The Sharpest Tool™

Kenny Chapman founded The Blue Collar Success Group with the mission to help home services industry operators become real owners. The coaching, training, and development company gives home services business owners the tools to improve employee consistency, retention, communication, and management, as well as maximize leads.

Kenny likens the relationship between sales and marketing to marriage. It takes a certain degree of communication and teamwork in order for it to be successful.

“The sales team and the marketing team can have a really good marriage where everything is communicating really well and reporting is going back and forth or sales and marketing can end up... in divorce or a turmoil-based relationship.”

Kenny emphasizes that it’s important to ask what each team can bring to the table to solve issues in sales. With combined efforts, marketing and sales teams can create a productive system that will bring in leads.

Take the time to consider what your service or product is worth and what customers are willing to pay for that service or product.

“You’ve got to figure out cost to goods and labor estimates and all these things. And if you don’t do it effectively, which most don’t, then you go to market underpriced and underpriced selling kills everything.”

The Blue Collar Success Group provides a “12 Step Ultimate Client Experience” that focuses on the relationship between the company and the customer. In the customer/company relationship, you are the hero, you are providing an invaluable service.

Marketing and Sales

These steps demonstrate the attentiveness required for success. The process is not over after the sale is through. You still must ensure your product or services are adequate, and also cultivate a continued relationship with your client that may prompt their return and possible promotion of your business.

Kenny highlights a few steps to help you determine when and where your business is making sales.

In the home services industry, many of the services and products offered were at one point considered a commodity and wants. However, over time these wants have become necessities—giving your service an invaluable edge.

If you are confident in the value of the products and services you provide, your customers will be confident in you.

Business owners need to be thinking more, Kenny says. Step back and brainstorm, plan, assess current problems and successes, and predict future outcomes.

The problem is, in the home services industry, boards of directors don’t really exist. The Blue Collar Success Group’s Mastermind Groups enable business owners to reach a board of directors mentality without ever establishing an actual board.

“Our frontline is kicked in the teeth all day... we have challenges day after day, call after call… as owners, as leaders of these organizations, we have got to get some good information, we have got to listen to people who are going through the same thing.”

Listening to peers in the industry via podcasts can relieve stress for home services business owners. You can discover invaluable tips on business priorities, improving management and sales skills, maximizing leads, and advancing overall business growth.

Kenny Chapman founded The Blue Collar Success Group with the mission to help home services industry operators become more successful owners.

The coaching, training, and development company gives home services businesses the tools to improve employee consistency, retention, communication, and management, as well as to maximize leads.

“The home services industry is changing faster than we’ve ever seen it and we want to be a guiding light to that. So, we’re going to touch more lives and help people understand where to go.”

“Sales does not matter… all that matters is what goes to the bottom line… meaning that we watch three, four, five, ten million dollar companies generate a lot of sales, but there’s nothing at the bottom, which creates stress, which creates anxiety, which creates fear, which doesn’t allow owners to make good decisions.”

Kenny highlights that while the state of sales in the current economy is very good, there is no guarantee that it will stay that way forever. If your company is not making decisions with the bottom line in mind, it can lead to serious issues in the long run.

“The challenge is really, entrepreneurs are optimists by nature, we can’t not be. When business owners get up in the morning, you have got to go ‘Today is gonna be better’... the challenge is, we don’t have our own blindspots.”

At The Blue Collar Success Group, they create “mastermind groups” to support business owners and help you predict future issues and find those blindspots.

The key, Kenny says, is preparing for a recession prior to it actually happening. With this in mind, business owners will have a plan set in place so that in the event of a flood, you won’t sink, but swim.

Kenny states that you have to build trust in order to earn the authority to ask a customer for their business.

A strong relationship with the customer, begins inside the company. It is the culture within the company that will ultimately affect the client relationship.

“When things get busy, sometimes owners have the tendency to forget the importance of team, and the importance of how we treat them. If you treat an internal client, meaning a team member, like a commodity, then they will treat your end user like a commodity.”

“If recruiting isn’t as equally important as generating leads, then you’re not serious about recruiting.”

Kenny encourages business owners who want all the benefits of a good team, to invest as much in recruiting as you are in securing leads. And, when it comes to recruiting today’s generation of Millennials, there are certain facets of the home services industry that it is important to highlight.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this interview with Kenny Chapman.

Eric Dutton was drafted at an early age into the plumbing world by his stepfather. While he tried his best to avoid being pulled into the trade industry, from the start it was obvious that he had a natural aptitude for the practice. Soon enough, he surpassed his stepfather, and established the Dutton Plumbing brand.

“I started going to the next level, started doing bigger projects, got into new construction at that time and then evolved from that, and ultimately into home service plumbing—that spoke to me, that really gave me purpose, helping people in their homes, solving problems, and the opportunity to make good money.”

Within the home services environment, Eric was able to make real connections with clients and build meaningful relationships. This area, he felt, gave him purpose as a problem solver and helped him realize that plumbing is one of the most important practices in the trade industry.

Eric never really had a job prior to Dutton Plumbing; rather, he always worked for family without a solid paycheck. This laid back and close-knit family environment allowed for free thinking and gave him the opportunity to go his own way.

“I wasn’t caught up in that box, on that treadmill chasing that hourly bill or that hourly paycheck and getting caught up in that. It allowed me to be a freethinker and forge my own path.”

With this open mind and ability to prioritize relationships over money, the very foundations of what Dutton Plumbing would stand for were formed.

“I’m very proud to be a plumber, I feel plumbers are the most genuine best people on the planet. We do more for society than any other trade—we save people, we create civilizations.”

Dutton Plumbing prides itself on its personable staff, focus on high quality service, and relationship building. Unlike some other plumbers in the industry, Dutton hopes to not only get the job done, but to ensure the happiness and comfort of the client along the way. Dutton Plumbers are kind and helpful, and as their slogan goes, they’re “the plumber you’d send to your Mom’s house.”

As the company grew, the brand which once revolved around solely Eric himself, started to revolve around the people who worked for him. More than anything, Eric wants the people who work for him—who ultimately represent him and his business—to truly care.

“Dealing with people, the relationships. You go into people’s homes get to know who they are, their kids, their pets, it’s more than just screwing pipes together, it’s more than just fixing things…you’re dealing with people.”

To keep your brand healthy and growing, you have to bring people in that embody everything you do. Each of his workers are well versed in how to deal with customers and handle customer service issues. Through and through, Eric says, personality is key; his plumbers must have the personable disposition which he grew his company name on.

Eric is a perfectionist; he likes clean, exact, and professional service from his team. Because of this, and the fact that the landscape of the home services industry is always changing, Eric is always looking for ways to take himself and his business to the next level.

While this is the case, he has never found “competition” to be a true issue in his industry. Rather, he has a deep respect for all plumbers at every level—from mom and pop plumbers to big name corporations—and finds that in the end, they all have the common goal of being fixers.

One of the biggest challenges many business owners face is the inability to let go. That is, being able to trust the people around you; to empower people, delegate, enable people to work freely; and to stop micromanaging.

Once you hire the right people and give them the room they need to grow and thrive, you’ll find yourself surrounded by a very talented team and you’ll be more than satisfied. From there you won’t have to worry about day-to-day problems and you’ll be able to focus on larger challenges, like business growth—you’ll be able to “let go.”

Jamie Adams is the Chief Revenue Officer at Scorpion. He has worked in digital marketing for over 12 years and leads Scorpion’s sales and business development team to recruit and help businesses grow with innovative, strategic marketing.

He works with Scorpion clients across several industries, including home services, and is especially passionate about connecting local businesses with customers.

Media consumption as a whole has increased, especially with mobile devices. In the past, people used to have to use a desktop computer to find an answer to their question or a business’s contact information. But now, all the information you are looking for is in your back pocket, so we are consuming content at every moment on phones.

Today, when customers are at a point of need, they are able to type in the service or use voice command to search for what they need and discover a high-quality solution quickly. Jamie shares the example of when he needed an HVAC technician ASAP, and immediately searched for one near him on his phone.

“I’m thinking about proximity, I’m thinking about what’s their schedule like, and I’m thinking about can I find validation quickly that these guys are good at what they do.”

A micro-moment is the exact moment in time when a consumer realizes they have a need for a specific product or service.

Jamie sees that businesses who are maximizing these micro-moments are present in their consumers’ media channels instead of relying on a memory of seeing a billboard or through word of mouth. These are the businesses who are growing successfully.

Jamie highlights that many businesses only focus on this one moment, but in order to maximize your results, you need to focus on several moments leading up to this one.

The traditional, broad overview of the marketing funnel illustrates the framework for how your brand can get in front of your consumer early on to maximize the micro-moment:

By marketing to these customers and exposing them to your brand and services through various social media platforms prior to this moment of need, you build trust and awareness. You have an opportunity to influence the customer to not just search for a service in their moment of need, but to search for your specific company. Today, this is happening on mobile devices through websites and ads, but also with voice technology, which underlines the importance of having an easy-to-navigate website and clear copy.

For home services businesses, identifying these moments before a moment of need is challenging because customers aren’t necessarily considering a purchase unless they need it immediately. Jamie says that having a presence on social media is an important tool for building this awareness of your business. It will help change your consumer’s moment of need from one of panic to one of certainty. They know who they are going to call to fix their problem.

Jamie shares the approach of one of his clients, S & D Plumbing, as a good example of how home services businesses can take advantage of micro-moments by building awareness on social media. Through content that tells their story and showcases the staff that powers their brand and services, they help their audience relate to and trust their brand.

For example, they ran a Valentine’s Day parody video advertising a free massage to anyone who shared their video. The video featured one of their technicians giving a massage to a co-worker on a workman’s table. They weren’t directly marketing their plumbing services, but they were making a feel-good, memorable impression on potential customers.

“Doing content like that and exposing your brand to people before they need you is going to give you an advantage when that need happens.”

Howie Metz is the owner and founder of Quality First Plumbing & Heating based out of Denver, CO. Since 2008, Howie and his wife have created a home services business known for its family-run, family-based, family-values approach and high-quality service.

It was his brother who initially introduced him to plumbing. When they parted ways, Howie was inspired to start his own business built on a foundation of trust and integrity.

“It’s not just about money, it’s about solving their problem, not selling them things they don’t necessarily need, giving them options, but looking out for their best interests first, instead of my own. And that really set us apart.”

Quality, Howie says, is the most important aspect of what they do. And, it lasts.

“We completely embrace technology. We take pictures before, during, and after so there’s no question. If a customer may have forgotten something they said on the phone when they were booking the call, they have the capability of listening to that call on the job site... using technology to everyone’s advantage makes us do a better job, a longer lasting job, and there’s complete accountability.”

Howie says he looks for three things when hiring: be on time, be sober, and give 100% of your best self.

Quality First’s family-centered approach to culture has also drawn loyal, invested employees into the fold. Howie values his employees’ ideas and feedback, which he says often informs and shapes the trajectory of the company.

However, it is often challenging to find and recruit techs for the trades because today’s generation is groomed to go to college. The trades are suffering because the pool of experienced people is dwindling.

“I go to high schools and I talk to kids and if you’re good with your hands, this may be a viable alternative for you, whether it be a plumber, a heating guy, or an electrician.”

For Howie, his mission is giving back and his why is his family.

Howie begins every company meeting with high energy music and a motivational video. This keeps his team engaged, positive, and connected. He also shares how utilizing technology in their company workflow is crucial for keeping Millennials motivated and excited about doing their jobs well.

Thanks to Scorpion, Quality First has gone from having clients mainly in the commercial space to expanding into the residential space. Howie credits the trustworthy experts at Scorpion for helping his team achieve their goals and deliver high-quality home services.

John Caprine is the Internet Marketing Manager Senior at Scorpion. He is passionate about helping home services clients strategize and communicate in a way that aligns with their identity and cuts through the noise of the competition. By coming alongside his clients as a partner, he identifies what will generate calls for their business, how to improve their website to tell their business story, and ultimately generate revenue.

John explains that when your potential customers are looking for a home services provider like a plumber, electrician, or HVAC contractor, their decision is heavily influenced by the reputation of your business.

“Having an online reputation that is positive, responsive, is really important to the end user in the long run.”

Today, people are less likely to be searching based on loyalty to specific brands and businesses. They care about who will provide the best service, the amount and quality of your reviews, your prices, and the presentation of information about your services.

Your online reputation and reviews are crucial to shaping how your customers view your business. In addition, they can inform the success of your ads.

Local Services Ads (LSAs) are a new type of Google ad where you pay per lead, instead of pay per click. LSAs pull from your online presence, so the quality and amount of reviews you have can impact how often you show up in local searches. You can target your LSAs specifically to show up with keywords specific to your industry.

“How Google perceives where you show up in the organic search results and now impacts your Local Service Ads and where you show up in those is significant. It’s based on over 300 different factors… reviews, your online reputation, how many visits come to your website, how responsive you are to those reviews coming across. It plays a really large role in their reception of you.”

It’s important to know that sometimes your business will get a negative review.

John encourages all of his clients to respond quickly and professionally to negative reviews and also reach out personally to the upset customer. This not only resolves things with the person who left the negative review (and they may even remove it!) but also shows potential customers who you are as a business.

So how do you gather more reviews? The sincerity of a technician asking a client for their honest feedback is the most impactful, successful strategy.

Kate (Wertzberger) Fitzgerald, Senior Internet Marketing Manager at Scorpion, works primarily with the home services division to make sure that all of their campaigns are running smoothly. She is passionate about creating relationships with her clients and helping them reach their goals.

In marketing, attribution is all about looking at cause and effect. What drove a phone call? What drove a paid job? Kate says that identifying your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is the first step to identifying attribution and achieving your goals.

“KPIs are Key Performance Indicators and essentially… what that means for a business owner is they would set up an objective that they want to hit for the entire company and also for individuals and then they would plan out what exactly that would look like.”

For example, Kate outlines what identifying KPIs might look like for your home services business.

Setting these incremental goals will help you achieve your big goals.

Your goals and KPIs don’t always have to be about ROI. Sometimes your KPIs might be measuring frequency, reach, and traffic, or SEO, if your goals are branding or online presence focused.

“Honestly, anytime you’re building your brand or you’re improving your organic presence, you will see that positively reflect in the number of calls...and correlate with an increase in revenue.”

Kate shares that this is why it’s so important to have a well-rounded, holistic marketing plan because all of the pieces work together. This also ensures that your target audience is familiar with you before they need you.

“By the time they’re looking for the service that they need, they should already have been exposed to you in some way, shape, or form because that’s going to build a lot of credibility and value.”

While revenue is important, there are so many things that go into closing a sale. The beauty of digital marketing is that it is possible to go back and look at a campaign that is getting a lot of calls and interaction but isn’t getting the closing numbers desired, and see where improvement can happen.

Kate highlights that tools like Google Analytics and Scorpion’s Dashboard can help identify attribution of where your sales are coming from:

Kate says that if you really want to know where your revenue is coming from in terms of calls, ditch the vanity number for call tracking numbers.

Bob Uttenreuther is a Senior Strategic Partner Manager at Google. In his role, he equips Scorpion with the knowledge and expertise to use Google’s tools strategically for clients.

Bob explains that Scorpion is part of the Premier Google Partner Program which allows Scorpion to bring their clients:

To become a Google Premier Partner, Scorpion had to meet a high standard of performance across the following categories:

Every year, Google surveys its partners and their partners’ customers to gauge performance and satisfaction. Scorpion has won the customer satisfaction award for the past two years!

Bob emphasizes that the value of working with one of Google’s Premier Partners like Scorpion is that your home services business gets access to top insights, trends, and experience. From website development to local ads and lead management, Google Premier Partners help your business get better results.

Google’s mission statement is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

“Within channel sales… we empower partners to deliver the benefits of Google marketing solutions at scale and with that it’s helping businesses worldwide grow.”

Bob highlights that these solutions help today’s businesses cut through the noise. Today, your home services business has so many ways to reach your customers: from social media, to email, to print materials, and more. Google Partners can help your business decide which tactics will help you reach your customers at the right time in the right place.

With Google’s solutions, from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Webmaster Tools, Search Console, and Local Services Ads, you can make your business more discoverable and trustworthy.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important strategy for driving your audience to your website. It validates your business and is important to showing potential customers that you are the answer to their problems. In addition, Bob shares how Google Partners utilize Google’s Webmaster Tools and the Search Console to help make your business’s website presence stronger.

“I direct people to Webmaster Tools to actually gain access to the things that will help them develop a better website, where the Search Console is going to give them insight into how to make or where they should be making those changes.”

Google Partners can also help connect your home services business to your service area with Local Services Ads.

In order to have your home services business show up with a Local Services Ad, your business must become verified by Google. This is necessary because Google backs their Local Services Ads with a guarantee to customers that your home services business will complete your job or service to the highest standard.

To get started and reach your customers efficiently, Bob recommends:

Raphael Paris is the Vice President of People Operations at Scorpion. He focuses on creating a thriving company culture and making sure that employees love what they do.

In the past, he says that Human Relations departments were focused on compliance and making sure that employees followed the rules. Today, they are much more people focused and want to create an environment where their teams are inspired.

“First off the bat, when you’re talking about culture, hiring is the most important thing you can do. This is just a guess on my part, but 90% of the problems you run into are bad culture fit hires.”

Take the time to get the best talent. Not only will this benefit your company, it will also save you money: it costs 1.5 in annual salary for every bad hire you make.

In the home services industry, Raphael says he often sees businesses hiring with only knowledge, skills, and abilities as the priorities. However, he says you should actually be focused on:

1. Are they are a good culture fit? Do they get along with the team? Do they inspire those around them? Are they smart?

Raphael’s advice is to hire slow and fire fast.

A part of having a good culture is you have to care enough about the high performance and low performance. If you have someone who is not performing, you have to let them know.”

You want people who have the intrinsic desire to do the best job. That defines your culture.

Avoiding emergency hires is all about preparation.

1. Build a Pool: Interview and keep track of people even when you are not hiring immediately. That way, when you do need to hire, you have a pool of people you know have potential, and you don’t cut corners.

Raphael has a wealth of experience and knowledge when it comes to managing Millennials. He believes it requires a unique approach, supported by a strong culture.

1. You have to give your employees opportunities to grow rather than just telling them to grow.

Susan Frew, owner and operator of Sunshine Plumbing, Heating & Air; TED talk speaker; and author has been working with small businesses since the beginning of her career. From her sales role at AT&T to starting a company under the business coaching franchise Action Coach, she has a wealth of experience in what it takes to help small businesses thrive.

When she met her husband, a plumber, they merged their talents and founded Sunshine Plumbing, Heating & Air based in Denver, CO.

While Susan says there have been times where she has seen a bit of resistance to her leading role in the trades as a woman, it has mostly been an advantage.

“Eighty percent of our clients are women, because women spend the most amount of money in the home in the United States. So they love doing business with a woman-owned company!”

She would also love to employ women technicians, but she currently does not have any. She even did a TED talk last year about why there are no women in the trades, part of the larger problem of a shrinking workforce.

Susan says that because college has been the priority for parents and children in the last 20 years, trade school has fallen to the wayside. In fact, within the next 3-5 years, estimates say we will be one million people short of necessary people in the trade industry because baby boomers are retiring, and nobody is coming in to fill their shoes.

Susan’s solution: talk to kids in 7th and 8th grade about the opportunities in the trades and encourage parents to be open-minded about the opportunities that trade school presents.

“Going into the trades is not about brawn and might, it’s about being super smart and having great customer service.”

While Sunshine Plumbing, Heating & Air has won the best place to work award, Susan says these factors have been even more instrumental in bringing in the right team and creating a positive culture.

The Pufferfish Effect is the title of Susan’s new book, which you can order now! She shares how this idea of the “Pufferfish Effect” was inspired by Seth Godin’s “Purple Cow” concept.

With 950 competitors in their market, Sunshine Plumbing, Heating & Air had to set themselves apart. They created a super high-touch customer experience that won them a lot of recognition and a reputation that their business is much larger than it really is, similar to a pufferfish! Susan emphasizes that this idea hinges on the importance of finding your uniqueness and using that to your advantage. What can you say about your business that nobody else can say?

“That’s the way we’ve always done it,” is something that is never said at Sunshine Plumbing, Heating & Air.

Susan shares how their Video Plumber service, where they observe the client’s problem and provide a solution and estimate over video, is a perfect example of innovation. Not only does it cater to the immediate gratification and timeliness of today’s culture, it also provides a great working opportunity for disabled or veteran techs. She also foresees them utilizing drones in the future to make Video Plumber even more effective.

Her secret to finding inspiration for innovation is by staying up to date on cutting edge practices across industries, not only plumbing.

Susan’s favorite tools for creating an outstanding customer experience include:

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