Tim Flynn, founder of Winters Home Services in the Boston area, started out like most other plumbers: working for someone else. During this time, he learned what not to do.

When he began his company, he had only one truck. But as he learned more about the industry, he saw an opportunity to grow his business by creating an exit strategy for retiring plumbers. From there, he built up his fleet from one truck to 21 trucks.

Tim sees a lot of poaching happen in his industry. His solution to this problem has been taking the time to train, teach, engage, educate, and invest in his employees.

“What’s the lifetime value of an employee? I was taught a long time ago if you train people they could leave and go work for somebody else. But what if you train them and they stay? The lifetime value of an employee is worth way more than the lifetime value of a customer.”

If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers, and it will come full circle.

Top 3 things that are important about online marketing and that he has learned over the years:

What matters is how many leads you’re getting from your online strategy. If you want to increase your staff and grow your business, increase your calls and improve your conversion process and rates.

Tim defines a good lead as someone who finds them online and clicks to call. He credits the quality of their leads increasing due to the quality and amount of their reviews.

He calls reviews “the new word of mouth.” Incentivizing his staff to ask for reviews has worked well to improve their online presence.

Discovering What Marketing Support You Need

Tim’s advice is to invest in a good website and good people. He had worked with many marketing companies before he hired Scorpion. He was constantly changing his marketing tactics and spending more and more money. Now, with Scorpion, he spends less, doesn’t have to change his tactics, and doesn’t have to worry about hitting his budget.

“I finally got what I wanted from my marketing company… get specific about what you want.”

While the marketing support has been crucial to gaining quality leads, Tim has made sure his staff is well-trained in how to close those leads.

“I think that how to deal with people is the biggest piece of training you can get… because it’s all about the person, it’s all about the customer.”