Why More Leads Won’t Fix Your Business with Matt Jones

In this episode, Greg Wilkes sits down with Matt from The Tradie Web Guys, a former plumber turned marketing strategist who now helps trades and construction businesses build scalable, systemised marketing engines.

Matt shares why most builders and trades are solving the wrong problem when they chase more leads — and why better systems, not bigger ad spend, are usually the real answer.

🔹 Key topics:

✅ Why leads aren’t the real issue — most businesses don’t need more enquiries, they need better systems to convert the ones they’re already getting.

✅ The DEAF framework (Define, Establish, Act, Feedback) — a practical roadmap for setting clear goals, building strong foundations, taking action, and continuously refining strategy.

✅ From enquiries to closed jobs — why marketing should focus on outcomes (revenue), not vanity metrics like clicks or impressions.

✅ The missing middle in most businesses — the gap between a lead coming in and becoming a project in Buildertrend or your job management software.

✅ Why fulfillment becomes the real bottleneck — once lead flow is fixed, recruitment and delivery capacity quickly become the constraint.

✅ Recruitment is marketing — your next great employee likely already has a job, and attracting them requires positioning, creativity, and brand strength.

✅ B2B vs B2C strategies — why commercial builders shouldn’t rely on ads, and how creative outreach beats generic LinkedIn messages.

✅ CRM done properly — the importance of tracking the full sales pipeline, not just generating enquiries, and why automation changes everything.

✅ AI and the future of search — how ChatGPT and large language models are shifting discovery away from traditional Google search, and why useful, relevant website content now matters more than ever.

This episode is a grounded, practical conversation for builders and trades who want predictable growth, stronger systems, and a business that scales beyond referrals and word of mouth.

If you’re serious about building a marketing engine that produces real jobs — not just enquiries — this episode is a must-listen.

https://tradie.wiki/mattmedia

http://TheSiteShed.com

http://TradieWebGuys.com.au

https://developcoaching.co.uk

For more episode please visit:
https://developcoaching.co.uk/construction-podcast/

If you'd like to discuss fast-tracking your results, book in a free call - https://www.developcoaching.co.uk/schedule/

If you'd like help growing your business join my private Facebook group - https://m.facebook.com/groups/constructiontradesaccelerator

Transcript

[00:00:00] 

Greg: So most builders and trades think they need more leads in order to scale. Matt from the traded web guys is gonna show us today why leads isn't necessarily the only thing you need in your marketing strategy. We're gonna look at everything from his four step plan on how to absolutely nail your system so that you can convert more.

Greg: To how marketing is even involved in your recruitment strategies so you can scale. So you're gonna get a lot of info from this. Let's see what's working, what's current right now. Have a listen.

Greg: Matt, great to have you on.

Greg: Appreciate you joining us today. 

Richard: Thanks, Greg. Good to be on your show. 

Greg: Yeah, that's it. So you we had a little bit of a swap. I did yours a few weeks back no. Great to have you on, mate. Today we're talking about some marketing, which is awesome. We haven't had anyone talk about that for a while on the podcast.

Greg: So I think these are the ones that always get the most views because I think every builder and trade just wants leads, leads and more leads. Let's dive into that and talk about why that's so important. Before we do though, Matt, ironic, 

Richard: mate, ironically, if I [00:01:00] can just interrupt there I would just like to say on that topic, leads is.

Richard: Very seldom the problem. And so what we're gonna talk about is to give your listeners and viewers a bit of hope and inspiration is more focused around how to improve results off leads they may already be getting. So we're talking here today more about systems because most people think they want more leads, but truthfully they just need better systems.

Greg: Good. Yeah. Excellent. Look forward to jumping into that. I've had a few ex experts that we often talk to, either on the podcast or that come into my coaching program and. Always find it interesting with experts that might be, you know, a marketing expert or might be, you know, a systems expert or whatever it is.

Greg: The ones that I feel are the real experts are ones that have actually had some real world experience in the construction industry. And that's exactly what you've got, Matt. So tell us a little bit about what you used to do and how you actually even got into marketing. 

Richard: Sure. Like probably many of your listeners and and viewers, I actually used to be a plumber.[00:02:00] 

Richard: That's why I speak a little bit slow. But I serve my apprenticeship on the north shore of Sydney. And I suppose what fueled that back then was the fact that very, like different to today which we can touch on as well. But the you know, like going through the whole schooling system that we have here in Australia, I wasn't like academic.

Richard: And so back then plumbing was like I'd either go to university and struggle or I could go and, you know, do something practical and, you know, serve a trade. And I say that's changed considerably now because in lieu of all of the you know, the things that we're seeing AI replace in terms of jobs, everyone's trying to get out there and do, you know, there's always talk about become a plumber, become a nutrition.

Richard: So it's kind of gone. Yeah. Full 180. But anyway, regardless, I went and got a job an apprenticeship, which is how we do it over here in Australia. Served that apprenticeship on the north shore of Sydney. And you know, then I, like many Australians and many Brits as well you know, went on a global pilgrimage and I spent a few years overseas.

Richard: But, you know, my trade enabled me to do that. And so I've always been a really [00:03:00] big advocate. People's serving trades and not doing it as a default option, but doing it as a, you know, a real way that you can create a great lifestyle and create a great income and so on and so forth. Yeah. So while I was traveling gallivanting around the world, I and I was actually born in the UK as well, so luckily I had a British passport, which enabled me to live and do all that kind of stuff over there.

Richard: So that was fun living in the uk. But I noticed while I was away there, there was, you know, I started developing a bit of an interest with business, as many of, I'm probably preaching to the choir here, 'cause I guess anyone that's watching or listening to this is much the same. And during that period I thought, oh, you know, when I get back to Australia, I sort of wanna go into business.

Richard: So I did that. Came back to Australia, started up a business, plumbing business, and I, I. I actually came unstuck with some and not to slag builders or anything, but I went through a bit of an issue with some builders. Ended up not getting paid, losing a lot of money, and I thought, you know what?

Richard: Maybe you wanna try something different. So I ended up taking a job with a company based in Sydney that's, that sold a a [00:04:00] technology primarily to plumbers called pipe Ry lining, which many of you guys might be familiar with. And that when I was in that position there, I noticed there were a lot of businesses that were really good at doing their thing, but really bad at telling their story.

Richard: And I had a couple of customers that we start that I, you know, where they'd buy this setup office, you know, spend quarter of a million dollars on it and they'd be like, if I don't start selling this thing, I'm gonna be sleeping in the trailer. You just sold me. So I said you need to get a web, you need to get it up on your website and talk about it.

Richard: And they're like I don't have a website. So we ended up building websites for a couple of them and then one thing led to another, you know, we were full scale into marketing years down the track. So that's kind of my 30,000 foot overview into how I went from plumbing into marketing.

Richard: And that was, you know, going back 14 years now. So I've probably spent as much time in agency as I have in the trade. 

Greg: Yeah. No, that's awesome. Funny enough, I was a, you know, similar story in some ways 'cause I started out obviously a trade and then moved into it being a coach. But I remember years back when I was doing my trade, I wanted to get out of it.

Greg: My my mates were, one of my best mates was a car salesman. And every [00:05:00] weekend he'd pull up in a brand new car. It wasn't his, he was just selling it. And I said to my dad, oh, I think I was 16, 17 at the time. I said to my dad, oh, I really wanna become a car salesman. And he said, and I'm so glad he did this.

Greg: He went, look, listen son, he went. Can I just survive? He goes, please just stick your trade out. Just get the trade under your belt and then you've got it forever. And you know, you won't realize how well that will serve you in life. And then if you wanna be a car salesman after that, do that.

Greg: But just get your trade done first. And I'm glad I did. 'cause it's amazing actually, you know what that's actually led to for me later on in life. You know, I dunno what I'll be doing now if I was still selling cars. But yeah, I think it's interesting that where life takes you and, but I do think the trade is often a foundation of.

Greg: Some good businesses, you know, going forward, if you've got that. Oh, I mean, I think it's a metaphor. Just for just life in general. You know, like where you start is not where you end up and like what, whatever your, you know, avenue you start in can open a lot of doors of opportunity into other areas.

Richard: And you know, that's kind of, and it's the same with our clients. You know, like they, you know, they might start being the be all, end all plumber that does everything and then they find themselves hyper [00:06:00] niched into, you know, hot water or whatever it might be. But it's the momentum that kind of drives those decisions.

Richard: And I think. For a lot of guys out there, you know, you can expect it. It's healthy to have change on the radar and you know, to be constantly moving into different directions. 

Greg: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So you mentioned earlier that you know, you were coming across. Plumbers or, you know, different trades that were turning up, you know, without websites, you know, we see that all the time.

Greg: It actually fascinates me that trades and builders can actually get quite far without anything like that, which is unbelievable. You know, they get to a certain size and you think, how have you even got to this level with no website? You know, hardly any social media. It's incredible sometimes what they do, but often they're then gonna hit a bit of a block, aren't they?

Greg: You think, i've got this far, but I'm not going any further. And then they're gonna come to someone like yourself to, you know, get a bit of advice. Let's talk about first steps and marketing and what's potentially needed. You know, when someone comes to you initially, what are you sort of doing?

Greg: Like what audit or analysis are you doing to then advise 'em in what way they should go? 

Richard: Look it the, before anything [00:07:00] happens and we are adamant about this, and the first part of our process regardless is always we call it our impact roadmap session, but it's basically like a discovery session where we can figure out, okay what are the actual goals?

Richard: What are the target? What are we kicking towards here? You know, like so many businesses, I think. They'll come and you, I'm sure you probably have more experience with this than anyone. You know, the what do you wanna do? Wanna grow? What does that mean? Grow your debt. Grow your headaches.

Richard: Get really clear on what it is they wanna achieve because they'll come to you with what they think is. The right thing. For example, oh, I want a website. You go, okay, cool. And then truth be told, you know, back in the day, we used to fall into this trap all the time where we would go and build the individual a website, and then they'd turn around a couple of months later after it's built and said, my phone hasn't rung at all.

Richard: You say 'cause you don't have any marketing. And so we've sort of learned the hard way with that, you know? But now it's like we are adamant about, okay, let's create you a 12 month roadmap, which is gonna get you to where you want to go, and then let's re-engineer the stepping stones relating [00:08:00] to sales and marketing that are gonna help you get to that point.

Richard: And so that is the first step. And without that strategy really you're shooting in the dark. And I think it's like paramount businesses do that, you know? 

Greg: So I don't, I think most marketing agencies probably wouldn't go down that route, would they? So it's good that you are looking at a little bit more holistically, 

Richard: I guess, that the difference like our difference is like we're more outcome focused and an outcome can change from business to business.

Richard: As you'd no doubt, see with your clients. You know, sometimes the outcome is we need better systems. Great, that's cool. Let's like fix that before we go and start pouring water into the bucket that has like holes all the way through it. You know, but you really need to identify those things because if you don't inevitably.

Richard: Everybody's gonna be unhappy. And like I mentioned the example before, you know, like that's a prime example of a situation where, you know, like a lot of agencies will just sell them the thing without fully understanding what the real goal needs to be to hit those targets, you know? 

Greg: Okay so someone comes to you with a goal and they say okay.

Greg: Matt, I wanna hit. Now I wanna double this year, [00:09:00] so I want double the amount of projects whatever else. How are you, like, how are you diving into that further? Because obviously there's you know, there's potential issues with double, it's not just as easy as to double, it's not just a case of doubling the lead flow.

Greg: Is it? So what, how are you going a bit deeper than that? 

Richard: Okay, so I'm gonna throw an acronym at you because every good business has ones and we call it DEAF. And the first one is defining your goalposts, which you've already spoken about. But within that conversation as well, it is also important.

Richard: If somebody comes to us and they say, we wanna double our revenue, then we need to help them understand in the interest of managing expectations, the conversations that need to happen as part of that and what it actually looks like practically, because they don't always understand. Things that are not obvious.

Richard: Okay, if we want to hit this target, we can. However, you as a business need to understand and be willing and comfortable with the fact that you need to be spending a certain amount of money to hit that target. But that's a really big one. 'cause once people understand that they can kind of hit their objectives, provided they're spending the right amount of money to get to it, then [00:10:00] it, everything sort of falls in place.

Richard: Now off the back of that conversation, it's important that they're working with coaches like yourself so they understand things like allocations. They understand, okay, are we charging the right amount of money so that we can, we have this constant fuel being allocated to keep the engine running, you know?

Richard: It's very common when businesses come out of like the word of mouth and referral model, and they move into paid traffic. That, and by the way, through no fault of their own, but just through pure, like lack of necessity, they have never had to consider. The fact that now they have to spend money to acquire customers.

Richard: So it's just a slightly different paradigm that they need to be comfortable with in order to make sure that their expectations are managed, leveraging, you know, marketing to grow the business. So that's really important. It's important to have those conversations upfront. If you want get to this point, you can, but this is what it's gonna look like in terms of spending the right amount of money, so on and so forth.

Greg: Yeah. And I think that is a little, a bit of a [00:11:00] mindset shift, isn't it, for some to actually have to spend. And I guess that, you know, I always sort of say to people, look, if you're on a pokey as they call it here in Australia, or a fruit machine as they call it in in England you put a pound in and you get in five pound out.

Greg: You're gonna do that all day long, aren't you? But I think that, you know, the worry is for a lot, they've, some of 'em have been burned badly by marketing agents before, haven't they? Or they've, or maybe not marketing agents, maybe they've tried themselves to dabble with Google ads or Facebook ads or whatever it is, and they've chucked, you know, a thousand dollars a year or whatever and got nothing.

Greg: So they the mindset is actually do, does this even work? You know, am I, do I really wanna spend, so how do you sort of deal with that, that must be a common, what, you know, problem, 

Richard: okay, so again, probably the thing the area where we are more different is we will use data to drive decisions.

Richard: And so what I mean by that is yes, of course people are hesitant to put money into things if they. First of all, don't understand how that would look in the bigger picture. And second of all, if they've been burnt 'cause they've done something similar in the past, then of course they're gonna have apprehensions and red flags and things like that.

Richard: So it's important that they [00:12:00] understand, okay, this is the way that this system works and here are some examples of exactly how this has worked for businesses like yours provided you follow the system. Now, I will say at this point in time as well, this is not. A conversation where you can just handball something over to an agency and say, Hey, do all these things.

Richard: We don't want any responsibility. We just want the result. We just want, because a lot of businesses do that they don't like, they wanna be able to just completely just turn off and just think you guys do everything. And that's not how it works because especially with our model anyway, because we.

Richard: Take off a lot of the tasks and the responsibilities within this ecosystem, but then we have expectations on customers and what they need to be doing to make sure that they're, you know, they're doing the right thing to, to end in the result. Like I say, results based like the closed job. So we will quite literally do everything from deploying the systems to generating the leads to managing and triaging and qualifying the leads to booking site visits, to sending out quotes.

Richard: But inevitably, we want the [00:13:00] customer to be able to go out to the site. And take the payment, you know, and put a face to the business and do those kind of things. So it's, there is still responsibilities there and it's important that they understand that. Yes. Although, you know, we are there to take a big load off.

Richard: It's, you're not it's not a completely removing you from the entire situation kind of conversation. 

Greg: Yeah. That's interesting. So you are you are actually, you are dealing with almost the entire lead flow right up until. Like contract signing or let's take some money off the customer.

Greg: You'll take care of that whole process. Depending on the vertical, but primarily, I mean, so yesterday I had on our podcast, you know, one of our clients who was talking about, you know, they've been working with us for the last couple of years, solar business based in Perth, and they have quite literal, and he says it on the podcast, so you can go and bullshit.

Richard: Check me if you want, for, he goes out there. But the, you know, they 10 x their revenue through working with us, by following our system. Now what we do for that customer is we deploy the systems. We generate the leads, we manage the conversations of the leads, and then we [00:14:00] book highly qualified leads into site visits for him with an expectation that they will be closing at least 60 to 65% of the site visits into closed jobs.

Richard: Now, this client closes 98%, 98% of the job, of the sites that he goes to, that we set for him. He closes into jobs what that actually means is like we're sending him out to less site visits, but the ones that he's going to, he is nailing, right? He's closing them. And so it's a lot of work that has to happen in the background for that to become a reality.

Richard: And there's a lot of moving path within that complete sales process, which are truthfully not that obvious. But you know, with the aggregate data that we have from working with thousands and thousands of businesses over the years in different, in these sort of verticals. We kind of have figured out what works and what results in the conversion, you know, and so that customer is very comfortable and happy with the process as you would be like his business is growing exponentially and like foundationally, we have established all [00:15:00] of the tools and all of the systems and all of the team and things like that for him, which enabled him to scale.

Richard: Now the next part of the conversation for him. In terms of scale, and this is 100% of the time with every business we work with, the first real bottleneck they hit is fulfillment. Yeah. It's like we have, we will solve this problem for you. We will enable you. We'll get all these leads, we'll get all these bookings.

Richard: We'll win you more jobs. No problem. However, we need to be working with you on recruitment because we know in three months time, you are not gonna be able to deliver any more projects. And if you've got a backlog in the solar space that exceeds four weeks, they're just gonna go somewhere else. So you don't wanna be in that situation, you know, it's a little bit longer for renovations and things like that.

Richard: You know, you've probably got a couple of months you can, you know, you can put people on the bench for but you wanna be able to deliver on the work and you want to, and that's how you scale. And so when we're talking about scaling a business, once you have the system in place for leads and lead management and sales.

Richard: That's inevitably scalable. You can really just turn the, all you need to do to increase that is up your ad [00:16:00] budget and you know, basically that system will generate whatever you need as an output. Yeah, no, so I'm really glad you said that because that, yeah, what you've said, there's really interesting because, that is, again, that's a complete difference to what any other marketing company will generally be doing. They won't then realize that actually recruitment is also part of marketing or you have to market to recruit, don't you? I think that's like massively important. So let's just dive into that a little bit more then.

Greg: You've solved problem one you know, lead sales, all of that's then solved. And then you are now looking at the scalability. So how much do you get involved in that, in, in that recruitment aspect? What are you what's typical things that you're looking at for a company to help them recruit?

Richard: Look, we have strategies and we have templates, and we have, you know, concepts and things like that work on different platforms within the trades. However, truth be told and you kind of touched on something then, which I'm not sure if you realize you even did, but for you guys out there marketing recruitment is 100% a marketing exercise.

Richard: In most cases, your next employee already has, if there are any good, [00:17:00] already has a job and there may be not even looking for one. So you are literally marketing your disposition. With the hope of taking someone, making someone leave where they currently are to working with you. So it is very much a marketing exercise.

Richard: Now the the best results when it comes to recruitment normally come from leveraging existing relationships and contacts. And what I mean by that is if, for example you know, Greg, you've got an apprentice. Second year apprentice, you know, he is great. He's been an amazing apprentice.

Richard: You've loved having him on board. You wanna find another one like him. There's a pretty strong possibility that he has friends within his network that are quite similar to him. So leveraging the network of your own, of yourself and your team members is a really great way. To and the cheapest way and the most effective way to compound your inquiries in line with the type of person that you're looking for.

Richard: If you go to seek, you're probably gonna get a lot of tire kickers that can't get jobs because they're, you know, dead [00:18:00] sheets or whatever it is, right? So there's some tools and some levers you can really pull there, which can help the results in relation to recruitment. However, it's a very hard thing for somebody to step in and do for you, because recruitment is very personal.

Richard: We have a lot of frameworks, all the different conversations, the different processes, and all the different meetings that you gotta have as part of recruitment. Sure. But at the end of the day, if someone's gotta do it, and it's very hard for someone else to do that, we found. 

Greg: Yeah. Yeah. So recruitment, you are, you're advising on that and maybe helping with ads and stuff, but you're not actually.

Greg: Out there doing the interviewing and that you leave that no, that side's gotta be to the business owner. 

Richard: Yeah. And again, we are not coaches. We're a marketing agency, like we're a sales and marketing agency. Yes, of course we do a lot of consulting again, in line with the outcome. But like we, you know, that's we sort of stick in our lane there.

Richard: But we just notice over the years when these constraints become obvious, which is, like I said, in a hundred percent of the time, once you solve the lead and jobs conversation, it's always fulfillment. Yeah. You know, we've gotta equip them with some concepts and [00:19:00] ideas so that they can deploy those and get the best possible result.

Greg: So 

Richard: I, I guess like in line with this you know, this acronym like Defining Your Goalpost, which we've spoken about e establish the foundation. So we wanna make sure that we have a strong communication cadence with clients. Like we give them their own dedicated Slack channels where they have access to the team throughout.

Richard: You know, business hours all day. They get phone, they get internet, they get whatever they need emails. They get whatever they need, basically. Assets as well. Okay, what can we start, you know, do you have a database that we can, you know, build, bring into our CRM, like from a technology point of view?

Richard: And we can do like re-engagement campaigns and all these kind of things, which again, they're not really obvious, but they're important because it's low hanging fruit. You know, so establishing some of these foundations. Sometimes a foundation could even be like a. You know, depending on the stage of the business, it might even be a website.

Richard: You know, if you've come, if you're trying to market yourself, like where are you steering traffic, you know, like I, I don't want to. In the interest, again, of managing [00:20:00] expectations. I don't want people to think for a second that, you know, just by having a website, it's gonna make your phone ring, but it's gonna be pretty hard for the phone to ring without one.

Greg: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly that. And where does, yeah, how do you do your conversion? You know, I think if anyone's checking you out online and you haven't got a website, that's a big sort of no for conversion for me, if I was gonna employ someone, so it's a. 

Richard: Truth be told, we live in a world, and this is like the main role that what selfishly the way that we use websites is by is.

Richard: And again if clients come to us and they have a website, they say we wanna generate more leads or more, you know, conversations and close more jobs. The website doesn't always play a part in that. It's normally like dedicated landing pages, driving traffic to them, conversion automations, technology, you've, you know, database reengagement, all that kind of carry on.

Richard: However, if they, if they're like a local business and you know, somebody is potentially looking for a service within that area, you, they need to be able to identify where they work, as in [00:21:00] location, what they do and who they do it for. And you need to be able to communicate that pretty clearly on your website.

Richard: And so if you don't have those things dialed in, like I said, at a base level, that's really important that you do that because people, when they hit your traffic and they will hit that, sorry, they'll hit your website, they will hit it from many different angles. It could be an ad campaign, it could be a social media post. It could be the branding on your car. It could be the uniform that you're wearing. It could be a letterbox drop. Like inevitably it's gonna end up back at your website today, and people will do their research. So you've gotta be able to tell your story on that website and actually communicate again what you do, who you do it for, and where you do it.

Greg: No, a hundred percent agree with that. So just coming back to we, you spoke earlier, you just touched on, you know, maybe putting a CRM system in for them if they haven't got that. I would just love to get your thoughts on how you find the Australian market with this, because I know in the uk you know, we are coaching, you know, builders at, you know, one, one to 5 million.

Greg: So they're probably coming to us at one to 2 million pounds. I am shocked with [00:22:00] the amount of people that don't have a CRM system or don't even know what it is. How are you generally finding it with traders and builders over here? 

Richard: It's of often they know what a, I mean, look, CRM is a pretty loose term today.

Richard: I mean, customer relationship management could mean anything from, you know, buildertrend through to service mate through to, you know, full blown email. I mean, truth be told, I mean, my mobile phone manager's customers contact details too. Is that A CRM? But I guess what the difference that, that I want to communicate to the listeners and viewers out there is.

Richard: Most people understand generally what a CRM well, conceptually, what a CRM means, but perhaps they don't fully understand what it means in the, in relation to the maximizing the value of their conversations and maximizing the potential opportunities, turning the as they progress through sales cycle.

Richard: Like helping them understand, okay, yes, this is how you can get the best bang for your buck with [00:23:00] whatever lead generation you are doing. Or just with the general conversations that live within this ecosystem. Because even if you're not running ads and we'll take builders for an example, right?

Richard: Like depending on the size of the builder and the type of projects they do, like typically speaking, the larger the project. Longer year sales cycle. So if you're a bathroom renovation builder, then you know your birth bathrooms typically will turn around in anywhere from six to eight weeks. That's what we see with our customers that we generate ads for.

Richard: If you're a full home builder, that could be 3, 4, 10 years. So it's a very different conversation when it comes to conversions. It's very important that people understand when they go down this route. If you're gonna generate, say run ads or something on platform for, you know, leads for a building company, it's fine, but don't expect them to close in 30 days on a million dollar home build.

Richard: Like it's just not realistic. So you have this opportunity and truth be told, a responsibility to, with that contact. You know, they're interested because they clicked on the ad or they [00:24:00] downloaded the resource or whatever it might be. Teach them, be the trusted advisor because they're looking for trusted advisors.

Richard: And this is, again, plays into the website. What does it say on the website about jobs that you've completed or projects that you've done, or obstacles that you've overcome, or whatever it might be, processes that you adopt, whatever it is. Like you have this opportunity to really start positioning and planting that flag as the go-to guy in the area.

Richard: But most businesses don't. And that is where CRM becomes super valuable because all of a sudden it gives you the technology and the system to be able to do that at scale and importantly. On automation for the better part. Yeah, 

Greg: exactly. Yeah. So a hundred percent. So what are you generally finding with I, I know how I advise my clients on this, but I'll just be interested to hear where your thoughts are.

Greg: So some, like you say, might be using Buildertrend for their CRM or something else. And then you've obviously got dedicated CRMs you know, active campaign, go high level, all those sort of ones. What's your thoughts on, you know, what should a trad or builder be using? Are they are you [00:25:00] using.

Greg: A project management tool that's got a bolt on CRM or should you be using a dedicated CRM that's actually designed for that? 

Richard: That's a good question. So there's unfortunately, it's like the thorn in my side for, you know. The entire time we're running this business, there's no one tool that does everything that I've seen.

Richard: There's some that come close. Just whe whether or not you're willing to pay the exorbitant fees for them. But I guess conceptually, when you talk about tools like, you know, build a trend or if you like do smaller jobs, you know, your service mates, sim pros, arrow flows, those kind of things. Their job management and they do job management extremely well.

Richard: But 

Greg: yeah, 

Richard: in most case, and Buildertrend, like you'd probably call that project management because buildings is more of a project and it will manage that extremely well. However, it doesn't really serve you very well in taking a new conversation that's coming to your ecosystem, like through introduction, referral, ad, whatever it is, and taking them to the point where they actually go into build a trend.

Richard: [00:26:00] So they're not yet in build a trend. They're not like when they're a project to manage, fantastic. But what you guys have to understand is you've gotta get them to that point. And so you really need a system in place that can help take them through the different stages of qualification and the different stages within the sales pipeline that we discussed.

Richard: To the point where they're actually in, you know, that then they go into your job management or project management, whatever it might be. So 

Greg: yeah, 

Richard: selfishly we deploy this system for our customers because we have a white label version of go high level, which we call TRA Hub, which you can check out@tradhub.net, plug the but it's literally just a system that we have to build out and deploy with all of the moving parts in it that we know is gonna help us, help them close jobs faster.

Richard: And then we will integrate it with different tools as needed. You know, we've got a really good integration in the likes of service mate and, you know, you know, simPRO and all these kind of things. Yeah I don't know, did I answer the question there? 

Greg: You did and I answer exactly the same way.

Greg: So funny enough we have the white label version to go high level as well for yeah. But only for clients that are working with [00:27:00] us. So this is, you know, this is useful for everyone else out there. Sure. I think just that, just one thing to caveat. So if you're listening to this and you think to yourself, oh, let me go and get, go high level for myself, what you will go and find is that go high level is a brilliant product.

Greg: But it needs a lot of customization to, to really work well. And I think sometimes when you go and use a product like what Matt's got that's already built out and it's already got all the workflows and the different things it's a much easier job than actually trying to get in it. If, I think if you try and take it from scratch, go high level and you don't really understand how CRMs work, I think you're gonna be in for a little bit of a world of pain.

Greg: But but I believe go high level is one of the best out there, to be honest. You know, I'm glad to that we're on the same page with that one. 

Richard: It, it scratches. I mean, the itch, it scratches for us. And again, this is we did this selfishly. We do, we still do a agree, do this selfishly because as a marketing agency, over the years and I was you know, an active campaign reseller for the longest time, and I loved it except we ran into a bottleneck where we were like, okay, as part of this workflow, I wanna be able to send SMSs, or I wanna be able to, you know, [00:28:00] send voice drops and then it doesn't do it.

Richard: They were like, okay, I need a system that does do it and then you can go and look into all these, you know, products like HubSpot and so on and so forth. And they just cost thousands and thousands every month. And like active campaign you know, go high level for us was a way that we could build out like.

Richard: A typical plumbing business, a typical electrical business, a typical renovation business, a solar business templates deployed, has everything where we want in it from you know, landing page funnels with high conversion numbers, with email sequences, text sequences, like all that stuff, right? It just comes outta the box, bang.

Richard: We just, we've just built it and it's just done. It's just easy, right? Yeah. But again, it's selfish because when the constraint that we had a lot was, you know, as a marketing agency. Before we had complete insight and transparency over what those leads were actually doing. Inevitably you would get companies that would say, yeah, you know, you're running these ads, but the leads are shit.

Richard: And then now we can say hang on a minute. Your leads are actually really good. Your cost per lead's great. They're all coming into your funnel here. You're not contacting any of them. [00:29:00] And you just throw it straight back on them. So for us it's a conversation around how can we improve through the different stages sales process as part of an evolution to improve you know, the less obvious.

Richard: Conversion factors, which you don't get from platform. You know, like we know what your cost per lead is. We know all this stuff because we get all that from the platforms. However, there are things that we can really move the needle within sales and marketing, which are not obvious, and this is what we can ascertain from the different stages of sales pipeline, which we build out with opportunities and all that kind of stuff.

Greg: No, that's great. Yeah, and I think that's really important to highlight. We see it all the time where someone will go, oh, my marketing agency's useless. And then sometimes we'll jump on a call with the agency, just go how, you know, how are things going? They go, look I've sent, they've, we've sent 'em this many leads, but he's only contacted, you know, 10% of them.

Greg: And it's an embarrassing conversation and for the business owner, but actually for you being able to track that. Is you know, a crucial thing for you to be able to, you know, advise next steps. So you are actually, in a way, you are providing quite a lot of coaching to the client throughout their [00:30:00] entire marketing and sales process.

Greg: You're pretty hands on with that then? 

Richard: Look again, it's selfish because like for us, our whole thing is about outcomes and so we're not interested in generating leads, we're interested in generating jobs, and so that is a bigger conversation than running ads. Because there's more, there's a lot more dynamic things that you need, levers you need to pull in order to make that become a reality.

Richard: And, you know, that's a prime example. You know, like anyone could generate a lead, but not everyone has the, you know, the system deployed that can enable them to convert that lead into a customer. And that system changes from vertical to vertical. Location, all this. But there's a lot of, but you need to be able to have a system which you can mold and you can adapt to make sure that the outcome.

Richard: Achieved. 

Greg: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's interesting. So 

Richard: yeah, sorry. We do a lot of consult like consulting on how to improve things throughout the different stages. And of course, 'cause we've seen it thousands of times, like it's never, it's always the same stuff. 

Greg: No. Exactly. So what, [00:31:00] you know, going through your experience of what you think is working at the moment and what's working well for anyone listening to this platforms and running ads, obviously there's multiple areas you can use, you know, Facebook in Star Google.

Greg: What are you generally finding is working for, you know, traders and builders? Or does that completely depend on, you know, who they're and what they're doing? 

Richard: It depends. Do a agree, but like conceptually, ask yourself this, right? If you are a, let's use like plumbing for an example. If you have sewer surcharging into your bathroom, rather a boundary trapper out the back are you gonna jump on Facebook or are you gonna go on Google to find a plumber?

Richard: Like typically speaking, reactive services lend themselves more to the likes of Google because that's where people go when they have those problems. Now what we find with project-based verticals, say renovations solar roofing, like these kind of verticals because they're not always urgent.

Richard: They do lend themself more to, you know, that net meta suite of tools, [00:32:00] Facebook Instagram, so on and so forth, because it's you're talking about problems that people don't always know they yet have. 

Greg: Yeah, 

Richard: so you know, then, you know, and the difference would be okay on Google, it'd be like, you know, block drains, you know, nine $99 call out fee, or $0 call out fee, you know, click here to have someone out within the next two hours sort of thing.

Richard: Great. I need that click. Whereas someone's scrolling on their Facebook and it's oh look, we can have our energy reduced in our home in Sydney by 80, 80% clicky to find out more. It's oh, I didn't even know I had that problem, but actually that would be good. So it's a little bit more, it's a different conversation, right?

Richard: So yeah, the plat, the platforms do kind of lend themselves to different verticals. And sometimes it's a combination, you know, like we've got clients that do, you know, residential lift installations, and we run ads for them on all different platforms. We do radio with them, you know, because it works.

Richard: So like the, you know, the, it is just a matter of finding the right formula for that specific business. [00:33:00] 

Greg: And do you ever get involved in advising a, like outreach strategies? So say like someone come up to you and said, look, I really wanna get into Strata, or in England estate agents we want to win a load of those contracts.

Greg: Do you get involved in that at all? Is it, do you still rely on STAs for that stuff? 

Richard: Okay, so yes. Good question. Now for you guys there, there's two different types of trade businesses. There's business to business B2B, and there's business to consumer B2C. Business to consumer is for example, your residential plumbing business or your home renovation business that is working with homeowners or property owners, right?

Richard: So conceptually you would run an ad and the consumer would see that ad, they'd click on it, and then they would engage the business directly. Business to business is if you are wanting to generate more of your customer, which is a real estate agent, or a strata, or a property manager or whatever it might be, then you have to get in front of those.

Richard: Avatars and typically speaking, you're not gonna do that through an ad. So when we have clients come to us that are B2B, the conversation for them is more around, okay, [00:34:00] let's firstly identify within our roadmap session the type of customers that you wanna attract. And that would normally be in line with, okay you know, what is their, what are their interests?

Richard: So to give you an idea, if you are a. Emergency plumber, but you only work with commercial customers. So like the, you know, big say our shopping centers, right? Or whatever it might be, your, those shopping centers are not online looking for plumbers. They already have a Rolodex. So when you are branding and marketing your business, what you need to make sure and have clarity about is if when this property manager.

Richard: Gets an introduction to us, or hey Bob, speak with Matt, their plumbing company. They do our shopping complex. I would think they could be, you know, they could fill that void that you've been looking for over at Westfield, whatever. You need to make sure that when they get to that website, the language and the communication and the dialogue and the, you know, the things that you talk about on that website relate to what they wanna see.

Richard: And those things typically are not. We do block drains and hot water heaters and you know, whatever it might be like, that's [00:35:00] kind of expected. You're a plumber, right? What's not expected is, okay, what are you, what are your prequalifications, do you have CM three certs? Can we roll you through our induction quickly?

Richard: When you, do you have what are your, what are your policies in relation to training your team and toolbox talks and compliance related things? So you've gotta, customize your website to speak to what they're actually looking for. But you need to identify that again in the early stages so that we know what the outcome looks like.

Richard: I very rarely advise B2B clients to run ads. Very rarely. It's normally a conversation that we have hundreds of them by the way. You know, B2B clients that we've done various projects for over the years. If they're, you know, commercial, industrial, whatever it might be the conversation normally is okay, like I said, let's establish the foundation so that it's telling the right story when they get to it.

Richard: And then let's build a list of five or 10 of these bus businesses that you would like to get in front of or individuals. And then let's come up with a creative way to get out there and [00:36:00] actually. Speak to them, which is not gonna be noise. AKA emails. Yeah. 

Greg: Yeah. 

Richard: So we, 

Greg: yeah, 

Richard: we had a guy on our podcast years ago.

Richard: We called that episode, I think Creative, creative Marketing or something like that. And he was an American based business that did fencing for like real estates and stuff like that over in the us. Yeah. And his way of marketing to these businesses, he would go to Walmart, which is like a big shopping supermarket place in the US and he would buy these little Tonka trucks and he would take these Tonka trucks around to the various real estates and he would fill them back with candy and then he'd leave and then he'd come back in a week later and he'd top it back up.

Richard: He said after about the third or fourth time, like the lady behind the reception would be like, excuse me sir excuse me sir, this is wonderful, but who are you? And then the conversation in, and then he was like letting 'em know who they are, what he does, and that's kind of how he would get in. And he ended up doing a huge business and he ended up selling it with a really good exit [00:37:00] just based on being creative.

Richard: So I guess the point there is don't be part of the noise. Like it's very easy to send a LinkedIn outreach, me outreach message or you know, send an email, but truthfully, it's probably not gonna get seen. You gotta get out, gotta get in front of these people and in most cases you don't need a lot.

Richard: Like I know you said, oh oh, what if I wanted to get in front of loads of real estate agents? It's probably not a case of getting in front of loads. It's probably a case of getting in front of a handful. 

Greg: Yeah. And it takes a view, doesn't it, to change your business. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah.

Greg: Agree. Agree with that completely. So that's a really interesting point. Yeah. You brought up about Yeah. Creativity. How are you seeing the landscape change at the moment with and maybe it's a little bit early to answer this, 'cause I think everyone's sort of feeling their way with it, but with, aI searches now that are coming up. 'cause we're starting to see a little bit of a change in behaviors for how people are actually searching for things. Are you noticing a big shift over to that now? What do you think is gonna happen with AI ads and things like that? Any any thoughts around that at all?

Richard: I mean, AI ads are absolutely gonna be a game changer. Once they start running ads into chat, chippy tea and [00:38:00] stuff like that, I think it's gonna take a huge market share outta Google, which they would be shitting themselves about. However. What I would say to this is, and I had this conversation this morning with a colleague of mine who you have coffee with in the morning sometimes.

Richard: She's also an agency. She deals more with like big business and stuff like that. The so large language models, Geminis Chat, CPTs, you know, and the likes of those they will refer you leads. And opportunities based on people going to chat between typing in, I'm looking for a plumber in insert suburb.

Richard: Can you recommend me one? So they're actually engaging with the lag, large language model in a way that they would engage with a person. Which is interesting. Yeah. Now what these large language models are doing, they're going to their pool, their accessible pool of information, which is the internet, and they are searching for specifics around that inquiry.

Richard: And if they can find things that are relevant. Social proof that supports it, then they will send that [00:39:00] inquiry through that individual on that large language model platform. So what that basically means, and this is, so for a very long time I've been like shit bagging and hate mailing on like SEO, especially for trades.

Richard: 'cause I'm like, it just takes too long. And although we have always done it, it's always been part of a solution, not the solution. Yeah. And I still kind of truthfully believe that is the case, but it the dynamic is changing in that landscape considerably with ai because of that ex of the exact reason where people are now going to chat GPT as a trusted advisor as opposed to Google.

Richard: And so if it is, it's always been the case that the backbone of SEO and truthfully internet search is content. And now more than ever. You guys have this amazing opportunity to be great in content on a website in line with what people are looking for that is now getting referred traffic to you from large language models.

Richard: And if I'm honest, it's the breath of fresh air that SEO needed because it was [00:40:00] stale and stagnant. And now you can have a website that is ranking on page 400 and 500, and it's still getting traffic sent to you through LLM. 

Greg: Yeah, 

Richard: the content. So we have a program around this, which ties into SEO because it is still largely SEO, but it's much more, okay, let's create relevant content that is leveraging, you know, the, you know, conversations that are happening over on LL LLMs.

Greg: Yeah, it's good that you're doing that 'cause I think that some marketing agencies are a little bit slow to, to pick up on, on where this is going. And you know, I speak to a lot of people and they're sort of just still sussing out what the landscape is, but it's obvious that this is gonna be the next big thing of of searching.

Greg: So if. Yeah, it's gonna be fascinating. And I was listening to a podcast the other day which said that it was Demi Sabi from Google and they said they've got no intentions to run ads at all on their Gemini app. Whereas obviously chatt BT are already rolling it out in the us.

Greg: I dunno if it's actually in Australia or the UK yet, but I know the US are rolling ads. So it's gonna be really interesting to see the dynamics of how, you know, how much they do take out of [00:41:00] Google share. With this market? I guess we'll wait and see over the next year. It's moving quick.

Richard: Yeah, I mean, it's, it'll be, it's been a turbulent few years regardless, but especially for, you know, and truth be told it's a bloody good thing, right? Because Google had this monopoly for the longest time. And now we've had, you know, obviously JBT that's been backed by Microsoft, which is Bing and all these different, you know, platforms there, which are now starting to take market share and it's equalizing that playing field, which is a good thing.

Richard: But regardless, you guys out there that are watching this and listening to this, the one thing that you can do today, which truthfully has not changed, but is now more powerful than ever, is you can create useful, relevant content on your website so that the search engines understand who you are, what you do, and where you do it.

Richard: So when people ask. LLMs or whatever it might be, it sends that you know, your traffic to it sends you that, them to you as traffic, right? Yeah. 

Greg: Yeah. 

Richard: Did I say that? A 

Greg: hundred percent? Yeah, we got it. No, that, that makes sense. No, that's awesome, Matt, that you've covered you've covered a lot here. You were talking about your we sort of bounced [00:42:00] around a little bit, but you were talking about the the four stages that you run through with customers.

Greg: Is there anything important that we haven't covered yet? 

Richard: You know, once we've established, you know, we've got the goalposts, so define as the D. We've established the foundations which is the E, the A is the action. Okay. Okay. Now we've got the plan and the strategy. Let's put that into play.

Richard: Make sure that we are working towards, you know, the outcomes and then the f and the in depth is the feedback, right? It's say, okay, let's keep this roadmap updated and keep it because it's a living, breathing thing, right? It's not a one and done thing. This is something we revisit with our clients every single month as part of a cadence.

Richard: And it's important that we do that because typically what we find is once we start pulling these levers, we normally get to where we want to go a lot quicker than we expected. I think that's kind of, in my experience anyway, a metaphor for having a strategy. Like you, you set these things in place and you're like, oh, so hang on, are you saying all I have to do is this to get to that?

Richard: Then all of a sudden we get there real quick and then that creates another, a lot of problems, which is normally, like we said earlier about fulfillment, but like the [00:43:00] point, having this strategy that you can revisit so that you can constantly be agile in regard to hitting those things. So I think that's a pretty simple like framework for people to understand, first of all, what is your strategy? Understand what your goalposts are. Second of all, make sure you have the esta the foundations established, so that you know once you do go into step three, which is action, the foundations are gonna support. The best the data capture and, you know, reengagement campaigns and all that kind of stuff, right?

Richard: Maximizing the conversions from the spend that you, or that you are. You guys are, you know, putting out there on platform and things like that. And then of course the feedback loop just make sure that you've got that dialogue ongoing and it's always an optimization and everything's always improving in, in regard to that.

Richard: And I think that's a pretty, pretty, in our experience, that's a pretty safe model. 

Greg: That's awesome, Matt. Really appreciate your time today. I think if anyone's listening to this have a look at that model in your own system at the moment and think, you know, if there's a little bit of a bottleneck in, you know, either your lead flow or your conversions or your [00:44:00] systems in recruitment go back and just listen to that on that model and just see where you might potentially be falling down.

Greg: 'cause there'll be something there that. Might not be quite right and if people want a bit more help with this, Matt is it are you only serving Australia or do you, 'cause we've obviously got UK Australians and the US that listen to this, but where, who are you sort of serving generally?

Richard: We have clients all over the world. And we're actually, you know, deploying some more team over here in the North American market at the moment. Us UK's been a bit of a struggle with the time zone. But like we have worked with clients in the UK in the past. But look. I'm not hard to get hold of.

Richard: You can easily find, you know, tradie web guys.com au. I would encourage you guys if you, if it was a conversation that you wanted to engage, and I know you're gonna have some links to this Greg, but if you go to go tradie web guys.com au slash grow, then just start the conversation there.

Richard: You can have a chat with one of our team because. We start everything with a chat because we've gotta figure out if and how we might be able to help you. And truth truthfully, we turn more people away than we work with based on, you know, a lot of variables, which again, we've learned the hard way over the years.

Richard: But and then of course the [00:45:00] site shared podcast, which is, you know, we've just coming up to 500 episodes with that. That's been going since 2016. If you like podcasts, then yeah, you can always head across there. 

Greg: That's awesome. Yeah, we'll put all those in the show notes as well. So Matt, really appreciate all your time today.

Greg: Lots of valuable advice there that people will be able to implement. So thanks again. All the best.

Richard: No, my pleasure.