Most home service companies think they need more leads. But as you approach $5M, the real problems are often attribution, capacity, booking rates, sales, and fulfillment.
Jack Carr and Sam Preston break down where home service marketing starts to break as a company grows, why cost per lead can be misleading, and how to track marketing all the way to actual revenue.
They also cover Google Ads and Performance Max, AI search, review velocity, and why the next era of home service marketing could extend well beyond Google.
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In This Episode
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• What breaks in marketing around $5M
• Tracking leads all the way to revenue
• Why cost per lead can be misleading
• Using phone numbers and campaigns for attribution
• Matching marketing spend to technician capacity
• Why booking rate is one of the biggest missed opportunities
• When a “lead problem” is actually a sales problem
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Sponsors
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Big Reputation
Get more from your Google Business Profile with Big Reputation. Automate reviews, improve local visibility, and turn more Google searches into inbound calls. Learn more: https://www.bigreputation.ai/oao?utm_source=oao&utm_medium=paid
Service Scalers
Get more high quality leads with marketing built for home service companies. Book a free strategy call with Service Scalers and see what's driving real jobs: https://os.servicescalers.com/go/oao_podcast/referral/podcast
Avoca
See how Avoca helps home service companies book more jobs with AI that handles calls, texts, follow ups, and dispatching without adding more chaos.
Book a demo: https://www.avoca.ai/partners/oao
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Connect
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Jack Carr
https://x.com/thehvacjack
Sam Preston
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-preston-a682103b6/
More Ways To Connect with OAO
John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC
📌 Disclaimer: Some links may include UTM parameters or affiliate relationships, meaning we may earn a commission if you make a purchase. Episodes may feature sponsors, but all opinions expressed are our own.
What actually breaks at 5 million from a marketing standpoint? The first place that things are breaking is actually knowing your numbers and where people are at in the funnel. All these tools are just getting more and more sophisticated to be able to work on that data source. Right. But there's still huge data in, data out problems.So a big portion where it's breaking is they don't have good data. Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing is can you track to revenue? Like, it really does matter to what you should be doing from a marketing standpoint. Anything else that breaks in that, that kind of, that sector? Um, yeah, soWelcome back to Owned & Operated. Today, you're here with Jack Carr- ... in place of John Wilson. Owned & Operated is a top 100 podcast that talks everything home services. We talk about our business that we're currently in, and John's business, who's not here today. So today I have- Sorry, if, if you are watching, we are in studio today at Wilson Company doing Breaking Five, so we have some really cool stuff and some really cool content that we're going over.And Sam from Service Scalers is here as well. How's it going, Sam? What's up, my guy? I'm, I'm just excited to be here. Yeah, it's been fun. This is a r- I, we say it every time, like, there's a bad cohort, but every single Breaking Five has been unique- Mm-hmm ... and has been a lot of fun. Yeah. So, um, interesting group.Um, good size, good mix of, of business types. I mean, we have people from septic to roofing to fencing to then the big three, and then sizing all the way up to 10 million from 600,000. Yeah. So a big cohort. Uh, and interestingly enough, um, there's been not too many questions about leads just yet. No. So, uh, which is- They don't need meunique. It's super unique. Usually it's like, "Hey, we need leads. We need leads." And then it's us spending a day and a half saying, "You don't need leads. You need to get your infrastructure- ... and call center and everything else right." Um, but this is the first group that was like, "Hey, yeah, we actually have in- infrastructure issues.Hey, we have org chart issues." Yeah. Uh, and no lead issues. So- Yeah ... um, so we'll see. Tomorrow's where we go through it in depth, and, uh, it's gonna be fun. This is the first breaking five million where, and tell me if I'm wrong, that we've had, uh, quite a few people above 5 million, 6, 7, and 10, where they're like- Yeah"All right. We have some of these issues, and we don't know how to keep growing and get to that next level." We've always had some level of above 5 million. Usually what happens, um, shout out Peter, is, um- Hey ... part, a part of their business that they're trying to grow is smaller than 5 million. Mm-hmm. So they'll run, like, a $10 million company, and 7 million's construction or 7 million is installation of septic systems, and 2 million is service.And so they're trying to grab, wrap their head around the service side of the business, which is sub 5 million. But yeah, this group does have its fair share of above five, which has been awesome. Uh, usually they're super interactive groups just 'cause they, they have some level of understanding that maybe somebody at sub one doesn't have.But in the best interest of breaking 5 million and marketing, uh, Sam, you run an awesome company called Service Scalers, which focuses on marketing. We do. So you are the resident expert. Um, with that, we were gonna go through what actually breaks at 5 million from a marketing standpoint. I don't have the time to babysit all of our Google business profiles, so we started using Big Reputation.It keeps your profile active by managing reviews, responding quickly, and giving Google all the signals that your business is active and trustworthy. In our first 30 days, calls from our Google business profiles jumped nearly 27%, and jobs booked through Google were up 27% too, without our team spending more time managing it.You also get a clear view of what's actually happening. You get review trends, customer sentiment, and which texts and locations are getting talked about the most. So it's less busy work, it's more visibility, and it's more inbound calls. If you want your Google business profile working harder without creating another job for your team, check out Big Reputation at the link below.You gotta figure out what, where things are breaking at in your funnel. Mm-hmm. Um, and so you enter, y- the first place that things are breaking and we're having these conversations is actually knowing your numbers, uh, and where people are at in the funnel. And this is the fir- the first thing I wanna talk about is revenue attribution.Um, 'cause I've, like even still today, we've got hundreds of clients. Um, the vast majority of my clients can't actually give me revenue information. And the problem with that is that we are making lead decisions at this point. So where's your best cost per lead? How do I get you as many leads as possible?And not what is actually making you money. Um, and so I wanna kinda dig into what you're doing to attribute, uh, revenue, 'cause I know you're using a couple different tools when you're talking up there at Breaking Five. Um, so how are you doing that today? I- is the issue that people are having trouble, uh, understanding the difference between revenue and sales, or is the issue they don't, they can't even get their revenue number correct?Um, it's, uh, top line they can tell me, like, "Hey, we've made 2 million this year," or "This, this month we're at 200,000. Uh, and we spent," you know, call it 15, uh, to get to that. Um, but what then they can't do is go, "Oh, but like 50% of it or 50 grand came from the Google ads that you're running. And that c- you know, came from these handful of campaigns."So like actually like dialing into- Yeah ... which campaigns, or is it Google Business Profile, or is it LSA? Where is that revenue actually coming from? Yeah, the way that we do it, which is, I find it really simple, uh, and it's not easy of course, but simple, is we focus on the phone number. So we have six pages of phone numbers in ServiceTitan, and each one is attributed to a specific campaign.Okay. So if we were to start a new campaign for a new anything, we generate a new phone number, and then we tie that phone number to that campaign. Um, or, like, we just notate that. Yep. Like, "Hey, this campaign is for our, uh, mailers, fall of 2026, that's focused on, um, plumbing, $89 services." Yeah. And that gets its own campaign, so we can watch over the next six months or a year, depending on, you know, how active the campaign is.We're able to watch and see, hey, we can attribute 60 phone calls to this number, and we booked 10 jobs off that. And then ServiceTitan does a really good job of actually pulling, uh, the revenue from those jobs all the way through. It, it can attribute the individual tied to the phone number, tied to the job that we estimated and sold, and give us a relative close number.There is some issues with data in, data out. There is some issues with, hey, we are picking up phone numbers. Most of the time, like, phone numbers, people don't realize, are recirculated really often. Yeah. Right? So, like, we own phone numbers who used to be, um, ironically enough, like we have a phone number that gets spammed a lot, uh, because it was a HVAC supplier in Missouri.Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And so that one threw us off. We had to actually delete that number and not use it anymore from our system because we got so many calls that were for this supply warehouse, and we're like, "We're too close in business types to that to be able to, to have that phone number." But, um, like, that can be an issue.Uh, but overall, we don't see too many problems from attribution when we're running it like that. I could see that problem exacerbating if your CRM doesn't, like- Have that functionality. Yeah. Uh, if you're only using a VoIP and not having any kind of attribution software that, that backs it up, um, or if you have to, like, tie it all the way through post, like, you know that the phone number came from that job.I'm sure you could just throw it in AI or something like that, but there is probably some extra steps for attribution from phone number to sold- Yep ... revenue. Phone numbers are, tend to be the easiest way, uh, for sure. Um, unless you're talking LSA, because then you have to get that data into your CRM, um, which I'm really hoping that now that they're moving LSA into Google Ads it's going to be automatically pushed in.Um, which I know Hatch fixed that problem, or they, they sold it as if they could fix that problem. Um, but outside of that, I haven't actually figured out a way to just push that without manually doing it. Yeah. Have you figured that out on LSA? So we manually do LSA. So we have an outbound team. Uh, people know, who know me know that I'm huge on my outbound team, uh, my lead ag team, and that lead ag team, uh, tracks all that really, really well just because that's how they're incentivized to do so.Uh, and that being said, they're the ones who are handling the LSA. That call center team's the one who's handling- Okay ... um, the call center team's the one who's handling outbounding for non-speed-to-lead aggregators like Thumbtack, Angie's, any of these kind of big aggregators. Mm-hmm. 'Cause that's, that's where we see a lot of the campaigns get lost sometimes from a marketing standpoint.Mm-hmm. Is it's not an inbound call, so they don't, uh, they, they, they just don't attribute it anywhere. Yeah. It's an outbound call. Mm-hmm. Um, and then if you don't book it, then even more so, like, there's no tie to it. Uh, so- Yeah. What, what we do is we use ServiceTitan's campaign function, or, uh, what... I, I think it's called booking job type.Okay. Um, no, not booking job type. I think it is campaign. You can tie it to a campaign in the call center function of ServiceTitan, and they just pick whichever one they're outbounding to, and that's how they book the job. Okay. So the CSRs that you're placing, they are trained- Correct ... to make sure that attribution is correct.Correct. Okay. That's huge. Um, no, I love that. Um- We did a lot of work. I mean, this is, I mean, simple, not easy. It took us a long time to get the SOP down for that, but also to go through and pull all of the old ServiceTitan campaign types out, and then to put all of our new campaign types in, uh, for those items, just to make sure, 'cause there's a mix of inbound, outbound, making sure that they're correct and applicable.Yeah. Uh, and then we have a really good call center, uh, supervisor manager, Alex, who's been with us for three years. Like, she's helped build the program. Nice. She's awesome. Um- I love that ... and so, uh, she, she watches and makes sure that they're all correct and reviews calls, and now we're utilizing Avoka as a secondary, uh, ties into our VOIP, which now she can utilize that as a tool to make sure that the call is coming from the correct spot and is attributed correctly.So- Okay ... like, all these tools are just getting more and more sophisticated to be able to work on that data source. Love that. But there's still huge data in, data out problems. So a big portion where it breaks, like you said, is back to the original item Uh, they just, it's breaking 'cause they don't have good data.Yeah. So, so, uh, leads come in, uh, a handful of different places, right? So phone calls, um, again, that's probably the easier one. You've got your, your CSRs trained to make sure that that gets attributed correctly. Uh, form fills- Yeah, the hard part though, right, with that is, um, attributed correctly. Like, if a phone comes in, where did they...Is it a referral? Mm-hmm. We don't ask. Um, and so, like, there's a portion that does slip through. Sure. But for the most part, um, that's why the phone numbers is so important because when the call comes in, like, if it's a referral versus a, I don't even know, like a SEO, like someone just found us or saw one of our trucks, like, I actually don't care.I don't care if somebody saw my truck and called me or got referred and saw me, a- and called me. I care more that the things I'm paying for are generating ROI, not the things I'm not paying for. So when I'm talking about inbound calls, I'm specifically talking about campaigns. Mm. The inbound calls coming from a campaign, not from just the ether- Yeahother. See, I care because people are paying me for SEO. Yeah. So, like, I wanna make sure that if you're paying for SEO, that there is actual revenue tied to that. Um... Well, where, where is somebody who's going through SEO, where would they find you? It'd be website, right? Mm-hmm. So that has its own phone number.Well, so, um, uh, do y'all use the DNI dynamic number insertion? No? No. Um- So we do... Yeah, 'cause I, I've heard of it. Essentially for those who don't know, dynamic number insertion changes the phone number on the website in relative to where the customer is specifically located, 'cause there's a higher probability if you have the phone number associated with the location that somebody is going to call it and/or answer from it.Yep. Uh, we don't do that. Okay. Okay. Uh, we... W- so we can set that up, and there's obviously- Yeah ... ServiceTitan has its own. You can do CallRail. There's a couple different other tools that you can use to do that. Uh, why don't you do it? I just don't feel like the, the value is worth the hassle. Okay. We, there is only three numbers, like real phone numbers, in our region that we, like our service area.So if somebody sees a 615 number, they know it's Nashville. They're not worried about, hey, I'm a 931 and they're a 615. Like, they'll answer the phone or they will still call it. The difference isn't grand enough that it makes- It, it changes it. It's different if, like, John in Akron, Ohio is running my call center, somebody's not picking up a 30-330 number.Right. So, like, that's a big difference, different state. But for regional changes, I don't know that the value outweighs the, the problem. Got it. Um, but yeah. So that, so that's interesting, but that's, that's the first place, like, so for SEO, it's, uh, website s- has its own phone number. Uh, we do that. Uh, I can see some issues, like, if you're trying to organically understand your Google Business Profile, that has its own phone number versus the website, but- That's the one I kinda care about, but don't as much, because it's way more important in my opinion to have, uh, your NAP, name, address, phone number, across all your local citations the same.Mm-hmm. And so I'm okay if we don't have a specific number there, and we can just go, "Hey, this is how many phone calls you're getting in from your Google Business Profile." On the back end, we just gotta know that, like, a percentage of those are not actually getting, uh, attributed to revenue correctly. Yeah.Um, which there's never 100% guarantee. Like, there's always- But so the point is, though, you're still getting, like, that phone number is all the indexes and- Mm-hmm ... Google. So, like, you know where the phone number's still coming from. It's not from ... There, there's a chance that someone saw your, your card and, and called the Google Business Profile.Like, that's always a chance at any point in time with any branding. So from a campaign standpoint, it is what it is, in my opinion. Um, but still applicable. Like, it's, like, you still have the source. Form... So phone calls is one way people come in. The other couple are gonna be chats, forms, and appointment schedules directly on your website.Mm-hmm. That's a little bit easier, um, because you can pull in UTMs- Yeah ... directly from the source and then push that direct, uh, in, um, as long as your CRM will allow you to pull. I don't know if I'm allow- I, I don't know if I wanna name names, but there's certain CRMs out there that you just can't- Not allowing APIs- Which-that are not very nice to play with ... it's wild, man. Yeah. Um, and so, uh, definitely, like, can be considering that before you're choosing a CRM is, like, can you attribute where those leads are coming from? 'Cause we do have a quite a few, um, clients that get a ton of form fills, even through their Google Ads or anything else.Oh, yeah. Um, and so if we can't push that in, you just get limited by how, like, y- y- the insights to what's driving revenue. Um- And that matters. Um So that's the first spot where you see big breaks. Yeah. And the answer generally is some kind of differentiation of phone number. It's multiple phone numbers to track.There's special features through certain CRMs that, like, I mean, for ServiceTitan there's, there's Marketing Pro, which has some additional features that we were talking about off- offline. Yeah. Anything else that breaks in that, that kind of, that sector? Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing is can you tr- can you track to revenue?And this matters, uh, 'cause we're, uh, we were just working with a client who, um, was, uh... We were running Google ads. It, it, what, the revenue was not getting connected. Mm-hmm. And he was like, "Hey, this isn't working. We've tried it. It's a good try. You guys did good, but, like, the revenue's not there, so let's turn it off."And we turned it off. His revenue just plummets. And so what was happening is it just wasn't getting attributed on the back end. Mm-hmm. And so we turned it back on, suddenly things started flying, flying in. Um, and so, like, it be- like, it really does matter to what you should be doing from, um, a marketing standpoint.Yeah. Definitely. We, we see it all the time where people are like, "Hey, this campaign is just, like, it's driving a huge cost per lead. Let's turn it off." Well, that's where, like, the majority of their revenue is, the highest cost per lead, and ultimately you don't care what that cost per lead is as long as it's actually bringing you a return- Has ROI, yeahthat you can run with. Yeah. Yeah, it, it's financially generating a ROI that makes sense for the business, uh, even if it's... Like, we have one, for example, that, uh, we generate... I think it's crazy. I think in, in August we generated 300 leads. We closed four or five of them out of 300, but they're all, it's an install first lead gen source.So each lead is worth, when you close it, 10 to $20,000 each. So you close six of them, four of them, I mean, you're sitting at 100 to 200K. Yeah, you paid, you know, 10, 15, $20 a lead for 300 leads, but overall you're still ROI. Yeah. The ROI makes sense because you're, you know, the, the value of that, that source is so high.So definitely important that you have some good tracking, that you have that function. I mean, are you seeing... Where, where are the other spots that it drops off, though? So, I, in, in theory, we could probably talk about this all day. Oh, yeah. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We could, Jack. It's just like- Um, but with that, like, there's about 10 other spots that I can think of where, like, it's, it's critical that I could see as somebody who's, you know, on your side of the, the marketing team, um, like I could see being problems out of your control.Yeah. So, like, where are some of these, like, next steps that you see, uh, places where marketing breaks where you're like, "I wish we could fix this"? Um, yeah, so, so first off is just understanding, like, before you can figure out what is breaking, you have to actually be able to track through the funnel to revenue, and that's gonna be, well, how many leads are coming in?How many of those leads are turning into appointments and jobs? Mm-hmm. How many of those are closing? And then how much of that is actually turning into a profit for you on the back end? Um, so in that funnel, the first thing is like, are you getting enough leads in the door? Um, I was just talking to a, a $17 million company- Um, and they're running, uh, they're running Google Ads, they're running a, a handful of these, uh, lead channels, uh, but they're not tracking their job board to know how full across several different locations.So I think that's the next place it breaks, is that you're just running marketing, you're generating leads, but you don't actually know how many leads do you have today, how do you mean, how many do you have tomorrow, and how many do you have on Thursday- Mm-hmm ... uh, to fill in that job board. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's three-day call board, right?Yeah. It's making sure that you are optimizing. Three-day call board, for people who don't know, is three calls today, two calls tomorrow, one call the next day, and you want to stay up on that so that when the next day rolls around, if you didn't have those jobs or those, um, leads that came in, well, you have two on the board already 'cause you've been working at it the day before.So it keeps, uh, the board full. Um, but also the key, which I think we don't talk about enough, is it also gives you capacity. Mm-hmm. Right? Capacity is essentially how many jobs could a technician theoretically run a day at a high efficiency rate. We generally, at, at Rapid Run, the minimum is three. You wanna do be- between three and four.Uh, once you start getting into the five, six, seven, eight, nine- Mm-hmm ... what ends up happening and what you see is that technicians just blow through the jobs. Like, they just, they gotta get to the next one. They can see their board, they're going, "I'm gonna be working all night- Yeah ... and all into tomorrow."And so they just blow through the jobs rather than spending the, the time with the customer they need to spend, um, spending the time on the equipment that they need to spend, um, to do so. So with that being said, understanding capacity's super important. Understanding, hey, I need to come in today with three jobs per technician in HVAC, three to four in plumbing, and, um Maybe fill the board one or two throughout the day with emergency calls I've wasted a lot of money on marketing agencies that made pretty reports but didn't make the phone ring, and that's why we use Service Killers at Wilson.They work exclusively with home service companies and focus on what actually drives leads: PPC, local service ads, SEO, Google Business Profile, and everything you need to get in front of homeowners who are ready to book. The best part is that you know exactly where your money is going and what's producing real jobs.If you're ready to stop guessing and start getting better leads, head to the link below, book a free strategy call, and let them know that Owned and Operated sent you. Yeah, and I think I, I see it breaking because, you know, as an agency, we ran, we run a handful of marketing services, and we do those. Um, but then, like, someone starts to, uh, not have enough jobs on their board, so they wanna push more spend through Google Ads, or they wanna push more in through LSA.And then they struggle to, and they don't actually have these other, like, lead partners, uh, or other opportunities or levers that they can just turn on and off trying to... I think that's where people really struggle. That's where you get techs just sitting on their hands going home early, um, even though your spend is going up and you're not, you're not filling that job board.Interesting. And, and so with that, um, just out of curiosity, what does What does shoulder season versus peak season look like in terms of spend and outcome? Yeah. Um, generally speaking, peak season, your cost per click goes up, uh, which is, you know, you're already maxed. You're just trying to, uh, get as much as you possibly can in these seasons.We see the cost per click go up. People are spending more. Shoulder season, people sten- uh, tend to dial it down. So even though we get less leads through the door in those shoulder seasons, they usually are cheaper leads. Mm-hmm. Which is weird. You would think people are spending more to try to just, like, get as much as they can, but generally speaking, it, it goes the opposite way.And maybe w- maybe we're the outlier and that's why. Because we s- we spend... Well, we used to try to spend more in, in off-season to fill the board to keep our technicians running. Um, and then people aren't as eager when it's sunny and 75 out to- ... to get HVAC work. Uh, weird how that works. Mm-hmm. Um, and then in summer, uh, we, we kind of dial it back just 'cause we didn't, we've never needed...We have an overabundance of leads, which maybe we are the outlier 'cause we do understand capacity and, and um... That's interesting. And so moving from there into where we see breaks in information chain of understanding where the leads are coming from, we see the, the breaks in, hey, they don't understand where they're coming from, they don't know how many leads they actually need, we don't understand, they don't understand capacity.Um, so they're either asking for too many leads that they don't actually need, they're not optimizing the leads they're getting, and they're s- upset at probably the average ticket and things like that. Um, moving on from there, where's the third spot? Like, where... progression, where do you see the next break?Uh, next break is, I think, where you're gonna be the most familiar with, is the, uh, actually setting those appointments- Yeah ... and tracking that. So, um, I think this number gets tricky, uh, as we were just talking about, in breaking five, um, is what is that percentage of leads that are coming through that are turning into appointments, and what is actually good?Mm-hmm. Um, and so we wanna see a high percentage of leads. Of course, yeah. 'Cause that's how you know you're getting quality leads. Yeah. But it all depends on, like, what you're actually defining as a lead. Um, you know, Facebook Ads is a good example of, uh, I've got a lot of clients that don't like Facebook Ads because it generates a bunch of leads, but they're lower quality- Mm-hmmand so they just turn it off. The people that are really good at speed to lead and have a CS- CSR team that's trained to turn those into appointments generally don't have as big of a problem with Facebook Ads- Yeah ... because they're good at that. Um, and so if you are not good at generating appointments and the speed to lead, like, that's a big breakage right there.Yeah, that's huge. That's where, that's what I was gonna say I see it as well, is, is the- People don't... They underestimate the booking rate and how important that is, um, because we're looking at big numbers, right? We're looking at, hey, my, my booking rate's 75%. If you had a closing rate at 75% on, you know, tickets- Mm-hmmyou'd be really happy. If you had 75%, you know, like a, a... 75% is just such a big number that we don't see those very often, that it's exciting. But when you realize, oh, the benchmark is somewhere 80 plus and, and best in class is doing 85 plus, you can do the math and f- come to find out every 100 jobs you're losing 10 to 15.Yeah. Every 100 calls you're losing 10 to 15 jobs. Um, and at, you know, $1,000 average order value- Like, it just adds up. It adds up really quickly. You don't need more leads, you need more, a better booking rate. Yeah. Um, and, and a lot of times that breaks for a myriad of reasons, right? It's, "Hey, no SOPs, untrained staff.We didn't even answer the phone because we were too busy." Like, you know, the whole ordeal. It's, there's so many reasons why that that comes about. I'm, I'm trying to be nice there. Just, like, as somebody who's super passionate about booking- Yeah ... and to the point where I started a secondary company that only focuses on booking, um, like, it- it's huge, right?It, it just, it's, it's one of the industry's, I think, big low-hanging fruits that nobody is focusing on. Yeah. I, I, I think that, uh, a lot of times people put pressure on marketing, whether that's in-house or external to a, a, an agency to, uh, to be that portion. Uh, or like, "Hey, this isn't actually turning into the jobs that I want."When we have clients that have, like, a marketing manager whose job is to work with a vendor like an agency or- Yeah ... um, a, uh, or, or their other levers of, you know, partners and they're focused on that job board, like, it always produces more. When we have somebody that has a trained CSR and you just know it's coming in- Yeahlike, we get excited when somebody's working with Quick Staffers 'cause, like, it's like, "Okay, we're good." Yeah. Like, this, this part is- This is not a pitch, by the way. This is not a- ... not a pitch. I did not pay him for this. You can pay me afterwards. Yeah. Here's your $20 afterwards. Yeah. Uh, y- yeah, man. I, I, and that's why, that's why we started is 'cause you, you just, you realize, like, there's so much more out there, uh, if you can actually just book the job and then not have them cancel on you.Yeah. Because you did capacity right. Yeah. And 'cause you know that 'cause you attributed the data right and your campaign's right. And so, um, that's huge. When, when you have that, you get to focus on the real problem. Yeah. I think sometimes people think that they have a lead problem when they have a sales problem.I was gonna say, this, the funny part about this conversation is it's, it's almost we're working this backwards. Like, we view it, I view it as marketing is, like, the last piece of the puzzle. Like, you have to have everything fixed before you even talk about marketing because as we kinda go backwards, um, what breaks in this line of processing, I think that you'll, you find out like, "Hey, oh, I don't even want people calling my CSR team."If my CSRs are booking it on people who don't know how to do the job 'cause we don't have a sales strategy- Yeah ... be, uh, and continuing on. So, so where's the next spot? I, I think I, uh, teed you up for where the next spot potentially is of- Yeah ... breaking. Yeah, I mean, it, it, in, in my opinion, it's the sales.Sales structure, sales process. I agree. Yeah. I, I think that's the next spot. It's, "Hey, we don't have a process for how our team is supposed to handle customers." Yeah. It's we don't have, um, the understanding. And it's, when we say sales, sales gets such a dirty word in this name, but it- it's really, in, in this game, it's really s- though the ability to talk to a customer and walk a customer through whatever process you wanna call your sales process.Yeah. But if you don't have that optimized and you're walking away with, with a lot of $0 tickets, it might be a good hint that that part of your process is broken. You should almost have no $0 tickets. You should have some level of... There, there should be jobs booked from estimates. W- I'm, I'm blanking on the terminology there.It's in ServiceTitan Close rate. Yeah. You should have, you should have some decent sized close rate, 50%, 60% close rate. People might think that's low, but I think that that's probably right in the right general region, um, 'cause you're never gonna be the cheapest, or you don't want to be the cheapest and have 100% close rate, 'cause that means your prices might be a little bit too low.Yeah. If you give everything away for free, I promise you- ... your close rate will be 100%, and you will get a ton of amazing reviews. You just won't stay in business very long. Yeah. So. Well, I think this all stems from being a, a smaller company that's growing into a bigger company. 'Cause when you're just a, a y- you're a one-man show, you're just getting started, the problem is leads.You just need more leads because you're gonna answer the phone, and then you're gonna run that job. Yeah. And because you're the owner, you're gonna close at 75%. 'Cause you care and you're good. That's why you went out on your own, 'cause you're a really good technician. You understand the business 100%. And then you, you just keep working in, in that capacity.Yeah. And the problem is, is if your sales team is coming in with a 75% rate, that means you're selling... Y- your average ticket's too ma- small. Most likely. You usually need to raise that rate until that average ticket drops down to 50 to 60, and then you go, "Okay, this is probably where our price needs to be."Yeah. I, I forget what the... The- there's a best practice in, in the industry, and I forget what it is for installs and, and larger ticket jobs for HVAC. But I, I'm pretty su- I'm pretty comfortable with that number and giving that out publicly and saying like, "Yeah, I would stand behind a 50% to 60% close rate," um, as like a good medium between average ticket and actually closing jobs.So. Yeah. 'Cause that, I mean, that's the other side. Like a- again, if you're way too high, you're gonna have maybe one closure, but it'll be a $20,000 average ticket, $30,000 average ticket. You're like, "Yes!" But y- you only have one of those. Yeah. So, um, interesting place to break. But sales, I think, is the next spot.Sales is the next spot, and then kind of beyond that, I, I think my... where I think the last place is fulfillment. Mm-hmm. Which is ironic for leads, but it's like fulfillment infrastructure. It's everything else, is you have processes in place that aren't allowing you to do any of the other stuff. Yeah. Your infrastructure's not good.You're not able to hire technicians, so capacity doesn't matter if you don't have any people because you haven't built the processes around- Um, hiring. You haven't built the processes around people in your business, recruiting. Yeah, so the, the two things that break on fulfillment, that if, if impacts your leads are going to be, uh, did you get reviews?That's true, too. Yeah. Right? 'Cause as a marketer, I can do all this. I can do everything right, but if you are not generating enough velocity of new reviews coming in- And good reviews, because that's the other thing. I don't care if your reviews, if you have 17,000 reviews, if you're rocking a 3.5 on Google, nobody's- Does matterno, your GMV is not going anywhere. No. Nobody's calling that GMV unless they have to. No. You're practically invisible. Yes. So. Um, and then the second piece goes back to attribution. Yeah. Like, we have to then take that back to where are you actually driving revenue through your channel, um, and pushing that.I, I've got, uh, I've got a friend out in Columbia who, uh, spends 30 grand a month in Angie's List, and it, those are his best leads. Yeah. Better than Google, better than LSA, better than anything else, and they will not let him spend any more money. He tries to push that as much as he can, and he does that because he knows that's where his revenue's coming from.Yeah. And so it- it's just a full cycle, so you have to have those two things 'cause they will break if you're not, uh, they will break your leads if you're not doing that right. Dude, I think, I think we covered it. That, that is solid. There's a lot of opinions in there. If you followed all that, congrats. If you made it this far, that was-a highly technical episode. Uh, lot, lot, lot different from our, some John and my normal episode of like, "If you had to start over again, which business would you pick?" Yeah. No, this one's like, "Hey, let's talk about attribution of lead gen at a very, very high level." Yeah. Um- If you enjoyed that, you are a nerd, and we appreciate you making it through- Yesthis nerdy talk. Definitely. Um, I mean, I think some la- I, I, my last question for you is going into, I mean, this is S- September of 2026, what on the whole from just, like, again, you're, here, here's the reward if you stayed this long - ... if you did not tune out yet. Yeah. It's where are you seeing some of the best quality leads?And if you were in my shoes and you were picking a, a channel to try or, uh, something new to, to, to pick up some, some silver, like, bullet, if you will, of marketing, where would you be looking right now? Oh, man, that's such a good question. Honestly, this is, the market is so volatile right now. Well, that, that's, so that's why I'm asking- Everything'cause I think from a volatility standpoint, like year to year, that answer changes for me. Even like quarter to quarter a lot of times that changes. Um, and so I think that the volatility is, is kind of the point. Like, where is somebody who's seeing every- Seeing the three big trades across all 50 states, like, they're...Where- where are the trends leading right now? Yeah, I mean, um, it's- it's kind of a, how do I say this, man? Google Ads has been... Th- this has been the hardest Google Ads fight of our life. Like, the m- the number of clients that are having success are going down from a volume standpoint, but the ones that are having success are having a lot of success, and it's because- Interestingit's all switching over into, uh, Performance Max. And you can see Google making big changes there specifically. So for example, uh, you know, for the last ever- What's PMax? What's Performance Max? Performance Max is kind of like an automated, uh, um, system where you focus on audience signals and, um- So the people who are winning, who are good at winning, are getting more opportunities to win, where the people who have missed on maybe, "Hey, we take too long to answer the phone," or this, it's just the- the leads aren't g- getting fulfilled at the rate that Google likes, starts to reduce their number of leads that they're getting even given.Yeah. Is that accurate? Yeah. A- and so, like, you can see Google's moving further and further into its AI mode. And so, like, my, uh, my guess, my, what, theory, uh, and I've been wrong before, ask my wife. Um, but like I- I really see the way Google is going is- is going to be shutting down every th- type of ad, uh, variant and going into more of the automated.So it's gonna be that AI Max, it's gonna be the Performance Max. LSA is being moved into- Into Google ... Performance Max. Yep. That's gonna be their one channel that everything is going. And so even in, like... So search has always been where, uh, we've had our most success, just standard search campaigns. Instead, your Performance Max, the things we're having the most success in is search.Yeah. And they're starting to break it out. They'll sh- they're showing you where things are actually working now. Um, and so, like, I think that that's where you have to be, uh, and keep playing because that's where- That's where it's gonna be. Interesting. So even though Google right now is kinda giving some of your individuals the hardest time, it's the hardest season, you still think that Google is the place to play?I think you need to be in there- Yeah ... because of where it's going. Um, I, it, it, I think this, the way people search and find you is changing. Um, and I think that's where you have to be. So with that, with that, with Google and, and kind of, um, not to al- always bring this back to AI, but with that being said, are you doing...How much work are you doing in AI optimization or do you not worry about that? Because Google is still, like, AI's main source of SEO, so if you do well on Google, you'll naturally do well in AI. Yeah. So we are seeing a, a, a definite correlation if you are good at SEO that your campaigns actually perform a lot better.Um, and so it matters being, like, technically a correct, uh, uh, site now, whereas, like, in the past it was like, "We can just throw up some landing pages. We'll just- Yeah ... we'll run your ads to that." Now it's just, like, the whole thing. Your Google business profile is attached to your LSA. Um, and so being foundationally sound.Um, and also, like, I don't wanna just, like, sit here and talk about the services we sell as like, "Hey, this is the one you should be doing." Like, you absolutely should be... Like, I'm, I'm playing around with this idea of Bing as well, 'cause Bing is feeding s- directly into ChatGPT. Yep. Reddit sounds super interesting to run ads to because it has such a high domain authority.Mm-hmm. Um, I think all these other places that used to just be thought of as like, well, it's, it's not Google's main, uh- Yeah. Yeah ... lead driver, I think are gonna become more and more impactful because these other AI search engines aren't gonna favor Google. They're gonna go elsewhere, and people are learning that you don't have to just go to Google.Yeah. Um, so you can see Google's traffic is starting to drop. Um- Yeah. Yeah, no, that, and that's why I'm asking 'cause we've seen Google's traffic. I think that that's public, um, knowledge of it's starting to drop and people are asking AI services more for, "Hey, what's the best restaurant? What's the best HVAC company?"And so some portion of it still pulls from Google, but- Ironically enough, with Reddit and Bing, it's like all these fringe strategies. Four years ago when I started, everyone was like, "Yeah, you could pick up like 15 leads a day by doing Bing." Nobody's on Bing except old people who can't change their browser to Mozilla Firefox.Yeah. It's like they're gone. It's like that was the answer, bud. Like you should have been on optimizing Bing four years ago. Good old times. Yeah. And Reddit was the same thing. Like I remember I, I did Reddit three or four years ago. We, we did a campaign, it did terrible. But like there's opportunity there now just because of AI pulling f- so much stuff from Reddit.Yeah, yeah. I, I AI'd myself or my business and I asked it why we came in third and not first in Brentwood and it pulled up some BS from 2022- ... about how one person left us a mediocre review on Reddit. I was so mad. Right? One ... It, it seriously- Right ... it is a singular comment in a dump of all ... Like who's your best HVAC company in Franklin, Tennessee?Yeah. And there was one comment that said, "Hey, we went with Rapid. We weren't a huge fan." Like this, this, this. Yeah. And so I followed up, uh, not on the Reddit post but I followed up with ... I was like, "Hey, why am I not showing up first in this, my community?" That, that comment. Yeah. That one comment from 2023.Yeah, dude. Rough. Dude. Rough. So sad. Yeah. I was like I can't fix this. I'm, I, I wonder if there's like- Well I can, but I can just like overrun it with ... But still anyway that's getting back way too deep into the weeds. Well, you know, yeah we can definitely ... Apparently you and I are the weeds guys. Yeah. Um, like you know how we right now you can like use something like Big Rep to like drive your reviews to different Google business profiles?I wonder if there's gonna be a, a way to also push that out to like your Facebook or your Instagram or Reddit or Yelp. Like where else you can get five star reviews just left in other places, 'cause they're gonna matter just as much as- Yeah ... Google Business profile. Like Google's always ... Well maybe they'll help us- Well but that's the ironic part is like we have 4.9 stars across all of our- Everythinglike over a couple thousand reviews, but it didn't pull from there. It pulled from a singular Reddit comment. Yeah. And so it's in ... The next, the next series of marketing will be interesting based on some silly stuff like that. Yeah. Where like you have to optimize across everything. Like even to unfortunately some of the more Um, let's say pay-to-play pa- plat- platforms historically that are c- have high domain authority, they've been around for a long time.You might have a bad review on one of these platforms because you have to pay for them to come off that platform. I'm being very careful with what I say here. Uh, but, uh, yeah, we'll see. It's gonna be interesting. Yeah. That, I mean, that would be the only other thing I would say is, like, more than, uh, any other channel that you can just be investing in is, is getting reviews.Like, how can you get more reviews in more places? Um, because that's, that dollar is gonna come back to you. You've probably been pitched a dozen AI tools a day by now, and most of them sound really great until your s- team actually starts using it. The one that I continue to come back to is Avoka. They built their platform specifically for contractors.It handles inbound calls, follow-ups, texts, web leads, dispatching, and even CSR coaching all in one place. If you're on ServiceTitan, the integration is rock solid, no duct-taping together five different tools. What I also like is they're realistic about what AI can and cannot do. When a customer needs a person, Avoka has 24/7 live transfers built in, so nothing's gonna fall through the cracks.And the payoff is that contractors are seeing hold times disappear and booking rates increase by as much as 30%. If you're serious about using AI to book more jobs, check out Avoka at the link below. I mean, even just generally, like, that's still the same advice. And, uh, I think that, I, I think John mentioned it a few weeks ago, velocity is just so important.Yeah. So, like, Google's, uh, focus on velocity of reviews, not total number of reviews- Yeah ... still allows for the little guy or this medium guy or the big guy to continue to win, is just, like, continuing velocity. Well, yeah. How do you drive more and more and more reviews faster and faster? So talk about, like, booking rate.Like, talk-- We should do an episode on review rate. Yeah. Like, how many reviews can you close, and how to close reviews, so. We've actually started changing our pitch to, "Hey, this guy has this many reviews, this, that. You need to go get, you know, to 100 reviews," to now it's just like, "Well, we don't really care how many reviews you have."Yeah. It's just like h- when's the last one you got? Yeah. And so, um, yeah, velocity's gonna matter. We see people that have, like, 95, 4 reviews beating out people that have thousands of reviews, just because it's, they get more in the most recent, uh, Google ones, so. Sweet. Awesome. Well, Sam, thank you for coming on and talking about marketing and diving deep with me.And sorry everyone listening who wanted a nice relaxing listen on their way to work. Uh, if you like what you heard, leave us a review. Yeah. There we go. Full circle. Leave us a review. And we'll see you next time
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