E440 Unlocking Buyer Psychology: The Key to Sales Success with Joe Cunningham

I thought, well, if we could just find an app that I could give to a technician and he had to go through there and do the checklist. And if he didn't do it, it wouldn't let him finish the job. That would be the coolest thing in the world. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mello. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So, I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text notes, N-O-T-E-S, to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build the 200 million dollar company in 22 states. Just go to Elevate and win.com/podcast to get your copy. Now, let's go back into the interview. All right, guys. Welcome back to Home Service Expert. Today, a good buddy of mine, Abba, and a pass by. He's in town, Joe Cunningham. And he, we had lunch and I said, "Let's go do a podcast." That sounds great. You were in town. So, Joe, tell us a little bit about, I've known you now seven or eight years. You've been in the Home Service sales game. You've done a lot of stuff. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about your history. I'll give you a little bit of feedback. My first trade was actually as a plumber. I worked for my uncle. And I didn't like digging ditches enough to stay in that. So after that, I ended up doing some carpentry and frame and work and I ended up selling home improvements. And we sold everything door to door. So that's how I learned. I was a canvasser first for a company. Then I became a salesperson and we went and we had our own leads. So I stayed on the East Coast for a while. I moved to Houston, Texas in 1981. Went in home improvement business there. And again, same thing. We didn't have any leads. There was no internet. There was just the yellow pages and the yellow pages was kind of a strange deal for me. And I didn't know any other way to do things but not going doors. Well, I was selling home improvements and I put in a room addition for a lady and she asked me if I could put an air conditioning system in for. And I didn't know if I could or not. So the guy that did my framing for me, his brother was air conditioning contractor. So I called him up. And he comes out there and he looked at the job and he said he charged me. I don't know, it was like $720 or $30 a ton for air conditioning. And I said, well, that's really good. But how many tons do you have to put in? He says, well, getting a truck, I'll show you. So he drive around the block says one like that needs two tons, one like that needs three times a big one like you're doing. You know, but four tons in there. He says, you know, how to check the electrical service. I said, yeah, he said, well, if they don't have a hundred am electric service, you got to charge them for that. And I, here's a guy's car to put in for 500 bucks. So I started selling air conditioning door to door because I told this lady I could get to put in for it. And I charged her $1,000 profit. She said she'd pay it. I thought this is a hell of a deal. So I started selling air conditioning door to door the same way. Now I was one of the first people that ever sold a million dollars worth of replacement a quit in a year. It's not a big deal anymore. We got a seven, six, seven, eight, nine million, but there was almost nobody did it then, but I didn't have an air conditioning company. And I didn't have any technicians and I subcontracted everything. So from that, the guys that subcontracted from me, they'd never installed that much air conditioning before the distributors they were buying from because my subcontractors supplied equipment. They asked them how they sold that much stuff. And they gave them my card and they said that we don't sell it. We put it in for this guy. And he's the one that sells it goes out, go ask him how he sold it. So all the distributors and manufacturers would come by and said, how do you sell this much air conditioning? And I told them. I said, you know, every day I get my truck and then I drive across town and I pull up in a neighborhood and I park it. I get out. And then when I get out, I walk down the street and I knock on people's doors and I try and sell this stuff and you know what? Some of them buy it. They said, you can't sell air conditioning. Like that. I said, I know I can't, but that's what I do. Well, after about three years, they figured out I really could do that. So I was contacted by carrier who always wanted to sell me equipment, but my goal was not to buy equipment. My goal was to sell air conditioning. And they said, look, we know you're not going to buy equipment from us, but we got these two contractors that owe us a whole lot of money. And we're really afraid they're going to go broke before we get paid off. And if you would just go teach them how to sell the way you sell and get us paid off, would give you this much money. Back then what they wanted to give me seemed like a whole lot of money to me. So I agreed to do it. So I went, worked with them for six months. We got carrier paid off. They paid me. Then carrier asked me, you know, you did this with one company. Could you do it with more? I said, yeah. They said, well, why don't you put a seminar together? So I did. A seminar grew from four to six to eight hours. All the distributors in the state of Texas came to see what I was doing. All the carrier distributors. And they asked me to go to work for them. So I did. And I worked for them. That would have been 1988 and the 88 first part of 89. Okay. And I started working with them. I traveled all over the state of Texas and I wrote a program for them called Texas stuff. Well, carrier at the national level saw what we were doing in Texas and they asked me to help them with a with a nationwide program. So I did. And we put together a program called Value Added Selling Value Added Service. And a lot of the guys, if they watch your podcasts that are old time carrier or American standard dealers, they've probably seen those programs. And they became pretty successful. So through that, I went from there to a company called RetroTech who was bringing out some new technology. They were selling diagnostic equipment that they showed me. And I thought that would enhance your sales more than anything you could do. So they offered me a distributorship, which I took. And I started selling lower doors for them. As I did that, I also went all up and down to East Coast and gave seminars for a lot of the major manufacturers. And a lot of the guys back then were joined in this new organization that was being formed called Contractor Success Group, which Jim Abrams and John Young, it started. And they said, you know, the stuff that you talk about in your seminars, that's a whole lot like the stuff we talk about in our meetings. You need to meet Jim Abrams and John Young. So I flew to St. Louis. I met with Jim and John. They asked me to run what was called Future University for them, which was their educational art. So I was president of Future University for about two years. I wrote a bunch of programs for them, delivered a bunch of programs. And then they wanted to start service experts. So Jim called me one morning and said, look, we're getting ready to do service experts. We'd like you to help us. So I went to work for service experts before there was a service experts. We put the first 13 companies together on one public. And my job was to make sure everybody hit their numbers. So every day, all the different companies, there was no service tighten. There was no consolidated software. People were just using like peach tree software or Excel spreadsheet or whatever they had. And they just faxed over to us every day. We'd look at their numbers. So if you didn't hit your numbers for two weeks, my job was to go to your place and spend a week there and work with you and fix your numbers. And then next week, I go to another part of the country. And we eventually grew that company to where we had 137 companies. And I was on the road every week. So I got kind of tired of it. And I told Abrams I was going to quit. So he said, what's your quitting for us? Because I never see my wife and kids. And you can't pay me enough to do this job. He says, well, is all you want off the road? I said, yeah, so we got to deal for you. Now, I think you know Jim, but if I-- I don't know him personally. I know everything about Jim. He's a pretty amazing guy. But the one thing that I learned is if he says we got a deal for you, you shouldn't just say, yes. But I did. I said, OK, if it'll get me off the road, I'll do it. He said, OK, we got 137 companies now. And I talked to the people over at the train air conditioning company. And they said, they got four TV stations. And you could use one whenever you want. You've been wanting to do your training by TV. So we'll make everybody get a satellite dish and receiver. And you can go to Tyler, Texas once a week. And you can just broadcast out of there. We're sending like a great big uplink truck like they used for the football game. We're just being you up. He said, that'll get you off the road. You want to do that? I said, yeah, that'd be great. He said, OK, you can do that. He said, well, we got one other little thing we need you to do. What's that? He said, we got these two companies. They're not very big. One's only doing three and a half. And the other's only doing a million and a half. And they're both losing money and both managers just quit. They're only 100 miles apart. And you got to go fix them. You can do that, can't you? So I agreed to do that. I took those two companies. One from a negative four or five percent net profit to a plus nine percent net profit in about six months. I did the TV show at the same time. They found two new managers put them in there. I did the TV show for another six months. They wanted me to move to Nashville. And that just was not in the cards for me. So I started doing more and more consulting work. And that business is kind of grown. I work all over the US, Canada, Australia. I do a whole lot of stuff in Australia. I know some of your friends from over there. That's a really fun place to go. And I helped them grow their business. And it's also expanded my scope again, working with the best practice groups over here, like service round table and service nation. Because it let me go back to work with plumbers and electricians and all those different people. So it's been a pretty interesting ride. And then meeting you and watching you, which you've done with the garage doors was interesting. And then when we got to talking at time and we just talked about it. about the checklist, that's even more interesting. I'm having a great time with that. - Yeah, no, we talk about a lot of stuff. We'll jump into that and a few, I got a couple of questions. - Okay. - I'm just gonna ask you about a few names. - Okay. - I'm sure you got great things to say. The Godfather, the original OG, Ron Smith. I had an opportunity to not only meet him several times, but he was on the podcast, HX Bell's well. He was in Southern Florida back in talking about this stuff and I feel like the '60s. - Yeah. Ron was a pretty amazing guy. I met Ron probably in the mid-to early '80s, and he had been down there, he had modern air conditioning company, but he also opened up a best practice group. It was called, it was called Service America. And he opened that up, and I helped a couple of the guys at work for him do that. And Ron and I became very good friends. And Ron did a lot of going out in the field and helping people too, but through our association and what I did with him when he couldn't go, he just called me up and asked me to go. And he was a great mentor, as far as helping me figure things out that these companies needed. And we had such a long association that before he passed, he would call me up and say, "Joy, I got this company in wherever the heck they were." And they need you to help him. What's wrong? And he'd tell me what's wrong. He said, "What do you want me to do?" He said, "You know what to do. Just go." So I did. And he introduced me to a lot of people, brilliant guy. And he was the first person that I know of that ever brought the retail side to any home service as far as in the trades plumbing electrical HVAC. You know, there had been home improvement companies remodeling and stuff like that, but there'd never been anything like he did in the air conditioning business. And he turned that industry upside down. There was a lot of naysayers when he started, you know, you can't do this, you can't do that, you can't charge this, you can't charge that. And he proved him wrong. He proved all of them wrong. He was an amazing guy and a great friend. So Jim Abrams, I think one of the stories, I went out and visited Terry Nicholson. And I heard story after story after story. I mean, I spent a couple of days with him and he works with Tom Hopkins. He's the road show warrior where he could go out and sell from stage. And now him and Jim and who's he working with and that best practices group. It's Terry, Jim Abrams and I'm brain farting. But anyway, tell me a little bit about Terry. I heard he could be a hard ass too. If you don't know him, he can. I'm the first person Terry ever worked for in the heating and air conditioning business. I met Terry when I was with carrier and he was working with Tom Hopkins Seminar and I actually met his cousin first. Now, I was helping carrier with their contractors and I was also helping him with their sales people as well. And their sales people, their territory managers didn't have very good selling skills. So a big full page ad. Now, I was at Tom Hopkins Devote for a long time. Full page ad in Houston Chronicle came out. Tom Hopkins is coming to the new George Brown Convention Center. Call here for tickets. So I thought, well, all these guys need to go. So I went and talked to sales managers and all these guys need to go see this. Gonna be a George Brown Convention Center. Here's the date. I wanna, I think they ought to go. He said, okay, call 'em up and say how much tickets are. So I called up, now you couldn't buy 'em on the phone. They came to you to make a presentation. So Terry's cousin Greg Buffington came out there to make the first presentation. So I met with Greg and he says, well, this is what it is, it was gonna be about. And we have to send our sales manager out here to meet with you. I said, you don't need to send anybody. I said, here's all you gotta tell me. How much to make the check for. I need this many tickets. I can't do that. Why? Well, the sales man, that's how we do it. The sales manager has to come sell you. So, well, he doesn't have to sell anything. We'll just buy. Tell me how much money you want. Yeah. No, we can't do that. So we agreed to let Terry come. So Terry comes and I told him the same thing. I said, Terry said, well, I need to make a presentation. Everybody says, you don't need to make a presentation. The only presentation you need to make is, I'm gonna bring this check out and you need to tell me how much to write it for. That's all you gotta do. So we had to sit to do set Terry's presentation. So we all went to Tom Hopkins, Deel and Houston. I've been to Tom Hopkins boot camp. It's probably five or six times. If you listen to some of his big recordings, you'll hear me on there. But later on, if we fast forward when I got done with Carrier and I went with that RetroTech company, my territory was actually Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas. But since we had no representation, at least to them at Mississippi, I handled the whole Eastern half of the United States. Well, it was too much for me to do myself. So Terry's cousin Greg lived in Houston. So I called up Greg. I said, look, are you still doing a seminar thing or you want something to do that's really cool? I'll show you how to do it. He said, yeah, I'd like something to do. So he came over there. I showed him how to make a presentation for Blower Doors and how to sell him. And usually I'd just sell him and then he'd go deliver him and do the training. So he did that for a while. And then during that time, I met Jim and John. Well, they asked me to come to right outside of St. Louis and St. Charles and run future university because that's where the school was. So I got things going. I wanted to add indoor air quality to it. And I thought, well, Greg knows all about indoor air quality after the Blower Doors deal. I'll call him up. So I called Greg up. I said, I got a really good gig for you. Greg, I'd like you to come up here and do IAQ classes. He said, why can't I'm telling real estate now? That's what I want to do. He said, but you remember my cousin, Terry? I said, yeah. Well, he lives in St. Louis. Call him up. He'll do it. He didn't know anything about IAQ. So just tell him what to say. He'll do anything. So that's how I got what Terry. Terry came to work doing seminars for me. And then we ended up after he went through all the classes, putting him into a company and letting him operate. And then during the service experts period, Jim got out of service experts. And he had a no compete. So he couldn't do anything later on. I got out. But because Terry wasn't an insider when he got out, he didn't have to sign a no compete. So Jim called me up one day. He said, look, we can't do this air time 500. You want to come help us? I can't do it. He said, well, do you know how to find Terry? I said, yeah, I know how to find it. He's a tell him to call me. So I called up Terry and he went over there and didn't. Terry's done an absolutely amazing job. Terry has a capacity for work that would kill a damn mule. He can produce and do more than 90% of the world's population, I believe. Yeah. He's an incredible guy. He's very energetic. And I think being short helped him because he feels like he has something to prove. Yeah. And he does. You know, some guys say he's pretty tough. Well, he has a goal. You know, and people ask me about working for Abrams. And Abrams was very easy to work for. A lot of people didn't believe it. But if you were Abrams and sitting here with me, you'd say, Joe, I want to do this project. This is what we want to do. And do you think you can do it? He would accept no. Who can you do it by then? Yes? OK, do it. That was it. That was our agreement. He would never, ever ask me, maybe ask me a question and pass it in a hallway how things are coming. He would never ask me for that. And I always had the project done early. So we got along great. I mean, I couldn't have thought of an easier person to work for. He never bugged you about anything. But I will say this, if you were ever to pick a guy in the trades that you wanted to learn something really quick and have it worth invaluable amounts of money, it would be to have a meeting with Jim Abrams. You will learn more from Jim Abrams and take notes when you go there in 30 minutes. And you'll learn from most people in six months. He's a brilliant man, brilliant. And he just tells you. Yeah, he's done a lot. I mean, he's a tough guy to get ahold of now. But that's how it goes. Yeah, well, he's kind of semi-retired. And he's enjoying that. And he's got the kids and the grandkids. And he's kind of enjoying that. And he pitches in helps Terry. And that kind of consumes his time. So you're working a little bit. You've worked with Ken Gooderitch. You're doing some stuff with them now. You know, Ken's a great guy. I've learned a lot. I've learned a lot from Lee Lind. I've learned a lot from Paul Kelly, Keegan. He was in Florida with the H.I.C.A. company. I mean, I've gone out to all these shops. I've been all over the country. And the H.I.C.A. had something kind of different. They're each a little bit different. They're not going to learn their own way. So much information. But I want to talk a little bit about sales. And where you think, you fix a lot of shops. Where do you think, you told me when you walked in today, I could teach. But I can't execute because I don't have enough time to go there run every business. So you need to have somebody good in there that will take with what I have and not make friends with everybody. but execute. So what do you think the biggest mistakes, the most common things that you need to get good at? Well, you know, sales training, I can teach people the processes and procedures because it's all proven. You know, sales is a numbers game. Statistically speaking, this process works better than that process. So do this one more often and then perfect that. People only buy from people they know and like and trust. So you got to spend a little time doing that before you execute the process. You know, there's three or four things about sales that a lot of people don't realize. I call them the truisms like nobody buys a solution for a problem. They don't know they have and too many salespeople just get there and they try and sell something without bringing up the problem that it'll solve and just making that important. Number two, nobody buys anything for themselves that they really think costs too much when they buy it. Because if they did, they wouldn't buy it. You know, and a lot of people don't believe that, but I'll ask the guys in a seminar. I said how many of you when you go out and you're looking for tools or maybe you're a gun nut or something and you already got 15 or 20 and you find one that you just really like. Do you just go ahead and buy it because you like it. And then when you take it home and show it to your wife, what does she say? When you buy an F, where you already got 37, well, this one's different. Baby, it does this and then you get in the argument. But doesn't your wife buy a whole lot of stuff that costs way too much? Oh yeah, it all costs you. Why do you think what your wife buys costs too much? But what you buy is always a bargain. Right. You know, you didn't want it. It could really be a bargain. But nobody buys something for theirself that they really thinks costs too much. And if you remember those couple of things, that makes it important. And the third one is really important. Also, as money is only important when that's all the customer understands, which is super important to remember when I'm going into a house and we get into a conversation and we're talking about air conditioning plumbing, water heaters, generate, doesn't matter. But we're talking about a product and during this conversation, I bring up, well, tell me, you know, a generator is a pretty big project. Let me ask you something. Have you gotten any other opinions on this? Never say the word bids or quotes because the customer gets defensive. But they'll tell you all about the opinions. Oh yeah, we had five people coming out. Okay. Well, what did they buy from them? And shouldn't you find that out before I ever give them a price? Because I'm going to ask him to buy before I ever make my presentation. So I'm going to get all my objections out front, but you got to ask that. And if I don't, if I don't ask that, what's going to happen at the end when I present my price? Well, already had five guys. Now we're right back to selling commodities because I didn't know the guy was really interested in this or that or why he didn't buy from that competitor of mine. And then the fourth truism as saying, no, it's just a defense mechanism. You know, people are just trained to say no because they find their money as being security. You know, and I might not have that really cool thing that Tommy is talking about, but at least I still got my money. So I'm safe. You know, so you have to overcome all those four things and they're there on every sale. I don't care what sale you're making and what product that is you're selling. Those four things are there every single time. So you've got to build your presentation around that. And then most people try and rush through the presentation. And they really don't like the role play. You know, that I don't like the role play. And then they don't have somebody that implements all these pieces and the learning of it. You know, when we did service experts, one of the things that happened was Jim and John were convinced that the companies we were buying to start with were so successful because everybody was doing what they taught them how to do. Well, that wasn't really the truth. They were so successful because these guys had a super strong personality and they did some of the stuff. And as we start buying more and more companies and they were getting less and less on the program, we had to figure out a way to keep them doing it. So we developed a position in those companies called the implementation coordinator. Now that person didn't know how to do a damn thing. They just knew how to nag your ass until you did it. They had the list. Tommy, did you do this? Tommy, did you do that? Tommy, did you get this done? Tommy or the guys role play it. So that's the way that worked. And the sales went up. The productivity went up. The closing ratio is called it went up because somebody was there driving the pieces. And driving the pieces. If if I make a guy do the same thing every day, he will become good at it. If I leave him to his own devices, he will practice doing the stuff he's really good at. And he won't do the stuff that he's not good at. It's just like if you're a great golfer and you can really drive but you're putt suck, but you don't like putt and saw you do is go practice driving. You never be a better putter. And that's how it goes when you leave your company to its own devices. And you don't fix those little parts in your sales department. No, it's powerful stuff. I agree with all that. I think time is one of the most important things. The spending time with people. One of the things I always look at is, wait a minute, you were there for 20 minutes and you started the estimate. I mean, especially on our new equipment soon. Is this like, did you even go to their kitchen table? Did you talk to their family? Did you figure out if anybody else was going to be part of the decision-making? Did you know what kind of budget they were looking to spend like you're asking questions. And they're not yesterday questions. When you hear why didn't you buy from the other guys, what's the most common answer? As you got other opinions, Joe, why wouldn't you? What caused you to just see, I don't whack him with that question. I build up to it. I say, Tommy, that's an interesting way to do business. Now, one thing I found out long ago is I can ask anybody a question about anything about preference, the question by saying that's interesting because the customer sitting there and he says, when you say that, he says, damn right. I'm glad you noticed how interesting I was. I was wondering if you noticed that. So it kind of pumps him up. So if I say, Tommy, that's an interesting way to do business. But let me ask you something. Why didn't you do business with one of those guys? If he's had four or five, then I'll say those four or five people you got the bids from Tommy, were they, did you vet them out? Were they all reputable companies? And do they all have good reviews? I'll ask them three or four of those saying, oh yeah, they were just as good as the same amount of reviews. Well, let me ask you this. Years in business. Why didn't you do business with one of them and then shut up? You know, and the typical answer is this. We just wanted to make sure we made the best deal. What the hell does that mean? So you've got to get them to qualify what that means. If you don't get that customer to qualify what he thinks is the best deal, you still don't know where to go. Because now you're assuming something. Now most green salespeople will think that means price. Yeah. So you've got to bring that up. I say, Tommy, I hear that all the time, you know, and a lot of people have different interpretations of what that is. What do you mean by the best deal? And then I usually get this answer from them. Well, I just want to get the best equipment at the cheapest price. You know, that's an interesting combination. Tommy, it really is. Have you ever on a regular basis been able to get something that's the very best at the very cheapest price at the same time? And shut up. Shut up. Yeah. When you ask the question, shut up. And it gets uncomfortable, but silence is pressure. Yeah. You have to get good at it. Now most people weaken right there and they start to talk again. You just lost the sale. Everybody says, first one speaks loses. No, he doesn't lose. The first one that speaks going home, what we're talking about. He's going to be a winner because he's buying what I got. But when I ask a question, then he's like, well, no, I haven't. Well, you know, he's in an air conditioning plumbing and electrical generators, garage doors, a whole lot like that. It's going to be really hard for me to give you the very best at the very cheapest price. What I think you're really trying to tell me, Tommy, is that you want to make sure that you and your family get the most value for the money. Is that right? Yes. Yes. Say, well, let me explain what we're going to do. I understand that, Joe, but don't try and tell me the most expensive thing you got. I said, well, Tommy, that'll be the last thing that I do tonight. And it will because if you buy it, I'm not going to ask you to do any damn thing else. But it gives me a chance to do what? Back up even if I missed it the first time and go through all the reasons why this is the right thing. Now, if I did it right to start with on this table, I ask them all this questions. I have I fill out forms. A lot of people like to go to nothing, but tablets and iPads, but sometimes you need paper. I want all the reasons this guy said he wanted to buy sitting right here. I want whatever analysis I did sitting right here. So I can refer back to it. It just becomes very easy for me to say, well, Tommy, remember right here when you said this was important. That's Robert Chedini was just in here last week. When you talk about that, people want to say consistent. You told me you wanted this the last. This is your forever home, didn't you? Yeah. You told me that safety was one of your main concerns because you've got kids. You also told me that because Tommy sleeps upstairs, Tommy, Jr., you wanted this to stay quiet. You know, these are some things that I think is super important to you from what you've told me. Yeah, it is and it becomes 10 times more powerful if I have that form in there and say and one of the things you told me Tommy Was that and I read it off Because when I was at I either wrote the words down that you told me or I have it on my list and I put a check mark there when you told me It's harder for me to say I didn't say it If I got the list right there it is incredibly powerful How many guys are still doing that with paper? Not as many as they should because the younger ones are taught you everything in the iPad everything in the iPad everything in the iPad everything in the iPad but all your shit disappears I love this stuff. So let's I could talk to you sales for hours, but we've got about 10 minutes here I think Let's jump into this checklist because we got we both got really excited when we started talking about checklist and I've always had an idea to be able to show a client The good the bad and the ugly and you have comprehensive analysis like you don't tell somebody they need a I've always done show and tell taking a part let's them touch it let them fill it Sometimes the client just didn't want to touch dirty parts and I get that but talk to me about the power of a checklist Because this has been something you talk to service talking about but this is we're talking about a much more comprehensive checklist You know that the checklist deal I've always done checklists for years But the problem with the checklist and I've given thousands of companies a checklist is if I've got 456 technicians and I give them a checklist and I say can y'all do this on every job? Yeah, so you're gonna fill it out and do everything? yeah So then I give them the checklist and they go out and you know yourself when I give a tech a checklist He does the stuff that he really likes to do and the stuff that he doesn't like there's always an excuse It couldn't happen today like I mean it was too hot It was too cold the moons in the wrong phase. I don't know why but that happens so I wanted to find a way to make sure that they did it so the first thing we did on checklists Was there were certain things I required pictures on and that helped a lot But guys can get very creative with pictures too so It wasn't helping as much as it should So when I was talking to you when when apps came out I thought well if we could just Find an app That I could give to a technician and he had to go through there and do the checklist and if he didn't do it It wouldn't let him finish the job. That would be the coolest thing in the world Well, I called about 10 app building companies to try and get it done None of them knew what the hell I was talking about but a couple of them said they did But I got prices like from 350 to 300,000 so I didn't know what the hell the price was But that was too big of a range for me. Yeah, and then when you and I got to talking about it And you said you'd like to have a app like that too That's when it really happened now what this app does and why it's so powerful is In the app when you open it up It's got a template for almost every trade everything a tech should do so If you're in a certain part of the country where that template doesn't match yours the templates are completely Customizable like you're in the Northeast and you do oil heat well There's no oil heat for the guys on the south so you just add oil heat in there and you take off what they use that you don't do So you customize this template, but the real magic is this The stuff that you absolutely positively want done no matter what as you're going through your template and you set it up There's a button on there you can hit this as mandatory That means this guy has to do it because this what happens if it doesn't if you put a mandatory mark there The guy has to perform these tasks. We've got every task related to working on heating an air conditioning system a plumbing system electrical system whatever it is He has to go through there and perform every task, but if it's Mark mandatory and he doesn't do it When he goes to summarize the job at the end it takes him right back to it and when it says mandatory if you put it in their mandatory That means he has to grade that piece of or that component and he has to take a picture and he has to put a comment there So when he finishes with everything just like I said at the bottom of the checklist There's a button that says summarize and you hit summarize AI will write you a summary of everything that you found wrong All your pictures are in there everything you found wrong with the equipment there Everything that he checked in the condition for the whole system Now here's where it really becomes powerful Let's say we're using greener and greener text because Train text are hard to find and guys that are really thorough are hard to find so we're gonna hire some greener text And as you know I have a trade school we train text and we take very inexperienced texts and do this But because we have taught them to find and work on every component they don't miss anything on their list But he doesn't have great communication skills yet When he hits summarize then there's also another button on it that's sent to office. So now he sends that over to the office My senior service advisor picks it up and he sees exactly what's wrong My tech calls him to get any advice and if my tech can't call they do all this while the guy goes out to the truck Then the senior service advisors says Tommy well Give me about two minutes and then head back into the house and then the senior service advisor calls the customer and says Amos Johnson this is Joe and the senior service advisor over at Joe's Air conditioning company my tech Tommy's at your house And while he was working on your system he found some things that he's really concerned about So I had him send me some pictures and quite frankly when I saw those pictures I was pretty concerned myself would you mind if I shared that with you 100% of the customers say yes 100% we have never had a customer turn us down Then he gets to make the presentation But really what really makes it even more powerful is because you now come in when he makes that statement the customers say share it So I'll say is mr. Johnson is Tommy gotten back in there. Yeah, he just walked in a door Well turn your speaker on I'd like him to show you what and what we're talking about One of the things that's wrong with your plumbing your electrical your HVAC whatever it is is this Tommy why don't you take them and show him what we're talking about So you're doing this show and tell you're not really good at communicating but you can show all the parts So he's getting an orchestrated sales presentation That's customized to him and then we sell it over the phone the tickets Go through the roof our callbacks dropped to zero our conversions are amazing You know and it's working in little places That you wouldn't believe we've got a customer in Henderson, Texas RES air conditioning. I went to his place. We put it in place. We set it up We even built him a template we called before troubleshooting because he's got really green text Tommy go out there and take a look at this system and see what's wrong Okay, well when you get there you have to hit the before troubleshooting It says you don't know enough about air conditioning to be on your own check this check that check this power here power There power so you fill that out then you send that in and a service advisor will tell you what to do to fix it if it's a repair Or he'll tell you go ahead and do a tune up and check the rest of the system It is amazing and right now I'm in the middle of building a knowledge base So we'll have another button in there So if if you're the tech and you get to a spot because you're green say shit. I forgot how to do that There's a little button this shit. I forgot how to do that button and you click that pdf or video come up Sure you how to do it. It's an amazing tool and it works in every single trade out there Well, you know what's interesting is you think about it the more comprehensive the checklist It's like you got all the evidence. I had a client. We did some simple things in service time But it's not like this and there's so many different things that this is capable of and it's cheap Yeah, I mean you make one cell you paid for it for the year practically one good cell I think the coolest thing about it though is just where it's going And you do allow everybody to do a comprehensive you make them do the job And if there's a manager on the other side saying you got to upload the picture you got to take the picture from scratch And you know you'd want to and you want to have the evidence to show the client This is what we did and here's how we did it Because I've had clients call back and say I don't think he sold my mom anything and we've got all the pictures We say look this is all that before. This is the job So I think it's super powerful What what other things about the checklist? I mean you wouldn't pretty comprehensive But it just basically conformity and giving the evidence. It's evidence-based solutions It is evidence-based solutions and uniformity of the performance that you're going to get from every single tech Every single tech will be able to operate at one level above where he normally is and I mean like the guy told you about Henderson. He's got two new techs at my tradeschool now. They're graduate tomorrow And he let him run with some of the guys that are using the checklist They both said they'd never seen anything like that before to make the jobs go right and when we went there He was doing a lot of $79 tune-ups. He's doing a lot of $1,200 tune-ups now I love it. What's the most comprehensive checklist? How many items? You know what I don't remember the exact number of items, but I guess if you use the entire HVAC template there's probably 7080 Items to touch on you know if you can if you do all the components in there and you can pair it down or build it up However you want you could add some tracks you get serial numbers. You could add anything. Oh all that's on there All the serial number of model numbers everything's on there. So you just click mandatory on that and they have to take a picture of it I love it. I love it. I got a lot of things. I'm thinking about right now. So it's Homeservicechecklist.com that's right homeservicechecklist.com And if they're interested just go there fill out a form and it just fill out a form and and we'll get you introduce to it, show you how it works, help you build your template and get it implemented in your company. It's amazingly easy. What do you think of the minimum? And I know you can't say this, but if they do everything you tell them to do and you do a small training with them, what do you think this impacts the number of closed deals and we're going to conversion. The guys on and just take service. Your average service ticket's going to go up about 40% as you're doing everything. And that's what's happening. Your conversion from fixing old stuff to replacing it because a lot of guys don't know how to do that. And it gives your inside guy all the information it needs to do the conversion that will probably double on what you're doing now. It's amazing what happens. Oh, I love it, Joe. I wish we had more time. I got to run here. But if you guys are smart, you reach out. It's home service checklist dot com. Yes, it is. And Joe, I appreciate you coming over. Thank you for letting me come. Tommy, I had a good time. This is great, brother. I appreciate I learned a lot. We're going to do this again. Good. Look at four. Thanks, buddy. Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high performing team like over here at A1 Grasdor service. So if you want to learn the secrets, tell me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees growing in the same direction, head over to elevate and win dot com. For slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.