Ep58: Post-Estimate SMS Templates in SmartMoving - My Full 7X Follow Up Sequence

All right, welcome back to the moving game. We're going to talk about SMS templates in Smart Moving. If you're not a Smart Moving user, then, well, this should still apply. But if you don't have the function, then that's a deal breaker, so you should check out Smart Moving. So what we're going to go through is how you should set up, in my opinion, your SMS templates. And you're going to find this, go to Settings in Smart Moving, and then go to Sales, and then at the bottom of that little list, Sales Templates. This is where you're going to build out your SMS and your email template. So we're right now just focusing on SMS, okay, for this episode. And the way you should build and structure these is really important because you want them to be highly effective in easy to read for your sales reps. So you have a name for every template, and then you also have, you know, your body of the message. And so let's start with naming. What we do, and I'm going to focus on Post-Essument, okay, so these are pending deals, you've already quoted them. We run a 7x model, meaning we have seven follow-ups that we always are going to get through before we mark a lead abandoned. And unless they, you know, within that process, if they end up giving us information that is very clear, they went with someone else, or it's something that's not for them. So 7x model, that means when we build these templates, we're going to set them up with those numbers indicated, as well as what type of follow-up it is. So when you build this template, the name, okay, this is how we build ours, we're going to read it out, type it out, "Essument 1x." And when you make those x's, it's like a big uppercase x. "Essument 1x - and then a descriptor of what that message means." So because we do a 7x follow-up on all of our pending quotes, we label it as "estimate" in the template name because "E" is going to come up at the top. Okay, because when you go into like an actual customer card and you click templates, it's going to sort them alphabetically. So we have three main ones for us, three different types. We have "Essument" follow-up, right? "Essument follow-up." That's the follow-up for somebody that's already had a quote. We also have "lead follow-up." Okay, so that's follow-up on a lead that's not been quoted yet. And then we have "no show." Okay, "no show" is for people who had an estimate scheduled and they didn't show up. Okay, most people don't have the process for that, so we can do that on another episode. And the reason we do "Essument lead and no show" as the names is because of that alphabetical order. We want "Essument" to be at the top because those are going to be the ones we do the most. We then want "lead" to be next because "L" will come after "E" and "lead." It makes total sense, right? Like "lead" means it's follow-up for a new lead. That's not been quoted yet. "Essment" means like this is follow-up for somebody that's gotten an estimate. And then "no show" is also very clear. "In" for "no show" is going to be after "L." Okay, so there's this ordering that happens alphabetically. Don't let me lose you here, okay? This can sometimes people get lost in the weeds, but like there's a process for this and that's why I'm teaching it. So next, we're going to do the numbering. Okay, so we have the type of follow-up and those three that I just described were "Essment lead and no show." Now, we're going to do the numbering system. What is the chronological order that this is in the process? For the "Essment" follow-up, like I was telling you, we do a 7x. So we're going to have 1x, 2x, 3x, etc. all the way to 7. And then we'll put a little dash and we'll put a descriptor. So the descriptor is going to detail what that follow-up means. Without the sales rep having to like click it and then read the template to understand what the template is. So this is important because when you're in a customer card and you click the template drop down, you don't see the full body of the message, you just see the name of the template. So we name those templates, bought with a descriptor, so sales can quickly know what it is. And I'll kind of run through an example. So our "Essment 1x" which for us, we send this one to two hours after the quote every time. And what it is is "Essment 1x dash next steps." Okay, and I'm not going to read every little bit of it, but I'll give you this one. You know, it basically reads out, this is the SMS template. "Hey, at first name, it's. " and then it'll key in the sales rep's name. "Over at big, like moving, smiley face." Thanks for making time today. "Examation point, I have a great feeling about us working together." "Examation point, you can sign for your move through the "Essment Portal" when you're ready to give me a call." Oh, I might have just read that funny. "You can sign for your move through the "Essment Portal" when you're ready or give me a call." "Click to book, and then we put the customer portal URL." Okay, so there's a clear call to action at the bottom of the SMS. It's a next steps. That's the whole concept of the template. "Hey, I feel great about us working together. Here's next steps." "Sign for your move through the "Essment Portal" when you're ready or give me a call." And then we put the URL in every "Essment" follow-up. Okay, that "Essment Portal" URL. It's a token inside of SmartMovie. We put that in every SMS template for "Essment Post-Essment" follow-up. Okay, and the reason we do that is because like you might email somebody the quote, but then it's buried down in their email, and then let's say you text them to follow-up, and they read your text, but they can't easily get to the quote. They're like, "Ah, can you recent the quote?" So what you want to always do is every single one of your "Essment" templates should have the link that goes straight to their portal. That way they can easily just click, read, sign, they've booked, you know, their move is booked. Right. As we go through, it's really important to have these descriptors nailed down, and also to train and teach your salespeople what they mean, how to quick reference. Everything here is about efficiency. Some of you may be like, "Man, Winston, this is kind of detailed, like you're talking a long time about this, but one, two, or three percent efficiencies are what really make the difference between good companies and exceptional companies. It's the difference between running 12 percent NOI and running 20 to 25 percent NOI. It's just having hundreds of these two to three percent efficiencies, literally hundreds of them when you look at company A versus company B. Okay. So we just talked about how to build titles properly, better efficiency. We talked about always including the portal URL, the customer portal URL, and every SMS for your post-essment templates. Next is when you build this out, you need to preview every message. Test it every single one, test it to your phone. And what I want you to do is when you get a text message, it pops up with a preview on your phone. I want you to read the preview. And I want you to feel amazing about how the preview looks, because there's a lot of people that they'll get your text. They'll read the preview, but they never open the entire message. So you may only have an opportunity on the preview. So you need to make sure the preview is a little clickbaiting. It has something that kind of entices them to open the full message. Read it fully. Reply. Okay. And you have to understand there's two ways that people can look at an SMS. They can look at it through preview and they can look at it in the full, you know, when they open their messages, they swipe their phone, unlocked, and they look at the full message. So every time you build a template, every time, whether this is good practice for SMS and email, is you need to preview every single one of them, every single one of them. Okay. Super valuable. The nice thing in smart moving, it gives you the preview. But I like, it shows you a preview. I also like to test it. I test every single one. Because you're going to use, your sales seems going to use this every single day. You want it to be dialed in. All right. Next, I'm going to give you a, this, this might be really enticing for some of you. I'm going to give you my one through seven follow up sequence. I'm not going to do like every single word here. I'm just going to give you the descriptors and then it might be. you can draw your brain to give you some ideas. So estimate 1x is next steps. We talked about that. Estimate 2x is going to be next day, and it's two spots left. Two spots left. So we're right away we're getting into some urgency, just a little bit of urgency. Not too much pressure. The reason we say two spots is if we say one spot left, that might feel like it's not quite fully believable. If it's three or four, that's going to make the consumer feel like, well, I got plenty of time. Two starts the process of thinking, hmm, maybe I need to take action. But it's believable. It's believable. So estimate 2x, the descriptor on that is two spots left. That's the whole premise of that follow-up. The email that we do that corresponds with the SMS, it's all built to mimic each other. So like everything from the SMS, 2x, matches in the email. It's just structured for email. OK. All right, next is the 3x. And that one is don't miss out. So here we're going for FOMO. OK. And we're going to be in the body of the message. We're going to be plugging in their move date. Hey, you needed help moving on blank date, but we never got your move schedule. Where should we go from here? Would hate if you missed out on your preferred move date. And then that call to action and that one is click to preview. Right. We're not saying click to book. We're just saying, hey, click to preview. And then we put that customer portal URL. All right. Estimate 4x is authority takeover. This is all keyed out. So that way it looks like it's being written by me. And it's just like if you understand what a takeover is, you could have a sales manager, you could have a owner, whoever, you could have just a senior sales rep do these. And it's basically like, hey, it's Winston. I'm the owner of a big, big, big moving. Look at your account. And I notice you had a pending move with us. What do we need to do to earn the job? Right. And then we let them reference the quote there. All right. 5x, this one is requires further action. So this one we're switching the tone now. Here, we're not putting a bunch of exclamation points all over the place. We're not putting a bunch of emojis. It's hey, let's say John is our arbitrary customer. Hey, John, period. This is when send with big, big, big moving located in Salem, Virginia, contacting you about your pending move, period. This message requires further action. And that's what gets previewed. When you actually test this message before you swipe it open, like that's what gets previewed. And then the rest of the message goes, we have not yet booked your move. So we're going to close the pending job unless you let us know. Thanks. And then we, again, click to review. And we add the customer portal URL. That's the 5x. And that one's effective. If you wait to do that one deeper in the process, it doesn't do as much good. So we hit that one at 5x. We then have a 6x. That's checking back in. And that one's a little more basic. Like, hey, haven't heard from me in a while. Are you still planning to move? That one's pretty basic. And then 7x is what we call our last chance $99 discount. And this one is basically like, John, redeem your special moving discount. that's what gets previewed. And then in the body, it says, grab this last chance moving discount in the event. You haven't booked a mover yet. Enjoy $99 off your move. Would you like to get scheduled? Question mark. Click to book. And then we put the URL for them. So I know that was a lot, but that's our 7x post-assessment system. And building those out in smart moving as templates-- again, you're going to have corresponding email templates that match up. And what this does is it just systematizes the follow-up so much. And you can just click, click, crank them out. And it gives a real system for your sales reps to follow. And then for you as a company, it's then just figuring out what's the timing of these follow-ups. Because if I give a quote in its 7 days from their move date, well, that's a lot different than me giving a quote in its 1 month out from their move date. So you're going to have to train your sales people in what that process looks like with a shorter life cycle date versus a longer life cycle date and how we're going to operate with the follow-ups in those amounts of days. All right. Hope that helps. We'll catch you on the next one.