. And it'll just say what code we're in. Hey, we're in code red for electrical service. Here's what we're doing to fix that. Uh, so we make them report to the whole company. 

Jack Carr: Man, that is something. I'm, I'm jealous, but at the same time, I know how, how long it took to build that muscle.

Because that's what it is, man. It's a muscle. You, if you go, and here's the part that we didn't speak about. What is something that people do when their call board's not full and they feel guilty? And so what do they do, John? 

John Wilson: Oh my god. They do something else. They have people do 

Jack Carr: [00:38:00] shop work. Shop work? That's one of them.

Shop work's terrible. Ugh. Waste money. It drives me nuts. Cause you're not working that muscle. It just drives 

John Wilson: me nuts. The 

Jack Carr: other one? 

John Wilson: Well, you're not, you're not actually figuring out how to build a business. It's like the easiest, stupidest button in the world. And I'm, I know that I'm being harsh. But like, you people need this reality check.

This is a dumb idea. What you need to do is figure out how to actually run a fucking business. And drive demand and then the second I'm off my 

Jack Carr: soapbox the second I knew I was gonna get you better not 

John Wilson: edit the fucking out of there 

Jack Carr: the second one which will also might get you riled up is don't I'm not gonna say don't I'm just gonna say be careful when you start working different muscles and that muscle being Oh, I don't have any service work.

I'm a service company. But hey, look at that shiny new construction over there. New construction. It's, it's March 

John Wilson: and there's some new construction that we could do. Oh my god, it makes me squirm. Yeah, that's like me being like, hey, I'm a Ford [00:39:00] dealer. And I didn't sell enough cars this month. So instead, I'm going to build a plant and start manufacturing Ford vehicles instead.

Like, that's the level of stupid that I see that comment as. 

Jack Carr: If, if John's hurting your feelings right now, it's okay because I'm right. I'm right. I don't care. I have also done this. I have said, oh, look at, and my team is all coming to me. Jack, we have, we can go get New construction contracts. Let's go do it.

I know somebody and I said, okay, sure. But you're managing it. You know, who ended up managing it? Me, you know, who ended up didn't get paid, you know, who ended up losing all the money. You know, who lost money me. And so I learned my lesson very quickly that john is correct in this as much as it hurts my heart that unless you have the infrastructure to run a separate new construction business, it's not a shiny object.

Don't do it. Don't do it. 

John Wilson: Yeah, it's a totally do it. See what happens. [00:40:00] Yeah, my, my best analogy really is the, are you a Ford manufacturer or are you the Ford dealer? Like I'm Bob's auto repair service. I'm not Ford. So just pick your lane here. I'm not going to build the thing, but I will fix it. 

Jack Carr: Unless you're Tesla.

And like, that was from the beginning, Hey, you. You know, you did both, 

John Wilson: but that would be, but none of us are publicly traded 

Jack Carr: companies. Awesome. Well, this is great. I think, uh, I'm leaving with some, some, some ideas, tidbits, tidbits. Nice. Yeah. 

John Wilson: Cool. 

Jack Carr: Good. 

John Wilson: Um, we've got our workshop coming up in April. Make sure you check out owned and operated.

com. Click on the workshop button. We also have owned and operated pro, which is coming out, which should be fun. It's like a peer group. So that should be cool. I think that button's also on the website. And then, yeah, if you like what you heard, give us five stars wherever it is that you listen to podcasts.

Sweet. Thanks everyone. [00:41:00] Sweet.

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