From the Yellow Chair
From the Yellow Chair
Open Estimates are Open Opportunities
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You don’t have a lead problem, you have an opportunity leak. If you’re staring at revenue goals while open estimates pile up and missed calls vanish, the money you want is already in your database, you just aren’t collecting it.
We sit down with Ryan Finn from CHIRP to talk about estimate follow up that actually works for home service contractors. Ryan shares how a tiny change in phrasing can massively change conversion, why “hope” fails as a sales strategy, and how tracking simple KPIs tells you where the real breakdown is. We also dig into why texting is the most effective channel right now, including the 98% read-rate reality, and why consistent touch points matter more than one heroic phone call.
From speed to lead to the Four C’s (capture, communicate, continue, close), we map a practical system for HVAC, plumbing, and electrical businesses that want higher close rates without dumping more cash into ads. Ryan also explains how automation can recover abandoned calls instantly, how a 14-day estimate cadence can be structured, and how AI-driven insights can reveal the best timing and best words to use based on real-world data at scale.
Listen, then take one action: tighten your follow-up process this week. Subscribe for more contractor growth strategies, share the episode with an owner who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find the show.
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We'll see you next time, Lemon Heads!
pen Estimates As Hidden Revenue
SPEAKER_01What's up, Livid Heads? Welcome to another episode of From the Yellow Chair. I am Crystal, and y'all today I'm gonna hurt y'all's feelings because I am about to remind you about the fact that you have a treasure box of opportunities sitting in front of you, and you're either one of two things, you're ignoring them, or you are absolutely oblivious to how much opportunity is actually there. But you know, we're constantly obsessing over new leads, um, and we're not really caring about missed calls, we're very lackadaisical in those things, but at the same time, you're aggravated when you can't hit lead count or revenue. Guys, so we're gonna talk about this today. We are really going to be focused on open estimates, are actually open opportunities for you to grab. So settle in, do what you're gonna do, but let's zip some lemonade. Perfect. I am so excited to have Ryan Finn in the virtual lemonade stand today. Ryan, what's going on?
SPEAKER_00Hey, Crystal, happy to be back. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. One of my favorites, you know, I was telling you earlier as we were getting ready to come on the podcast. Um, you know, one of my favorite things I discovered chirp one in my early days um of Lemon Seed. And I was like, hey, y'all should come to my conference. And y'all are like, uh, sure. But like, I mean, it was so early days. And to see what you guys have built is so exciting. And so, congratulations to that. And thank y'all for what y'all do for the industry.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. I appreciate that.
as Station Lesson On Wording
SPEAKER_01That is so exciting. Well, I thought you could start off by telling everybody you have a pretty interesting background. Um, you're no, you're no stranger to the industry, and so we'd love to hear uh about yourself and what you guys have going on over there.
rack KPIs To Find The Leak
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so um, yeah, I like to tell uh you know, I kind of like to tell the story because, you know, um I didn't come from a tech background, I'm not a tech guy. Um, I come from the trades. I grew up, you know, uh with my dad building custom homes, as you know, that's how he put food on the table for us. Um, and so he was a general contractor. And then um I was always very entrepreneurial. Um, I always wanted to own a business. I loved even when I was little, I loved selling things. I let I sold gumballs in the in the uh you know, in the playground at school. And um, you know, I just love selling stuff. And and you know, when my first son was born, uh, that's when I started my first like real, like actual successful business. Um I I started off with a business where I did windshield repair, so I'd fix windshield. So not home service, but service, a service business. Yeah, so yeah, and I would do that. Uh I sold that going door to door. And then uh I I I this part of the story I think is really important because it's gonna bleed into what we talk about in estimate follow-ups and a principle that I learned that's very important. So I'm gonna, if I get a little detailed, I don't mean to bore you, but I think it's important that we understand kind of where some of these principles come from because uh they're very powerful. So um when I was when I was going door to door, um, I kind of was you know thinking this isn't this isn't like sustainable, I don't want to do this forever. How could I get more business? And uh I I saw a girl, I was visiting my parents. I had moved to Utah and I was visiting my parents in California, and I saw this girl um washing windshields at a gas station. And I kind of got, I was like, oh, I wonder what she's doing. And I noticed that on her shirt it said uh windshield repair, like this is what she does. So what she was doing, I realized was she was providing some value up front to these customers that were coming in to get gas for an opportunity to be able to look for you know damaged windshields, right? So she's saying, Hey, let me wash your windshield as a courtesy, and then she would wash the windshield, and then if she found a chip, she would um repair that, you know, offer to fix that crack in the windshield. And that was a real light bulb moment for me as an entrepreneur. I went back home to Utah and I went to the nearest gas station to my house and I asked him if I could do it, and he immediately said yes. And um that Saturday I did like$1,500 or something,$1,200 to$1,500 worth of repairs from washing people's windshields. And um that that was like this key moment in my journey to be like, okay, providing value up front is really important. But this other part is really, really important to understand because we talk about following up, right? And people go, yeah, I follow up with my leads, I follow up with my leads. And they think they're doing enough, and they may and and and this is gonna make sense in a second, but the words we use are so important to how we follow up. I'll give you, I'll give I'll I'll tell you where I discovered this. When people would pull into the gas station, if I asked them if I could wash their windshield, if I used I would use these words, hi, welcome to Mike Chevron. Can I wash your windshield for you today? Nine out of ten would say no, just because obligation for whatever reason, they didn't feel like it was just like no, no, thanks, no thanks, no thanks, no thanks, right? And I switched my wording. So so let's let's put this into perspective. If I saw a hundred cars, only ten people said yes, and that means I had to make money off of ten people, right? Right now, I switched my words just slightly from can I wash your windshield to as a courtesy today, we're washing everybody's windshields. Okay, so it's very subtle difference in the way that I said the words, right? But I went from washing one out of ten windshields to washing uh nine out of ten windshields. So if I saw a hundred windshields, nine I now had 90 opportunities instead of 10. Okay, so the reason I bring this up is because this is how chirp was developed. I I, you know, I eventually went on to build a course on how to start a windshield repair business, and then I used text messaging to sell that course, and I, you know, had the idea to create all these automated follow-ups and all this stuff, and that's how chirp was born. But it was all from principles that I learned at the gas station washing these windshields, right? And it'll be important as we go into what we're gonna talk about today because I want to talk about not just follow-up, but the importance of the words you're using in your follow-up. Because if you say something, you might only be getting 10% of the opportunity, and you may change the wording just slightly and unlock huge opportunity in your business. I hope that made sense. No, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01So messaging, it's that's positioning. Yep, right. So marketing is very it is very reactive, right? So marketing is a series of testing and trying, and then write it out. If it if it works, baby, you write it till it don't work anymore.
SPEAKER_00That's right. 100%.
SPEAKER_01When you find a good one, you hang on to it, right? So I love this idea of number one, you tested, right? And you pivoted when you're like, something's not right here. But more than anything, like I think the biggest thing I want to start with is that you actually knew that you were doing 10 out of 100 windshields. Yes. That's one thing that our contractors like, y'all can't even tell us your actual, your actual numbers of things. And I know this feels uh, I did a sales call the other day, a positioning call, like where I could I was telling the contractor where we would position in their marketing budget. And I said, Well, like right now, you know, average tickets. He goes, Oh, I don't really believe in that. I was like, You don't believe in operational excellence? What do you not believe in, sir? You know, tracking. So it let me know though that we were not probably going to be a good fit. Yeah, 100%. You have to care enough to know where your holes are. That's right. And so I love that positioning, changing your positioning statement, but also like when you have a brand in an editorial style, like the way that you write your emails and write your text messages and write your organic social media content, right? The way that those things are written, it is literally, and I know what you're probably going to tell us, it's probably like two or three words changed around will make a huge difference in booking rate and click-through rates and all of the things that are impactful for you guys.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the you bring up like I'm glad you brought that up because it's like it's the unseen, the thing that people don't want to talk about. But if you are not tracking, you cannot improve. And the more you track, the more you can improve and the more granular you get. Let's talk about that for a second because I think it's really important. You said that I knew one out of ten. Now, how did I know that? So I didn't know this at the beginning. I would just go up and watch windshields, right? And I'd go, cool, I got four repairs today, but it I didn't know how I could improve. I didn't know where I could improve, what could I change to get six repairs, to get eight repairs. And I met this guy that that did it, and he actually let me fly out and and shadow him. And I noticed that what he was doing is he had a sheet of paper, and every time he went up to wash a windshield, he'd go back and put a little mark on that sheet of paper. So I asked him about it. And he said there, and there was a grid on the piece of paper, it was a 10 by 10 grid, so a hundred cars. And for every interaction he had, he had a code that he would put into the grid. So if it was I wash the windshield, but there was no chip, he would just put W for wash the windshield. Okay. If he put was chipped, but they said no, he would put um uh chipped but didn't close, so no close on N, right? And then um, and then if there was a chip and he closed, he could um he would put closed. Uh and then at the end of the day, he would add those numbers up and he'd go, okay, I saw a hundred cars, 25 of them had chips in the windshield. I pitched all 25, I closed five. Let's, you know, that's that was the that was the KPIs that he was tracking. And now he could know where was the problem in his if if he and as he was scaling his business, as he had sales guys, he could look at somebody and say, based on data, I can make a decision here. Because he could say, Okay, cool. You let's say you're a sales guy working for me doing windshield repair, and you come to me at the end of the day and you say, Okay, I saw a hundred cars, ten of them had damage, I pitched all 10 and I closed six. You'd say, Cool, you have a 60% close rate, that's not your problem. Based on my data, I know that if I see a hundred cars, I've I've done this for a year now, so I know I have all this data. I know that 25% will generally have damage. So, what I know is that you're not looking at the windshield long enough to determine if there's damage on the windshield. And so now I know the problem to work on. I don't need to work on the guy's close rate, he's got that part dialed in. I need to show him how to find more opportunities. Now, if he comes back to me and says, Cool, I've I pitched, I found 25 chips, but I only closed one deal. You go, okay, now we know that your close rate is the problem, right? And we can work on that problem. But until we had that data, we could not choose what we didn't know what area of the business to work on. And that's the problem. So many home services businesses they have. They just go, uh, we have leads coming in, and we're getting this much money, and it was more money than we spent, so that's all that that's all that matters. And they don't they're not finding where they can improve.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they're not looking for the opportunities. That was the key phrase that you said. You know, everything has to be an opportunity, you have to look at the world that way. That's right, that's right. And you know, you're definitely missing out on a lot of a lot of things when you when you just don't have any transparency, any insight into your own business. And again, I know that it's difficult in a lot of ways because it requires you to number one, it's hard to look at numbers sometimes because you're like, oh my gosh, what in the heck are we doing?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah.
hy Open Estimates Go Stale
SPEAKER_01Um, but it's also an issue to me of you feel like where do I find the time? And then what the heck numbers do I even track? You know, so I just encourage people to really get that under control. But with your open estimates, right? So with open estimates, I think are the biggest opportunity that contractors have. Um, and I meet two different styles of contractors, like I mentioned in the in the beginning. Um ones that either wear out their database, and then there's ones on the other end of the spectrum who never talk to them again. Yeah, and just depending on what you've done, what damage you've done, or what um abandoning them has caused, you know, you you have different sets of opportunities, right? But so today I thought we could talk quite a bit about just hidden revenue.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01Um, and and how we go find it and how we how we get after it, you know. But you know, so we got open estimates, right? So things that your team has said that the homeowner needs to do, right? Uh quotes that have been sent but not closed, customers who gave you whatever excuse, I need to check with my spouse, I you know, gather money, whatever that looks like. And then just basically they're stalled and they're just sitting there. So if your team's mindset is, well, I went and I left a quote on to the next, there has to be something, a tool or a person or a combination that is actually doing follow-ups there.
SPEAKER_00Well, so that's a huge gold mine that people are missing out on. So uh what we taught, what we try to really enforce, and people have heard this a million times. You've we've all heard it, the fortune is in the follow-up, right? It's a cliche at this point that people just they just hear it. When we say that the fortune is in the follow-up, we literally mean like that is where all your money, if you as the owner, are going, man, I made$10 million last year and I didn't put any money in my pocket. I feel like our margins are just so thin I hardly made any money. It's because there is so much free money sitting in these areas, in these uh leaks in your business that you're missing out on. And that's how you open your margins up is by not by getting more leads and putting them into the same system that's broken. It's by taking the leads you already have and maximizing the conversion on those leads. So, what I mean by that is yeah, you're going out to the house, you're you're giving an estimate, and you're closing whatever deals close, and then you're waiting for the other ones to call you back. You say you you you'll say something like, Oh, if they want it, they'll call me back, or oh, they must not want it because I haven't heard from them.
SPEAKER_01They're probably broke.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're probably broke, or whatever it is. And and it's a very tempting mistake to make because sales guys like to be where the action is, where they like to be closing the deals, right? And they don't like to do the monotonous part of following up with leads that they like that likely won't close. And so they're missing all this revenue because they're not taking a couple extra steps to make sure that those leads are are getting followed. There are literally people that will only do business with people that follow up with them. So you those ones are already off the table. Like if you go to their house and they're gonna go, I'm gonna get three estimates from three different people, and then the guy that follows up with me and and actually wants my business, I'm gonna go with him. And so so those ones you can already wipe out if you're not following up, right? Those are gone. And then there's people that just are busy or are nervous about making a decision or need to sleep on things, and it just takes them more time than somebody that's willing to sign right on day one.
SPEAKER_01Right or they're distracted, you know, distracted.
ext Follow-Up Beats Calls And Email
SPEAKER_00We we think about HVAC all day, right? Because that's what that's our business, right? They think about HVAC when it when they absolutely have to, they're thinking about a thousand other things, and then HVAC is one of a thousand problems that they have to deal with. And if they're not if you're not top of mind, they're gonna be solving other problems. But if you're following up consistently, you're gonna maximize your conversion. Now, when we say consistently, people can argue, but the number seems to be somewhere between 12 and 18 touch points of follow-up for maximum conversion. I can guarantee you, if you're doing it manually, you're not doing 12 to 18 touch points of follow-up. And when we say touch points, we don't mean that you call 12 to 18 times. That could be an email, text message, a phone call. Uh, it could be, you know, them seeing uh your billboard on the freeway. It's a combination of touch points that are happening. But the way that we find obviously is the most consistent is consistent text message follow-up on estimates. Um, text message has a 98% read rate, and so it's and it's the most emotionally charged form of communication. People enjoy getting text messages, they don't enjoy getting emails, they also don't enjoy getting phone calls. People don't prefer uh having to talk, especially the younger generation that's now becoming homeowners. They are far more anxious people than than than you know that's it's a very we live in an anxious world.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.
SPEAKER_00The idea of answering a phone call can spike cortisol, it can spike anxiety, and and so but a text message does not have that same emotional um reaction. You that it it's something that people still enjoy getting that may change in the future, just like email was kind of like the hot thing in the you know the early 2000s, late 90s, and then it became cold. Text message may get to that point, but right now it's not, so it's the key for the the most effective follow-up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and you know, I think that I wrote that down 98. I mean, hello. Um, and people are getting smarter with their phones, but at the end of the day, I cannot talk to you during the day. I'm in meetings, I'm on podcasts, I've got things happening, and I'm actually irritated that I can't book an appointment online or respond online or click and read. I love the at my fingertips help of things, but I also think that contractors really avoid follow-up sometimes, Ryan, and you can tell me because you deal with a lot more, but they feel like they don't want their technicians to be pushy or too salesy, right? Like, or they're too busy, you know, to stop and follow up with people that probably aren't gonna buy. We have all these negative Nellies, you know, in there, like, or there's zero systems in place for follow-up. That is a huge one. It's so manual that they've pushed it to the side, and then no one owns the process. Follow-up, you know. I don't know if you remember this, but about 10 years ago, it became very popular to hire these follow-up people in your HVAC business. Yeah, like basically you were you have CSRs and then you would hire a follow-up person, and that was like a big deal, very trendy. Um, and you know, those positions have not left because I think we were like light bulb moment, people don't make decisions the same day that we're at their house, and these follow-up people were making all of this money, but they still need tools and they need resources to be successful.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Yeah, and you you bring up a good point when people say, Oh, I don't want to be pushy, I don't want to be this, you know, whatever. The the the in the actual problem is they don't they're afraid of rejection, and that's the core of that argument where you go, I don't I don't want to follow up because I don't want to be pushy. Really deep down, you're just afraid of being rejected. And and that's okay, that's that's that's understandable, it's something that you you have to work on. But at the end of the day, follow-up is absolutely a part of business. If you paid to have somebody raise their hand, if you paid for that lead and you're not exhausting your resources to close that deal, some other business will. That deal is going to close, whether it's with you or with a competitor, is up to you. And so um, the competitor that is willing to follow up and be aggressive and actually go fight for business, they're gonna beat you. And what ends up happening is those guys can spend more on marketing because they're making more money, and so then they end up beating you in all areas because they're willing to put in what it takes to close a deal. And so if you make the excuse of, yeah, I don't want to bug my customers, then somebody that's willing to is going to beat you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's right. And I I love this other thought, like you know, as I was reading my notes, hope is not your follow-up strategy.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, I think not a follow-up strategy. Yeah, absolutely not. So, and then I think the other one is like when you really break down the math, right, of like your your booking rate, your closing rate, your average tickets, and all of that. I mean, you've got real money. Many of you have real dollars, probably goal hitting numbers.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_01Um, in your in your when it's done right. So the other thing that I think we try to do sometimes is I call, you know, poor boy it a little bit, like, well, let me, I'm just gonna have somebody sit here and call. I don't need, you know, to text or or right now it's like people are all worried about that texting permissions, right? Right, you know, in their state and things like that. But you know, there's real money, there's real money sitting there, and I think it's worth us feeling it out, right? Um, feeling it out. My East Texas showed up, but feeling it out, you know, to make sure that you are paying attention. So before I move to the next statement here, I just want to say one thing is uh this is a little plea to contractors. If you are not paying attention to open estimates, you are leaving a gaping hole in your revenue opportunity, gaping giantly and then don't don't underestimate it, give it what it needs, feed it the process, the attention. It is temporary pain of figuring it out and getting it, making meetings and setting things up, but for long-term success. And so when you try to just sneak around and like you know, skirt all the processes and everything, just stick something in place, it just doesn't land like it should, right? Well, I yeah, go ahead.
I Data Finds Best Follow-Up Timing
SPEAKER_00I want to make one more point on that. That's really cool. So you may be thinking, like, well, what do I have to do? I uh like, how do I know that I'm doing enough? Over the last seven years, we've been sending estimate follow-ups through CHIRP. So uh hundreds of millions of text messages going through CHIRP uh in estimate follow-ups, and I didn't really know how I was gonna use that information until recently, until AI became a thing. I've now had AI reading all of our hundreds of millions of text messages and coming back with data saying these are the best words to use, this is the best time to use, this is when I mean who would have guessed that the best time to send an estimate follow-up text message is between 7 and 9 a.m. on a Monday morning. That's the best, the most effective time. That's that's the power of AI telling us going through these hundreds of millions of text messages and finding what's working and what's not. And so that's been our next push with CHIRP is to get the data we've been collecting over the last seven years and start using it effectively to help uh contractors follow up automatically. You don't have to worry about it. You just plug it in and go, cool, do your thing, follow up. So okay.
SPEAKER_01So I wanted to do this. I reached out to you about doing this podcast because I know that chirp kind of has a philosophy, right? Or like a process that you guys like to follow. Um, and again, it's automation, which I wish more people trusted automation. So take AI contractor out of your head. We're not talking AI in this, I'm talking automation, specifically automation, which means you don't have to do things over and over and over again. It is programmed to do it immediately, and so there's that much more of a of an efficiency rate because you're not like several of my clients will tell me, Well, I have my CSR, go back and pull a list of everybody that we served yesterday, and then send them a text message with a link to our Google. And I'm like, listen, you can automate this that's right, and not ever have to worry about it again once it's set up correctly.
SPEAKER_00That's right. That's right. Right.
SPEAKER_01So, um, and then it's not about letting opportunity fall through the cracks. Like, we as contractors, we need to make our head mind up that we are going to capture everything that we can, and then optimizing your opportunity, your revenue opportunity versus just keep spending more money. So some of you are like, I wish I didn't have to spend this much money on marketing. Well, we really don't take good care of the leads that we have, therefore we have to spend more money.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_01So I know you kind of have a little a little framework.
he Four C’s Follow-Up Framework
SPEAKER_00So we have so we have, yeah, so capture we capture the lead, right? That's the first thing is you want to get the lead as quickly as possible. We find that if we don't um contact a lead quickly, we see a very fast drop-off in in um in conversion. We're talking one minute. So if you're waiting more than a minute when a lead comes in to contact them, your chances of converting drop very quickly. So capture capture the lead, we call it speed to lead, right? Capture the lead, communicate quickly. Text message is better than calling. Um, and then we and then continue, follow up. If they don't respond, we continue to follow up consistently, and then we close the deal. And this leads to what you were saying. So there's four C's capture, communicate, continue, close. The the fifth thing we talk about is revenue optimization. This all leads to revenue optimization. Most companies, they just go, I want to make more money, therefore, I need more leads. And that's the bad, that's that's the wrong way to look at things because leads are finite, right? There's only so many people in your city looking for HVAC, there's only so many people. And and if you're not converting the leads you're already getting, you're just burning through leads. And so you could look at your thing and say, How about and if I have if I have a 40% close rate, just like we talked about earlier, if you don't know your numbers, you can't track this. But let's say you get 100 leads and you only have a 20% close rate or whatever it is, everybody's numbers are different. You have to figure these out for yourself. But you say, I have a 20% close rate, I want to get to a 40% close rate. Okay, what do I need to work on? And so if we can consistently be improving our close rate on our leads, we're gonna be able to spend more money on marketing, and then we're gonna be able to get more leads knowing that we're more we're more efficient with our leads because we're closing at the maximum. And if if you don't have a hundred percent close rate, there's room for improvement, and nobody does, nobody has a hundred percent.
SPEAKER_01Nobody does, but that means there's always ways to be working.
SPEAKER_00But if you say if it instead of looking at go, well, I have a 40% close rate, say no, you have a 60% opportunity rate, you have 60% of people that aren't closing. What can I do to make that better? And so um, generally, what ends up being the answer to that is more consistent follow-up.
SPEAKER_01I love that, and I love this one note we made remind without awkward, remind without awkwardness. And I'm like, is that even possible? So I'm not a super pushy salesperson, but yeah, I have learned even myself, like I have full intentions of doing lots of things, whether it be with Lemon Seed or whether it be for my kids or whatever, um, like doctor's appointments or hair appointments. And I'm constantly getting these reminders, and I'm not annoyed with them because help you stay on track, yeah. And so I I myself need to take a dose of that medicine. But um, I love the four C so capture, communicate, continue, and close. Um, I also love that looking at things as an opportunity rate, um, instead of like how you know badger sucking it up, but you know, it is what it is there. But yeah, you know, I think that when you deploy a system like chirp, you know, you are now you're not really having to live in that chaos of who followed up and when did we follow up and how did we follow up and and all of that, you have a system in place.
SPEAKER_00Well, you're turning your humans into superhumans because, like you said earlier, oh, I have my CSR pull up the information and start calling. Well, how about instead of having them pull up the information, they just respond to leads that we've already communicated with. Now they're way more efficient because I can send out a hundred text messages in 10 seconds, right? And and then we get 50 responses, and now that CSR can take over at that point, but they don't have to sit there and send the 100 messages. The automation takes care of that part, and so we're turning them, we're we're moving them up the ladder in efficiency, right? The the boring mundane stuff, the follow-up that just needs to happen consistently, that can all be automated. And then then once an opportunity arises from that follow-up, your CSR can then step in and take it over. So now they're doing 10 times what they were doing before, and you're paying them the same amount of money for 10 times the efficiency.
SPEAKER_01So, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well, and then you know, do you have some examples or you know, a contractor or anybody that you can think of maybe that's um some specific examples of estimate turnarounds, um, or who you've seen doing it really well?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I uh there's there's one I actually want to talk about um because this is another point, and this this is from this is kind of in the whole customer journey from from the beginning through the estimate, but we had one plumber. Um, this is when we discovered how important abandoned calls is. So so many contractors are missing calls. They're uh you know too busy, CSR is on the other line, whatever it is, they miss a call. And we're triggering an in an instant follow-up to happen to that call. And you can do it one of two ways. You can have AI answer the call. I'm still on the fence of whether or not that's the right way to do things. People really are leaning heavily into AI voice. Some people love it, some people have had absolute horror stories with it. So it's kind of one of those like it's still in a gray area right now. Uh so we do have the option to do that. We also find that one of the most effective ways is just to instantly text the customer if the call is missed. So instantly text them and say, sorry, I missed your call, I'll call you right back. Or if you'd like to book, you can click here and they just book right away. We had a we had a plumber who captured$200,000 the first week of turning that automation on. First week, tons of missed calls that he didn't realize were just slipping through the cracks. Um, and then of course, we follow up for with those leads that don't book. Once they go to estimate, we want to follow up with estimates on average. This is again something you test, you want to split test, but 14 days is a good uh amount of time to follow up consistently with an estimate, followed by you don't want to stop at 14 days, but you want to you want to loosen up the the um the cadence after 14 days and reduce it down to like 30 days and then even up to six months. We have so many times where a text message will go out six months later, hey, we we came out to your home six months ago, wanted to just follow up and see if you uh were still looking to get something done. And every now and then one of those will go, you know what? Actually, yeah, I do need to get that done still. And that's that's money that you never would have even, there's no way you would have ever gotten it, because you're not gonna call that lead six months later, it would have been just gone. But that single little text message, that one little drop six months later could recover a deal, right? And so you want to go 14 days, uh, not every day within that 14 days, but you go like day one, day two, day four. You you know, you mix it up, but you don't want it to be all just every single day. And you want it to be different times of the day, uh, and then um, and then uh up to 14 days, and then after that, slow drip.
SPEAKER_01I love that slow drip. And and again, this is a process, right? Or a pro the way that you set up these these campaigns. I'm over here writing notes as fast as I can.
SPEAKER_00Um because well, and here's the beauty of it, like I said, with that AI stuff, you don't need to memorize all this stuff because the AI is gonna tell you how how to follow up, right? It's gonna if you plug into chirp, it just goes, Oh, I know what to do based on this data. We'll just follow up, you know, for the next 14 days for you.
apid Fire Cadence And Mistakes
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and you know, like follow-up, I think again, you know, we're in that same boat of trying to understand, you know, when is too much? Uh, you know, do I follow up in one day, 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours? And I love that is one reason I love AI, kind of like you're mentioning it. Like, yeah, that's such a cool resource as a way to be like, hey, based off actuals, not theory. Like, I don't know about y'all, but like I go sit at all these conferences, and there's so much theory thrown at you of what this should work, this short AI is like, nope, here's what worked, yeah, and here's what didn't work. Uh pivot. You know, you should pivot. Um, so okay, I this has been fantastic. I want to do a couple of rapid fires at you before we do a little rapid fire, a little fun conversation there. Um, any other last little words that you would like for the people to know about follow-up um and things like that? And then in a minute, I'm gonna get you to tell them how to reach out to chirp.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would just say the number one thing for follow-up is you need to shift your mindset from um, you know, uh more uh more marketing, more marketing, more marketing, more leads, more leads, more leads. And you need to place as much importance and emphasis onto the follow-up process as you do on your marketing. It shouldn't be like this where it's all marketing and then a little bit of follow-up. It should be your emphasis should be both on marketing and on follow-up, and you'll see a much higher conversion rate. You'll be spending less money to get more deals, and it's just like it it solves so many problems. So you should be taking follow-up extremely seriously.
SPEAKER_01Less money but more deals. I love it. Less money but more deals. Okay, really quick, rapid fire.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Biggest mistakes contractors make with estimates.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, obviously, it's number one, uh, they assume things, they assume the customer got all the information, they assume that the sales guy did a good job. They assume that if the customer wants it, they will follow up. So stop assuming and and get the actual information. Are your sales guys doing the things they need to be doing? Are you this is where you can use a tool like Field Spark or Real or something where you're actually listening to the the calls and understanding if your sales guys are saying, because like I said, they could be saying one sentence that's destroying all their deals. Like one one wrong sequence of words could be destroying all your deals. And if you're not tracking that, you'll never know. And then and so you don't want to assume that they're doing a good job on the pitch, and then you don't want to assume that the customer doesn't want it if they don't call you. You have to uh you have to understand that people are busy, like you said, it's just gonna take that consistent follow-up. So don't assume that everything is, you know, uh that you can't improve something. And you just well, it's just the way it is. My that's how my sales guy is. And it's like, well, what if you listen to one call and determined that he says one stupid sentence, you know, that's ruining all your deals.
SPEAKER_01Yes, absolutely. Okay, identify the ideal follow-up cadence.
SPEAKER_00So 14 days, uh, aggressive at the beginning, uh, first three days, uh, you know, pretty top of mind. Then you could skip a day and then skip a couple days. So through that 14 day, but you you'll wanna it it's different across it's funny because it's regional, right? Some everywhere is different everywhere, like New York is more aggressive than the South, right? And so you you have different cadences in different places. You have to determine that. But generally, we see that it should be at least 14 days.
SPEAKER_01I love that. Okay, text versus email. I think I learned the answer to that on today's webinar. Yeah, I just I mean texting.
SPEAKER_00There's two extremely important parts. The emotional part is the more important part. What what emotion is tied to one or the other? Uh, email is tied to you know, marketing, it's tied to sales, it's tied to more anxiety and more cortisol. Um, and so you're not creating an emotional experience that you want that you can ex that you can create with text messaging. And then, of course, just the read rate itself, people read 98% of their text messages. Um, and then email has, you know, if you're doing well, 15, 20%. So again, that goes back to do you want 10% of you want 10% opportunity or nine, 90% opportunity?
SPEAKER_01I love it. And then what metric do you think matters the most? Is it close rate, response time? What do you think?
SPEAKER_00So so obviously close rate is gonna be like the the the end all be all right. It's like I got 100 leads and I closed X amount, and that's where you start, but then you start to chisel away and say, okay, if I have a close rate of of 90 of 20, what is it? Is it what I'm saying, or is it that I'm not following up enough? And and like I said, with with the checkbox, you can't know without tracking that. And so if you can say, hey, cool, I close nine out of 10 deals that I sit down with, I just need to sit down with more people, then you go, okay, let's figure out how to sit down with more people rather than working on your close rate.
ow To Get A CHIRP Demo
SPEAKER_01Yes, I love it. I love it. So, you know, open estimates, that's not we should stop assuming that those are just no's and rejection. There's opportunity in that system. Um, and the fortune isn't just in the follow-up. While it is in the follow-up, but it really comes from the consistency and the ability, the willingness to implement a process and implement a strategy there. So, Ryan, again, I think chirp is such a unique tool in our industry. I think you guys have been around, y'all learned, y'all pivoted. Every time I turn around, y'all are adapting and innovative and uh innovative, innovating. Um, and sorry, and I love I love what you guys are doing. But let's say someone's listening today, what's the best way for them to reach out to chirp to get a demo?
SPEAKER_00So go to chirp.com, ch I r p.com. We actually do so. This goes back to my windshield days. I like to provide something of value first before we pitch you. So we do a revenue optimization analysis. This is a free AI report. Um, we we take a look at a few different things in your business and we come up with this really cool little report that shows you where leaks are happening in your business. It's a hundred percent free. We're gonna hand you that first before I I want to earn the opportunity to pitch you on using chirp. So I want to provide you that value. Take that. If you decide to go with chirp, great. If not, it's still very valuable information that you can use. Like I said, that's me washing your windshield just to see, you know, if there's damage that can be fixed. And if so, uh, we'll offer to fix it and uh we can work together and make a lot of money.
inal Challenge And Sign Off
SPEAKER_01So fantastic, Ryan. Thank you so much. Well, everybody, thank you so much for listening to another episode of From the Yellow Chair. I hope you've enjoyed this. I love finding more revenue opportunities for you guys. So, congratulations, go kill it. Uh, go find you some money in that treasure box that you have there of a CRM. But again, thanks for listening. If you like what you hear, share this episode with someone, leave us a comment. Until next time, let's keep sipping some lemonade. See you next time.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, everybody.