Full transcript9 chapters · 10,638 words
00:00Jujitsu at 33 and running a Service Titan consulting firm
Bernie Ollila: So you’re probably not a good candidate. If you are under that like 3 million mark, you have a tough time kind of letting other people do things in the business. That’s stuff that you’ll grow out of. But if these are problems that you have, like maybe you’re like a control
Bernie Ollila: freak or like a micromanager, a lot of people know if they are or they aren’t, you know, or maybe you’re scared to spend money, then don’t do it because it’s just going to be a nut. You’re just
Tyler Martin: going to think about the wrong things. Welcome to Profit and Grit with Tyler, where blue-collar owners and insiders spill the real story behind their hustle, building businesses that thrive through sweat and smarts. We’ll dig into their journeys from scaling chaos to growing the bottom
Tyler Martin: line with lessons and grit that pay off big. Here’s your host, the blue collar CFO, Tyler Martin. If you’re doing 3 million, 5 million, or even 10 million in home services, you’ve probably heard the name Service Titan. But is it a massive profit driver or just a giant monthly expense?
Tyler Martin: Today’s guest, Bernie Olila from Titan Pro Tech, breaks down why your CRM is actually the heart and lungs of your company’s valuation. We’re diving into the whole garbage in, garbage out, trap of price books, why you shouldn’t be the one managing your own tech, and last
Tyler Martin: but not least, how to build a business that is ready to sell, even if you never plan to. Let’s get into it with Bernie. Hey, Bernie, welcome to the Profit and Grit Show. How are you doing?
Bernie Ollila: I’m doing great, man. Thanks so much for having me here, Tyler. I look forward to the conversation.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, I’m excited to have you here. Hey, I’d love to start out learning a little bit about you. What do you do professionally?
Bernie Ollila: So I am the head of partnerships and one of the partners at Titan Pro Technologies. We are just a full-service, Service Titan consulting firm. What we do is everything from price book optimization to making sure your techs have the pictures that go out and a text message to customers when they are headed towards their home.
Bernie Ollila: So everything top to bottom of Service Titan to make you more profitable and operationally efficient.
Tyler Martin: Very cool. And I want to know something about you personally. Can you tell me, give me a little tidbit about you?
Bernie Ollila: Yeah, I play a lot of instruments. I’m a jujitsu purple belt and a big hockey fan.
Tyler Martin: Wow. So you’re hardcore, man. You’ve got it all covered, all the legit stuff. On your purple belt, how long have you been working to get up to purple?
Bernie Ollila: I’ve been getting my ass kicked since 2021.
Tyler Martin: Wow, that’s a long time to stick with it, man.
Bernie Ollila: Yeah, it’s fun. The problem is, the older you get, the tougher it is to find competitive teams to play on. And like, if I wanted to play, you know, beer league hockey or softball, a lot of times it starts at seven hockey, like 10 o’clock at night on a Tuesday.
Bernie Ollila: You can’t really make it work, but jujitsu, I can do it 6am or 6pm. So I just was like, you know what, let’s start grappling at the age of 33.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. Well, you’re pretty young dude. So you, you got a lot of years to get to, uh, to that top belt. Okay. You know where I’d love to start since this is going to be all about service Titan. And I think this has application for whether you’re considering Service Titan, whether you already have Service Titan, and maybe you’re not fully optimizing it.
Tyler Martin: So I think what we’re going to try to cover here is the full range of So It Applies to Everyone as we’re going through these topics.
03:20Why your CRM decides whether you can grow past $3 million
Tyler Martin: So where I’d love to start at is why does Service Titan matter in the sense like, how does this fit in for a home service business owner primarily? And why do you think it matters relative to maybe businesses that don’t use it?
Bernie Ollila: I think there’s two things you really have to consider when you’re thinking about your CRM system. And the first one is always, what is my goal with the company? Am I looking to grow and exit rich to generational wealth? Or do I want to just grow and sell?
Bernie Ollila: Do I want to dominate my backyard? Whatever it is, if you want to get typically beyond that like 3 million mark, for whatever reason, you’re going to want to be on Service Titan to be able to support that. And if you’re looking to sell, it’s because that’s where the private equity firms, they want to see.
Bernie Ollila: They want to see, you know, your service site is all bundled up. You have all your data in there. Things are clean. Like Lance Bachman, who owns our company, could talk about that for days. In fact, he does. He does a lot of great classes on it.
Bernie Ollila: But that’s number one. The second side of that is if you are looking to grow at all, you need a system that can support that growth with relative ease. And by ease, I mean, you know, it can do the things that you need it to do from everything
Bernie Ollila: from like dispatching, accounting, payroll, all of it. You’re going to need that one spot with minimal plug and play and copy paste and holding things together with popsicle sticks. So that’s the goal. No matter what, you need a handle on the company. Service tent is what’s going to help you get there.
Tyler Martin: And one thing I want to add, you mentioned about if you want to sell, it’s perfect for private equity. I know there’s a lot of people out there that are listening and they’re going to be like, well, I never want to sell because I hear this always with potential new clients.
04:54Build it to sell even if you plan to hand it to your kids
Tyler Martin: I don’t know if I ever want to sell. It’s a family business or whatever. Really, the mentality should be build a business that you can sell regardless of what you’re going to do. Because so many people change. It’s sad. I’ve had many clients come to me over the years that never thought they were going to sell.
Tyler Martin: And all of a sudden, they got cancer. And they’re like, oh, my gosh, I got to get out of here. I need to think about my life. I want to keep my life together and preserve how long I can be on this earth.
Tyler Martin: And so things change.
Bernie Ollila: Yeah, things change. And also there’s a side of it where I’ve talked to so many guys that are like my age, maybe a little bit older, you know, like mid thirties, like early forties. They’re in this family business. Their dad hands it to them or whatever.
Bernie Ollila: And it is just like a mess on the back end. Like things are, you know, kind of in spreadsheets. And, you know, somebody’s answering the phones. They’re doing pen and paper still today. I had that conversation about a month ago. And they’re like, listen, I want to, you know, I have goals for this company.
Bernie Ollila: So I need a system that’s going to help me get their service. Titan’s the answer. So even if you are looking to pass it down to your kids or to whoever else it might be, give it to them in like a nice box that way they don’t have to put a jigsaw puzzle
Tyler Martin: together. Yeah, that’s a wonderful point too, is that transition, that legacy that people are creating can make the transition so much easier if the foundation is there. Yep. That’s a good one. For sure. So Bernie, just kind of switching gears here, what do you see is the most common mistake
Tyler Martin: contractors make when they’re onboarding with Service Titan?
Bernie Ollila: They buy shit they don’t need and they don’t use it. Like a lot of the pro products, super useful. You should have the ones that are going to serve you. But a lot of times I get people that come to us and they’re like, yeah, you know, I
Bernie Ollila: have Marketing Pro, but I don’t really use it. I don’t really spend that much money on my marketing. Or they have, you know, like a Pricebook Pro and they’re not, it’s not really dialed in the way it needs to be. So they buy these products that they don’t use.
Bernie Ollila: So when you get on Service Titan, make sure that you’re having conversations with the person that’s helping you onboard about when actually is going to serve your business and have a plan for any products that you’re going to plug on and add on.
Bernie Ollila: Like, for example, if you’re getting marketing free, you should be spending a decent amount of money on your marketing and advertising so that you can have a good hold of what’s happening there. And the flip side of that coin is people that don’t get enough, right?
Bernie Ollila: Maybe somebody has multi-trucks and multi-locations, a lot of techs, and they cover a pretty big area, but they’re not using the Dispatch Pro feature, which is a product that you can plug in that will automatically send people to different places based on everything from their skills to where the job is in proximity to where they are currently.
Bernie Ollila: So the pro products can be a little bit of a misstep sometimes for people, both on the side of they’re getting things they don’t need and on the side of they’re not getting things that they should get because of its price or their standard technology, whatever it is.
07:35Bring a list of pain points before you talk to a salesperson
Tyler Martin: How do you know, like every business is going to be a little bit different. So how do they know when they’re getting sold something maybe that they don’t need versus what can they do to reduce that error of either not getting something, getting something they’re not going to use or getting something they really need, not getting something they’re going to need?
Bernie Ollila: It’s like when you buy anything, right? You’re dealing with a salesperson that probably wants to sell. I mean, I’m not saying anything bad about service titan, but people buy things they don’t need sometimes. So when you’re looking to onboard with that, have like a consultant,
Bernie Ollila: if it’s somebody like me, or even if it’s the person that does your books, your CFO, whatever it might be, have somebody kind of guide you through that process. Don’t just blindly walk onto the lot and get sold the biggest car with the best trim.
Bernie Ollila: You know what I mean? Just have an idea of what it is. Don’t say like, yeah, I’m going on service titan because Tommy Melo is on service titan. I’m going on Service Titan because Lance Bachman’s on. So go to Service Titan because you need it for your business to get to where guys like
Bernie Ollila: that are. But make sure you know what it is that you need to make easier. What are my biggest pain points? Why am I getting on Service Titan? Is it a pain in the ass for me with my accounting and my payroll? Is it tough for me to make sure my guys are answering calls the right way and booking things
Bernie Ollila: the right way? Those are the things you should have a list of. This is what I need this to fix for me. And bring that list to Service Titan whenever you’re going to do it. And, you know, obviously a consultant, me or someone like you, Tyler, or like whoever
Bernie Ollila: can help you guide you through that process that’s familiar with it.
Tyler Martin: And so you recommend like how comprehensive should that list be? Should it be like going through every section of the business and going, hey, this is a weakness I have in the business. And this is what I’d like to, the problem I’m hoping to solve.
Bernie Ollila: People will, I am not a, personally, I’m not like I’m a detailed person, but I’m not the kind of guy that’s going to, you know, make a ton of like notes. I’m not a big note taker, right? I know a lot of people aren’t.
Bernie Ollila: But with something like this, I would be comfortable going in with like a talent prior scroll worth of like things that I needed to fix for me because it’s such a big investment. Not in terms of price, but like the way it’s going to work for you and your company
Bernie Ollila: that you need to be prepared with the problems you need to have addressed. And if it doesn’t address it, then it stays on your list of shit. You got to get fixed. But if it can address it, now you know how that’s going to work in service tighten.
Bernie Ollila: Yep. But make it a million things. Make it 10. It doesn’t matter. I would say go as much as you can.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, I love that suggestion, by the way. I do that with clients, but it’s kind of unconscious and it’s not to the level that you’re talking about. I think it needs to be more intentional. You should be making a list of, hey, these are the things that we want to solve.
Tyler Martin: And how does that correlate to any package, really, that you’re bringing into the business? That’s a great one. I love it.
09:58Who should not get Service Titan even at $6 million
Tyler Martin: So taking this one step deeper, the common pushback that I’ll get for someone that’s not a service site and user. So let’s say $6 million shop. They hear the pricing and they flip out. They’re like, oh, my God, this is a ton of money.
Tyler Martin: It’s way more than probably one of the other two compete, most dominant competing packages. Why should I do this? What’s your answer to that?
Bernie Ollila: You know, it’s probably more expensive to stay where you are instead of being at 10 million in two years, you know, like Housecall Pro or whatever is going to get you there. So the issue is you need as much control as you can possibly get.
Bernie Ollila: And that is the best option out there is service time for getting there. It’s more, you know, cost versus value, right? Like, yeah, it costs money. Good stuff costs a lot of money, you know. and it’s a great program. It’s a great feature. It’s a great product. You can do that. You can do whatever you want with it.
Bernie Ollila: That’s the beauty of it. It can literally do anything you need to do in the business. And that like, yeah, you know, cost what it costs, a few thousand dollars a month. What’s it like? One install. If you have a consultant, you have like the full package of like everything that you need,
Bernie Ollila: or maybe two if you’re a bigger company, but it’s going to cost you more in the long run in terms of getting towards your goals. You’ll get there slower. You’ll have less control. You’re going to have a lot of headaches that you have now in the future.
Bernie Ollila: So I would say like, yeah, I know it’s expensive, but it’s something that you need.
Tyler Martin: is a great candidate for Service Titan, and maybe who’s a candidate for not really, you would say, ah, you’re not ready for it. Even for revenue-wise, they fit the criteria.
Bernie Ollila: You know, I would say you’re, I’ll start with the latter there. So you’re probably not a good candidate if you are, you know, under that like 3 million mark. And so it’s not just under 3 million, if you’re under 3 million, you can be a really good candidate. And you’re also in the trucks all
Bernie Ollila: the time, you have a tough time kind of letting other people do things in the business. That’s stuff that you’ll grow out of. But if these are problems that you have, like maybe you’re like a control freak or like a micromanager, a lot of people know if they are or they aren’t, you know,
Bernie Ollila: or maybe you’re scared to spend money, then don’t do it because it’s just going to be a nut. You’re just going to think about the wrong things. You got to get your, you have to be in like the right kind of spot to be able to make that investment for yourself. So if like you’re brand new to like
Bernie Ollila: investing into things like that, you’re probably not going to be a good candidate for it. But if you’re looking to get out of the truck or if you’re already out of the truck and you’re behind the desk all day, right? Then it’s a great product for you. And you have specific goals that you want
Bernie Ollila: to get to in terms of revenue. Great product for you. You want the different kind, you want certain controls over the business that you don’t have from where you are right now. Great product for you. But if you’re like a nerd, if you’re still nervous, you’re still new, you’re treading water,
Bernie Ollila: it’s, you know, kind of, then you might, it might not be the best, the best thing for you right now.
12:30The price book is the engine and somebody has to own it
Tyler Martin: So I think I’m hearing you say, even if you’re 6 million, if you have, if you’re so stuck in the weeds of the business, that everything runs through you, you’re a control freak, unless you’re really self-aware and say, Hey, I’m ready to let that go of that and change my
Tyler Martin: business operations. Cause I know this is what’s holding me back. You, that sounds like they’re going to get overwhelmed if they try to do it unless they have that open mind.
Bernie Ollila: Yeah, for sure.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. Good. Okay. Good feedback. Okay. I want to switch gears. I want to talk about the price book. One of my favorite topics, because I think this is one that it causes a lot of anxiety for a lot of business owners. Let’s start there. What, what should, I want to kind
Tyler Martin: of go through the whole range here. So if you’re new to service Titan, I believe this is probably one of the most important, potentially one of the most important parts of the setup. What are your thoughts around it and kind of take me through what you see when it comes to price
Bernie Ollila: book? I think the price book we often say is like the heart and like the, some people say lungs. I think that’s a bit too, I don’t know, not boring, but it’s the heart and the lungs of the business, but it is definitely, it’s going to run through the price book. It’s the engine. It’s the engine,
Bernie Ollila: dude. It’s the, it’s the biggest, it’s the biggest component because it feeds a lot of other things. And if that’s not dialed in, you know, a lot of other stuff isn’t going to be the way you want it to be. You need it just from like, and personally, like I’m a sales guy,
Bernie Ollila: right. Uh, by, by trading, most people that even that own companies like our salespeople, you need it to be as easy as possible for your guys in the field to be able to get new business, right. And to close new business, your price book is dialed in and you have the right,
Bernie Ollila: you know, you have your right templates in there set up. You have your right packages set up for people to be able to sell in the field, it’s going to help you tremendously. You can set your margins in there to the profitability that you want to have. You can set your materials,
Bernie Ollila: your costs, all that stuff in the price book can be dialed in in such a way that everything else runs smoothly. And I’ll say this, the price book is an ongoing thing with people. Prices change. It’s a living thing. Yeah. Yeah. It’s never like, okay, I’m done. We’ve done builds for people
Bernie Ollila: at that where we’ve taken, it’s like 98, we build a price book out and it’s great. People are like, holy shit, this is awesome. And they want to start changing things. So then they start adding stuff on and add stuff on and add stuff on. It’s like the first question I always get is like,
Bernie Ollila: how long is it going to take to build on my price book? And my answer is always like, it’ll be functional in 30 days, right? In 60 days, you’re going to love it. In 90 days, you’re going to start having ideas, you know? And then when they start having ideas and it’s
Bernie Ollila: like a living organism, a lot of people have their hands in it. You have your hands in it as the money guy. I have my hands in it as the consultant, the marketing company is going to be probably we’re looking at it, the accounting person internally, payroll, all that. It’s all going
Bernie Ollila: to be running through the price book. So you got to make sure that you’re managing it. Somebody has to be the price book guru for you. If it’s going to be a consultant, if it’s going to be somebody internally, whoever it is, somebody needs to be the person,
Bernie Ollila: the numero uno for the price book in your business. If it’s you, whatever, that’s great. But somebody has got to be the one that’s watching it, making updates to it, making sure that things change, things in the business change, costs go up, commissions change, whatever it might be.
Bernie Ollila: I know that was a long answer and I apologize.
Tyler Martin: No, that’s great.
Bernie Ollila: But I feel very passionately about the price book.
Tyler Martin: I want to go deeper though, that guru. Is that guru manually adjusting it? Is there some type of interface? What do you recommend in terms of their interface that’s updating pricing and stuff? Or is it manually done? What do you recommend and what do you see most common?
Bernie Ollila: Both. You could like, somebody can jump in and change. You can have different things plugged into it to make changes as, you know, cost of things are adjusted. But I would say just to have the one person that knows the price book inside out.
Bernie Ollila: like, yeah, you know, this is Jake of our team. Shout out to Jake, Jake Blair. This is Jake. He’s the man with price book. He knows everything about it. He can just look at it and say like, that’s who you need in your business. And it’s not just, you know, us as the consulting firm,
Bernie Ollila: right. There’s other companies that we work with or people that I’ve come across throughout my, you know, career that are like, yeah, this is, you know, Susie in the accounting department. She’s in complete control of our, our price book. She knows it inside and out. You as the business
Bernie Ollila: owner, it’s never going to happen. Yeah. But somebody needs to be the person that is the go-to person for that price book to make sure everything else is running efficiently.
Tyler Martin: Do you ever see a certain, is there a certain role that of person, like you mentioned accounting, is it usually fall under an accounting person? Is it, it sounds like it wouldn’t be the business owner. Who do you think is usually the best suited for that caretaker role of the price book?
Bernie Ollila: Usually somebody in accounting. And they’re always like, I don’t know why this is my job, but I’m always like, I don’t. Cause it’s the most important function, arguably the company. I like, I, you know, I just, I do the academy invoices in the accounting. I don’t know what’s,
Bernie Ollila: what’s going on here. But it’s like, it’s always, and I’m always like, yeah, you know, I hear that all the day from people that are in the accounting department. So this is your, this is your baby. So, but yeah, we work with a lot of vendors too.
Bernie Ollila: They’ll hook us up with like different vendors they work with for, to plug stuff in the price book. So typically it’s, yeah, someone on that accounting side or, and like, or a consultant. Like us, we train people on it, right? We have meetings with them
Bernie Ollila: to make sure that whoever is that, that, that appointed person on the customer’s end, the contractor’s end, does know what’s going on with not just the price book, but everything else that is fluent. and it knows what they need out of it. And it’s not a situation where they learn it and they walk away.
Bernie Ollila: It’s so they can start thinking about it and understand it as a piece of the business as opposed to this thing that somebody’s setting up for me one time. So they can come to me and say, hey, we need X, Y, and Z done in the price book.
Bernie Ollila: And then we can do it for them. And now they have that in their pocket too. You know what I mean?
Tyler Martin: Yeah, totally. Do you feel like the price book, is it more of like a flat fee pricing that you’re instituting because you’re building in a certain margin? Is it more like dynamic pricing? How would you articulate to someone that was new to a price book in Service Titan and how they’re doing it?
Bernie Ollila: Yeah, I would say both, honestly. In any situation, yeah. Like the dynamic pricing, I’ve seen people to set it up so that they know what their margins are going to be on different things. They want it built in that way. But dynamic pricing is pretty much instituted everywhere across a lot of the price books that we do.
Bernie Ollila: So dynamic is very important, but I think the profitability is usually number one, right? When you say?
Tyler Martin: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, having to know your profit. But I think they’re all feed off each other, right? If you’re getting that dynamic pricing and then you’re feeding through that data and you’re keeping it current. What I see happen a lot of times is one of two things.
Tyler Martin: To your point, like people either don’t update their price book or they’re not like modifying for changing times. And so that gets way out of control. or they want to keep it so neurotically up to date that I think it doesn’t make sense.
Tyler Martin: If there’s some parts that need manually updated and they’re very small parts, I don’t think you need to be worrying. I think you can just say, hey, maybe there’s a 10% fluctuation between the pricing and it doesn’t really matter. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not going to have a big impact on the business.
Bernie Ollila: Yeah, I agree.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, cool. Okay, last thing on the pricing book. Any words of wisdom in terms of what people should be doing with their price book or especially when they’re starting out? Because I know a lot of times people are using some of the other packages.
19:20Garbage in garbage out on the initial data migration
Tyler Martin: They don’t have a price book. Like they’re just like I have a client, literally, it’s a true story. They look up pricing on a website at a vendor site every time they’re trying to put a quote together. And they spend hours.
Bernie Ollila: They don’t just get it from the vendor?
Tyler Martin: Well, they go to the vendor site where the vendor has the pricing. Oh, okay. But they literally are looking up pieces for price changes. Now we’re changing that. In fact, they’re going to be a future service site and customer. But my point is a lot of these smaller shops that don’t use tools like that and maybe use
Tyler Martin: some of the other packages, they don’t have a formal price book.
Bernie Ollila: Yeah. So I’ll say that the biggest, the most important thing is, is obviously getting it right from the jump. Right. But in tandem with that, you need to have like all your stuff like together. I was talking to somebody that we signed up the other day.
Bernie Ollila: And a lot of times people do this for a little hire someone on Fiverr to get all their PDFs together and like all the data from their 14,000 historical customers. Like the migration, that initial like migration is always like the biggest pain in the ass to get it kind of into Service Titan.
Bernie Ollila: And like they help you out the best that they can, Service Titan. But like it’s a matter of like, you know, garbage in, garbage out in terms of the things that you’re bringing over. So you got to have your stuff together when you’re going to build it out.
Bernie Ollila: that way you’re not, it’s not a situation where you’re kind of, like you just said, you’re scripting, you go to a website, look at things up, plugging it in, et cetera, et cetera, have it all together all at once. And then it’s easy to change and easy to match.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. Do you recommend if you’re starting out, do you try to tackle your whole price book from the get-go or do you just take a certain section of it and say, okay, we’ve done enough of the core stuff we do. Let’s, let’s roll this out and get live with certain service site.
Bernie Ollila: Yeah. You have your core things that you build out for exactly from the beginning. You have like that, that you make it functional from the, from the jump there and you build on as you go, it can be functional, you know, rather quickly. And then you start plugging and playing more as
Bernie Ollila: you start building and building and building. But to have that core, like that foundation laid
Tyler Martin: is very important. Yeah. And just to end on a positive note, I had a lady named Katie Higgins on this podcast. She has a two-year-old HVAC company. It’s now $10 million a year. She went five to 5 million in the first year, 10 million in the second year. She said to me,
Tyler Martin: one of the smartest moves she ever made when she first started. It was a new business. She got Service Titan. She literally spent, and I don’t remember, but I’m going to kind of fill in the blanks here. I think it was like two or three weeks straight of just spending all that time
Tyler Martin: with the price book, setting things up, analyzing it. And she said it was the most boring kind of overwhelming project. But yet she says now two years later, it’s one of the smartest things she did because they had a foundation. It’s all in Service Titan, that good data, and now they’re
Tyler Martin: just maintaining it. So I would just say anyone that kind of gets nervous about the big aspect
Bernie Ollila: of the project, it pays off long-term. Dude, it does pay off long-term. And I think that, like we were talking about earlier, like when you’re going to buy a service site and have that list of things that she did, the pains that she needs to solve. Same thing with the price book.
Bernie Ollila: If she did, that’s awesome that she did that. A lot of times people just don’t want to like do that little work in the beginning. You’re not even like, you have to do that. And somebody else is going to build it out for you. Good for her for being able to do it on her own. I don’t know if
Bernie Ollila: anybody helped her enough. That’s great. Yeah, I’m not sure. Somebody’s going to have to help you build that out, but it’s going to be, it can be painful sometimes pulling all that, that data and stuff together, but you got to be able to sit down and do that. And when you do it, it’s just going
Bernie Ollila: to set you up for success in the future. So dedicate that time, you know, know it’s going to suck and give it that, you know, week, two weeks, but however long she said it took to pull together.
Tyler Martin: That’s a really, that’s smart. And I know I said, this is going to be my last question on price book, but I lie and I have one more. What would your advice be to people, of business owners, companies out there that are using Service Titan.
Tyler Martin: And I know there’s people listening right now and they’re like, man, I know my price book sucks. Is there some way you guys integrate with already established users? Maybe that their price book isn’t great or maybe they need to increase the functionality of it
Tyler Martin: so they can rely on it more and it could be more accurate. Any words of wisdom there? Before we move to the next topic.
Bernie Ollila: Yeah, just get it working. You can hire me, you can hire whoever you want to do it. Somebody has to get that work. Once it’s like, I’m in for you, you’re going to see a lot of different things start like functioning for the better in your service site and in the, uh, in the business.
Bernie Ollila: So whether it’s whole humming about, you know, I’m going to pay somebody to do it. I don’t want to do that. Just bite the bullet and make it work for yourself because it’s going to pay off long term. We actually started as a price book company at a Titan pro.
Bernie Ollila: We were just, we were building price books for people and now we’re like a full service consulting firm. But that price book is so important. Like even like we built, built a business off it, you know, and now we do, we do everything.
Bernie Ollila: But that price book is crucial to the business. So you need to, if it’s dialed in, it’s right. Everything else is going to be a lot easier for you.
Tyler Martin: Do you guys as a company ever do like price book audits for companies? Like if someone were to come to you and say, hey, I’m kind of worried. We haven’t been updating it or whatever the issue is. Do you ever do anything like that?
Bernie Ollila: Yeah, I do it for free. We look at people, obviously, because we want them to sign up with us, right? I’ll look at the price book for anybody and tell them what’s wrong with it. And I’ll show them some ones that work for companies like them.
Bernie Ollila: similar size, you know, similar goals, whatever it is. We have some, we have an example for pretty much anything because we’ve been in business for so long with this stuff, but yeah, we look at it for free. And then we tell you, you know, this is what we can do for you. Obviously we don’t just make the list
Bernie Ollila: and say, here you go. Now you can go change it, but we’ll, we’ll tell you what’s wrong with it and show you like what it could be.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. What are the most common things, one or two things that you see that’s wrong with it?
Bernie Ollila: Spec based templates. So the way the material, the way it’s all talking to each other is usually off. A lot of times people have trouble too with like commissions and stuff in there for those people. So like, it’s really, it’s a lot of things and it usually points back to a different problem if it’s like really messed up.
Bernie Ollila: But that’s, that’s typically what we say.
Tyler Martin: Got it. Okay. I want to go into workflows, streamlining workflows.
25:01Sales versus completed revenue as the first bottleneck check
Tyler Martin: So let’s talk about, you know, owners oftentimes talk about bottlenecks where they’re having problems in the workflow and the systems of their business. What are the first bottlenecks that you might look for in terms of a business? like as it relates to Service Titan?
Tyler Martin: Is there anything that stands out?
Bernie Ollila: Yeah, I’m going to pull one up here. I can’t share my screen, but I’m going to look at one and I’ll tell you right now exactly.
Tyler Martin: Okay, sure.
Bernie Ollila: Whenever somebody, we look at their Service Titan, the first thing that I always look at is that initial dashboard in the front where I could see like their total sales versus their completed revenue, right? So that total sales number should be bigger than the completed revenue number.
Bernie Ollila: And if it’s not, then that means that there’s some kind of a, there’s a major workflow issue that’s typically pointing back to the way it’s being sold in the field, right? So the total sales should be higher than the completed revenue is. If the completed
Tyler Martin: revenue is higher, it’s, do you know what I mean? Yeah, totally. Yeah. You can’t have,
Bernie Ollila: you can’t complete more revenue than you’ve added in sales. That wouldn’t, that can’t work. Yeah, exactly. So if I see that, I’m like, okay, tell me how the, how, how does the workflow go? Like if somebody, let’s just say, you know, Johnny goes to, you know, whoever’s house, Mrs. Smith’s house,
Bernie Ollila: and he’s there to talk about her HVAC or her roof, whatever it might be. Does he have the estimate, then move to invoice that’s sent to her and she pays? Or is he skipping that and just going right to the invoice? So what’s the process looking like there so that nothing gets kind of hung up to dry there
Bernie Ollila: or left in the ether, right? That’s typically an issue there. And that’s usually the biggest one. You got to have those sales and those revenue numbers, right? To make sure that everything else is functioning appropriately. But what you really need to do is also think about your customer experience
Bernie Ollila: from that standpoint. The call comes in, is it getting answered right there in service site when the green bubble pops up? And when it gets logged, is anybody changing like different lead sources? Is everything set up so that it flows in automatically and it’s automated?
Bernie Ollila: There’s really a lot of different workflows. Somebody’s always got a workflow issue. Anybody can jump in and pull it apart. But those are usually the two that I start with is like, what do the sales numbers look like? And then what is the process like when,
Tyler Martin: you know, a lead comes in. Got it. Do you ever taking this kind of in a little bit direction, but same topic. Do you ever deal with office staff where you have to get their buy-in? Cause life’s going to change for them once service Titan comes into the, into play. Where do you
Tyler Martin: guys fit in, in terms of office buy-in and staff office staff buy-in and just making people feel
Bernie Ollila: comfortable with change? We have coaches here that will work with your team to make sure they are bought in and up to date and they know how to use service titan and that they want to do it the bottom line i think there was like technology is your friend right and uh if you don’t want to
Bernie Ollila: use it then you can’t then you probably shouldn’t be at that company probably shouldn’t have that
Tyler Martin: person there do you know what i mean yeah do you see that come up very often after when there’s an implementation where maybe someone just can’t get up to speed with it or it doesn’t
Bernie Ollila: doesn’t fit for them can’t can’t’s different than walt i think you know i so if somebody can’t that we’ll spend the extra time with that person. But if somebody is like, man, you know, F this, like, you know, I’ve been doing it this way for so long that it’s like, what do you,
Bernie Ollila: that’s your, it’s your business. Like you have this person working for you just invested however much money in the service site and they’re just not going to use it. That’s, you know, that’s your cause of the business owner to either have them in or not,
Bernie Ollila: but we make them very comfortable. We make people really comfortable in it. We kind of show them how it helps them perform their job better too, you know, make their lives easier and make it easier for them to make money inside that
Tyler Martin: company. So yeah, we, we spend a lot of time with people. What do you think is the biggest response as you’re getting service tightened up and running from office staff primarily, I guess out in the
Bernie Ollila: field too, what’s the biggest feedback that you get from it? You know, maybe I have an angel on my shoulder. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve, I’ve always had the experience of people like, yes, it’s great. I can’t wait to use it. A lot of times they come in, like, they don’t know,
Bernie Ollila: they don’t know like what it’s going to be like, but they know what they’re doing right now sucks and they hate it, you know? So they come into a pretty open-minded and ready to go. The only time I’ve only ever heard of like two people having trouble with it.
Bernie Ollila: I’m sure my team has a lot of different stories than me, but you know, I just like salespeople that are like just not doing stuff as salespeople are, you know, want to do, you know? But yeah, usually people are coming to us. They’re super excited about it.
Bernie Ollila: Even from like the accounting team too, you know, the people that needed to just talk to QuickBooks, people that are doing like, you know, the payroll, the people that are answering the phones, they’re all typically very excited about jumping into Service Titan and making it work for them
Bernie Ollila: because they can answer more calls. They can book more. That’s more money for them. And the people that are on the other sides of the business now have this simple system for them to be able to
Tyler Martin: perform their jobs too. So people are usually excited. On the same note to you, there’s a lot of external packages like Chirp comes to mind as being one that I know Service Titan has modules, but then there’s modules that other companies make. What’s your opinion around that?
Tyler Martin: Like, and don’t, I’m not specifically talking about Chirp. I’m just talking about those packages like that. Are those a good route to add packages that arguably do things better maybe than the home-created module of Service Titan? What’s your thoughts?
Bernie Ollila: Yeah, I mean, if it does it better, do it, I’d say. But if you’ve never done it before and Service Titan hasn’t there for you, just give it a shot there. If it’s not great, Or if you have one that you know is working and it functions well in the business and it plugs in the service site, keep it.
Bernie Ollila: Don’t change it. I would say definitely. But like we talked about earlier, like what pain is it? Are you just buying something because you want to buy it or you buy it because it’s going to help you out? Because then you got to know you’re going to buy this thing that you don’t know if it’s going to work or not.
Bernie Ollila: Then your team is like, what do you want me to do with this? And us as like a consultant or someone that’s implementing it is going to be like, okay, now what? How would you like this to go? And they’re like, I don’t know. I heard it just text people.
Bernie Ollila: It’s like, what the, what do you want me to do with that? You know?
Tyler Martin: I got it. Okay. And I guess the last thing I’d just wrap up on this. Do you have a real world scenario recently? And I obviously don’t say the company name, but what type of things are you typically coming into for people that don’t use Service Titan?
Tyler Martin: You’re coming into their environment. What are the things you’re seeing? Are they using some of the smaller packages that have limitations in terms of growth? Are there still companies that are trying to do things mostly manual or kind of hodgepodge together? Do you have like a real world example that you could recently ran and do that kind of makes for a good story?
Bernie Ollila: Yeah, I had people call us sometimes and they think that we are service titan. And like, fine, we’ll send them to where service titan is. But a lot of times they’ll come to us from a different CRM that isn’t working for them. Like yesterday, I talked to a hundred million dollar company with four locations.
Bernie Ollila: They just called in and they are using, I think, PayCore, ProCore, PayCore. I forget what it’s called. I think it’s a pro core, but I might be wrong. Yeah. But they’re using that. And it’s, you’re just like, holy shit, how are you doing that?
Bernie Ollila: And I’m not exaggerating. I have sometimes where people come to me and they’re like, yeah, I’m a house called pro. I’m doing, you know, 15 million. I’m like, what? You know? So it’s kind of a situation where people come to us. It’s like, they’ve, they’ve either held it together, you know, so long with like, you
Bernie Ollila: know, paper, glue, and popsicle sticks that you like, this is a miracle. Or it’s a situation where like, they want to grow and they have like ideas about how they want to do it. But the most common one is like, yeah, so-and-so does it.
Bernie Ollila: And now I want to be like, that would do that too. So this is why I’m on service setting. Can you make this happen for me? And obviously the answer is yes. But the people that, the one yesterday that I just told you about,
Bernie Ollila: the big company that was not on service settings on a different system entirely, using spreadsheets, multiple locations, has people just like dispatching willy-nilly. It’s kind of like, wow, man, that’s crazy that you can do that.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s a good story. Let’s move into training. is training something that you do once you get the system you learn how to use it and then you’re done after a couple weeks or whatever after you start to use system or is that an ongoing thing
Tyler Martin: what do you recommend around training and this is particularly if it’s a new user obviously they’re going to use training but someone that’s used the system for two or three years should they still be
Bernie Ollila: getting training yeah i think so uh i think that we we train like once a week well we spend time with people once or twice a week in terms of like training if it’s new staff that’s coming in or if it’s people that need to understand better how to use a certain aspect of the system,
Bernie Ollila: or maybe you’ve done something else in the company, independent of service time completely, that now you need to have in your service time. Because as your companies, as they grow, as they change, everything in it changes, and it’s got to be in service time.
Bernie Ollila: So there’s never any shortage of things to train on or things to implement in service time. For sure, I can tell you that. But I know it’s kind of tough for some people to wrap their heads around, But that’s usually where the training and the ongoing stuff comes in is like the business changes, right?
Bernie Ollila: And you get different tools and you get different people and different staff and your head CSR leaves or somebody gets promoted and now somebody else comes in. There’s never any shortage of things to train on in service titan.
Tyler Martin: What do you do when you do lose a critical function within your company and now you’re bringing in a new person that unfortunately doesn’t have certain service titan experience? How do you integrate that and mitigate some of the pain of that change?
Bernie Ollila: Well, we can fill them. We fill the void until that person’s up to speed. And then we hand them the reins and move on to something else. Yeah. So that’s no problem for us. But in terms of by fill the void, I mean making sure the data and everything stays together
Bernie Ollila: and service time, we can’t jump in and start answering the phones for you. Sure. That’s no problem for us. And then it’s not easy to hire, right? But when you do hire somebody, you kick them over to us. What happens to speed? Relatively quickly with how to use the system.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. And, you know, one thing we didn’t talk about, or at least I didn’t use this term specifically, is not only just the system of Service Titan itself, but also the training. Everything has a component of ROI, right? Like in terms of what’s going to be my return on investment in that training, if done right, and you’re getting your people up to speed and kind of following a consistent process is going to give you ROI.
Tyler Martin: There’s just no way around it.
Bernie Ollila: Yes. That’s like the biggest. I think about it like this. when you, like, let’s say you’re an intellectual company, right? You have all these open quotes and leads that you didn’t follow up on that are sitting in your service site. Nobody’s put together like a campaign to start following up with those people.
Bernie Ollila: And that’s one way you can kind of mitigate that. But if people are more efficient themselves and we can make the operationally efficiency happen in service site, now you’re talking about, you know, really making more money, not losing any opportunity. So yeah, if somebody’s proficient and they’re up to speed
Bernie Ollila: and they can spot things that are going on, it’s going to just do better as a whole for the entire company.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, good stuff. Okay, last topic, and this one’s close to my heart, so I don’t want to gloss over it. Data-driven decisions using dashboards. Talk to me about just the dashboard in general
35:46The campaign summary report and what he checks on dashboards
Tyler Martin: that Service Titan has, and what are some key metrics that come to mind for you that are a fabric of the dashboard and an important part of how you’re going to get that ROI?
Bernie Ollila: Yeah, man, I think sales is number one, right? Like revenue closed is… is so beyond that, you have your like marketing scorecards in here and your CSR scorecards in here. So you can set up and start measuring the performance of your team according to different
Bernie Ollila: metrics that you might have. We were joking before we started recording about everybody’s like, yeah, my call booking rate is like 95%. It’s like, it’s no, it isn’t right. Like it’s probably like 50, 60, something like that, 70. But if you set these like realistic metrics for yourself and you
Bernie Ollila: can start like, you know, working towards getting there, those are very important dashboards. My favorite report, though, in a service site is called a campaign summary report. And what that does is shows you your jobs that you’re booked and the sources of the leads that have come in.
Bernie Ollila: So you can see right away, like, what is my best ROI on my advertising in the last 30 days? If I see that I spent $4,000 on Angie and I closed $150,000 of business in it, you know what I mean? Or if I see my Google ads just hemorrhage 35 grand, I made 12,000 off it.
Bernie Ollila: You know, that’s where it’s kind of like, and you can see your existing customers there too. Like, okay, they’re still good for, you know, 120K a month. Do you know what I mean? So that’s kind of, that’s my favorite report. So I can see like where my marketing and my sales are lining up and where my best opportunities
Bernie Ollila: are to get the most bang for my buck there. Sales first, everything else is like, it’ll come. Price looks good. We want that sales. We want sales to be the driver.
Tyler Martin: Would you argue the dashboards are the secret sauce of like getting a gauge on how your business is doing?
Bernie Ollila: For sure, man. Like 100%. I would say, was that a softball? Would you say that too?
Tyler Martin: I’m trying to warm you up, man.
Bernie Ollila: No doubt. You’re not supposed to say this in the podcast. Sorry.
Tyler Martin: I’m teasing. I’m joking with you. I love it. So basically you’re telling me I asked the dumbest question of this year in this podcast.
Bernie Ollila: No, I don’t think it was the dumbest question. I’m teasing. Yes, 100%. And you can set it up for like, you can do custom dashboards for people too. Like you could do whatever you want in there. But I would say those dashboards and making sure that you’re monitoring your metrics
Bernie Ollila: with a good goal in mind. Like, okay, I want to get to 10 million. My call booking rate from this source needs to be 75%. My CSRs need to look like this on their scorecards. And when you know like what your numbers need to be
Bernie Ollila: and you can set it up in here, start measuring that and start working towards it. That’s the sauce. and do 100% to dashboards and have control of those numbers is the secret sauce.
Tyler Martin: The reason why, in all seriousness, I geek out so much on dashboards, because obviously numbers are something I really love and have a passion for. But sometimes people that haven’t driven their business by numbers, they don’t understand that power or have appreciation for being able to get,
Tyler Martin: assuming good data is going in, and this is a big comment, good data has to go in to get good data, good reports out, good data out. It’s powerful, man. And if you can just look, I just always just light up when I’m looking at a client’s dashboard on ServiceTriton, regardless of what one it is, because it’s just powerful.
Tyler Martin: When you’re looking at good data and it’s saying, hey, I’ve made $10,000 of sales today, and these are the reps that made sales for me today. These are the reps where deals fell down or whatever that data might be. Man, to have that one spot is just overwhelmingly cool.
Tyler Martin: It’s great.
Bernie Ollila: Because you can ask somebody a question, like you were saying, and they can just have the answer right there. Like, all right, so you told me you know what you need to get to. What’s Johnny’s booking rate? How did your Google local service ads do last month?
Bernie Ollila: How much money did you spend on your marketing? Do you have email follow-up campaigns set up? Do you have text message campaigns set up to follow up with people with open quotes? So exactly like you said, having those dashboards and those numbers right in hand is going to
Bernie Ollila: help you think quicker and be more efficient and make decisions.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, love it. Love it. Okay. So let’s wrap up here. So a few things that I’m taking away from this, I think the number one thing is price book. That’s probably what dominated most of this conversation. So I think, you know, I got to lead by price book. It’s cool that you guys actually focus in that area. That’s
Tyler Martin: how your business started. Cause I think it’s just such an important thing. So price book, I’ll say price book protects your profit, a good price book protection profit. That’s number one. I would say the KPIs, knowing your numbers, dashboard, things like that, that’s going to drive growth. And if you can get a dashboard, the whole concept around that is a
Tyler Martin: simplification. It’s all in one spot, easy to kind of take that data and then make decisions from it. And then I guess the last thing I would just say is use the right tool for your business. So, you know, it could be service Titan, but you may not be ready for service Titan, depending on
Tyler Martin: maybe you’re an owner that controls everything and you’re not ready to let go. Maybe you’re a little too small right now, but that’s okay. You still can set the foundation, but that would be my last thing. Use the right tool for the right job, which I’m sure speaks to our audience really
Bernie Ollila: well. Yeah. Yeah. And so I can add like a 3B onto that. Yeah. I would say don’t like when you’re buying tools, buy the right tool. Don’t just buy something for the sake of it. Make sure it serves
Tyler Martin: a purpose. That’s a huge one. Yeah. I just shouldn’t have glossed over that right tool. Yeah. Don’t over, we all do that too, because as consumers, I know I do, you get all the bells and whistles. You just want them all. And it’s a lot of money we’re talking about.
Bernie Ollila: Yeah. I’m always like, why do I have that? And your service center said, why do I do one thing? How much for marketing? I don’t use it. Yeah. So.
Tyler Martin: Okay. Awesome. So in terms of your links, we’ve obviously got Titan pro technologies.com. That’s your company link. Then your LinkedIn is your first and last name with a bunch of digits. So I’ll just say, look up. Do you want us to say what your LinkedIn is or do you just, I guess your first and last
Tyler Martin: name.
Bernie Ollila: Yeah. It’s Bernie. A little B E R N I E O L L I L I. And people, people can text me too. You can share my phone number. It’s 609-891-9911. Shoot me a text and I’ll set up some time.
Tyler Martin: Okay. And then you want to also share your email address?
Bernie Ollila: Yeah, my email is B-O-L-L-I-L-A at TitanProTechnologies.com. So my first initial last name at TitanProTechnologies.com.
Tyler Martin: And if people reach out to you, what’s going to happen? You’re going to kind of help them assess where they’re at in terms of their needs, how you can potentially help them. And then you have a whole team, right? You’ll bring in people depending on what their needs are.
Tyler Martin: Is that how it works?
Bernie Ollila: Oh, yeah. We have 50 people over here. So I’ll have a conversation with them about what they’re doing, take a look at their service site, and tell them how I can help them out. And then my team will do all the work that we do, all the hard work that me and the person
Bernie Ollila: talked about.
Tyler Martin: Okay. Sounds good, Bernie. Hey, thanks for the conversation. I think we gave a lot of good information that people can, if they’re current users, I think they can utilize it in their business. or if they’re potentially new users, I think it kind of opens the door for a conversation
Tyler Martin: with someone like you to see if it’s right for their business.
Bernie Ollila: Yeah, brother, my pleasure. Really glad to be here.
Tyler Martin: Okay, man, take care.
Bernie Ollila: You too.
Tyler Martin: So my big takeaway from this conversation with Bernie is the idea of the price book guru. As a CFO, I see all the time, owners are trying to be the technician, the salesperson, the IT guy all at once. But like Bernie said, your price book is the engine of your profitability.
Tyler Martin: If your margins aren’t baked into that engine, you’re just spinning your wheels. Building a business that is ready to sell isn’t about quitting. It’s about control. It’s about having clean data and a foundation that doesn’t crumble the moment you step away for vacation.
Tyler Martin: If you’re feeling like you’ve got the grit, but you’re missing the profit, or if your backend data looks like a jigsaw puzzle, and I’m not kidding when I say that because I see it a lot, I’d love to help you find the missing pieces. I work as a fractional CFO for home service leaders
Tyler Martin: and companies to help you dial in these exact numbers. If you want to chat about your margins or your path to an exit, let’s hop on a no-pressure call. You can book me directly at cfointrocall.com. That’s cfointrocall.com. No sales pitch, just to look at your numbers,
Tyler Martin: quick discussion, see if I can help you. As always, thank you for listening, and I will see you on the next episode.
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Tyler Martin works with owners on the numbers behind these stories: Profit & Grit CFOs.
