From the Yellow Chair
From the Yellow Chair
Why Maintenance Clubs Fail: CRM Mistakes Costing Contractors Revenue
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In this episode of From the Yellow Chair, Crystal sits down with Gary Woodruff of Boxed for the Trades to discuss why so many maintenance programs fail before they ever have a chance to become profitable and how contractors can build a membership strategy that actually supports recurring revenue.
From CRM setup mistakes and missed billing to overdue maintenance visits, monthly versus yearly renewals, and the importance of clean customer data, Crystal and Gary break down the operational side of maintenance clubs that many home service companies overlook. They share real world insights on how contractors can use their CRM, especially ServiceTitan, to better manage memberships, prevent revenue leaks, and turn maintenance programs into true customer retention tools.
Whether your maintenance club feels messy, your data is hard to trust, or your team is struggling to understand how memberships should be sold, scheduled, and renewed, this episode offers practical strategies to help you clean up the process and create a more profitable program.
In this episode, you'll learn:
Why maintenance clubs need clear goals before setup
How poor CRM setup can create hidden revenue leaks
Why missed billing and overdue visits can hurt profitability
The difference between monthly and yearly membership billing
How clean equipment data can help your team make smarter decisions
Why CSRs, dispatchers, and technicians need to understand the strategy behind the program
How automation can reduce office workload and improve customer follow up
Why maintenance programs should support recurring revenue, customer retention, and long term growth
If you're an HVAC contractor, plumber, electrician, roofer, or home service business owner looking to improve your maintenance program, strengthen recurring revenue, and get more from your existing customer base, this episode is packed with actionable insights.
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Welcome And What’s At Stake
SPEAKER_01Alright, what's up Lemon Heads? And welcome back to another episode of From the Yellow Chair. I'm Rachel De Res. I'm a graphic designer here at Lemon Seed, and I'm also behind all things from the Yellow Chair. So today we're bringing you a webinar replay all about maintenance programs, recurring revenue, and the CRM setup mistakes that may be quietly costing your business money. In this episode, Crystal is joined by Gary Woodruff from Box for the Trades to talk through what actually makes maintenance clubs work. They cover missed billing, overdue visits, clean data, monthly versus yearly billing, and why your team needs clear rules around how memberships are sold, scheduled, and renewed. So if your maintenance program feels messy, your CRM data feels overwhelming, or you know there is more opportunity inside your existing customer base, this episode is for you. Let's sip some lemonade.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for joining us. Hi Ernest, welcome to the party. Guys, today we are getting down in the weeds about maintenance programs. And you know, in May, we have been passionate about maintenance mania um here because we at Lemon Seed have seen contractors really grow their business by implementing, executing, and following up with maintenance programs. So I want you guys to know Crystal Williams with Lemon Seed Marketing. So I am here. Um Lemon Seed is basically a fractional CMO and branding company. We come alongside contractors and help them bridge the gap between what the heck should I be doing for marketing and how and with who and my brand needs work and all those good things. Joining me today is Gary Woodruff from Boxwork Boxed for the Trades. He and I are going to be killing it today. So, Gary, tell everybody a little bit about yourself.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh, so I started my career in our family HVAC business in Springfield, Massachusetts. And uh we'll we'll go with 1999 when I started doing commercial ductwork installation uh during college breaks. And then I went to work for somebody else for a little bit because I didn't want to just go work for the family business. Uh I sold boat stuff, it was fun. And uh then I got recruited back into the family business because I was gonna make a lot of money because dad signed up for Airtime 500 and he was gonna blow the roof off with this thing. Well, turns out he didn't have those pieces in place, so struggled for a few years and then said, either I'm leaving or you got to make me a manager so that we can actually do the stuff that you told me you were doing when you brought me in here. Uh, so we spent the next number of years growing with a pretty steady pace with a pretty reasonable marketing budget until we got to the point of beating our heads against the wall because we didn't have a good organizational chart and uh sold the business of private equity at about $10 million worth of revenue.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. I love it. I love it. And you also work with your sister, so you know I relate to that. Yep, yeah, brother and sister. So you and Jessica have Box for the Trades.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_02Right. So you guys, what is it that Box for the Trades does specifically?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so we um we are a company that helps with all manners of Service Titan, but we were founded specifically on good financials. Um, one of our other partners is a is an accountant, and a big challenge in Service Titan, which actually ties over to our memberships very well, is getting the accounting data from Service Titan correctly to QuickBooks and making sure we know what to do with it there. And Service Titan has a really fantastic integration called the touchless uh accounting integration, but it does need to make sure that it's implemented and operated right so it can actually be touchless. So that was what we were founded on. But we help with all manners of Service Titan. Uh, do a lot of price books, coaching, um, process and procedure implementation.
SPEAKER_02If it comes to service, if it comes to service Titan, you guys can figure it out.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_02I love it. I love it. Okay, so I know I want you guys to picture this. I, my husband and I, my husband's name is Ray. He and I were sitting in a hotel bar area in, I guess, Virginia, maybe Washington, D.C., at a Service Titan event, and we're sitting in there and we're just talking, and Gary is just spouting off all these things. Well, they should do this, they should do that. And I'm like, you know, I think contractors have a really hard time just wrapping their brain, their head around how do I should I do recurring revenue if I do, like if I charge monthly for my um for my maintenance plans, how does it actually impact my cash flow? Like, what does all this look like? Do I have it set up correctly? What if I miss somebody? And then what if I have people that pay yearly and monthly? I mean, it it really overwhelms contractors sometimes, just how to wrap their brain around it. So, why do you think, Gary, from your perspective, that most maintenance clubs are set up incorrectly or like what is the biggest issue inside of our CRM? Because not just Service Titan, even though we all love Service Titan, both you and I both, um, but inside of their CS CRM, you know, why do we think most of them are failing in their implementation there?
SPEAKER_00Yep. So there are two real places that I see some failures. And place number one is not understanding all of the parts and pieces that go into the membership to have it set up correctly in a structure that's going to work and make the financials flow correctly. And then the second
Why Maintenance Clubs Fail In CRMs
SPEAKER_00challenge that I see is not understanding the proper way to uh manage those recurring service events to ensure that we don't end up with, especially if we have deferred revenue, a bunch of uncompleted uh events where customers never called us. So uh it's really important that we both have it set up right and understand how we are going to make uh make the nuts and bolts of it work uh as we go through to ensure they get billed correctly, to ensure they get uh the work gets done correctly. You know, I set I see a number of clients that have set up um they have set up monthly billing, but then they didn't actually set service tight end up to bill that monthly. And so they'll be six months into their membership and figure out, oh, we haven't charged anybody for six months.
SPEAKER_02Yes, it's so unfortunate. And I say that because I know it's frustrating to contractors. So before we go much deeper, we have the Lemon Seed team behind the scenes, Madison, Darien, and Lupita. So make sure you guys are commenting there. Tell us where you're from. Welcome, Maribel and Shannon and Ernest again. Thank you guys for being here with us. Comment, let us know where you're working from, if you're on Service Titan, the name of your maintenance club. I'd love to know any of it. We would love to know any of it. But Gary, I picked up on something that you said, and you said an understanding twice. You said an understanding of, and you said an understanding of. So, you know, I was like all the parts and pieces and managing the proper events. I cannot tell people enough. This is a mindset that you are going to make service tighten work. Like you have to just uh buy into the service tighten way of life, right? Lean into how they have it set up, how it's working, and basically what we could do to make this be set up better. Hi uh Kirsten, I think. Hey, Ashley. Um, welcome, welcome. But do you understand what I'm saying there? Like there's just a lack of mindset.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Yeah, the the the place that I want to start with contractors when we set up a membership together is what are the goals of the membership? Now, um, I have my own set of goals. If people say, what the heck do you mean? Uh, you know, the main goals of memberships are generating call, you know, generating jobs when we're our schedule is light. So we have maintenance calls to do in the spring and fall, or you know, if we're in plumbing electrical, et cetera, memberships are great there too. It may not be as seasonal that we need to grab those events. In HVAC, it's very much seasonal. Um, and then, you know, is our goal to develop those calls for the future? Is our goal to get into the customer's house right away with a discount? Um, what are they? And then we can come up with the right ways to make service Titan work and the rules that you're gonna have to follow in order to not break the memberships.
SPEAKER_02Uh yes. So a lot of times you mentioned this too. A lot of times we see contractors that are like, well, so here's what Lemon Seed does, right? We want to be able to run an email campaign to any of your members or any of your non-members about why they should become a member, right? This is all a part of customer cultivation. Well, what happens to us is most of the time a contractor is gonna say, Well, you can try, but that's probably a mess. And I'm like, that's how what in the heck? Like, that cannot be a mess. That's that should be a huge part of our puzzle here of either recurring revenue or opportunities to get back into the homes. And so rules to follow. I will kind of expound on that as well, uh, because I love what you said. Like, you know, you're basically creating rules. And Ernest said that he's on House Call Pro, but this is the same thing, right, Gary? Like, there are rules that you need to set yourself up with from the get-go, and then make sure everyone on your team understands your rules for setup and follow-up right inside for those memberships.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Yeah, I mean, you know, one of the one of the big rules that uh you have so you know, I guess there's two things, there's two things that I want to bring up here. The first one is a lot of times we know what our goals are and we bring those to the team, and the team will say things like, Well, our customers would never go for that. Our customers are used to paying us $300 up front and getting one visit right away and then one free visit. Okay, well, I'm I get that that's what they're used to. I get that some people, you know, you may need to have some programs in place to bridge that gap and keep them there. But all over the country, all over the world, people do operate this other way. Your customers are really not much different than customers in Los Angeles or Texas, etc. Yes, they may like different sports teams and they, you know, may be more laid back or they may be more high stress, but you know, they're the same general people and they're used to the same kinds of things. Uh, so it's not really going to be a deal breaker when we change things because the customers will go along with it. And unfortunately, you know, for better or for worse, sometimes the customers that don't want to go along with it weren't the right customers to generate your revenue anyway. And maybe it's a better thing that they go find the other person that does it that way.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um and then the other part here is so now we have to make those, you know, so now we make those rules. So one of the rules that's really um important is we can't go sell a membership with a visit due in September and next April and decide in June right now, we're gonna go run next April's spring maintenance because this customer wants it right away, because then they're not gonna get a spring maintenance next April because we already did that one. Uh, so we have to, we really have to follow those rules and say, hey, yeah, Mr. Customer, you part of the reason of this maintenance membership is you actually get a discounted rate on the service uh because we come out and do these in the slower season. You know, it's June right now, it's 90 degrees outside, so we do have to charge full price for our maintenance. But if you go and sign up for our membership, we'll actually give you the member rate for this maintenance and then you'll have your future maintenance covered. Um we have to follow those rules and you know and make it work. You know, we want to be nice to our customers, we want to build value with them. Uh, but if we're always bending over backwards in ways that don't make sense for the company, um, you know, that doesn't work either.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I love that. So I want to just lean into this a little bit more is like, I think it's important that your CSR team understand the why and your dispatch team, the why. Why can't I do this? What is my option? So at McWilliams, we always said we want to make sure that we could say yes. How do we say yes to this customer and help them? And then how do we make sure that that still falls in line with what we are doing? So, hello, Carol, hello, Patty. Welcome, welcome. And Patty's on field edge. That's right. Patty's a client of ours. She's on field edge. So, you know, same situation here. You need to invest time in setting these things up correctly because it helps everybody, everyone on your team understand the direction that we're going. You know, it's kind of like, hey, I want you to get in my car. We're going on a trip, but I'm not going to tell you where you're going. You have no seatbelt, you have no way out, you have you have no idea when the next restroom break is, right? That's what it's like when you tell everybody sell more memberships, but your team, you're telling them to get in the car, but you're giving them no direction, right? So as the boss and as the owner of the company, you need to be able to give more direction for your team
Billing Errors And Deferred Revenue Traps
SPEAKER_02about why, how, and resources I think are really important here. So you mentioned something also earlier, Gary, when we got on, and you said, well, you know, you know, you could not be collecting payments for six months. So one of my bullet points here was the hidden revenue leaks behind are caused by poor setup. So the hidden revenue leaks inside of your business that are caused by poor setup. What do you see happening in the industry? Yep.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So so again, a big one is is getting the billing wrong. So either we don't have our automatic billing setup or people in the office come in and just change billing dates, but it's a date that's already been billed for. So now that customer gets stuck and we end up never billing that customer. So that's a big one, is is just not charging the customers. But that does also lead me into another conversation on revenue leaks. We could be getting all that money, but we could never be transferring that money into revenue if we're using a deferred revenue. So if we're collecting these fees sort of as a, you know, for lack of a better word, as a deposit against doing that maintenance later, and we don't ever do those maintenance, or we go out and run the maintenance, but we don't actually book the recurring service, that money that we have is gonna stay stuck in that, you know, future service due account on our balance sheet and it's never gonna become revenue. And then when we figure it out, we're gonna end up recognizing revenue the next year, maybe that's all for work that has no costs against it. So that's a hundred percent profit we have to pay the government tax on.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it just runs it, it it's just not a healthy way to control your expenses, right? So, you know, I'm not a huge, like even at Lemon Seed, I'm really not a huge financial person. Like, it's not what I love. Um, okay. But as a responsible business owner, I have to get down in the weeds more and really work hard to understand the financials of how things work. So not only how they work inside of Service Titan or House Call Pro or Field Edge, but how does what I do every day impact the financials?
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_02So every decision that I make, how does it impact the financials?
SPEAKER_00Yep. And that's that's the that that's really great. And we're kind of similar in that way. Like I can read an income statement, I know where things are supposed to go, but I don't know what to do with it all in QuickBooks, but I know how to get it there the right way. And then when the person that knows how to put all the numbers in the right place shows me a thing, I know what they mean.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00And please don't make me go through and have to reconcile accounting. That's like that's like pulling teeth for me. But you know, I want to know that I sent the stuff there the right way, and when it comes back to me, I know what it means.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. So,
Two Models For Profitable Memberships
SPEAKER_02what does a profitable maintenance club really look like, Gary? Like when you get it all nice and set up and looking good inside of that CRM, what what happens?
SPEAKER_00Yep. So there are two. I'll start with a little foundation. There are two methods to create a profitable maintenance club. Method number one is you have a very low monthly fee and you do a very good job when you go out there in converting additional work. Method number two is we have higher monthly fees that cover more maintenance and more of the stuff that you do for the customer. So that base visit is a profitable visit. Uh, by and large, uh, at least in the HVAC industry, the first option or a balance toward the first option is the most common.
SPEAKER_02Right, right.
SPEAKER_00So now, how okay, so now how do we make sure that those maintenance club memberships are profitable if we have a you know kind of a loss leader in the club membership? And yep, go ahead.
SPEAKER_02No, no, so I was gonna say I uh loss leader like leans me into this. So I call this a low barrier of entry opportunity. Yep. So, you know, I I need to get you. This is gonna sound a little cryptic to some of you, but welcome to being competitive. I just want to get you in my little web so that I can keep marketing to you. I can stay in your home because you are going to have a problem and I can be the solution, but I don't want to have to earn you every single time. I really want to have already earned you right now and kind of again have you in my web. So you're on my maintenance program, you're hearing from me monthly in general newsletters and special promos. I'm out at your home twice a year, or I'm started that the visual home remote home inspections if you're using Smart AC and stuff like that. Whatever I'm doing, it's because I am your HVAC or plumbing company.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_02And so I love this low barrier of entry offer where we do basic things and you ramp up the perks as far as top of the line. So move to the front of the line during the busy months. Um, I give a discount on repairs, I give money towards the replacement of a new system. Um, you know, lots of little perks in there. And I'm a I'm a big fan of number one, um, of that very low monthly because it's again, it's just non-threatening to the average homeowner. Like $19.99 a month for me to have access to this and be a part of this community is worth it. But I've also seen people be $109 a month and offer everything, almost a concierge style service. And it's also very interesting. But again, we're just trying to get consumers to stop going out to the world and looking for their HVAC or plumber and have them look at us directly. Yep. That's how we drive our cost per lead down.
SPEAKER_00Yep, I agree.
SPEAKER_02So people want that. Well, how do I? I mean, I have to do the PPC game, and you have to do it maybe early on, but eventually you should be building your memberships and keep cultivating your existing database to where that and your top-of-mind awareness tactics, your your um mass media has really driven that for you. So I love that. I love that thought.
SPEAKER_00Yep. And then one of the other one of the other profitability leaks
Rules For Scheduling Without Chaos
SPEAKER_00that I see some companies have before we get involved together is they feel that, well, since a customer has a membership and they have this recurring service event, that somehow they're entitled to that recurring service event for the next five years if they decide to call back. And so we never dismiss those events. Uh, they stack up. We don't really know how many visits we have due. And once again, if we're using that deferred revenue, all that money now is staying on our balance sheet. It's not becoming revenue for the company. Um, so it's very important as we do this to make rules of okay, you know, we have lemon seed sending out our um, you know, reminders, we have you know, marketing pros sending out the text reminders, we make telephone calls when we're bit when we're slower. We've done our job reaching out to this customer. You know, it's time, you know, they were due for a fall checkup, it's now time for a spring checkup, or their due date was six months ago, if it's something that is more, you know, tied directly to a number of months. Okay, it's time to go ahead and dismiss that event. And then everybody says, well, what if they call up after you dismiss it and say they want it? Say, great, we're gonna book the next visit now and say, Yep, and I'll make sure the technician takes care of that, you know, other thing from the fall. Yeah, Willie's out there. Um, if they've canceled the membership, you know, if the membership's expired and they didn't get their last visit and they call up and they're a good member, and you're like, well, listen, if you sign up again for the membership, we'll come out and do that last one for free. Great. Just go run the call as a free call to make the customer happy. We don't need to keep these things open in perpetuity to confuse things and make it, you know, unable to manage those visits we have to.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, absolutely. So, and it's all this is also about control. So I know once McWilliams got up to several thousand members. Um, we have actually implemented a coordinator position. And that coordinator position was basically, you know what they were was basically a like a goalie, right? So they kept anything crazy from happening, like people falling off, people clipping and they kept everybody engaged. Because the last thing that we want to do is have to call, physically call people to schedule. We need them to schedule through some more automated technique. The most expensive thing we can do is have a tech a CSR sit in an outbound call.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_02Um, for that, for that a free in our in really in the big realm of things, a free maintenance tune-up. So we wanted to try all these other things. So their job was to keep all of that rolling and manage, people falling off, people trying to transfer, people selling their home, you know, all of those good things. Um really a big piece of that.
SPEAKER_00That's a really good point about the coordinator. The coordinator should also be going into your system and attaching the equipment to the memberships because then, at least in Service Titan, in that follow-up screen, there is a column for equipment age. And so when we do get to the we need our CSRs to call because our uh schedule is empty, we can prioritize those older systems.
SPEAKER_02That's right. Listen, y'all, there's power in the data, there's power in making sure that things are set up correctly. So hear me on this. And that was Gary, such a good call out. So listen to this. What we're saying to you is eventually when your CSRs have to dial out, let's say you got a hundred people that have not scheduled. If you will go in and keep up with the content, make your CSR team or coordinator or whomever you have responsible for this actually putting in age of equipment. Now you can go prioritize and say, of all these hundred people, these 30 have equipment over the age of 10 or 12 or whatever. And then it helps you prioritize because I do not know about you, but I will fall over myself to get to a home with a system over 12 years old. Can we all agree? Right? It also helps. So listen, I want to go back to your point a little bit. Your maintenance club member customer with an of age equipment calls you during July and says, Can y'all come out and go ahead and do my spring tune up? Something's wrong. You know what? I'm probably gonna figure it out. You want to know why? Something's wrong. His equipment needs to be replaced. So now you know what you have data-driven decisions. And if your CSRs understand, if you're coaching them to understand why we do what we do, what does of age equipment mean? What is the importance of healthy data entry and garbage in, garbage out theory, right? Once they understand that, these are little profit buttons for you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, you know, that's a really good point. You know, technicians all the time would come but why am I going out to do a maintenance when it's hot out? Customer has has something wrong. Well, we should be charging the service fee, and I should just do a trouble call while I'm out here. And it's so it's like I get it, but this customer has a 12-year-old system. It's a good opportunity. We should be going out there, we should make it easy for the customer to say yes to it. And if you don't do the maintenance now, how much longer does it take you to do a maintenance versus doing a trouble call? 20 or 30 minutes, maybe? Because you got to go through all the stuff anyway. Now you're gonna go back to that house to drive back out there to spend an hour to an hour and a half doing doing the maintenance visit for no revenue because we already fixed the thing that was wrong. Like, does that really sound good to you? And you're still gonna be complaining about going home late then because we got to do this maintenance now on the system you just fixed.
SPEAKER_02Odds are, God love you, technicians, you're still complaining. It doesn't even matter.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02Why are you sending me on this call? Listen, this goes back to everything that Crystal Williams preaches every day of my life. This is strategic revenue growth. This is strategic. You don't just wake up every day and everybody on your team understand this level of strategy behind these maintenance programs, right? This has to be a strategy, but most importantly, your CRM has to be set up correctly. So if you're not on service titan, you need to go in and look and see how I can get as much data extracted as possible to make some of these decisions, right? So, how do you think um some
Monthly Billing To Protect Renewals
SPEAKER_02of the best ways might be to prevent missed renewals and lost recurring revenue?
SPEAKER_00So the number one best way to miss uh to avoid missing renewals is to get customers on a monthly recurring service plan. That small monthly fee is very easy. Yes, I know there is a culture of I don't want another subscription. I understand that, but let's build the value and get and try to get as many of those customers as we can on a monthly recurring. It builds to their credit card every month. Uh, Service Titan has a program where they can automatically handshake with the credit card companies to update info so that they fall off less, but you do have a report in Service Titan for who has expiring credit cards that we may need to um activate up to date. Uh the cancellation rate is a lot lower than the cancellation rate if you're trying to do automatic billing every year because the customer calls up and says, Why'd you charge my card $179? I didn't sign up for this. Or if you're doing manual renewals in Service Titan, manual renewals are a pain in the rear end. They all need to be touched. If the customer just signs it online the last I knew, they could have changed things now, but you had to book a job for that renewal and then fake complete it with the hoops that service height and makes you jump through, or not you know, not you know, use that as the sale and then put a manual invoice in. Anyway, automatic recurring monthly payments is absolutely the best way to make a profitable membership that has a low turnover rate.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, absolutely. So I'm curious for those of you that are watching, there's uh 20 something of you watching right now actively. I would love for you to tell me in the comments if you are billing monthly or yearly or both. Tell me in there so that Gary and I can kind of get a good read. Are you billing monthly reoccurring? Are you only billing annually, or do you let your people have a mixture of both? I would love to hear that. So I I love this. So by preventing to prevent this, it is ideally we go into where we are getting the majority of our team getting moved to or our customers moving to where they are billing monthly. I just think it helps so much. Number one, with cash flow, just so many things. So, so many things. But I I will tell you that I think that again, this is strategic, but this goes back to, and Emily did a podcast on this the other day um about building the value, excuse me, excuse me, allergy season in East Texas, but building the value of the actual community that your maintenance program is. So here's what you don't need to sleep on, though. You don't need to sleep on things like, well, we have preventative maintenance. Again, if y'all have heard me say this, this sounds like a colonoscopy. No one wants to be like, yes, preventative maintenance, yes, let me spend money on that. But if you can use your brand, like I know Patty Wilson, she's on here. They have Mr. Wilson. It is a she has a brand, she has a whole vibe down there in San Antonio, right? So who doesn't want to be a friendly neighbor to Mr. Wilson, right? So how can you create a community around that program? Because then people want to be a part of it. You need to feed that community with, like I said, emails and with extra perks throughout the year. During slow times, if you offer other services, so let's say you have a maintenance program that's built around your HVAC company, but you also offer plumbing, give them a members-only discount to something with plumbing. Give them a special on your duck cleaning, your dryer cleaning, your IAQ stuff. If you offer pest control, roll it all in so that they get little perks. Hey, you're on this program, here's a mosquito spray for half price, right? Like, how can you work on some things that help you bridge those slow times of the year? But also when you get people actively involved in your community, meaning they feel a part of something like, oh, Miss Williams, thank you for being a part of Sailor Max VIP program. Thank you for doing that. You know, that gets you moved to the front of the line. Teach your CSRs to remind people about the value. Like, thank you for calling, Mr. Woods or if I see you've been a member with us for over five years, I am bumping you to the front of the line. And don't forget you're probably also gonna be able to get a discount on today's services. I show I can have somebody out there in the next couple of hours. Thank goodness you're on our program. We were pretty pooked full today. And people be like, heck yeah, I'm on your program. Move me up. Like, I want to go to the front of the line. It's a vibe, it's a vibe. So I'll tell you, Gary. Um, so we have uh several boths, several people that said both, a couple of people that say yearly, um, both moving more people to monthly. There are still a good amount of, oh, Kristen um Kirsten. I want to say it's Kirsten, K-I-R. Kirsten says both people tend to go with monthly, both, comma. People tend to go with monthly, but there's a good amount of people that still go yearly because they don't want to put their credit cards on file. And that that's understandable. We also used to offer um ACH. Oh, and I see Cameron who's in Canada, so he's got some other processing was really, really high for him in Canada, but ACH, so automatic pool. I think the point here is to start pitching your program monthly. And eventually people don't always expect a yearly, they're used to paying monthly and they appreciate the opportunity to pay monthly. And then you have the few outliers on yearly. But if you're like us, we did Texas Tough programs. I don't know if anyone is old enough on this call to remember Texas Tough. We were a carrier dealer and we were Texas Tough. So it was basically, you know, $89 for the year back in the day to have the Texas Tough program. And so we had to literally make a shift, a mindset shift with our community base to get us over to monthly. So, guys, I want to know if you're struggling with how to set this up. I want to know towards the end, I'll save some time to ask Gary some specific questions. And so if you want to post those in there, but also, okay, let's jump into some long-term things, right? So, do you think that the
Automation That Saves CSR Time
SPEAKER_02automation pieces, like what you know about all the pro there's tons of pro products, right? Tons of pro products, tons of things. What do you know about what should I really invest in, maybe within a CRM, um, to help with the automation? Are there tools or things? Any best practices there based off your recommendation?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so um, so one thing that we and I I will say we were very early marketing pro adopters. We were on marketing pro reputation during the alpha and beta. Um, you know, if anyone knows my sister, you know that she is uh gung-ho on every pro product that exists. Um, and particularly related to club memberships. Um, I am a big believer in marketing pro because of not for outside marketing, which they which they do now, but for that client retention, for making sure that we're doing the outreaches to our customers and we can do that within Service Titan. Um, you need to figure out who's going to do the creative for it because most HVAC electricians, plumbers, et cetera, are not marketing creative people. Um, but the amount of time, effort, and energy Marketing Pro saved us just on booking club member visits. I put half of our marketing pro spend into administrative costs because it wasn't really doing marketing, it was really covering some CSR tasks and automation. Um and when we thought about that, it made Marketing Pro seem like it was more uh more valuable uh or less expensive because you know it wasn't really all a marketing expense. Um, but then it also allowed us to in-house very easily respond when a heat wave was coming uh to send out that hey, the heat wave is coming, make sure you turn your air conditioning on before the heat wave gets here. Because if your house is already 90, it'll take a long time to get back down. And if it's gonna break down, let's get it fixed before the heat comes. Um, you know, those kinds of uh those kinds of things. Yeah. Um you know, I I have uh I think I think Dispatch Pro is a great product. Um, but I see a lot of uh I see a lot of head and heartache with clients that implement that, that they don't want to actually let the system do the primary dispatching and they end up turning off dispatch pro on every call and they're paying for dispatch pro, but it's never actually doing anything. Or they're paying for dispatch pro, but they're still on the old school two-hour arrival windows, which um tell me in the chat how often you actually make the two to four arrival window between two and four if you're on two-hour arrival windows. I bet you that it's like 70% of the time you don't when you get to a busy season. Um, but if we have those two-hour arrival windows, dispatch pro can't actually hopscotch the um calls around to account for routing or account for availability. It's sorry, it can only move them between technicians. So, you know, we really do need to be thinking about being on a more modern, flexible dispatching uh system where we let the customer know, hey, Mr. Customer, we don't want you to wait around for us. Um, what's gonna happen is when the technician's on the way, you'll get a text message. Um, you'll know exactly where he when he's gonna be there, you'll have a tracking link. Hey, if you if you're not available, if you need more time, just give the office a call and we'll go ahead and send them somewhere else and then get you next. Does that work? Great. And for most of the people, you know, that's gonna work. And if they'll give you a morning or afternoon, hey, yeah, let's do the morning and I'll just wait around until you get here and then I'll go into work. That'll be great for me because I can take some time off of work. But if you tell them you're gonna be there in a two-hour arrival window, they think, they hear, oh, the technician is gonna be here at 10 and I'm they're gonna be done at 12. And then all of a sudden it's 11:45 and nobody's called them, and now they're calling the office and saying, Hey, you were supposed to be here at 10 and be done by 12. I told work that I'd be in by 12:30, you know, and we have bad, you know, we have upset customers.
SPEAKER_02So we don't miscommunication. Miscommunication.
SPEAKER_00So flexible dispatching, I'm a big fan of, and that really helps for products like uh dispatch pro to work. But even if you don't have that, it allows your dispatchers more flexibility in deciding where they're going, the routing, and to take off that technicians driving back and forth across the service area, waving at each other, and then being that their routing is not good.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, that's a little okay. Have you last couple things? Have you seen um any uh any things from maybe your existing customers that were unique things or are good just good practices of how they set up their maintenance clubs? Just some real life examples for us?
SPEAKER_00Yep, yeah. So um one of
Seasonal Due Dates And Fast Cleanups
SPEAKER_00the battle, you know, so this is something that a lot of people don't think about, and I think about because I had um, I don't know about you guys, but do you ever have CSRs that you explain the why and how we're gonna do things? But then when they see some information inside Service Titan, they just say, I'm gonna forget everything we talked about and why we're doing it, and I'm gonna go with what it says in Service Titan. Um, yeah. So one of the things that I uh am a big proponent of, if our if our goal in these memberships is to front load our spring and fall seasons with HVAC, you know, with with maintenance visits, is we set those up as being seasonal and we have them be due in say August or September and say February or March. And the reason for that is twofold. Uh, one, it puts them all in the same time frame so we can go in there and say, okay, I want to see all the fall ones that are due really easily by sorting by filtering that date. We know those are all due for a fall, which we should be checking out the whole system while we're there because there's opportunity. Um and then I can prioritize for equipment age, zip code, zone, et cetera, trying to get the routings down, et cetera, so we can keep profitable, keep being more profitable on these. Um the other reason is if I say, okay, just everybody's due every six months, I end up with service visits that are due in June and July. And when I call up the and when my CSR calls up the customer in March to say, hey, let's go ahead and get your visit scheduled. I can have somebody out next week. The customer says, Oh, but you know, you guys came out in June last year, so I want you to come out in June. And the CSR says, Oh, yeah, I see that you're due in June. Let's go ahead and book it for June. And then June comes around, it gets hot, we reschedule that customer, and then their air conditioner breaks down because we rescheduled them. And now they're upset and they don't want their club membership anymore because we put them off and then their system broke down. So I don't want, I don't ever want an HVAC visit to claim that it's due in June or July in New England. Uh, and if I was in Texas, I probably wouldn't want him to show in May, June, July, or August.
SPEAKER_02A few more, a few more dates have to get in there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Okay. So again, do you have any quick fixes that people might could implement immediately?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So the first one that we can implement, uh, and this is easier if you don't do the deferred revenue, the kind of prepayment, and then we recognize when we do it, is go into your C go into your CRM, find everything that is due more than six months in the past, and dismiss all those events. That way they're not showing up as being due for the customer. Nobody can go in and accidentally book the one from two years ago instead of the one that was due now. So now we have another one from now that is um getting clogged up in the system. Um, so clear out the old events is a really big one. Now, if you do use that deferred revenue, clearing out those events might pull you know a hundred thousand dollars onto your income statement that month. So before you do that, check with accounting and see how they want to account for that. Um, you know, it may be that it may be that they have a system in the back end where they're already clearing that out. I have some companies that do that, but it still shows that it's doing service Titan. Um, so we really want to clean up the clean up the history so that we can start to go uh go forward in a better place. The other item is if you don't know how your memberships actually work, you could book a discovery call with me. It might be a few weeks out because the schedule is pretty full right now. But I'd certainly be happy to go over what we do at Box for the Trades and as part of that call uh on the demo, look at your membership setup and see if there's any challenges.
SPEAKER_02Because we're gonna see challenges.
SPEAKER_00Uh I frankly, memberships is the the one thing that I never recommend a client set up for themselves, and they just have me do it. There are plenty of other things where sure, if you want to spend all those hours doing it instead of letting me do it efficiently, I can teach you how to do this. Uh, but memberships the sarcasm is real that I say nope, you're gonna let me do this for you. I'm gonna show you how it works, and then you're just not gonna touch anything because it will work if you make it work. Don't touch it.
SPEAKER_02Yes, okay. The last thing I know this is not specifically to do with memberships, but over the past couple of months, a lot of several of my clients will say, and this is an off the cuff question, you may not have an answer, but they'll tell me, Man, my QuickBooks isn't matching my service Titan. Do you see that a lot? Yes, and what is most of the
QuickBooks Mismatch Causes And Fixes
SPEAKER_02time like some key things that that could be?
SPEAKER_00Yep. So with regard to Membership specifically. It's usually a setup issue where we are recognizing that revenue up fr up front. Um, but then also we might have our membership set up um to see to pretend like it is showing revenue, so it's kind of double the revenue. The more common is we set up our memberships with deferred revenue, but we haven't followed through with the correct ways to have Service Titan reconcile that. And so we'll be going through and um doing work, but not actually taking that money back out of our customer future service bank account that we have in our QuickBooks and making it revenue. Um, so those are two of the really um really big challenges we see going from Service Titan to QuickBooks. The other uh the other ones are uh Service Titan for a very long time was committed to well, everybody can just switch to QuickBooks Desktop and we'll kind of ignore QuickBooks Online. And the reality now is no, everyone can't just switch to QuickBooks Desktop because that's not really even an option from Intuit. Uh, so Service Titan has realized some of the challenges we have going from Service Titan to QuickBooks Online, and they have the new touchless journal entry uh set up. Once we get QuickBooks and Service Titan to match up, if we move to touchless, whatever happened in Service Titan will also always be what happened in QuickBooks because it becomes a two-way street where I do my invoice in QuickBooks or in Service Titan, I send over just the financial data from that to QuickBooks. Service Titan keeps my customer level data. And tomorrow, when I decide to give the customer a refund, instead of having an adjustment invoice, I can just go and update that original invoice and it'll sync that data over. The other item that we find a lot with the old school batch post export process is people will have invoices that need more information from a manager or something. And we're only managing that by putting into a batch that says do not export and it's sitting in there forever. And you might have a $50,000 invoice that's three months old sitting in this holding batch because you don't have any process or procedure for it. Whereas if you were on touchless, that preliminary data would go over right away, and then when it was updated, it would sync itself up uh if you needed that. So it makes it makes the financial leaks harder to happen because the stuff is going over automatically and is matching between QuickBooks and and Service Titan.
SPEAKER_02Okay, okay. So there's just so many things. Patty uh Patty was is a great client for Limit Seed. Do you guys only work with Service Titan or do you guys work with Field Edge or House Call Pro?
SPEAKER_00At Box for the At Box for the Trades, we are a Service Titan specific specific. Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_02I thought so. Patty, I do think I have a um a reference for you, though. There are people like Gary and Jessica that do this for House Call Pro and for Field Edge. He just happens to be a Service Titan expert. Um, okay, and then Chelsea did say on here, um, I'll prop it on the screen. They're gonna be setting up welcome drips for new customers, all in marketing pro. Um, and so there is, I believe that Service Titan is a wonderful product, it has great things. Is it for everyone? No, right? Because some people just aren't you're just not it. Well, number I don't know. I hate to use the word advanced, but a lot of times it's it overpowers
When ServiceTitan Is The Wrong Fit
SPEAKER_02us. What do you think, Carrie? I know you have an opinion on that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, so if you're if you have three service technicians, which I think which has been service titans minimum level that they want somebody on, three service technicians, customers not in a truck, you're on the road. The the lift of Service Titan is going to be a heavy lift. And it's a lift worth taking if you're intending to go from three technicians to 10 technicians to 20 technicians to 30 technicians, so you don't have to do that work twice, and you can make the mistakes when you have three guys out in the truck and only have to rebuild the habits of three guys instead of making the mistakes when you got 30 guys in trucks and having to rebuild habits for 30 guys, definitely worth it. But if you don't have a clear vision to grow, uh and you've got three, you know, five technicians, uh, you're kind of moving along. You're probably you're maybe even you know an existing company, getting on it just because it's shiny and it's the best might not be the best solution because it does require uh a lot of work to make sure it's set up correctly. Um, so Service Titan is what we call it, what's called in the computer industry a semi-custom software. So there are all sorts of modules and features that can be turned on. A lot of things in Service Titan, there's no one right way to do it. Um and because of this, like other semi-custom or custom software platforms, the people that write the software might not necessarily understand what you need exactly for your business, but they know one or two ways to do it, or one or two configurations of all these things there, um, and they may not have you pointed in the right direction. So um either someone like me or someone in-house being a very much understanding service titan, this is what we need to do, this is what the process is, is really important. And so if you're a you know, three, five technician company that doesn't have immediate plans for growth, you know, that kind of investment to make it actually work right and be what it can be, you know, may not be a reasonable investment.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I'm about to start wrapping up, but if anyone has any questions as I start to wrap up,
Signatures Plus Final Next Steps
SPEAKER_02drop those there in the chat. Also, um we would love to visit with you if you have really been struggling. Like, Crystal, how do I get my marketing organized around my maintenance club? What all do I do? Lapita would love to meet with you. Um, Madison and Darien, one of them can drop in the chat the link to schedule a meeting with uh Lapita on the Lemon Seed side. And then Gary can pop his email in there if anybody's interested in talking with him. Um, but yeah, Darien's put that in there. Like we're we can help you organize all of your marketing, all of your vendors, including helping you get your maintenance program more marketable, build a build a campaign around it. Uh Lapita would love to meet with you. And then Gary just dropped his uh email there, Gary at boxfortetrades.com, so that you can meet. But if you have a question, drop it in now as I wrap up. Um, I want to say, Gary, thank you so much. I think a service tight and support company like Box for the Trades is so underrated. I think there is so much power in having an expert that this is what they do. Not only is this what they do, but they see how other companies are implementing and executing the product. And it helps them bring that perspective to you. And so if you've not considered this and you're frustrated with maybe some stuff that you've got going on in service time, maybe it has nothing to do with maintenance clubs, I encourage you to reach out to Gary and Jessica and just have a meeting with them to see like what it would look like to have them on your team helping you clean up that data. Because listen, marketing people, we want the cleanest data possible. And so we would love to help you with that. Um, and okay, let's see. Kirsten says they're using Adobe Acrobat for signing memberships forms. Is this a good way or is there an easier way?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so uh that's a really good question. Um in the field, Service Titan mobile does allow technicians on a service tighten native form to request a signature. Unfortunately, that doesn't work from the office side uh collecting a signature. So, you know, if we're talking about from the office side, hey, I've talked to the customer on the phone and I want to get the customer's autograph on a club membership enrollment form so that I can prove that they signed up for the club membership. Um you could send and you could send an estimate that has all that information on it. Again, we may have to book that estimate into a job to do it. So I'm not opposed to for those those office sales having a DocuSign or an Acrobat form uh with a signature that the customer can sign. And then we go and when we get that form back, we go and hit the sell membership button on the customer profile and sell them into a membership.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, she did say specifically the office side, which you called it. You knew where the issues were there. So again, Service Titan is not perfect, but there's normally at least a process to work around. And then Cameron said he's in the middle of this right now with his maintenance club members. Cameron, I'm assuming, are you talking about getting them to sign uh correctly and sign up or the structure inside of Service Titan? But great questions. Great question.
SPEAKER_00And I I'm gonna I'm just gonna pop in with a one more thing, Steve Jobs thing here, real quick. So if your customer calls up and we're able to sell them that membership over the phone, so they call up and they say, Hey, you know, I want that membership. Yep, $17.95 a month, blah, blah, blah. Hit the sell membership button, get the payment method, get it all set up, and send them out the invoice and have your term, you know, your terms and conditions in that invoice number and go ahead and get them signed up. I did not sign anything for Microsoft Office 365. I did not sign anything for um our Google Apps account for our business. I did not, there's so many subscriptions that I have, and I have never signed a sign-up form for any of them. So the we need to have a signature on a form for signing up to a membership is you know a relic at this point, is something of a relic that dates back to you know Jim Abrams in 1990, 85, 1985, when he was, you know, selling memberships on the streets of St. Louis, Missouri. Um, and I'm not sure that we really need an enrollment form if we get good at getting them to uh sign up over the phone or you know being able to send out you know a link to have them fill out a form on the website to say, hey, I want to enroll in the club membership.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, yeah, good feedback. Good feedback there. Well, guys, we are coming to the end of our webinar today. I want to thank everybody for joining us. Thank you for Gary, thank you for taking time to meet with us. We appreciate it. Um, I hope you have a good rest of your week. And guys, I just want to encourage you like just you eat an elephant and a cookie the same way, which is one bite at a time. So if you're looking at a CRM that you're pretty frustrated with, just fix one thing at a time and it'll compound and it'll grow with itself. So I encourage you, Gary. Thank you again for joining us. Guys, we'll be sending out the replay of this pretty soon. It'll probably be a podcast episode as well. So, again, guys, thanks for joining. Please go follow us on all of our social media channels, and we'll see you next time. Bye.