1.5M Leads Per Year. Learn How He Does It. With Guest Dave Azer

Dave Azer, Vice President of Marketing at Jacuzzi Bath Remodel, generates over 4,000 leads a day for the company's dealer network. Not a month or a week. A day. That comes to 1.5 million leads a year across roughly 40 sources. Leads run anywhere from $20 to $425, and Dave will tell you the cost of any single one is almost irrelevant. What he watches is net sales. On The TruCoach Podcast, Dave joins Brian Gottlieb in breaking down the system behind one of home improvement's biggest lead operations: how he vets a new source, why he pulls one vendor out for every one he adds in, and the $3,000 market test that tells him whether a source is worth scaling. He explains why he confirms appointments by listening to the recording of the first call instead of chasing a second confirmation call, and what that did to conversion on his highest-performing leads. Plus he gets into where AI voice agents earn a place in the call center and where operators run to them too fast. And he lands on the advice from an early mentor that still runs his operation: always follow the data.

The TruCoach Podcast with Brian Gottlieb is where you’ll find industry-specific, actionable methods to help you build a supercharged home improvement or home services business. From leads to leadership, we exist to help you and your team successfully grow. TruCoach is your single source of truth for organizations looking to scale. Brought to you by Truvolv, you’ll get exclusive access to leaders who have been there and done that - and the wisdom that only comes from experience. No fluff, no noise. Just proven strategies for you and your team to implement. Learn more and have your lightbulb moment at truvolv.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the TrueCoach Podcast, where you'll find industry-specific actionable methods to help you build a supercharged home improvement or home services business. From leads to leadership, we exist to help you and your team successfully grow. TrueCoach is your single source of truth for organizations looking to scale. Brought to you by True Vault. You'll get exclusive access to leaders who have been there and done that. And the wisdom that only comes from experience. Proven strategies for you and your team to implement.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Hi, my friends. Welcome to TrueCoach. I am so excited for this episode. I've been thinking about it for weeks now. We are joined, by my opinion, the best marketer in our industry, period. And I don't know anybody that's even close to being as good, but he's not only a great marketer, he's also a fantastic human being. He generates over 4,000 leads a day. Not not a week, not a month, a day for his dealer network. 1.5 million leads a year. We're talking about Dave Azer, the vice president of marketing for Jacuzzi Bathroom Model. Dave, thanks so much for joining us. Great to be here, Brian. For those that don't know you, maybe give people a little bit of background.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

How did you get into this crazy industry? Sure. I was in college working at Musicland, making $4 an hour back in 1987. And I saw a sign that said earn up to $10 an hour. So I became a call center rep in the timeshare business. Then about a couple months later, someone said to me, Watch these people. I'm like, okay. And then somehow I was in charge of a call center. And then honestly, everything grew from there. To give the quick story, I um led marketing for a company called New England Sash for 13 years, which regrew into the largest window, uh replacement window company uh in New England. From there, I moved to Ohio and I led marketing for a franchise of Owens Coining Basement Finishing System, which had um locations in Columbus, Chicago, Wisconsin, and Virginia. Uh I was there for four years. I spent four years um with Owens Coining Corporate, an incredible year as a consultant under Dave Yoho, which was a blast. And then the last uh 10 years with um Jacuzzi, which initially was bath wraps and quickly became jacuzzi. And so that's the quick story, Dita. I can I can drive, I can dive into details, Brian, but that's the quick, that's the quick story.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

Yeah. Well, I think it's great what you've done with that lead program for Jacuzzi bathroom model. So you you provide you you have your own company stores that you provide leads for, but then you also have this incredible best in class national lead program.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Yeah. Um, you know, we we just look under every rock every day to find more leads.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

1.5 million leads a year is it's an it's an astounding number. I how many different, like how many different lead sources does that take? It's astronomical, I imagine. Yeah, I think right now we're at about 40 overall. Yeah. So I kind of want to go there with you. I think one thing that we can all relate to as business leaders, and especially if we're trying to fix anything that's broken in marketing, how do how do you first of all start with how do you vet a new lead source when it's time to think about hmm?

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Because I'm sure people are knocking on your door all the time. I I think a lot of times it's science, but a lot of art when you're trying to vet lead source vendors. Um, number one, yeah, we we have we have 10, 15 companies reach out to us every every single month. And so we have to vet them. Um, the first thing we're doing is we're trying to limit vendors doing the same thing. So we only want to have so many at pay-per-click, even if it's unbranded, so many at SEO, so many on Facebook. So so we're trying to understand exactly what do you do, what's your secret sauce, and so what's your competitive advantage, and really have them describe that. Then we're looking for case studies and we're looking for what they've done for others that's similar to what we do, and and ultimately put all that into the in the decision making, and then we just also have to make some decisions. So I think it's number one, get as much data as you can, get as much case studies as you can, and really, really challenge these companies to say, what's your secret sauce? Why should I give you a try and really have them explain it? A lot comes out when you do that.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

I think it's really a great nugget, the idea that you only need a certain amount of companies that do similar things, because I think a lot of times we fall into we need lead aggregators. So we're turning on every possible lead aggregator there is when that might not be the best that the best approach, correct?

SPEAKER_01 4:43

Yeah, and also what's within the lead aggregate is exactly how they generate in the lead. So we want to we don't want to put like 15 people in the pay-per-click ecosystem because it's just gonna make it more competitive for all of them. So we wanna we do want to limit um how much how many companies are doing the same type of advertising for us, and then go from there. And honestly, we pull out a vendor for everyone that we add in. So we're really once we put them in, it's an extremely competitive landscape in our lead program, and we have so much data because of all these different vendors that we have. And so, realistically speaking, for every lead gen vendor we add in, we're also most likely pulling out a lower performing lead gen vendor.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

Yeah, it's kind of like running a sales batting order, right? You want your best lead providers always running. Yeah. So so maybe you can share with some business leaders out there or marketing managers, if they're watching this, how do you vet? Once you vet, you get through the vetting process, how long do you let a lead provider run before you pull the plug?

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Well, I mean, let's say we're talking about individual market, right? So we might start out on an individual market with a $3,000 test. And on those $3,000 tests, you're number one just looking for your cost per appointment, your cost per net issue to see if it's somewhat in line. However, if the first test, if it's off by say 30, 40%, that's still close enough to think I can optimize that, I can get better with that. However, sometimes you'll spend $3,000 and you'll see you set one appointment, two appointments, three appointments. A lot of times that's enough for us to unplug it. So um generally speaking, we wanna we wanna we wanna see continual improvement after the $3,000 test. If let's say, you know, we set out of $3,000, we set 10 appointments. That's $300 an appointment. If half of those issue, that's $600 issue. That's a really good test. We're gonna we're gonna start building that. Let's say it cost um, you know, $3,000, we get four appointments. That's uh $800 an appointment. Still, that's enough that I'll probably say, okay, like what where can you improve? If we throw another $3,000 at this, do you see that you can optimize it? So that's our that's our thought process when we add new. And that's that's really that's that's for individual market thought process.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

And then if if it works on an individual basis, then you start to say, okay, let's expand it. Do you go straight from individual to national?

SPEAKER_01 7:05

So we also do national um tests, and um we'll look at it a little bit differently. We might do a $20,000 test nationally because we can spread that out amongst you know 50 dealers, so it's small per dealer. It's the same kind of calculation, though, on that $20,000. You're looking if you get 20 appointments, $1,000 an appointment. Uh you're also looking quickly if you can see finance rejects. You know, in this business, when you're when you're talking lead vendors, a lot of times you'll see the first six or seven sales. You've got three or four finance rejects. So you're really watching the finance rejects closely out of the gate, um to to to see if it's a source that might make sense.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Yeah, so you you followed all the way through the funnel because I'm sure that we we all know you can you can tolerate a higher cost per energy deployment if it has a higher closing ratio and hardly, you know, and and a very low finance reject ratio, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:04

There are other factors that that well when you look at all sources, right? We have leads as low as twenty dollars, leads as high as four hundred and twenty-five dollars. So from my perception, the cost of the lead is almost irrelevant. The cost per appointment is almost irrelevant. All that really matters is how much you just spend and what is your net sales. Yeah. But when you do initial tests, you don't usually have enough spend to always go by net sales. Like if you do a $3,000 test, right? One sale means it worked and zero sales means it didn't. So you really have to, you're just making sure that you can set some initial appointments sometimes on that first chunk of money that you spend.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

And you have a team of people that work with these different lead providers, these different vendors. And I'm I'm sure they are there are accountability calls and all that sort of thing going on. If you were to chat, if you were to talk to the marketing manager at ABC Company right now, what should they be talking about with their vendors to make sure that we're that they're working together?

SPEAKER_01 9:03

Well, the biggest thing is talking to them. The biggest thing is the regular meetings to review the results. And if you're reviewing the results and then certainly passing back the data to these lead gen vendors of the leads that sold, the leads that didn't sell, the leads that rejected, the leads that didn't set, because they're constantly optimizing to whatever their search terms are on no matter what the media they're generating. So, in my opinion, the biggest thing is just the regular meetings where you're reviewing the results with that lead gen vendor.

SPEAKER_02 9:37

Yeah. So you work with countless companies across the country in the one-day bath space, but before that, with with Yoho, with all kinds of companies, what do you see that like the best call centers out there are doing differently than everybody else?

SPEAKER_01 9:52

I mean, I would say two things. Number one, it's the culture. Um, you know, it's the culture and the positivity and realizing that you don't have a business without that person that sets the appointment. And I just think that in my opinion, sometimes the call center isn't treated like that. So I think number one, it's the culture of the whole marketing team and the culture of the company, number one. And number two, it's processes. So, you know, when in my consulting days and even now, when you when you see the dealers at struggle, typically there's not a set process, there's not a set methodology, everyone's you know, using something different on the calls. So when you combine the culture and the processes, to me, those are the two biggest um factors that are probably the toughest factors to get right. To get a positive culture, very difficult. Yeah, to get everyone on the same page and having processes that you have and you follow, very difficult. Um, but the companies that do it do well.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

Yeah, I think about it's the difference between a technical approach versus an adaptive approach, right? A technical approach when when maybe we're not setting the number of appointments we need, even though we have the data, we tend to want to add another script line, another something, but but which is a technical approach to uh trying to solve a problem technically. But a lot of times it's an adaptive problem. It's the way people are thinking about what it is they do to begin with, the culture. That's much more difficult to fix, right? It's a longer slog trying to change the way people think, but it's such an important factor. It really is. Yeah, 100%. You know, I think about, in fact, the the thing that makes our industry so interesting is the difference between the bottom performers and the top performers in any role, it's not they're two or three percent better, they're they're 10 times better. And it's not because they're following the script better, it's because the way they they show up and think about what it is they do differently than everybody else. And I know you're a really big culture guy. It's one of the things I love about you. So, so how do you how do you make sure as you're generating a lot of leads, it's a lot of numbers to it, it's an accountability model. How do you how do you maintain a great culture in that environment?

SPEAKER_01 12:02

I one of the things that I think we do a really good job is we protect the off hours of the team. So we have a culture, and I know this is a this is a controversial term that work life balance is a little bit out. Um, people like so, for example, leaders. I don't want my leaders working more than 45 hours a week. If we find they're working 45 hours a week, we want to dig into that and we don't want them. What we want is 45 energetic, high impact hours from our leaders. But in this industry, a lot of companies have this culture of 55, 60, 65 hours a week. And so I do think our leaders talk about that being a difference. Um and then from there, uh all of our core values really go back to making a difference in the lives of the people, if it's the customers, if it's the team members. And so we really believe achieving the success um with the success of the team.

SPEAKER_02 13:01

Yeah, jacuzzi has always been a big supporter of Bass for the Brave, where we surprise veterans with free shower projects. And so far, we've done three or four million dollars in free shower projects for veterans. And I know you've been really the cheerleader on this inside of Jacuzzi, and I'm grateful for that. When people on your team see that that's something that you guys believe in, what do you think it does for people in general?

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Yeah, I mean, first of all, there's a lot of people at Jacuzzi that cheerlead this and advocate for it, and I'm and I'm a piece in that puzzle, so I appreciate that. It just um it just energizes the team. Honestly, and when people get to be on site, so when we when we have you know eight transformations in a year, we have um somebody from marketing that flies out, we have somebody from the local office, we have somebody from sales, we have multiple people people checking in, and you just hear over and over again how it just energizes the team. Honestly, they just want to do more of it every year. And they want to do more. So it really is um special and the people that you know, and and the team just love being a part of it, really.

SPEAKER_02 14:13

Yeah, it's such a great movement. And I I was out at a crash that you guys were doing out in Arizona, and I got a chance to stop by, talk to the veterans, see the let's say we're changing their lives. But there was there were several people within the organization at various levels, salespeople, marketers showing up, just trying to make the veteran feel special that day. It's just it's it's a it's it's my favorite day of the year, actually.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

It's very cool, it's very cool. And when and when you're a bigger company like us, there's logistics to figure out and do that. Yeah, and the team does such a great job of making every single one feel that local feeling to it, you know, which is important. So um it's something that brings the company together.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

Yeah, and if anybody watching this wants to participate in in Bass for the Brave, we have a we have an application page on our TrueVolve website. You can go there and and let us know what market you're in. We'll see if we can help you out. So I want to talk a little bit about AI and the I don't want to get into the texting side. We had we had Scott Berman from Heavyset on a couple of weeks ago, and that was great. I really want to talk about the voice calling of AI. What is what is your stance on that? Is that the future?

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Where do you come from with this? Here's where I am. We we've heard of some companies that aren't very good in the call center, and then they say, oh, AI improved me by 10%. But the problem is your conversion data might be off by 30%. And so here's my stance on it. Number one, if we're gonna consider AI, want to make sure that our call center is already world-class human. Because if not, what's happening is that I'm gonna get locked in at that AI level. Um, so again, I want to make sure, number one, that I'm world-class human. We're also hearing people say something like this Well, during some of these off hours, after hours, or even just actually I couldn't possibly handle it. But before AI, they had to figure out a way to handle it. And so my stance is this at the same time, we do want to learn. So if there's some 1% or 2% overflow, that you're just never gonna be able to handle a speed play because no matter how efficient you are, a call is gonna drop. It makes sense to handle that with AI. Additionally, we can learn to set up the AI and make it as effective as possible. I do think it's important to learn and gain some skill. I also believe that right now, some people are running too quickly to it as an easy out. Um, so that's that's my stance, Brian.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

Yeah, I think it's a really wise position to take that if you're if if you have a low-performing team and you're benchmarking AI's success against a low-performing team, maybe you want to fix your team first, raise that, raise that bar, and then introduce some AI tools there.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Yeah, there's plenty of companies that will become an ads in the next couple of years to use the AI agents. We're gonna be able to do that. Yeah, I'm not worried about being able to do that. I have another concern though, if there's a backlash and more and more people start basically saying, I'd like to talk to a human. And so are some companies eventually going to advertise correct. You'll only talk to humans if you talk with our company. Will it become a set of advantage to guarantee no AI? And so I don't think we can see that future. I think the risk is becoming too dependent on it. Yeah, and now competitors that have the skill of human call centers could have an advantage. And so I don't think any of us know it. I think the risk, though, is becoming overly dependent on AI agents.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

Yeah, I agree with that. And I also think that look, I've had a lot of employees work for me, right? They weren't always perfect, and an employee can screw up and you coach them. But when I think about AI screwing up, it's like I don't want them, I expect perfection out of anything AI related. And I think that's also going to be a challenge. But anyway, I want to move into a different topic with you because it's, I think it's such a fascinating topic. I want to talk about your take on conf on confirming appointments. Okay. Now, to be clear, you have how many company stores that inside of Jacuzzi? Depending upon what you call a territory, 12-ish, 12 or 13. So so we're talking about a lot of leads coming in. You guys, how do you approach confirmations from an appointment standpoint?

SPEAKER_01 18:21

So if there's already been a voice-to-voice contact to set the appointment, in most cases, we do not want to make another voice-to-voice contact. So the home improvement standard is this you make an appointment for one, two, three, four days out, and then you call to confirm. Correct. And so, my question for people is this in the next three to five years, do you really think it's viable to plan to get people to answer the phone twice? It's sometimes almost impossible now to get the people to answer the telephone one time, never mind two times. And so the system that we've implemented is that when we set an appointment, we confirm it by listening to the call recording of the first appointment. Now that does a couple of things. Number one, when we listen to the appointment, we give the feedback to the agent if there's mistakes made. And so it really changes the game on the quality of the first appointment. And ultimately our demo rate and our not home rate have stayed the same, and our conversion is up uh on our highest performing leads by say 10 to 15%. So that's where the direction that that we believe. Um, and we've been doing that for a couple of years now.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

Well, I think it's such a contrary way of thinking about things because you're right. It's uh, oh, you we have to confirm it within 24 to 48 hours ahead of time, and you're just saying we have a better way of doing it, and the results prove it.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Correct. Yeah, and the other thing we really believe in is a sliding scale pay structure to pay call center-ups more if they set a lead for today or tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02 20:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

Um, because that even if you lose a little bit on the demo rate on a on a non-voice-to-voice five, six, seven days out by having a higher percentage of your leads for today and tomorrow, that's going to balance it out. And again, when you put all this into the into the mix, our quality is the same and our convergence is better. And again, long-term was set up to succeed. As people answer the phone less and less, we're not dependent on talking to people twice. Especially if somebody calls in for a TV ad, I do not want to put the friction of that second call between it. I just want to drive out. If it's not home 5% of the time, so be it. Drive out and sell it, is my feeling.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

Well, I think about all over the course of my career, how many, how many set appointments got thrown away because they never got confirmed, right? So it's when we talk about missed opportunity, it's it's it's interesting. I hope, I hope people try that. So you're listening to the calls and you're listening. What specifically do you want to hear to say, yeah, we can issue that?

SPEAKER_01 21:01

So the team has a checklist, right? And it's all the basics that you would think, right? So you have the information correct. You're listening that the consumer um confirmed that specific day and time, didn't say maybe could be. Um you're listening for voice inflection, which is why AI is not great for this process at this point. But honestly, Brian, there's a checklist of six or seven things that they're listening for. They're also making sure that the process was followed because we believe the process leads to that right result. If the process wasn't followed, then it will have to get that voice-to-voice verification.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

I I just um I'm so I'm so interested that you know the people on your team, they're getting a PhD in marketing just by working under you. It's really cool. My daughter, one of them, by the way. So she works under Dave's team for those that didn't know that. But it's just it's just really cool because they're really learning, they're they're really learning how to do things right, and that's pretty terrific, you know. So, congratulations on that.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

That. Of course, Dana is a super high performer on our media team.

SPEAKER_02 22:04

Yeah, that's super cool. I want to talk about television for a moment since you brought it up first. So the philosophy of do I run a 30-second commercial, a 60-second or a two-minute spot, what's your opinion? What does the data say?

SPEAKER_01 22:18

I mean, you just gotta let the data tell you. So when you're on a 30-second spot, you know, it depends on your attribution, right? A lot of times you might have one website, so you can't always get direct attribution on your web leads. And so a 30-second call is gonna get more web leads. Um, and then a two-minute call, a majority will be calls and QR codes because the people have more time to call or to capture that QR code. Ultimately, that mix just goes up and down. There's there's really not a right answer to 30s, 60s, and 120s. Um, the market evolves, what's available evolves, and so um at different times we're heavier in different ones, but there's really not a right answer to that question, Brian.

SPEAKER_02 23:02

When I started buying television, I had one rule, which is whether right or wrong, is let's only let's only run TV as when our call center is open so we can actually answer the phone when people call. And I think one of the mistakes I see companies when they first stick their toe into running TV, they're running like, you know, Saturday morning at 6 a.m. Well, but there's nobody to feel the call if it even does come in. So I think there's some some simple things we could do to to help conversions. And and you put QR codes as a as a big factor in any TV ad that you run, correct?

SPEAKER_01 23:33

Yeah, we do. Well, there's a there's a QR code in every one. I think around uh 12% of our sales and our TV ads right now come from QR codes.

SPEAKER_02 23:41

Yeah, that's pretty amazing. You know, Dave, I I could just spend all day talking to you, all day and night talking to you. I but we don't have all day and night. So I really want to ask one question. You have obviously built, again, the best marketing team in the industry, and that knowledge didn't come, you weren't born with that. What is who's an early mentor of yours that really helped you formulate what you want to do and and how to be successful?

SPEAKER_01 24:08

Um, I I had quite a few early mentors from when I was 19 in the timeshare business to really young in the window business. Um, one of them was Joe Maronello. He um he actually launched home craft windows, insel insel sash windows, and um, you know, and then eventually sold it to Shuco. And so he is certainly one of the legendary guys in the in the window industry back in the 80s and 90s. One of the things he taught me is always follow the data. So, number one, always be in the data, always make sure you have the data. And once you have the data, you can diagnose the issue and look at every stage of the funnel, and that really tells you where to go. So I think that was an early um piece of advice that I followed that's been really valuable.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

Yeah, it's interesting. Well, when when I had my businesses, I used to train my sales managers on a sales report that started with just a whole funnel and demo rate and different sales reps. And what is the data telling us? Because the data does speak to you once you know how to read it and if you know how to listen to it. So that's that's some really, really good advice, Dave. So what people struggling saying, My gosh, I can't generate a lead, and here you are generating over 4,000 leads a day. The good news is the leads are out there if you know how to go get them, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 25:24

The leads are out there. There's still plenty of business out there for everybody. We hear all the data now, which talks about people are reinvested in their homes, they're staying in their homes. The home home remodeling business is still booming. Um, just a matter of getting those leads.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

Yeah, Dave, I'm very, very grateful for you to spend time with everybody on TrueCoach here. I really appreciate it. You're you're amazing. Keep on making a difference in this world. You're the best at what you do, man. I appreciate you. My friends, thanks so much for joining us on TrueCoach. Hope you all have a wonderful day. Thanks, Brian.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Great being here today. You've been tapped into the True Coach podcast from TrueVolve. Home improvement and home services experts helping professionals like you get better results faster. Subscribe and follow on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts for more expert insights. From digital marketing to business coaching, TrueVolve is dedicated to helping your business grow. Learn more and have your light bulb moment at TrueVolve.com.