Automation & AI: Win More Carpet Cleaning Jobs Faster

The most effective strategy combines all three. Automation can trigger a quick acknowledgment text and email, then escalate to a phone call for high-value or complex jobs. This multi-channel approach meets customers where they’re most comfortable, boosting conversion rates.

00:00:20
And you know, we every year we kind of there’s certain topics that just what’s the newest newest, latest, greatest updates. There’s a lot of things that the same is the same, but how you present it, where it comes out, what you do, all that kind of stuff changes. And obviously, the massive change we’ve been talking about for quite a while now, um, is AI.

00:00:41
In fact, every Friday, I am on the AI marketing experts podcast. Go find us. I think we got seven, eight, nine episodes out now. Um, up on YouTube and Spotify and stuff like that with four other really smart agency owners because AI I use every day in my life. Kind of fell backwards into it a few years ago.

00:01:03
But you know even just go back in the last year and the last 6 months in the last 3 months and the last two months and the last two days the amount of agentic agents that we learn that we’re making and building and understanding why and the amount of co like AI has learned to write its own code to the point where human code is not needed anymore and the next iteration is AI is just going to be coding things for us completely with a code set we don’t even understand and pulling in all the design modules and stuff like that. Again, you you still need smarts. It’s like garbage in, garbage out. You need good humans to be involved in the process. But the more our world goes AI, the more humans need to be in contact with humans. So, I’m not one of these people that say, “Oh, get, you know, switch everything over to AI.” AI is an assistant. It will be, it’ll be an assistant when you go to the doctor. all your blood tests, all your history is there so you don’t have to rely on your doctor getting older and forgetting or giving you that five minutes of attention and reading your chart before

00:02:05
you walk in. They are bringing AI in so that it’s like here’s your entire history. Here’s your blood test. Here’s some ideas. Here’s some, you know, maybe we should do this and this and this because you might, you know, you we might want to rule out this and rule out that.

00:02:17
And it’s not sort of how well trained was your doc, this doctor versus your friend’s doctor, you know, kind of idea. Like we’re getting to a world where, you know, it’s amazing, but that amazingness is is running really, really fast. So the industrial revolution is going to look like a slowmoving train compared to the AI revolution.

00:02:36
So everything we do in our world, our lives, um, our appliances are going to have AI, our vehicles are going to have AI. about um a little lapel pin I’m getting that’s what it does is you know you just press a button go okay let’s talk and it records all your conversations takes the transcripts puts them into like you can put them into um chat DPT or claude or perplexity and all of that kind of stuff as well and then just have that history of conversations to go back to and I think that’s really amazing I don’t think we should probably use that on our spouses because it’s like oh no oh no let’s go back you said this you know I think we’re going to be in trouble so you know again there is some warning ing signs. But anyways, so we’re going to talk about all that. Welcome to the Carpet Cleaner Success Podcast, a show created to inspire carpet cleaning business owners to build their own thriving residential and commercial cleaning business. Your host, John Clintenning, has built and sold successful cleaning businesses for multiple six figures over his 30-year career and is the founder of Carpet Cleaner Marketing Masters, a digital

00:03:39
agency that turns your online marketing into a lead generation machine. Tune in as John shares proven tips, strategies, and expert interviews to help fasttrack your success in the carpet cleaning industry. [Music] Welcome. Today we’re going to have a great conversation about running our businesses better with automation AIs um to to book more appointments to be better at what we do to help do some of that heavy lifting and and and that kind of thing just make make things easier so we can be more human. we can pick up the phone and call our clients and have those conversations uh and things like that because we’ve got some of the other stuff being taken care of faster, better, easier so we can do more. That’s what we do on our end. We’re not building AI agents and and using leaning into AI in every single department of

00:04:41
our company um so we can do less. We’re doing it so we can do more for all of our clients and the industry and stuff like that. Um so part of that is is what we’re going to talk about today. Let me switch over to the other screen and let’s have this uh great conversation for the next hour or so on on how to win more jobs faster.

00:04:59
So there we go up in the top corner. So um so yeah, today we’re going to be talking about book more with smarter followup. So automations but now automations layered with AI. So something that we’ve always suggested is you know you should be following up. We’re going to talk about that.

00:05:17
We’re going to talk about what kind of followup that the like, you know, if you follow up with inquiries. I will be using the word leads and you can cringe every time I do because I hate the word as well, but lead is sort of a not only a keyword and a buzz word, it’s a it’s kind of a mindset, but it’s an inquiry.

00:05:34
Um, you want to be following up with your inquiries uh consistently and regularly. As always saying, kind of crudely, but until they buy or die. Um, but you want to be have them in a funnel. You want to have them in a database. You want to stay in touch. You want to tell them happy customer stories. You want to reach out to you want to go, hey, is it, you know, did you did you make a decision on that? Is it time um time to work on that? Automation is going to help with has always been able to help with that.

00:05:59
Doing it is the most important. Way back in the day, Heather and I in my office when I ran all my cleaning businesses and she was ran the office for me. It was like I’d come back, learn something new, come back from a a convention. I’m always working on the business, marketer of the business, not the guy in the truck.

00:06:13
Um, you know, that was the first year and a half, 30 years ago. Uh, working on growing the business was okay, I learned something else. Let’s go do that. And it the automation was the rolling um crate that we got from the um the uh office supply store, one of those crates that you hang folders in. And it was, hey, when somebody calls, if they didn’t book, call them back tomorrow.

00:06:33
If you didn’t get a hold of them, send them an email. Leave them a voicemail. Send them an email. Move it three days back. And eventually at the end of two weeks, send them the mafia offer, the offer they can’t refuse if they’re a good qualified candidate. Um, make sure your marketing is doing that.

00:06:49
And then if they still didn’t book, put them into the nurture process so that they hear from you with emails and print and and physical and outreaches every month and then a check-in every three months and and all that kind of stuff. We do that with leads. We do that with databases. We do that with referral partners.

00:07:09
We do that with, you know, again, even like customer databases. You have a couple different um what they like to call ICPS or ideal client profiles, right? You have to build out those ICPs. What is your best ICP residentially? Your customer avatar. What’s your best ICP um commercially? What does that look like? There’s there’s layers to that.

00:07:28
Like there’s there’s one main, then there’s go deeper. Go deeper. Right? Think a little bit more. each one of them has different needs, wants, fears, stuff like that. So, we do a lot of we use a lot of AI to help us figure that out so that messaging can be better um to those people, right? So, we do a lot of that for our clients to so that messaging can be better in some of the stuff that we do and we recommend that that’s happening as well.

00:07:54
So, we’re going to talk all about that. So, hopefully that makes sense. And if that does make sense, I have to just find my um next button. There it is. Okay. So, we’re gonna turn off our cell phones. are going to turn off Facebook. Um, obviously if you’re home service, home cleaning service, anything like that, you’re going to give me the next 60 minutes of your attention and I as a as a trade-off back against that agreement and going to give you some very very deep insightful information that not a lot of other people are talking about. It’s there there’s kind of a a noisy mess out there. Think of this as your curated. Okay, Gay, John, what what can we do right now based on everything out there? What’s important? What’s not important? What do we focus on? What do we not focus on? Because again, actionable information. What would what would I do in my own business? Having grown million-dollar successful cleaning businesses over 30 years, exited, sold them off, helped with marketing, um, consulting for the last 20 years, building million-dollar cleaning businesses. Um, and, you know, and any level you want. And then, you know, the last 15 years doing digital marketing

00:08:56
for cleaners and other businesses. And then the last six only working with the cleaning industry, home cleaning industry. So, um, yeah, what would I do? How would I use what’s actually going on out there to better run my business? And when would I put it in place? Because you can’t do everything all at once.

00:09:12
That’s drinking from a fire hydrant. How do you slow it down and go implementation is everything one step at a time. Um, but able to keep up because ah, what keeps me awake at night is how fast everything is moving and how to simplify that and and stay plugged in. So, let’s talk about that.

00:09:28
So, what we’re going to cover today, the hidden reasons why you’re losing bookings, and the five minute fix, right? Um, the master follow the mass master the follow-up game, timing, frequency, and human touch. Um, in fact, if I could go back into the slide right now, I’d make human touch huge and red because we’re going to lose the human touch.

00:09:47
Everybody thinks that AI can, oh, I don’t need to hire employees anymore. I’m just gonna use AI to do No, no, no. Um, AI can be a great assistant. AI can be, you know, great at at at helping and simplifying and giving you a thought partner and you go for a walk and and hit chat GPT up and say, “Hey, I’m out for a walk and I wanted to have a conversation with you about this.

00:10:13
” And your chat GPT would go, “Great. Let’s have a conversation about that.” Right? Always very positive. It always loves you. Um, and then you you go back and forth and when you’re done, you say, you know, what did we learn today? What can we what can we do about that? and you can come, you can have it give you a bulletoint list and that was your walk. Um that that’s all cool.

00:10:29
It could be about your business, about your life, about your dog, about your, you know, renovations, about you name it. But, um, we’re going to be all tied into that, but the human touch becomes the missing piece, right? So, we want to make sure we we we we have real people um involved in our client outreach, retention, all that.

00:10:48
So, you want smarter, not harder. How to automate without losing the personal touch. again there that is again and lead uh lead um conversion that feels effortless because it’s a system you know you build a system you run the system and then you you you monitor the system you see the results um the data coming out of the system and then if the data isn’t right you don’t wing it you fix the system so if you build operations and systems SOPs we call them right standard operating procedures um APIs that’s another thing that you could be calling it Um if you’ve got those kinds of things, systems and KPIs running in your business, then um then you know now now you can now you can grow your company and as something is developing you can decide well is that good? How do I make it better? How do I make it best? Do I need to make adjustments? You can show the data to somebody because you have a systemized way of doing things. scripts on phones work better because if you’re all saying the if you’re saying the same thing the

00:11:51
same way the right way then your booking percentage is 45% somebody else’s booking percentage is 52% or 58% you can go hey show me your oh wow oh I see it oh wow that’s a little bit of nuance that’s a little bit different let me try that next time because there is a system in place so we’re going to talk about that as well so as we get into that let’s take a look who am I right so um for anybody who’s new here.

00:12:15
Um, been in a career in cleaning industry since 1990 while still in high school. U started a window cleaning company, owner of franchises and independent businesses and ecom that goes underneath our logo for some reason. Um, and um, and been a consultant in the industry as well. Just I learned I didn’t know what I didn’t know. So, I learned what I didn’t know.

00:12:36
And by learning what I didn’t know, I decided to teach what I didn’t know um, and help other people out, buddies and friends. and eventually got asked more and more and more and created consultancy and and coaching programs and then eventually helping with digital marketing in general digital marketing specifically and all of that kind of stuff.

00:12:55
So, I’ve lectured and talked on stages about this two-day recently we just have three-day elite retreats. We recently just did in March a two-day um um basically uh business accelerator with CleanFax magazine. Jeff Cross and I did that. Um, so I’ve done all of this. I’ve wrote the book on it literally.

00:13:15
So if you want to go to uh um Amazon and pick up the complete glide internet marketing uh again even as things are changing the concepts are all the same. What what needs to happen where what why is is is all the same psychology. It’s just there’s different ways to um implement it in today’s day and age with AI and stuff like that.

00:13:35
So, um, also, uh, again, industry leader of the year in Clean Facts magazine two years ago, uh, spoken on stages, all that kind of stuff. That’s cool stuff. Um, more importantly, probably is the what we do with our clients, right? So, we like to grow very successful clients that can exit the way they want to, be number one everywhere, build the type of business they want with the amount of effort they want to put in.

00:14:04
Um, again, do we want to do we want to do we want to be up 50 grand in a year? Do we want to or six months? Or do we want to number one everywhere? Do we want do we want to make be able to raise our prices and keep our boutique business? Do we want to be able to add more employees? Do we want to get ready for, you know, organize and optimize the business, be ready for to to sell it and have an exit strategy? We all have different reasons, but ultimately they all come down to one thing and which is what we want to do as well with these trainings and with our clients and all of that is make you know make you the top cleaning brand in your marketplace so you can attract the best clients whatever they are because the ideal client in today’s day and age is upper upper um upper middle class to upper class. They they’re the ones that that have excess money. They’re the ones that, you know, while there’s a a a squeeze on the price of eggs and groceries and inflations and housing and all of the things we hear about in the news, you know, at different levels in different locations and stuff like that and tariff threats and and huh um the

00:15:08
people that have discretionary income and investments and all of that have more value, more wealth in their life. They’re the ones that are hiring more cleaning services more often, right? And co was great um for that crowd because uh it reminded a huge section of the world taught and or reminded a huge section of the world that cleaning is a healthy thing. Cleaning for health.

00:15:31
So we get to have that those conversations. It’s not you know three rooms in a hall for $99 129 149 you know kind of idea is a cleaning for commodity business. Cleaning for health is about how you do what you do. who guarantee it, show up differently, act differently, talk differently, have different programs and packages and marketing messages and stuff like that as well.

00:15:59
And all of that goes into our nurturing or automations that we’ll talk about because you do want to be booked out weeks in advance at the highest rates, right? You want to be able to tell people, “We are the most in demand in the area. Let me see when I can fit you in.” Most of our regular clients book a year in advance into our schedule.

00:16:14
Let me see when I can fit you in. Those are two elements of scripts that we always had in our company because we did have our clients book a year in advance in our schedule pre-platinum pre-book their next appointment. Um, right. And so we were able to make that claim because they did that. And we also uh were booked out, you know, again, we were the most in demand, so we could say that as well.

00:16:33
And it gives you an air of confidence even on new calls. Oh my gosh, why is your price so much more than anyone? Well, we get asked that a lot. You have a script that kind of gets them past that already. But yeah, now we would like to, you know, are you available today or tomorrow? Oh gosh, no, no, no. We are the most in demand in the area.

00:16:49
And they have to cognitively go, wait a minute, you’re higher priced than everybody else and the most in demand. Am I missing something? Like what do other people know that I don’t know? And we as humans make those those those thought connections. So neural linguistic programming in scripting really really helps because you can actually get people around that.

00:17:03
Now, how can you train an AI to do all that? Really hard these days. I got a friend who is uh who’s building a an answering service for a pressure washing franchise he or licensing franchise that he’s building and um multi-million dollar company and they are six months in development and hundreds of thousands of dollars so far to try and train AI to the level of a well well-trained um um human who knows scripting and and communications that well that trains call centers that that you know all that kind of stuff to try and get similar booking rates and they can’t yet right so because humans trained well understand the nuance of the conversation much better so um couple little aides there but so what is it all about how do we do this well we we talk about omniresence marketing system we’ve talked about it for years AI requires it so if you go back to one of the most recent SEO um trainings that we did SEO

00:18:06
doesn’t exist anymore. It’s AI, SEO, AEO, or one person I just heard from recently said, “Yeah, the S just changed. It’s not search engine optimization. It’s search everywhere optimization.” Because people search everywhere, but AI searches everywhere and comes back with an answer.

00:18:20
So when people are asking chat GPT or even in Chrome, you’ve got um you know, you’ve got Gemini at the top of Google and all of that kind of stuff that all of those all all of those are search engines trying to get the best answer for that person and it goes out into the world, not just keywords on Google, not just reviews in your Google Maps listing.

00:18:44
Again, part of those are important, but answering those Google reviews is actually even more important. and syndicating those off of Google and sharing them everywhere else and telling happy customer stories and and and and being a voice in the marketplace and being authority and and all of that becomes omniresent having articles on your website that are authored by you where it makes you an authority tied to your LinkedIn profile and I see and oh my gosh right it’s a lot that’s what we deal with on our on our end but the whole idea is you want to be omnipresent you want to be omnipresent and doing that you’re maximizing your opportunity to generate a qualified lead. Where are they and how are you getting in front of them? Are you showing up in chat dpt now? Are you showing up in um you know Google search and you know your Google maps listing? How far wide is it showing up? And and what’s influencing that? And when it gets restricted because of population size and and and competitors, what else are you doing? because that’s just one pole in the water of the 30 40 poles in the water you need that are generating inquiries every single month that then

00:19:46
go into this automation system we’re going to be talking about today. So are you maximizing your opportunities generate generate a qualified lead online and offline? Ask yourself that question. Um are you maximizing your brand impressions? Because if AI takes over, hey, I need to hire somebody to clean the uh the carpets.

00:20:05
It’s starting to smell stinky and the family’s coming over on the weekend. um or like you know whatever you know I’ve got I’ve got guests coming next week you know who do you recommend in the local area chat right or Alexa or whatever like once AI is embedded even in Alexexas and you’re having just a general conversation large language models are about conversation right so you’re having that conversation um if if three four five names are mentioned because it goes out finds some data comes back oh yeah I’ve heard of those guys let me hire Right? Because the brand impression is there. Without it, you’re a commodity. So even more so today than it was six months ago, e way way more important in the next 3 months than it is today. And by a year from now, if you are not the number one brand in your marketplace, and you’re not doing working working that that muscle online and off, and somebody else is, they’re getting all the calls, right? And you want to maximize your

00:21:07
conversions. So, we’re going to talk a lot about conversions today, but conversions happen based on human psychology. So, are you telling a great story? Does your website tell the story of what it’s like to have you in the home? Does your marketing tell that story? Are you telling happy customer stories? Are you sharing all of the information that customers want to know about? Um, Marcus Sheridan wrote a great book, They Ask You Answer.

00:21:31
He’s got a new book out right now. Um, I just heard him. I went to a a workshop with him recently. Um, pretty high-priced workshop and learned all about the next generation and and how AI is is changing everything in his brain as a consultant. Um, but they ask you answer is literally about what are the common questions that everybody’s asking? What are the questions that they should ask and don’t know to ask and how are you answering those in your marketing, your email follow-ups, your phone calls, your scripts, your authority positioning in the marketplace. If you’re answering those questions, you’re a thought leader and you stand out as the authority. If you’re not answering those questions, you’re a commodity, right? So, what are the biggest challenges when it comes to lead flow, right? Getting new people into your pipeline, your biggest job as a business owner, again, as a as a business owner and an entrepreneur, you are the marketer of the services you provide first and foremost. Everything else second. That is an identity shift. If you have it, good on you. Thank you so much. Right. Um, I had that identity

00:22:34
shift like within a year or two into my business. That’s how I got out of the truck in a year and a half in 1990. Started 1995. Was not in the truck by 1997, right? I already had a $10,000, $15,000 and $20,000 a month cleaning business back then. Starting in a town of 30,000 people.

00:22:50
How? Because I knew my identity was not a was not the cleaner. My identity was the marketer of my services. Now, what does that change? Ah, shucks. I have to go clean today. can’t grow my business. Not, oh, I get to go clean. I get to make money. No, that’s somebody else. I’d rather pay somebody, you know, 20, $30 an hour, $40 an hour to go do the service so I can do the $500,000 an hour um tasks of meeting and and growing the business and and building lead flow and all of that kind of stuff and putting a fence around my clients because it’s not if you’re trying to run a business on new inquiries, new leads, new leads. I just need more leads. I just need more leads. That tells me you have a leaky bucket. If you need more leads, you have a leaky bucket, right? You leads to complement. Yes, leads to grow to the next level. Leads because some people are moving and and and passing away and and and all that kind of stuff over the years and years and years. Yeah. But you should have a client retention. You’re the marketer of cleaning services to retain

00:23:53
your customers, deliver the best experience, find referral partners, one to many, and be the number one choice in the marketplace so that you do and create create those inquiries and then put them into the system that we’re going to talk about today. So, is the problem that you have not enough leads coming in, that’s why you’re slow? Is it that your lead quality is too low? Is that why you’re slow or you’re not get meeting your goals, not growing to the level you want? Oh, they’re just crappy people. Is the problem that a lack of clear tracking to know which lead sources are generating the best return on investment? Which which part of your marketing goes to brand awareness? That you know 10% or so of of your marketing budget. 20% of revenue should go to marketing. 10% of of that amount should be brand minimum should be brand awareness. We see that on the billboards and the you know the little league sponsorships of the bigger companies because as they grow the

00:24:58
percentage of revenue going to marketing creates a bigger dollar amount. That bigger dollar amount allows more direct ads and allows more brand awareness so that their direct ads their door hangers are oh I know those people because of all the other stuff that isn’t immediately trackable.

00:25:13
Some people make the mistake of running just brand awareness marketing. I’ll if I just do it all, I’ll grow. No. Other people do, oh, I am only going to do direct response. If if somebody responds, then that’s the only way to go. There is a blend. There is a blender. So, um, you want to be putting a budget towards brand awareness, but you want to be able to track the rest of it, right? So, is it lack of tracking? Right? Not enough lead genen options like do you have not enough options? They say I got two things holes in the water as I like to call them. Um what do I do? Not enough options. I personally don’t think options are the problem. Right here on this screen is over 40 and each one of these can be broken down into even more. Um there is not a an a problem of generating enough poles in the water. There might not be enough hours in the day unless you’re willing to systemize and optimize, which part of that we’ll talk about today, but

00:26:17
you lock and load. You put one, two, three new ones in place. Over the next quarter, you have 90-day rocks. You build your business. You lock them. You load them in place. They automate. They they they stay in place. They keep running. That’s a system. That’s automation. And then you add new ones. And then you add new ones.

00:26:32
And then you add new ones. Right? So everybody can go out and get commercial jobs. Um, one of our clients, Tony, um, he did that last year, um, before we even knew him. Went out and generated $150,000 worth of commercial cleaning in the first three months of his business. Did over half a million dollars, I think it was, at the end of the one, his first full year in business, starting brand new as a carpet cleaner, right? He had a skill set.

00:26:55
He was able to go out and smoo and and do a great job and and and contact people, and he wasn’t afraid of it, and he went out every single day just to grow the business. Anybody can do that. Great. Once you land that commercial client, what’s another pole in the water? Every single every single um employee of that company is now gets the employee reward program.

00:27:16
You’re the carpet cleaner of that that auto dealership. You’re the carpet cleaner of that accountant office. Does everybody get a tent card that night you come in and clean and with an offer to use your services that a preferred employee reward offer? Oh, well, there’s another pole in the water. Every time you do a commercial job, there’s that.

00:27:33
Every time you do a commercial cleaning, do you come back every three months, just pop your head in, bring a coffee, bring a box of donuts, Howard Partridge 101. Um, million other people have done that before. Um, Howard learned it from other people. Um, do you do that? Do you do you do you walk in and and and and remind them, take a quick check around, do some free spotting to try and get, you know, like again, it’s not about pressure sales, but hey, hey, I just want to check how thing everything’s going. You know, you keep that job. That’s client retention. But then you also talk about, you know, maybe a maintenance program. Yeah, it’s a little starting to get a little worn around there. Probably I’ll pop in in another couple months and I think at that point we might want to be touching up, you know, maybe book a time to touch up the traffic lanes. You know, you might be a little save a few bucks if you jumped on our maintenance program instead. Whatever. And you know, while you’re at it, you get a discount or a savings on on any car or office chairs that get done at the same time. Those should be done, you know, about once a year or so. So, um, I don’t think they probably done in years. Um, let’s get rid of some of that stinky butt smell. Aha. Off you go. Now you leave. There. There you go. Now

00:28:36
there’s another strategy. There’s another pole in the water. When you leave, do you do a five round of the commercial business? Yeah. I was just over at one of my clients across the street. Just thought I’d pop in and do some free spotting. If you’re not doing any of these, these are all poles in the water, right? So, I don’t think I don’t think it’s an opt.

00:28:47
I don’t think not having enough opportunities to generate inquiries and leads and ads and and all of that kind of stuff and yard signs and door hangers and flyers and and and paid ads, you know, are you optimizing Google? Google’s got local service ads, then pay-per-click. You got Google Maps, you got Google organic.

00:29:02
Um, that’s for the crowd that makes it on Google. You’ve got Facebook ads for brand awareness and lead generation. You’ve got um Next Door and Instagram and YouTube pre-rolls. And, you know, there’s there’s a lot of opportunities for to can add part of your paid ad budget as you grow. keep the percentage the same so you have more money to go into the next level the next level and you can maximize each of those and it’s just a formula right there’s a lot of formulas in there so I don’t think that’s the problem so if we agree hopefully we do at this point I don’t think lead flow is really the problem the biggest problem ready for the reveal here it comes the biggest challenge facing carpet cleaners is unconvertedly leads. What is your lead conversion percentage? Do you track that? Do you know that across all sources and can you ramp that up? Right? So, new inquiries of all from all sources

00:30:08
and source specific. So, all sources, big bucket, source specific, smaller buckets. Um, do you know the your lead conversion rate, the average first job, and then the average lifetime value of those clients? Have you run those calculations? Right. The hidden reason you’re losing bookings and the five minute fix.

00:30:28
Let’s let’s dive into this part. So, slower or inconsistent follow-up is one of the biggest ones equals lost jobs. Leads that are not followed up within five minutes. And I mean text messages, emails, DMs, likes, shares, comments. If you’re running Facebook ads, one of the best ways to run a Facebook ad is to create a the Facebook a post on your page, then in ad manager, set up an sophisticated targeting ad done properly.

00:31:00
But because it’s a post, people can continue to comment on it. Then anytime anybody comments on it, are you following up on those comments, getting alerts right away, commenting back, pulling them off of there into a conversation, getting in Messenger, whatever, that kind of stuff. And also hitting the little button beside it and requesting they like and follow your page to grow that side of it as well.

00:31:26
Right? So, you want to anybody who starts a text conversation with you on your website, text to chat, um, anybody who fills out a a form, do you have any any way of knowing right away, getting right back to them and having that conversation during business hours being alerted? After hours with automation, respond, right? Um, if you respond within the first 5 minutes, all stats show that you’re nine times more likely to convert them to a customer than if you don’t because they got you open and three, four, five other tabs open or or on their phone or whatever and they’re calling around. They’re texting around. They’re looking around, right? So many customers must actually be followed up with five to seven times before booking as well. So, if you do get back to them right away, sometimes they’re not available. Sometimes you you’re going back and forth, but they need about a, you know, they need to be followed up with, you know, they’re thinking about it, whatever. Well, you don’t let that go cold. You send them some happy customer stories and testimonials and and why you started the business and what you’re all about and make them go,

00:32:29
“Ah, shucks. These guys are great. Nobody else is saying any of this stuff.” Right now, you sell at prices higher than your competition because you’ve got more personable, better story. Part of it’s automated. part of its real live calls. Um, so today’s consumers prefer messaging versus phone calls and emails, right? So, which is that that’s great. They prefer that.

00:32:47
So, you start there. You prefer, you should prefer having a conversation with somebody new by phone, by voice, because you can influence them better. So, there’s a bit of a disconnect. They prefer messaging. You prefer phone. So, live voice conversation. So, how do you bridge that gap? We’ll talk about that in a second as well.

00:33:10
So, systemize and automate your follow-ups to win more jobs. Respond to all inquiries within 5 minutes, even after hours. Not you, automation as well to help you out, to assist you. Use text messaging as a key follow-up channel in that drip sequence, right? So, you want to stay in touch with them. Um, one thing people know about text messaging is again when somebody inquires with you and you get back to them with valuable information about what their their needs are and you know in the right way, the right voice with the right cadence, people don’t mind getting a text message if you blow up and spam their phone. Like everybody goes, “Oh my god, I tried text messaging marketing my database and it’s amazing.” you know, I I text messaged, you know, my database, you know, the other day or, you know, LA last week or whatever, and oh my god, I got so many jobs. I should just do that from this point. That’s all I need to do is text messaging. I always say, call me after the fifth time you’ve done that because you’ll find out that you’ll burn

00:34:13
the list out, right? It’s you’ve got to you’ve got to treat it well in the moment and then you got to back off. If your dentist sent you a text message every single week or every single month about your teeth cleaning, you would unsubscribe. You would type stop. If your dentist sent you a six-month reminder, you might be interested.

00:34:32
And if you come in in six months, we’ll also give you this oral care kit with $99, you might think about it. And then at the year, hey, it’s your time for your annual visit because you didn’t come in for the six-month, you know, mid checkup or whatever, right? you will probably keep them on your list.

00:34:49
So, you’ve got to be smart about it. But when it’s an inquiry, you’ve got a window. We always, you know, that again that um you want to you want to text, but you also want to email them. And you can email them and then say send a text. Hey, I just sent you an email about some of our customers that had the exact same needs that you did and how we solved it.

00:35:05
Um go check for this subject line. And again, that can all be automated, but that’s a great reason for a text, right? Um use smart automation and AI that makes it feel personal, not robotic. So, what did they ask you about? are you talking back to them about that thing? Right? So, we’re not being generic.

00:35:21
We’re being very and we’re using their name and you know all that and they want to integrate email, text, and phone into one seamless flow. If you can do that, then now you’ve got a systemized automated way to follow up with people, right? So, you don’t want to just automate, you want to personalize.

00:35:37
Automation gets you in the door. Personalization gets you the job. So, too many businesses blast generic follow-ups and wonder why the leads go cold, dismiss it, call it spam, junk it, unsubscribe, whatever. The real power lies in that combination of automation and human touch. Use the real name, right? Reference the services they asked about.

00:35:59
Follow up with context. Just checking in after our quote last Tuesday. You know, be very specific. Don’t don’t fake it. So, it’s simple math. Here’s an example. 100 leads come in, 100 inquiries come in, new inquiries, haven’t used your services before on brand new inquiries from people that have never used you before, weren’t referred to you, didn’t have a name in mind, went to Google, went to whatever source, heard about you from there, called up to see what you’re all about, checked out your website, checked out your social media, checked out your reviews, did all of the stuff that people do. There’s no one thing. That’s why we always suggest you say, “Hey, what research have you done on us so far?” instead of how did you hear about us, right? Better better data to to to grab. But industry average in cleaning is 30%. If you actually track your numbers on cold inquiries, 30% booking, no followup, 30% on the book. Your average job is 325, which it should be north of 300 bucks, north of $400 these days. Um, but the average residential job ticket

00:37:04
should be in that range because you know how to, you know, have package systems, upsell, do all that other kind of stuff, market them from the moment they book to the moment they you show up to teach them about other things they should be doing. Lots all kinds of stuff. There’s layers to this thing, obviously, but right, um, you made 10,000 bucks, so you need a 100 leads per month to make $10,000 of new client money a month.

00:37:27
Hopefully, you’re also making another $10,000 or $15,000 a month of repeats and referrals, right? If you’ve got those systems in place, but this is your new inquiries, your new your new your new peeps, right? One-time customers, you’re going to hopefully turn into lifetime clients, right? How do we become this crazy guy with all the money in his hand? Well, now we we we change we we we have automated follow-ups that chase that that person in a personalized manner, remind you to reach out and call, leave voicemail mail drops, like bring this voicemail. So all of a sudden the phone go oh I must have missed a call as we see that happens all the time. It’s actually a technology. Um we have it built into one of our tools as well but and they go and listen to the voicemail and you’re just following up. It’s just an automated process that sounds real. Maybe that one, you know, doesn’t have their name in it. Maybe with AI, we can put their name in it nowadays, right? So, there’s different ways to play with this, but you’ve left that. Maybe you do it again. Maybe you do it live, right? There’s a reminder that says, “Hey, by the way, it’s been 3 days. Call this person.” They don’t answer, say this on the on the uh on the voicemail. If they do answer, say this to them live. And that’s just a process, right? Um but now you’re booking 70%

00:38:31
because you’re chasing them. So maybe some of them book right away, some of them book two weeks from now, some of them book a month or two from now because you’re staying they’re staying in your drip campaign. some of them booking six, seven months from now, but it’s the same hundred crowd.

00:38:41
Right now, you’ve booked 70% of them, and you’ve made $22,000 if your average ticket stays the same from the exact same 100 people, two to three times more in sales, same people, because you have follow-up. Very simple math, as I like to say. So, make every lead more valuable, right? What are some of your key takeaways so far? or hopefully you’ve been jotting things down, getting some nuggets, getting some ideas.

00:39:07
Um, don’t do what I do as I drive. I have a notepad beside me. I’m getting so much better at at um at at trying to capture it digitally, but I’m usually on my listening to my digital device. I’m usually, you know, my phone is playing a podcast or a YouTube video in the background as I’m driving and stuff like that and I all this great idea.

00:39:27
I have to press pause and I’ve got a notepad and I still write on the steering wheel. So, don’t do what I do, but are you capturing stuff right now while you’re listening to this? Are you capturing some ideas that you’re taking away? Right? Are we paying attention? There’s a lot of things that we’re talking about.

00:39:41
So, engage how your customers want to engage. 98% of all text messages are opened. Again, that doesn’t mean about them typing stop the next time. 95% of text messages are open and responded to within 3 minutes of being delivered. if they care, if they want to respond to you, right? So, what it what what’s more is that consumers are five times more likely to send and receive text messages than make phone calls.

00:40:09
So, that’s why it has to be in your mix. Not the only thing, but it definitely has to be a key part of your mix. You want to be following up quickly. Leads that are not followed up within minutes go cold. Follow up with five minutes 21 times more effective than than calling after 30 minutes. Right? So you had we had you know higher chance of of of of booking but we also have being like more effective to be in their head and in their world.

00:40:35
Five mi after five minutes the odds of qualifying a lead drops by as much as 80%. And 50% of all leads go to the vendor that responds first. So one of our more more recent clients I was just on a uh um doing a podcast interview with him. So you’ll see that coming out in the in the future. Um he was talking about how um one of the things he’s he’s been in business since last September growing an amazing company is think of himself as an entrepreneur and the marketer of his business first.

00:41:07
That’s his identity, not a cleaner. He’s got technicians already on off, you know, and he’s off to the races. Um and he said one of the things is that um he makes sure that his phones are answered within two rings all day long and that his messaging messages are answered right away. He he he drank the Kool-Aid. He believes in what we say.

00:41:27
He follows the podcast. He he became one of our clients because of all that. And um he said it’s just shocking the number of people that go, “Oh my god, you actually answered the phone. Our industry still sucks. It sucked 30 years ago when I started. It still sucks today. Just answering the phone within the first or second ring is game changer still, right? 50% of all leads go with the vendor that responds first.

00:41:49
Now, you have to have good scripts. You have to be able to tell a good story. You don’t want to be selling a discount service. You want to be able to sell at prices higher than your competition with with the right way of explaining the right way to properly clean and all that kind of stuff.

00:42:01
And why the other people who are offering three rooms no for $99 are actually scamming you because they’re not doing you a good service. especially if you’re um upper middle class or upper class. They that it’s a bait and switch or they don’t even know what to do to deliver a proper cleaning service to to make a healthy home and and carpets that are going to last years in the way you want them to do.

00:42:24
One of the reasons why our cleaning services after about the first three years did not have a clean only service anymore at all. Once I learned how to package, I got rid of the bottom package. Um a lot of people know that story. We clean and protected from 1998, 1999 until the day I sold the business. And the person who runs the business now still cleans and protects residentially as the base service and is able to explain why that means that yeah, we might be a little bit more sound a little bit more expensive, but we’re actually the best value for your money plus this and this and this and our 12step process and and all of the other good marketing, but we know that cleaning a customer’s home and applying a protection gives them that window of opportunity done well, done properly, that window of opportunity that is better for them and better for the carpets than a discount cleaning price. And you end up getting better clients because of that. So, we’ve got some clients of ours that they’re they don’t even give a quote over the phone. They everything’s done in home and their average job residentially is over $800 when their competitors are three rooms in a hall

00:43:26
for $99. Why? Because they’re selling a better service and explaining it in a better way. And that just takes a bit of time and a little bit of nuance. And that doesn’t happen, you know, as a commodity. That’s why I also say you shouldn’t put a self-booking widget on your website.

00:43:41
How do you get to that level of nuance when somebody has to look at your prices and build their own job? Now, you should be able to explain pricing on your website and the differences, but I don’t think you should be able to get somebody to give the an exact quote on your website uh because you should be selling at prices higher than your competition and you should be explaining why you’re the preferred vendor in the marketplace.

00:44:03
So, anyways, lots of little rants there. Sorry about that. Um, so faster is better. This is just stats in the industry, right? 391% improve improvement on lead conversion rate if you if you answer them, you know, if you answer get back to people or answer immediately or get back to them within one minute, right? 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 5 hours, the next day.

00:44:28
Gone are the days where you get emails, you check them once at the end of the day or next thing the next morning you start getting back to people. Gone are the days that your your chats and texts come in and you get around to them after you’re done everything else you’re doing. Gone are those days. Long gone.

00:44:45
You want to leverage AI and automation. Every lead gets an email and SMS within 30 seconds of submitting and a call from someone again live person at your company within five minutes. Every time somebody messages you on any platform, any platform, you’ve got Instagram, you’ve got before and afters and happy customer stories, and somebody goes, “Wow, that looks great.

00:45:06
I’d love to have that done in my house.” Boom. Captured email, SMS, phone call. If you start that conversation, they reach out to you, they land on a landing page because you’re running pay-per-click ads. Could you imagine running pay-per-click ads, spending the cost per click? It takes about five clicks to get one person to actually reach out to you on your landing page.

00:45:30
That’s that’s Google stats. In fact, it’s probably closer to 10 clicks. So, if you’re $10 a click, $100 to get one person to reach out. Hopefully, you’re not $10 a click. You should have a vendor that can bring you down under $5 a click. Um, sometimes under $3 a click, depending on the marketplace, um, with really, really good optimization.

00:45:49
But still, that’s $30 to $50 to generate an inquiry. Could you imagine spending that much money? 20 years ago, Yellow Pages was $80 to generate a phone call or to generate a a client, sorry. 50% booking rate would be a phone call was about $40. $40 to $50 back in the day. 20 years ago when I was running5 to $7,000 a month in yellow page ads to run a a growing million-doll business, right? So, that was back when Yellow Pages was a thing.

00:46:17
Any of you who are too young, you don’t even know what yellow pages are. They’re the things that grandma put underneath the couch to keep the one leg up when it broke. But um so you want to get back to these people within minutes with a live call as well. Have something that hits their email and their text and then a live person on the phone.

00:46:38
Every lead is followed up with at least seven times over a twoe period. It’s called a chase process um with email, SMS, phone until they book or tell you that they’re not interested. And even if they tell you’re not interested right now, you put them in a long-term drip. Now, it’s what do you send that you don’t become an annoying pest.

00:46:54
You want to be seen as a welcome guest, not an annoying pest. You want to be providing value. That’s a psychology. My good friend Steve Rosenbomb talks all about, you know, the perfect cadence. Um correct cadence. Sorry, he likes using alliterations. correct cadence and the flawless follow-ups, right? There’s there there are ways to to engage with people over time and there’s ways that AI is making that even more natural and more targeted to each individual person.

00:47:26
So, not just there there there’s sort of a generality to it, but there’s some people that the generality is not not not good. Then there’s AI that is starting to try and be embedded into things. Some of our tools are getting AIs embedded into stuff like that as add-on services where it starts to nuance it a bit.

00:47:45
It’s like it’s like, hey, this person is more engaged over here than here and and things like that. And it’s it it makes some of those assumptions and decisions and over time the data becomes your friend. large volumes of data can start creating patterns where it’s like it’s better if I try this for this type of person.

00:48:02
It’s better if I try this. We can all do it. It just takes hours and hours and hours and hours of work over spreadsheets. AI can just do that faster and make those decisions. So, if you followed up with all your inquiries in that way, do you think you’d convert more of them? If somebody called today, you called them back tomorrow, they got an email about happy customers that had the exact same problem and how you solved it and their great comments and testimonials.

00:48:30
And then they got a text message saying, “Hey, by the way, did you read my email?” Um, just wanted to say, you know, there’s other people that had your same issue and I wanted to share those with you. I wanted to make sure you saw that. Here’s the subject line. Um, and then you sent other, you know, you left a voicemail.

00:48:45
Hey, this is the owner of the business. Um, just checking in on you. um want me make sure my staff followed up with you if you have staff or you’re the one that reaches out. Um, and I want just give you a little bit of a backstory on why I started the business and why we’re different than everybody else.

00:48:58
And you’ve got like a 30-minute elevator pitch. And then you send an email about that that same story. And then you send about other happy customer. And you just stay in touch with them. And at the end of two weeks, you give them like a mafia offer. You know, hey, I know you reached out to us a couple weeks ago.

00:49:11
Maybe the timing is not right. Maybe you went with somebody else, but if you are ready to make a decision, I wanted to give you sort of like a last chance to make a decision. If you get back to me within the next 24 hours from this message, um, here’s what I’ll be I’ll I’ll be willing to do for you.

00:49:24
If you think your marketing is targeting the right people, not the 96th floor of the apartment building where they want one bathmat cleaned. We know those calls, but the the person that is, you know, on Golf Course Road in the 5,000 foot home that wants their entire lower level and media room cleaned at 3,000 square feet, right? Something like that.

00:49:50
That if you know you’re targeting the right people, your mafia offer can be amazing. tell you what, we’ll come in and do one free room of cleaning all bells and whistles and show you why we’re amazing. Now, of course, you get the rest of the house when you’re done, but you got to get you got to get back to me within 24 hours.

00:50:03
Um, and set that up, right? That there’s ways to play marketing, right? How that looks, this is behind the scenes. AI and automation looks like this. We have a tool called Carpet Cleaner Lead Pro that has led the industry on automation for the last 5 years in the cleaning industry.

00:50:20
and AI is being embedded throughout it and it’s an upgrade and add-on service um to add different AI nuances and and monthly client newsletters and and all kinds of new stuff that have been that’s coming out and rolling out and being beta tested and in development and stuff like that. Uh because there was the bad way to do it, just have AI answer all your phones.

00:50:41
And there’s the right way to do it, a fully trained AI assistant that knows you, your industry, your your database built on an AI command center and an AI ICP um deep dive and all kinds of stuff. So there’s a lot more layers to this. And AI is starting to get ready now. It’s starting to be good enough that it it works, right? So again, it’s been out as AI voice agents and chat agents for a while.

00:51:08
If you’ve ever engaged with them, they’re starting to get better now. We’ve been in testing them for a long time and in development and tens of thousands almostund $100,000 now, and we weren’t ready to launch only because they weren’t there yet. AI wasn’t there yet. AI wasn’t smart enough yet. the latest models that just dropped two and three weeks ago are actually making some of this manageable and and doable and not making a mess.

00:51:34
So anyways, a lot of people in the players in the game that that kind of said they can do what they do, it actually starts to do what they it could do now. So So here’s some examples of just smarter automations. Um so again, we saw these kind of numbers before, but um 599 inquiries came in. This is just one of our clients dashboards. Uh 40% conversion rate.

00:51:56
They got 239 booked jobs. Average ticket $350. $83,000 um revenue bump. I think this was over one quarter. Um 88 8x return on investment. I had a $10,000 spend in ad spend to make 83. This was a paid ad tracking to make $83,000. Right. Conversion rate upgrade. When putting in automation, they went from 40%, so a little bit better than the 30% average, up to 65%.

00:52:34
Starting to push that 70% sort of cap of new inquiries from paid ads. That generates that 65% conversion going back onto those original leads. what they were before, right? Would have been $389 jobs. Still the same average ticket price. Now that’s $136,000. 13 times return on investment. Same investment and ad spend. Way more money.

00:53:09
Looking back at those previous numbers now that the conversion rates are up, what would it have been if they’d imple implemented that prior? That’s kind of what the data is showing here is that now that we’ve got the conversion rates up, what would it have been in that same period before? What are the new periods starting to look like? That’s a huge amount of extra cash that didn’t come from any extra spend.

00:53:29
It came from extra automation like conversion optimization and and and proper automations, proper live human touch, all that stuff we talked about today. So Dan Kennedy quotes um one of his main quotes um is the business that can spend the most to acquire a customer wins. The business that can spend the most to acquire a customer wins.

00:53:54
So how are you able to spend the most? You know your numbers. You upsell clients. You have a in-home client experience. You have package services. You you understand that a customer is a one-time transaction, but you know the lifetime value of your clients. There’s good languaging customers one time, clients repeat.

00:54:16
You need you also know that you need to get a a a customer to use you three times before you you have a chance before they really lock in as a long-term client. So, how fast can you do that? Right? The first time a customer uses your services, no matter how great you are, you have about an 80% chance they’ll never use you again.

00:54:36
By the time they use you the second time, because you influence them with a whole bunch of cool stuff, you have a 50/50 chance that they’ll use you again. By the time you’ve they’ve used you the third time, you have an 80% chance, unless you screw something up, you are their provider for years and years and years to come until they move or something else massively changes.

00:54:56
as long as you don’t screw up the relationship and you keep things consistent. So now if you know that that the lifetime value of your client is 10 to $20,000 and you know that you convert 70% of your ideal customers to clients. You now have very simple math. You now know how much you can spend.

00:55:15
It’s not like well my average job is $400. I need to pay my technicians. I need so I need to I can’t I can’t buy a new customer for more than $50 to pay bills and make a profit. If you knew the lifetime value of your client was average client was 10 20,000 or George if you’re on the call here he’s got one client that he’s residential client he’s gone back and done the number been in business 19 years the client wasn’t from day one and it’s $200,000 they have spent so far with his cleaning company. That was the lifetime value of that tracks tracks all of it knows them and can figure out the averages. Right? So, if you know that, how much would you have spent to land a $200,000 lifetime value client that’s maybe been with you 15 years and given your company $200,000 in revenue? Probably more than 50 bucks. The average cost to buy a customer in carpet cleaning is actually closer to 100. It was 100 $80 20 years ago. It’s about $100 now in today’s dollars because some things have gotten more efficient, but

00:56:17
you still it’s still volume. It’s about $100 to buy a new customer. So, if your prices are your average job is 150 or 200 bucks, that’s 50% of of that transaction buys a new customer. But if you’re buying a client, a customer you can turn into a client because they’re the ideal person and you know how to wow the crap out of them with your, you know, your your systems and your experience routines and your uniforms and your your afterare and your, you know, from the moment they book to the moment you show up. how you’re endearing and grooming and nurturing them and all of the great marketing that you should be doing all the way through because you’re the marketer of cleaning services first. Let’s go back to that. Then yeah, if you know it’s $10,000, why not spend $3 $400 to buy a quality client? Your first job is 600 bucks, but you bought a $20,000 lifetime client. You can now outarket all of your competitors. That’s what that phrase means. Just so you understand the unpacking of that. So, um, how to implement this in your business. Let’s talk about that as we wrap this up. So, Carpet Cleaner Lead Pro is our tool. That’s a lead database um management, optimization, and now AI

00:57:22
service that’s being built out. Um but what you need to think about, this is what we do. You think about how you do this. Smart forms, when somebody fills out a form on your website, it instantly gets back to them, but also your phone rings. So, anybody anytime somebody texts you, if you didn’t answer, like through your website, if you didn’t answer, there’s a missed or they call into your company, there’s a missed call text back instantly, right? If you if they missed the call during business hours, they get a text. If it’s after hours, they have, you know, an AI taking that that conversation. A missed call, text back, AI overflow o roll over overflow so that if you can’t pick up the call, at least some, you know, an AI service is having that conversation, not trying to book the job, just get the information, you know, get a human on the line andor if it’s after hours, you know, is there a time that you’d like us to call you back, you know, next business day, tomorrow. AI should know it’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

00:58:24
you’re not available Saturday. So on Monday, whatever. Here, let’s put that in the calendar. So that you know what’s here’s a good time. Okay, perfect. We’ve got it uh in the calendar that one of our representatives is going to call you between 12 and 12:15 somewhere in there when they got a free moment um to have a conversation about this and this.

00:58:39
Do I have that information right? Awesome. Thanks so much. That is so much better than an answering machine. That’s the way AI should work well. But you should also have it just on your website. Somebody fills out a form on a landing page for a pay-per-click ad. They should have the phone, the ability to call, the ability to text, and the ability to fill out a form. People are shy.

00:58:55
You’re going to get form fills, right? Which is fine. Some people say, “Well, my form fills don’t convert that well. Just turn them off.” Okay. Well, what about all the people that just want to fill out forms? You just turned them off, too. They’re not turned on to you anymore. They’re turned off with from you because you got rid of the form.

00:59:10
That doesn’t mean you forced them to make a phone call. You forced them to go find somebody else. So, yes, unfortunately, sometimes you end up having to deal with it. That’s where automation can help with this. But as soon as you somebody fills out a form during business hours, do you have phones ringing? Hey, you know, hey, Mrs.

00:59:28
Jones has filled out a form. She’s interested in um carpet cleaning and tile cleaning. Press one to connect with her. Now, if you press one and her phone rings and it says, “Oh my god, this is ABC carpet cleaning. Wow, I just filled out a form.” She answers it. She’s not shy. She’s not a millennial.

00:59:42
Um then you’re on you’re having a conversation. If she doesn’t take the phone call, she was just having to fill out the form on your website while also doing 20 other things at the mall and it doesn’t want to talk to you then or while driving in her car or whatever the thing is, then you know the call disconnects.

01:00:01
You didn’t take it, they didn’t take it. She instantly gets a text message. Hey, thanks so much for the form of our website. Very interested in having conversation with about these items. Um, you know, um, I’ll try and reach out to you shortly. in the meantime I’ve got a few questions and you start a conversation by text and automation that you can jump into that you can monitor that AI can be involved in all those kinds of things right so you want to make sure that you have that smart smart form automation on your websites and landing pages and stuff like that AI smart connect again part of that as well leaving voicemail having AI jump in stuff like that that again those are add-ons those are extra things that are available to throw into the mix um you want to have all of that happening so that as you’re reaching out and as they’re answering, it is moving them through different funnels, different trees. Um, and again, that soft booking is what we just talked about as well, right? Soft booking has a couple of variables, but in our world, we definitely don’t want to necessarily book somebody, you know, 30, 40 minutes

01:01:05
away to the south of us on a day that you have the first job, you know, 25, 30 minutes away from the shop to the north and then, you know, booked in over there because, you know, that bookings isn’t isn’t where and you, you know, everybody I I talked to say, well, well, you would just have certain days of the week that you were over in that area.

01:01:26
Does that really work? If you’ve ever answered phones and booked, you know, if you have 10 trucks on the road, sure, you can move things around and that’s fine. What if you have two or three crews on the road? That’s we we all know that we there there’s a human element about saying, you know what, yeah, I’ve got an open opening in two days, but it’s I’m I’m we’re always getting calls from that town.

01:01:48
This person’s wanting this town. I’m going to ask them, hey, it’s next Tuesday. We’re one of the most in demand. um we’re booking about, you know, four or five days out right now. Next Tuesday work. Why? Because you want to start building a schedule over there. You know that you’ll get enough calls to put a second and third job over there.

01:02:02
There’s a nuance again that it’s hard to train into AI right now. But what you do want is soft bookings where hey, let me call you book into my calendar for somebody to call you back, right? Book into my calendar for a day and we’ll we’ll pick a time. Stuff like that. There’s different ways to play with soft bookings without creating hard bookings.

01:02:18
So that’s something to think about as well. Um, so what you want to do is you want to have on your website, again, lots going on on just the front of this page, lots of marketing nuance, lots of smart nuance, lots of chat to text, AI automations available, phone calls that if you can’t answer it, there is um, you know, an an AI assistant helping in the background.

01:02:40
There is lots and lots and lots happening on on just on this this screen alone on an example website and including review pops that help social proof and risk reversal guarantees and all that kind of stuff. Like I mean the amount of marketing nuance and psychology on this is insane. But what we’re talking about today is the phones, the forms, and the chats.

01:02:58
And how automation needs to be built into all of those mis call text backs, putting them into a routine if you know, so that they now get captured and get followed up with by by text, by followup, ongoing, a personal outreach, a workflow, all of that kind of stuff, so that you and the automation are chasing down people.

01:03:22
You want to also make sure that all social channels feed into one place. So, Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, you know, you name it. Anywhere that other people people can reach out to you. There used to be a thing called Google Chat. They kind of got rid of it now. they’re coming back with something else eventually or whatever.

01:03:38
But um inside your Google Maps listing, but anywhere that people can start having a conversation with you should also be coming in because you know WhatsApp, if you have a crowd that uses WhatsApp, WhatsApp should be coming into one central dashboard where you captured them as an inquiry and you put them into that automation funnel and you’re at least automating the follow-up and then you can start adding that AI layer to it.

01:04:03
a lead that gets followed up within five minutes or less. That’s the goal. Um, and then you want to have that automatic nurture so when they fall off, when they start ghosting you, um, they don’t respond, you’re dripping on them. Maybe they went with somebody else, right? Maybe they whatever. So, all leads come in from all sources.

01:04:23
They get in, they get filtered into the right channels based on their response and and you know each step of the filter and eventually they turn into a long-term nurture. Again, they are nurtured until they buy or die. Then what that looks like is a pipeline. If you ever seen Pipe Drive, we’ve got that built into our tool, but a pipeline of all your inquiries at different stages moving through the process. Right.

01:04:55
Right. So, pipeline is full of new inquiries. Which ones are hot? Which ones are converted? You got smart automation following up with them. You’ve got stale stale lead alert. You got long-term nurture. All of that kind of stuff. It really should look like you’ve got you, you know, where everybody is that has ever been interested in your services.

01:05:15
One of the things that we got to think about in this is that, you know, not everybody cleans their stuff, right? whatever cleaning service in home cleaning service you provide that’s who we work with not everybody cleans their stuff. So of the people and the you know and then of the people that do clean their stuff, how many of the do themselves for the first how many times, young families, whatever until they actually have discretionary income or the desire to hire it out, right? So now we got a much smaller crowd. Take all the households in your neighborhood or your your your marketplace, your service area. That data is easily available. Go find out how many households are there. And then understand that that a whopping 60% I think is the last number I’ve heard um just don’t clean it. They’ve not cleaned their carpets or if they do they’ve rent a machine. So you got you got a pool of maybe 40% that have ever hired a professional service even once for carpet, upholstery, tile, area rugs, not not even to mention hardwood floors that most people don’t know it can be and LVT and stuff that

01:06:18
can be a professional cleaning thing. or maybe you do pressure washing, maybe you do window cleaning, whatever. The number of people that hire those services out is a much smaller crowd. So, you found one, they reached out. Maybe they hired the competitor today, but you found somebody who actually does that. They pay that bill.

01:06:34
Why not stay in touch with them to see if you can get them next time? We’re not talking about roofers who if you miss it out miss out on it, that roof is good for the next 20 years or more. kind of kind of doesn’t make sense to stay in touch with that that lead as much maybe maybe to get a referral but it’s a much harder sell but in our service industry they should people who actually stood up and go hey I buy this we know they’re buying that every 6 12 18 24 months our job is to get them in our funnel and impress upon them why it should be more often but that’s what we’re talking about right so you want to make sure that that you know your pipeline is Right. Client case study first quarter on carpet cleaner leadp pro last year October to December. Well actually sorry 2021 is this one. Um I thought we’d updated one to a newer one but anyways um because we did have a a result I was trying to put into this case study but from from 2024. But anyways let’s look at this one. First quarter carpet

01:07:37
cleaner lead drop. Um web leads conversions up from an average 31% to 65%. 367 65% 238 leads. Average ticket for this client in Edmonton was $415. So $98,000 in that period of time in revenue, 15x ROI, right? Because that conversion rate was brought up to 65% on new cold inquiries. 15 times ROI across all lead channels.

01:08:10
So this was across SEO, pay-per-click, Facebook, Google Maps, all of those kinds of things that we would track for lead conversion and then put them into the funnel and grew them up. So new revenue captured versus their old percentage, $51,000 in one quarter. So, will this make you more money, help you convert more of your leads and grow your business? Kind of hope so.

01:08:42
So, reminder, leads that are not followed up with in 5 minutes go cold. A follow a follow-up within 5 minutes is 21 times more effective than calling after 30 minutes. 50% of leads go to the vendor who responds first. Statistics have shown that 98% of all text messages are opened. So, again, be cautious, but understand it should be in the mix.

01:09:01
95% of text messages are open and responded to within three minutes. Um, so you’ll know if you’re being unsubscribed to and it like how to play with that because they should be getting back to you if done well, especially if they reached out to you. You don’t have a lead problem. You likely have a conversion problem and it can be easily solved.

01:09:20
That is one of my most common quotes that I say on every single client call and um, you know, consultation I do with people in the industry and stuff like that. So implementation is everything. One of my trainings, the most most businesses fail not because they don’t have ideas. It’s because they don’t execute on those ideas. They don’t have a plan in place.

01:09:40
What am I going to work on now? What’s the most important? How do I determine what to what’s what’s going to have the biggest impact and work on it first, then next, then next? The key to growth, take immediate action on one high impact shift. Market marketing is not a side activity. It is your business.

01:09:54
that identity crisis. You have to rewire your identity to be the marketer of cleaning services first, everything else second. Marketing is not a side activity. The best businesses are not the best operators. They are the best marketers who then need to refined operations to scale. Marketing should cause an operations problem that you need to fix.

01:10:18
Marketing then fixed operations then causes a data problem. Data and finance need to be dialed in. You have to start being really good at your numbers because you got you’re marketing so well that you’ve created operation problems. You started f creating operational efficiency. You’ve trained technicians.

01:10:34
You’re doing this. You’re doing that. You understand scripts. You like your business is growing. You are an entrepreneur. You’re reading books. You’re listening to podcasts. You’re you’re you’re understanding the next thing you need to know at the time you need to know it. And you’re putting that in place and you’re growing through.

01:10:47
And that’s so it starts with great marketing. And then you just cycle around and cycle around. It just becomes a perpetual loop that grows a company. Commit to one major marketing shift this week. What top three lead automation initi initiatives will do you need to implement now to hit the goals that you set at the beginning of 2025? You’ve got what five months left.

01:11:12
So it’s hard to believe we’re that far through the year already. Every year seems to move faster and faster. But that’s what we’re talking. So you you’ve what what goals did you set when we did those trainings in December and January? Um we did a recap of those last month of just that mid midyear check-in. What are those goals? You got to at least set goals. We talked all about that.

01:11:32
Go back and watch those trainings if you haven’t set goals because if you haven’t set goals, you’re guessing anyways. But once you’ve set your goals and you know where you’re heading and you’re you’re rowing in the same direction, everybody knows, then what are the things that you’re putting in place? What are those big rocks that you’re putting in place this quarter, working on getting solved, and then what are you doing next quarter from that? There is a blueprint for this. There’s an exact million-doll growth blueprint. How do I know? Because I created it. I choke coached on it. I learned it. I I built it. I developed it from everything I I learned. And then I I’ve I’ve taught it starting in 2007 onward. And again, a lot of the like the some of the items change. AI changes a little bit, but the the the framework doesn’t. What are you doing before the sale? What are you doing during the sale? What are you doing after the sale? How are you marketing marketing marketing? What operations and systems do you need to have in place for all that to happen? And how can you now in today’s world automate and use AI and other tools to help you implement faster, faster, faster, faster, faster than your competitors? That’s all we’re

01:12:34
talking about. So recap the hidden reason you’re losing bookings and the five minute fix. Hope you understand what that was. You got to get back to people within five minutes or less. That’s why you’re losing bookings. Master the follow-up game. Timing, frequency, and human touch. Smarter, not harder.

01:12:51
You got to automate without losing the personal touch. Lead conversion that feels effortless because it’s systemized, right? You want to lead conversion that feels effortless because it’s systemized. So hopefully you guys had a bunch of takeaways. Hopefully there’s things that you took out of this. Um again, if you’re listening to a lot of these podcasts and trainings and stuff like that, you understand there’s a common theme.

01:13:19
There’s a repetition because repetition be breeds success. Everything kind of fits into a much larger integrative marketing, right? Always be marketing mindset. Integrate your marketing. In today’s world of AI, AI looks at integrative marketing. Consumers need to know your brand offline and online so that when they do hear it more and more and more AI being involved in search and how they find you and stuff like that online, they already go, I’ve seen those trucks.

01:13:49
I’ve seen those guys. They’re in my neighbor’s house. I’ve seen that door hanger. I’ve seen that yard sign. All of the stuff that we’ve always had to do for the last 10, 20, 30, 40 years is all the stuff we still need to do. Join the chamber. or show up at the BNI’s, walk in with donuts and coffees and stuff like that to referral partners and real estate offices and and you know meet with interior designers and and and all that stuff that we talk about that’s all integrative and have a digital presence that backs that up that that that build your reputation because your reputation marketed properly means it’s not static sitting on Google. It shows up everywhere. H happy customer stories show up all over your social media but they also show up in your marketing. and they show up and again AI picks all of that up all like it’s just you know all of it just works together rising tides lift all ships that’s what we talk about integrative marketing and this is a big piece of all of that you can see how everything we’re talking about together is integrated from everything else as well so it’s it’s a big picture that blends together and you do that well and you pick the pieces of it and you

01:14:52
upgrade those and then you pick the next pieces and you upgrade those and then you pick the next pieces I always say the rule of three is the best way to think about this you know do something that one thing that’s before the sale, one thing that’s during the sale, one thing that’s after the sale and implement that, systemize that, lock it in place.

01:15:07
And when those three are done, pick the next three. And then once you get through the whole company and everything’s upgraded, you know, whether you run fast and that’s a year, 3 months, 6 months, five years, whatever that is, you come back and that was good. Now let’s get better, better, better, better.

01:15:22
Then best, best, best, best, best. So it’s always, you know, good, better, best. Rule of three before, during, and after the sale. Rule of three. There’s powers in threes. So work on it that way. So anyways, we call it the best known cleaner, our omniresence marketing system because it is the seven essential marketing.

01:15:37
These are the six of them right here on the screen. Plus lead nurture automation. The seven these these are the web marketings and then the lead nurture automation is the that the big piece. the seven essential marketing elements that every digital marketing elements that every business needs plus that coaching, consulting, and understanding the done together marketing model of your marketing agency isn’t there to get you leads. You don’t need more leads.

01:16:06
You need a system that grows customers into clients that that creates high ticket offers that finds the ideal customer and brings them into a funnel and nurtures them till they’re ready to buy. and and then follow you have to follow up with those people when you turn them into clients to get them to come back more often because they will forget about you.

01:16:26
So you have to be in touch with them one, two, three, four times a month, not a year. A month, right? At least once a month, but four times a month, sometimes even better. We did our very best clients, A-list clients, 48 times a year. We we were in touch with them and they weren’t annoyed by that. It wasn’t too much.

01:16:44
It was done because we were a welcome friend with great educational information and some very special offers and ideas for them um that they could use and if they couldn’t use it themselves, they were allowed to gift to one very special friend because we were a boutique elite business.

01:17:01
Then our belist clients, more average, not in our most desirable neighborhoods, that kind of idea, got heard from us over 30 times a year. and our Sealist clients, Granny Smith on the 12th floor of an apartment building who, you know, once every five years cleans, you know, her two bedrooms hallway and around the couch.

01:17:21
Um, she would still hear from us 12 times a year, right? Maybe there’s something popped up. We want to be in her world. Maybe your neighbor or, you know, she went down to check the mail and somebody mentioned something. Oh, yeah. Because we just reminded her within the last 30 days about us again, right? So anyways, marketing is your friend.

01:17:42
So if you want to help creating a larger than life appearance and become the best known cleaner in your marketplace, hop on our schedule. You’re one of our clients on the call learning all this stuff and just remembering and sharpening the saw and you know anybody else that should hop on our schedule, reach out to them.

01:17:59
We do have referral rewards for our clientele as well. So to to help again elevate the industry and get you know so have the best businesses stand out, charge the best rates um be booked out weeks and weeks in advance and you know be stand out better than the three rooms in the hall for $99 commodity businesses that haven’t realized they’re slowly going out of business or quickly going out of business depending on which it is anyways.

01:18:25
But they’re also dis they’ve always been around and they discredit the marketplace because the average consumer then needs more education to understand that that was a fraud. That business hasn’t figured out how to run a business yet. They have they do not have a longevity at $99 cleanings, right? But they don’t know that yet because they seem to think it’s a thing because everybody else has marketed that thing, right? The prices that people are marketing now are the same prices that they marketed 20 years ago. How’s that possible? Everything’s more expensive yet the price on the coupon is still the same. kind of makes your head scratch. It’s because that’s not businesses are going out of business or they have their they’re the bait and switch, which has always been around as well, and they’re they’re getting their foot in the door and then upselling everything else. And that is not a long-term sustainable model. We want to build friends. We want to love our customers to death, and we want to be with them for years. And then when they, you know, they move into the retirement homes and stuff like that, we’ve already been cleaning with for their adult children, you know, and grow the business. And when we go to sell the business, we have we’re selling a business that has an asset value, which is the database. So, if any of that

01:19:27
makes sense, jump on the schedule. Love to have you. Um, check out the podcast, Carpet Cleaner Success Podcast. If you want to be interviewed, we’re doing a lot more interviews with successful carpet cleaners. We create an entire media kit as well that helps brand you in your local marketplace and teach you how to share that out.

01:19:41
That is all a free bonus for just jumping on the podcast and having a great conversation. So, um, we love to have hear stories from from successful carpet cleaners and you get a great local authority brand awareness build out of it as well. And we even show you how to to share that into all of the the prominent groups that you should be sharing that into to get more phone calls and more referral partners and become more more known as well.

01:20:07
So, anyways, lots of stuff going on there. Um, reach out to us if you need us. And with that, I want to thank everybody for investing their time. Under an hour and a half, under 90 minutes. So, um, I try and do them in 60, but we have a lot of content to cover. So, um, we got this in about, you know, what, 75, 80 minutes or so, though.

01:20:24
Anyways, thanks so much for showing up, and we shall catch up with you next time. Take care.