Full transcript10 chapters · 9,471 words
00:00What Power Selling Pros does with recorded CSR calls
Brigham Dickinson: Private equity is pouring billions into home services because we’re customer-centric. But if we strip out the human element to chase margins, we lose the very thing that made this industry worth buying.
Tyler Martin: 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 line with lessons and grit that pay off big.
Tyler Martin: Here’s your host, the Blue Collar CFO, Tyler Martin. What if the real reason your business isn’t growing has nothing to do with leads? Today, I’m joined by Brigham Dickinson, the founder of Power Selling Pros, who has worked with hundreds of home service companies
Tyler Martin: to fix what’s actually broken behind the scenes. Most owners think they need more calls. Brigham will tell you they’re already getting them. They’re just not converting them the right way. In this episode, we get into why calls fall apart after they’re booked, where AI helps and where it hurts,
Tyler Martin: and how the best companies turn a simple phone call into real revenue. Let’s get into it now. Hey, Brigham, welcome to the Profit and Grit Show. How are you doing today?
Brigham Dickinson: I’m grateful, Tyler. Thanks for the opportunity.
Tyler Martin: I’m excited to have you here. So this is your second visit. First visit for those folks. I’ll put a link in the show notes. We went through Brigham’s journey. We talked about his business. We talked about a lot of really good things to help home service businesses.
Tyler Martin: Today, I’m going to hopefully go a little layer deeper into that. And where I’d love to start is just learning, for the folks that didn’t hear the first show, could you share a little bit about what you do, what you fit in the marketplace, your company,
Tyler Martin: and then I’ll start hitting you with questions.
Brigham Dickinson: Yeah, Tyler, thanks for having me back. I really appreciate it. I’m grateful that I was able to do a good enough job to come back. I begged you. Let’s be honest. I don’t know. We could debate who begged who, but that’s all right.
Brigham Dickinson: So yeah, Power Sling Pros. I started Power Sling Pros 17 years ago. According to LinkedIn, last month, it was 17 years. Got a bunch of congratulatory social media messages saying, hey, 17 years. I’m like, really? So that was cool. But yeah, 17 years doing this.
Brigham Dickinson: And what do we do? Well, at Power Selling, I founded a company called Power Selling Pros. And at Power Selling Pros, we listen to phone calls. We monitor phone calls. We monitor AI. And we provide feedback using those calls. We started with CSRs because their calls were recorded.
Brigham Dickinson: So we’d monitor those CSRs, listen to them, make sure that they’re creating a great experience for the customer. The end goal is for them to is to help homeowners realize that they’re that they’ve called the right place. Right. To go from the mindset of comparison to the mindset of, you know what, this is the right company.
Brigham Dickinson: This is the one I want to work with. This is the one I trust. So your goal is not just to book the call, but to have such an amazing customer experience using this really cool tool called the pattern for excellence. So if you don’t know about this tool, go back to the other podcast and listen to it.
Brigham Dickinson: And we’ll tell you all about it. But it’ll help your CSRs book the call while the customer and make sure you’re the last call that homeowner makes. So that’s what we do in a nutshell. We work with a lot of contractors, over 400 and counting now.
Brigham Dickinson: We train their CSRs and we also coach their technicians.
03:32Stuck at 300 trainees while the marriage fell apart
Brigham Dickinson: Now that AI is out for technicians, regardless of what it is, whether it’s Rilla, whether it’s FieldPro or SalesAsk or a number of others that keep coming out, such as FieldSpark with the one that Tommy Mello just came out with, we use that technology and we provide feedback using that technology to your technicians one-on-one twice a month, just like we would your CSRs.
Brigham Dickinson: So that’s what PowerSlane Pros does in a nutshell. And, of course, you can learn all about it when you listen to that first podcast.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s awesome. Okay, so I want to start with your own challenges as growing your own business, because I feel like one of the directions you took in getting past that plateau, which we all as business owners had a plateau, and do we seek outside help?
Tyler Martin: Do we just stay there forever? And I wanted to learn how you did it and when you felt it was the right time to do it. So what I’m specifically talking about is around 2016, I think you were about 300 CSRs, and you were stuck at a plateau for a few years.
Tyler Martin: you were trying to break through that. And you decided to hire a coach at some point. Walk me through that. Like, when did you know it was the right time to seek outside help? When did you feel like, how were you feeling at that point?
Tyler Martin: Was it like pure frustration of being flat or was it more like, nah, this is good enough, but I’ll just see what else there is. Kind of take me through what you were thinking, what made you decide to use someone else’s help?
Brigham Dickinson: Well, it was painful time for a lot of reasons. married for 18 years, four kids, and the marriage wasn’t going very well. I was running the business, right? Contractors would see me everywhere. In fact, I remember Buddy Smith, an owner of a company in Virginia, he saw me at a Lenox event and he said,
Brigham Dickinson: holy cow, Brigham, I’m seeing you everywhere. And it’s true. I was everywhere except home. So, yeah. Right. I wasn’t home. And back then, all my kids are out of the house now, but back then they were all, you know, 10, 12. And the boys were younger than that, right?
Brigham Dickinson: Six and five, I think it was. It changes every year. And so it has a tendency to do that. But yeah, it was an interesting time. I remember her once saying, listen, I never planned to be a single mother. That was kind of a stab. Plus, there was things going on at work. The first time we hit 300
Brigham Dickinson: trainees in our program, it was exciting the first year. Hey, 300 trainees! And then the problem was is that we hit that same number again the following year, and yet we didn’t make as much money that year. And then by the third year, I could see the writing on the wall that we were doing this,
Brigham Dickinson: We’re going to hit the same plateau again.
06:23The coach who made him see he was the bottleneck
Brigham Dickinson: And what’s crazy about this is this is 10 years ago now. And there was an individual that referred me to a coach. His name is Johnny Covey. Johnny Covey is the grandnephew of Stephen R. Covey, the guy that wrote Seven Habits for Highly Effective People.
Brigham Dickinson: And it’s amazing how many people in his family are in the same kind of business, right? And they all have that energy about them. So it was cool. And when I first started talking to Johnny, he said, you know, I don’t want to meet with you in your office.
Brigham Dickinson: And I said, what do you mean you don’t want to meet with me in my office? He says, I think it’d be better to meet with you in your home. And I’m like, my home. Okay, fine. And when he got to my house, and I remember letting him in the front door.
Brigham Dickinson: And it wasn’t as if, of course, the first thing that comes to mind is that, what’s that Saturday Night Live skit where the guy is a public speaker? and he lives in a van down by the river. Right? That sort of thing. That was the thing that I kind of thought
Brigham Dickinson: when he wanted to meet with me in my house. I was like, dude, if he comes to my house, am I ever going to get him out? And so he comes, he brings these oversized stickies, right? Big poster boards that have sticky adhesive on the back.
Brigham Dickinson: And he tells me to turn off my phone, which is really hard. All the kids were at school, so it was just him and I. and he said, all right, what do you want to accomplish today? And I’m like, what do you mean, what do I want to accomplish today?
Brigham Dickinson: I want to grow my business. I’m at 300 trainees. I want to grow past that. And it’s been like this for the last three years. I don’t know how to get past it. And he’s like, cool. How are we going to get past it?
Brigham Dickinson: And I’m looking at him going, dude. And at the time, I was paying him $1,000 a day. So in the back of my head is going, bro, I’m paying you to answer that question for me and he’s like I understand that and we and we’re
Brigham Dickinson: going to but first tell me what makes you think what steps do you think we need to take to get there and he just keeps asking question after question right and by the time he’s done asking all these questions we come to realize that the only thing keeping me at 300 trainees is me
Brigham Dickinson: wow it’s me it’s me and then as i realized it was me that i was kind of the bottleneck all the traveling that i was doing all the you know whenever somebody said hey i want to i want somebody to train my team but it’s got to be you right it wasn’t working because the answer was
Brigham Dickinson: always me it was always me and this 80 hour work week sometimes more staying in hotels all the time it just wasn’t working. And so by the time we were done on day one, when he was doing that, we had so many stickies on the wall. You would think it’s, I don’t know if you’ve ever watched
Brigham Dickinson: the movie Beautiful Mind. No, it goes in that back, that back, I don’t know what it was, shed. Yeah. And holy cow, they were stickies all over. My kids came in after school. They’re like, holy cow, dad’s gone crazy with all these stickies on the wall. And I had all these ideas and it was
Brigham Dickinson: just really cool to have that breakthrough where I realized that really I I’m the problem that what what I’m doing and how I’m doing it is the problem of course you know the things going on with the marriage and so on and so forth you never want to get to this kind of rock bottom before you hire a
Brigham Dickinson: coach I would suggest you hire the coach long before right long before you get to this point you know there’s there’s a lot that was broken there’s a lot that was broken and a lot that needed to be corrected. And it was up to me to correct it. And it was cool to have a coach ask
Brigham Dickinson: me the right questions to get there. And quite frankly, he influenced our coaching heavily. I’ve got 31 coaches now. We’ve far surpassed 300 trainees. We now have 1,400 and counting. We’ll likely have 1,500 in the next 60 days. So we’ve obviously broken barrier after barrier
Brigham Dickinson: after barrier. But even the way he would ask questions in our coaching sessions now, when we have people listen to a specific part of a phone call, we simply ask, what did you hear? Right? And they might say, hey, well, what did you hear? We’re both here on this call. We know what was
Brigham Dickinson: wrong with it. Right. But our goal is for them to discover for themselves what they need to improve. And at the end of the day, it’s come to, it comes down to self-discovery. It’s interesting that, you know, the one part that blew my mind the most was, is that when Johnny Covey was asking
Brigham Dickinson: his questions, I came to the, the aha moment was this, the aha moment was, yes, I’m the issue.
11:04Following his own principles and why people feel they belong
Brigham Dickinson: And the issue was, is I wasn’t following my own principles. Yeah. My attitude wasn’t positive. I wasn’t well-prepared. I just go in and be Johnny on the spot. Right. I wasn’t listening to my team or my customers. Showing them that I care. Now, obviously, I care.
Brigham Dickinson: Look at how hard I’m working. But showing them that I care about them individually, my employees as well as my customers. Making sure that everyone realizes that they belong. You belong. You’re in the right place. You’re doing the right things. You’re in the right seat.
Brigham Dickinson: You’re doing a great job. People need to feel like they belong. The main reason why people leave a company is not necessarily because of their pay or their weird hours. it’s because they don’t feel like they belong there. So as the owner, it’s your job to make
Brigham Dickinson: sure that you help them feel like they belong. Asking the right questions. Why is that such an important thing? Because sometimes fear would take hold, right? There’d be some sort of impending future that I was afraid of. And it was cool to have Johnny say, hey, look at your own principles,
Brigham Dickinson: bro. Look at your own principles. What should you do when fear hits, when fear strikes? And he reminded me that 80% of what I fear never comes true. So in order to combat those types of fears is you ask it logical questions. Now, fear is an emotion.
Brigham Dickinson: So you take that emotion and you press pause in the moment before you freak out, ask it questions. In what scenario could that possibly come true, right? How could that reality really come to pass, right? What has to occur? And then you hit it with some logical questions and you realize, you know what?
Brigham Dickinson: that the likelihood of this fear coming to fruition is next to nil. It’s just an emotion, just an emotion. So just all those types of coaching skills, I was taking this guy’s coaching skills. And probably at the time I had five coaches and saying, you guys, this is what you do. And I
Brigham Dickinson: was like, I was this, I was this mirror. Oh, that’s a great idea. Hey guys, this is how we coach. And then the next thing, you know what, this is how we coach. And, and he still has some things he taught us still has an influence on, on what my team does today. And not just the coaches,
Brigham Dickinson: not just the 31 and counting coaches, but also the trainers. We’ve got four painters now as well.
Tyler Martin: So, so anyway, it was, it was me. It was me. Yeah. It’s interesting. I, um, that mind part of things where your, your mind just limits you so much. I had a lady named Melissa Rogers, Rogers heating and air conditioning on the show a few weeks ago. And when they had their
Tyler Martin: HVAC shop, they’re around $2 or $3 million a year. And they’re like, you know, how are we going to get bigger? We’re kind of stuck. Can we even get bigger? And they went and got some coaching. It was a service nation they went through and service nation helped get to the next levels, like five
Tyler Martin: or 6 million. And then they went to, of all places, Cardone Ventures. And Cardone Ventures said, you’re thinking too small. Like you could be a hundred million dollar shop in, oh, by the way, their town is only 10,000 people. And they started talking about how they could replicate opening
Tyler Martin: more locations. And I think they’re now like on their fourth or fifth location. They’re over 10 million. Actually it was third or fourth. They’re over 10 million and their mind is around a hundred million. And it’s just all because of a lot or not all, but a lot of it because execution is a big
Tyler Martin: part of this, but a lot of it is around just aligning your beliefs that to not limit yourself. And it sounds to me like what you’re saying to some degree was a mental thing. It was like, how do I get out of my own way? I mean, I have passion, I have conviction, but how do I get out
Brigham Dickinson: in my own way. Yeah. Yeah. How do I transition from working in the business to really on the
Tyler Martin: business? Yeah. Yeah. And that’s good stuff. The answer came down to me following my own principles.
Brigham Dickinson: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That’s awesome. I love having that discussion. I think that helped a lot of people in terms of their own limitations to think about taking the next step if they’re in that situation. Where I wanted to segue is getting into like after hour calls and just meeting the
Brigham Dickinson: customer where they’re at. Now you guys have an after hours call center where, and believe it or not, I have clients that come to me and they’re not even taking calls after hours. They’re losing all that opportunity. So I want to talk with you a little bit about where does that fit in for your
15:18Starting Booked by PSP and booking 93% of calls
Brigham Dickinson: services? How does that work? How do you train your own staff so your CSRs stay very engaged when they have multiple clients that they’re probably taking care of? So I kind of want to just go through that, talk about that. How does that fit in for the typical shop that hires you? What are
Brigham Dickinson: they expecting to see out of how having this augmented service? And then last, I know I’m
Tyler Martin: giving you a ton here, would be how does AI kind of fit into that? That’s a great question. So in 2019, several of our clients had been reaching out to us about starting our own call center. You guys do such a great job training our CSRs. Why don’t you just do it? Just do it, right?
Tyler Martin: In the back of our heads, every time we looked at a call center, just the success rate of a night answering service, meaning a business in general that answers phones for others, they don’t make it. They don’t make it. They don’t do very well. And so we were very reluctant
Tyler Martin: to do it ourselves. But Barry Gates is the one who runs Booked by PSP. And he said, he proposed to me the idea to do it. And of course, I really love the idea that I didn’t have to do it myself. So Barry said, let’s do it. Let’s give it a go. And we’ll use PowerSelling
Tyler Martin: Pro’s principles and kind of put our money where our mouth is. We spend all this time teaching people how to answer the phones, and yet we’re not willing to put money on the line for ourselves and show them that we can do it ourselves. And sure enough, we started doing it. We have over
Tyler Martin: 100 agents now. We book 93% of our calls on average. We actively sell service agreements over the phone. We charge by the call and the call itself has to be 45 minutes, 45 seconds or longer, anything underneath that, we don’t even count. So super, super cost-effective. And it makes a lot
Tyler Martin: of sense. It makes a lot of sense to have. And when we have agents, they’re dedicated just to that individual contractor. They’re not answering for everybody. They’re answering just for that contractor. So it’s an extension of your company, just like them working remotely.
Tyler Martin: So that’s how Booked by PSP works. It’s really cool to be able to say, you guys, we’re going to train your team to book 90% of their phone calls. We’re not going to only teach them how to do it. We’re going to show them what we’re doing
Tyler Martin: with our call center, our own call center. So it just gave us a whole lot more clout in our ability to teach CSRs. We don’t just teach people. We do it ourselves.
Brigham Dickinson: Yeah, that’s big. You know, I mentioned to you when I was at Epic, I sat in on Chad Peterman’s presentation. And one thing that he said is he’s like, hey, if you’re not over 85% on your bookings, you’re not doing a good job.
17:59AI books the call but cancellations jump 20 to 30%
Brigham Dickinson: And so to hear you say you’re in the low 90s, mid 90s, it’s a pretty damn good conversion. That’s really good. Yeah.
Tyler Martin: And that’s where it’s a good time to talk about AI. So AI technologies has come in and it doesn’t matter where you get it at this point. AI does a good job of booking the call. Okay. Keep in mind that it’s very transactionary.
Tyler Martin: And our objective is to build a relationship with the customer. So one thing you got to be careful about with AI is that even though the call may be booked, your cancellation rate will go up. All right? They’ll cancel after the fact. They might not even call you.
Tyler Martin: They’ll just have somebody there taking care of the situation that they found sooner. And, of course, by the time you get there, it’s going to be super, super awkward, which happens. Which happens. Now, the way to mitigate that is that even though the AI picks it up, right?
Tyler Martin: You’ve got a team of high performers that are being trained at a high level and held accountable to perform at the highest level, right? To make sure that they create such amazing experience over the phone that by the time they’re done, they’re wowed to the point where they don’t call anybody else.
Tyler Martin: And you are their last call. That’s the objective, okay, to be their last call. If you don’t get to them, the AI picks it up, books it. Fine. You call that person as soon as you get a chance. Hey, how was your experience with the avatar?
Tyler Martin: You know what? It was okay. It was pretty good, right? Okay. Do you like the time that you were scheduled for? Well, you know, I actually am calling around, see if somebody can come out sooner. Okay. I’m glad I called then. Yeah, I’m actually surprised you did as well, and I appreciate it.
Tyler Martin: And so we get past that. If we need to reschedule it to a better time, fine. We reschedule it to a better time, and then we start talking about our technician. Now, the technician that we’re sending out, I just want you to know that he is trained,
Tyler Martin: he’s certified, he’s backed by our company. He’s been around for the last 30 years now. You’re in great hands. He’ll come out. He’ll look at the scope of the work. He’ll determine exactly what you need, and he’ll give you a price before he starts.
Tyler Martin: So you’re in great hands. We’re going to take great care of you. So our goal, once again, whether it’s the avatar that books it, whether it’s us that calls in after the fact, we want to make sure we create such an amazing experience that by
Tyler Martin: the time they’re done talking to one of our high performers, that they’re done shopping. They’re not calling anybody else. Okay? So just kind of keep that in mind with AI. And there’s a lot of contractors who say, hey, which AI should I use?
Tyler Martin: You well? we have a live call center that works with several of them. We are the live call center for many of the AI companies that are out there. Now, why do they have live call centers if it’s all about AI? Well, because you’re going to have homeowners that say,
Tyler Martin: hey, I just want to talk to a live agent. And so instead of that AI company building out their own live call center, they just subcontract out our live call center, and we book that call for them, create a wow experience for them. And of course, we can do it right on their CRM, regardless of
Brigham Dickinson: what it is of the CRM that you’re using. Do you have any data when you say cancellation rates go up typically when a call is booked solely by AI? Do you have any data? I know it’s still, we’re in our infancy of all this, but do you have any data points? Like, are we talking like 10%,
Tyler Martin: 30%? Any idea? Yeah, it’s 20 to 30% depending on the AI. Okay. Wow. That’s a lot. It is a lot.
21:14McDonald’s speed versus the Chick-fil-A experience
Tyler Martin: It is a lot.
Brigham Dickinson: Yeah, that’s not a small amount. Okay, so let’s talk about that for just a quick second. This is important. You’ve got to decide how you want to go to market, okay? There are two prevailing ways to go to market right now. One way that AI has kind of created for us is kind of the Amazon model.
Brigham Dickinson: The Amazon model is inexpensive and fast, right? Same with McDonald’s. Inexpensive, fast. You know what you’re going to get. You go to McDonald’s not because the food is good or healthy. You go because you know what you’re going to get. So they’ve even done the research.
Brigham Dickinson: When you do your order on the big screen, because that’s what they have now. You do your order on the big screen, you actually order more than you would if you were talking to somebody over the intercom, which is an interesting study. The downside to that is that they’re going to say your name or whatever name you put on there.
Brigham Dickinson: They’re going to announce your name, put the food on the counter, and walk away. No eye contact, no experience whatsoever. The way that they change their experiences is they have no experience. They focus on speed and low price, and that’s how they make their money, okay, on the amount of units they sell.
Brigham Dickinson: So for each mil, they know they’re going to make a total of $3 to $4, and they just want to keep turning and burning those bad boys. All volume, volume, volume, volume.
Tyler Martin: Exactly. Same with Amazon.
Brigham Dickinson: So that’s one way to go to market. Now, that’s not the reason why PE groups came into our industry. They came in because we are a relationship-based industry, by and large. So here’s what I mean by that. When you go to Disney, you don’t go because it’s a cheap theme park that has no lines.
Brigham Dickinson: You go because of the experience that they create. And yes, you are going to pay more than most theme parks, if not all of them. And you also are going to wait in the line. But to you, it’s worth it because of the experience they create, even inside the lines.
Brigham Dickinson: Okay, the same is true with Chick-fil-A. You’re going to pay more at Chick-fil-A than you would at McDonald’s. Okay, why? Well, the experience they create justifies the price. Okay, the biggest issue Chick-fil-A has is ushering people through the line. So they’ve doubled down, tripled down on the amount of people in the line that say,
Brigham Dickinson: my pleasure, and give you eye contact, and make sure that everything’s taken care of. And if you go inside the restaurant, they call it a restaurant, they’ll refill your drink. You probably won’t ever get that at McDonald’s. It’s the experience they create that justifies the additional cost.
Brigham Dickinson: Okay? The handshake of the host affects the taste of the roast every time. Every time. And so what we want to do, regardless of whether AI is involved or not, whether a night answering service is involved or not, is to make sure that we create such an amazing experience for the customer.
Brigham Dickinson: That they go from comparison shopping over the phone to, you know what, I trust this company. This is the one I want to work with. And the same is true with the technician. When a technician finally gets out to a customer’s home, the mindset for the customer is, I just wanted to get by.
Brigham Dickinson: Okay, now if a technician takes that mindset and just goes with it and they maintain the system and leave, there’s a problem with that. This is why there’s so many capacitors being switched out. If a capacitor needs to be switched out or a system needs to be recharged with refrigerant, it’s likely because there’s a bunch of other things that are going on with the system.
24:31Airdropping crawl space videos to close the furnace job
Brigham Dickinson: There is a part or two or three that needs to be switched out or replaced or at least considered by the owner. Okay. And so what do we do? Well, our goal is not just to maintain the system inside the customer’s home. Our goal is to actually think about ways to enhance their quality of life.
Brigham Dickinson: Okay. Let me give you an example of that. I went into a house and the gal was home without her husband, which happens a lot. Okay. And I’m there with the technician and the technician and I are explaining, different options, right? Because her furnace wasn’t working. And we go up into the crawl space.
Brigham Dickinson: And as we’re in the crawl space, we’re seeing the installation was pretty bad, right? It’s a new construction company. They’re throwing the system in and they’re moving on to the next one. That’s how they make their money. I mean, I’m even seeing the adhesive that you would use
Brigham Dickinson: in between PVC pipes. You could see a dried drip of it down the front of the furnace. It was horrible it’s horrible right the the duct work wasn’t uh sealed properly there was just a ton that was going on with it and so finally i said the technician’s name was wade and i said wade
Brigham Dickinson: listen here’s what we need to do let’s just do some videos keep them a minute or less right and i’ll just go for a minute and you know what let me just show you real quick here this is this is actually kind of kind of interesting let me just kind of show you this video here sitting right out
Brigham Dickinson: of the gate. I’m going to let Wade take over. I’m in the crawl space. You have definitely not some issues here when you’re in zone systems. These motors are starting to spin just by touching, just like that. Is it supposed to do that, Wade?
Brigham Dickinson: No, not at all. Oh, look at there. Just by pulling on it. It’s worn itself out to where they will not open up the damper flap inside. How old was that job? How long ago had that been done? It was three years ago that they did that job.
Brigham Dickinson: But that’s not that long, three years ago, to have it falling wire hanging out and it’s all looks like it’s fading away. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. You can even see, let’s see. So I did four different videos with him. We go downstairs. Yeah. And I said, look, the last thing I want is for you to, this keeps, it keeps playing.
Brigham Dickinson: We’re talking about the capacitor now, but we go back downstairs and I, and I said, Hey, look, I don’t want you to have to explain this secondhand to your husband. I’m just going to airdrop all this. Or the last thing I want to do is say, give me your number.
Brigham Dickinson: I’ll text all these videos. No, let’s just airdrop the videos into your phone, show them to your husband. Because she was saying, look, I really don’t want to make a decision without him. And we were like, totally, don’t even worry about it. Take these videos, send them to your husband.
Brigham Dickinson: You decide what you want to do with these options. As we were talking, I could see that she was sniffling. I said, hey, what’s up with the sniffle? We had a good enough relationship that I can kind of ask it nonchalantly like that.
Brigham Dickinson: And she said, oh, it’s these pollens that come this time of year. and funny thing, we have some great indoor air quality products that we can help you out with as well. Would you mind if we include air scrubbers, UV lights, UV light options inside
Brigham Dickinson: the different options of your proposal? She said, yeah, I’d love that. And so we included that in the videos as well, gave them all to her. She calls us two hours afterwards. She called the office two hours afterwards. She said, yes, I want to go with the option, the first option
Brigham Dickinson: presented with all the bells and whistles, including the indoor air quality products. It’s going to help me a ton. Let’s just get this taken care of. And so it was super, super cool. Now, what happened there? Our goal is not just to maintain quality of life.
Brigham Dickinson: Our goal is to enhance quality of life, right? So those are some of the things that we look for on the technician side. But at the end of the day, you want to work with the customer the way that they want to be taken care of, whether that’s through AI, whether that’s through a high performer, because
Brigham Dickinson: I don’t know why we started calling them humans. They’ve always been humans. We don’t want to change the way we talk about our people, right? They’re our people just because of AI. So yeah, you want to give them the ability to communicate with us in the way that they’d like.
Brigham Dickinson: So create that amazing experience for the customer, whether it’s over the phone or in the customer’s home.
Tyler Martin: Do you feel, you kind of answered this, but I just want to go one layer deeper. When we first talked, you felt like AI has a place. It wasn’t taken over the whole world as far as like CSRs and technicians and things like that are concerned.
Tyler Martin: Are you kind of still there? Now that we’ve had, you know, it feels like 20 years, even though it was just less than a year ago that we talked, 20 years of AI enhancement. Do you still feel that way? Do you feel like there’s still an evolution that’s going to happen in terms of how much AI is involved in calls?
Tyler Martin: I mean, what’s your thought on that?
29:10Two more booked calls a day is a million per CSR
Tyler Martin: And I know this is a little bit crystal ball stuff.
Brigham Dickinson: So say you have four CSRs. If all four of those CSRs are on the phone, then what? When a phone call comes in, then what? What’s the experience? If you don’t have an alternative, then you’ve got to use AI. Now, a CSR without training is going to book 60% to 7% of their calls if they’re good.
Brigham Dickinson: Our objective is to come in and work with them to book the rest of those calls. That’s why we’re in the 90 percentile. So what are the rest of those calls? When a customer calls in and they want a ballpark price, it’s going to be hard to book without training.
Brigham Dickinson: Hey, I just want a no charge to come out. That’s going to be hard to book without training. Hey, I just want to talk to a technician. That’s going to be hard to book without training. Okay, so you’ve got to make sure that your CSRs, dispatchers, lead coordinators are being held accountable to their calls, to their performance, so that we can book the other 20 to 30%.
Brigham Dickinson: So the question you’ve got to ask yourself is, are you really content with them only booking 60 to 70% of their phone calls? because trust me, if they book two more calls a day, when you do the math, even if it’s on a service call,
Brigham Dickinson: not even a replacement call, it’s an extra million dollars a year per CSR. So you can make an extra million dollars per CSR when they individually go from 70% to 90%. So is it worth it? Yeah, it’s worth it to train them and make sure that they’re being held accountable.
Brigham Dickinson: So the AI success rate, they also book about 70 to 80% of their calls. So what does that mean? That means that those difficult calls, the AI can’t book it either. If you’re CSR without training can’t book it, chances are the AI won’t be able to book
Brigham Dickinson: it either. So what are you shooting for? You’re working for a group of high performers. If they answer that phone call, hey, I want a ballpark price. Great. Tell me more about your situation. What’s going on? I’ve got this air conditioner. It’s blowing hot air. My gosh, that’s terrible.
Brigham Dickinson: How long has it been doing that? Oh, last couple of days. So wait a minute. You’ve been doing this for the last two days? Yeah. My wife, she’s upset. She wants to get this thing fixed. Look, you’ve called the right place. We can absolutely help you with that. When would you like us out?
Brigham Dickinson: Well, this afternoon would be good. Right? So AI can’t do that yet. Right? Hey, I just want to talk to a technician. Awesome. We’ve got a lot of great technicians. Let me make sure I’m setting out the right one. Okay? It’s that human touch, empathy, right?
Brigham Dickinson: Years ago, I shared a story about an older gentleman at a post office, and he was waiting in a line to ship a box. And they just received these new machines in the post office where you can do everything with the machine, get the sticker on the box, and just leave it on the counter.
Brigham Dickinson: And you don’t have to interact with anybody. In fact, there was a gal there at the post office that wanted to walk people through the line to the machine instead of having to wait in the line. So she approached this older gentleman and said, hey, we have these amazing machines.
Brigham Dickinson: We’ve got these machines now. You don’t have to wait in the line. He’s like, yeah, I’m good. I’ll wait in the line. And it didn’t matter what she said to try and convince him to get out of line. He wouldn’t get out of line. And finally, he just leveled with her.
Brigham Dickinson: He said, look, the machine won’t ask me about my arthritis. Okay? When I drive up to a Chick-fil-A, in fact, there’s one time I drove up to a Chick-fil-A. I get to the window. I say, hey, do you really freshly squeeze that lemonade?
Brigham Dickinson: She didn’t skip the beat. She said, oh yeah, would you like to try some? As if I’ve never tried it before. Right. Yeah, let me see how it tastes, even though I’ve tried it twice, you know, just this week. But let’s try it. Maybe it’s different today.
Brigham Dickinson: You see what I’m saying? It’s that little human touch that a high performer has the ability to do, trained to do, being held accountable to do that the AI can’t do. And so if the AI picks it up, great, let the AI pick it up.
Brigham Dickinson: But make sure that high performer is calling afterwards and saying, hey, how was your experience with the avatar? Do you like the time that was scheduled? Awesome. Let me make sure you know the technician is coming out and how amazing he is. Why? Because the objective of a high performer is to make sure that that homeowner believes
Brigham Dickinson: that he’s called the right place, she’s called the right place, and we’re off to the races. We’re the company that they trust. That takes high performers with or without AI.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. You’re giving the client a memorable experience. Just using your Disneyland example, it’s a memorable experience. Something that we all do. it when we have a good experience, whether it be with a service provider or whoever, if it’s a good experience when Amazon first came out and you got a package overnight,
Tyler Martin: that had an impact. Like you were talking about it with friends. I think that’s exactly what
Brigham Dickinson: you’re talking about. It’s memorable experience. And this is why the most successful AI companies are still using PowerSelling Pros or the sister company of PowerSelling Pros to answer their live calls. They don’t have a live call center. And if they do, it’s not as good as ours, which is why they’re all using ours.
Tyler Martin: One thing I want to go back to, and this will be the last thing and then we’ll wrap up, is you made a comment about matching the client asked for, hey, let me talk to a technician. And your response was, let me ask you a few questions so I match you with the right one.
Tyler Martin: I had a guy named Cody Martinez on my show. In his family business, they grew to $20 million. And what he articulated as the one thing that changed his business dramatically was when he got into call management and literally lined up the right technician
Tyler Martin: for the right job. So my question to you is this, when you go into a typical shop, how much attention to detail is a typical shop giving to that where they’re really consciously thinking about who they’re sending out on the job? Is it the right person?
Tyler Martin: Is it going to represent us the right way and get the job done effectively? Because I know you visit a zillion shops. You probably get visibility on this. What’s your impression typically of that?
Brigham Dickinson: Most companies do not spend a ton of time in their call center. Okay. Most business owners spend their time with their technicians and their comfort advisors. Okay. And so the call center doesn’t get as much attention, which is the reason why PowerSelling Pros exists.
Brigham Dickinson: Sure. You know, we exist to make sure that we send the right technician out to the right job. And there are times where we have to sit down with the dispatcher and say, hey, look, the last thing you want to do is tell that technician that this is your job.
Brigham Dickinson: job, get over it. Okay. This is exhausting for them. They’ve already been out on four jobs today. They may have a fishing trip plan. They may have some of the things that they’re doing. So what do you do? You reason with them, use the pattern for excellence. You say, Hey, I know you,
Brigham Dickinson: I know you had that fishing trip plan today. I know you’ve been looking forward to it. I know that you want to use that new rod and I want you to use that new rod. I, I hope that, you know what, the fish that you’re going to catch, I hope that you would share that with me. I’d even buy some of
Brigham Dickinson: of some of that went for you. You know what? This family is in dire need of your expertise. I would call somebody else. I know that Jim or James can do it, but Billy, you’re the only one. You’re the only one that has expertise to take care of this family. I’m asking you to do me a
Brigham Dickinson: solid. If you’ll just take a couple of hours with this guy, take care of this family. I promise you I’ll make it up on the back end. I can even make sure that you’re out for an extra day so that you can enjoy another day on your fishing trip. You can use that new rod. Will you please help me out?
Brigham Dickinson: Will you please do me solid, right? So what am I doing? I’m listening, I’m caring, I’m reassuring, and then I’m asking for a favor. If you do this, you’re going to get a whole lot more productivity out of your technicians, right? And so when we do need to send them out to the right job,
Brigham Dickinson: and there are some that have more experience with electrical, there are others that have more experience with heat pumps than others. You want to send the right technician to the right
36:34The weekly all-company meeting that builds culture
Brigham Dickinson: job. And those high performers are incentivized to do that. So yeah, you should absolutely do it. And if you don’t have time to do it, get somebody from the outside, get a third party, such as PowerSelling Pros to come in and do that for you, for your team.
Tyler Martin: Good stuff. Good stuff. Okay. I’m going to wrap up here. I know we’ve gone through the hour and it’s been an awesome conversation. If people wanted to reach out to you now, obviously your website, PowerSellingPros.com is one spot that they can go. Anything else you want to share,
Tyler Martin: anything you got coming up in terms of speaking engagements or if you want people to check
Brigham Dickinson: anything out? Well, you and I have talked before the podcast about leadership, leadership in general. And if you don’t mind, I’ll close with this. Please. When I go out to a shop and I go out to a lot of shops, as you know, the main thing I notice that’s lacking is a company meeting,
Brigham Dickinson: an all company meeting. So here’s what I mean by that. For whatever reason, since COVID, we stopped doing them. Let me tell you why this is important. It is a culture builder. Now, how do you make that meeting a culture builder? It’s just once a week.
Brigham Dickinson: It’s not just your technicians, it’s everybody, okay? Your CSRs, your technicians, your comfort advisors. Everybody that is involved in the company in any way, shape, or form should be in this meeting. Take one hour, once a week, and you start that meeting out with a company.
Brigham Dickinson: Say you go over your company purpose. Your purpose is your North Star. It’s the reason why you do what you do, And it’s got to be more than moving boxes or making money. Okay. It’s got to be about, hey, you know what? We’re all about enhancing the customer’s quality of life.
Brigham Dickinson: We don’t just maintain quality of life. We enhance quality of life. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s company purpose. And then you have a mission. And your mission is something that you can achieve, a tangible goal that you can achieve in three years or less.
Brigham Dickinson: Okay. So if you’re Nike, your goal is to beat Reebok. In fact, that was their, that was their mission back in the eighties, right? We know that Reebok came on the scene. Nike had to beat them. That was their mission. You want to have a mission.
Brigham Dickinson: and you want to achieve that mission. It’s going to be a tangible goal that you can achieve in three years or less. And then you have a set of core values. Core values that it’s not just on the wall, but you go over those core values
Brigham Dickinson: and why they’re important. It’s your code of conduct. You hire, you train, you fire in accordance with this code of conduct. If you don’t have a code of conduct, just grab the pattern for excellence, put that on the wall. I won’t mind. And test, use a standard,
Brigham Dickinson: a set of standards that you adhere to. When you do this, you will establish what you’re looking to hear over the phone is what you’re looking to see in the customer’s home on a regular basis. Take time to let people share breakthroughs, experience they had last week where they said,
Brigham Dickinson: you know what, this happened and it kind of changed my point of view on life or on family or what have you. Let them share that sort of thing. Shout outs. Say Billy did skip his fishing trip to go take care of that family. I should shout him out in front of everybody and say,
Brigham Dickinson: that was freaking awesome that you did that. This is a culture building opportunity. If you want to, look, if you’re a $5 million company, you want to be a $10 million company, this is how. This is how. You spend the rest of your time, you take 10, 15 minutes doing that initial stuff. Spend the
Brigham Dickinson: rest of your time focusing in on real call scenarios. Customer calls in, they want a ballpark price. Practice that. Let the technicians and the CSRs practice that so they can kind of get a feel for each other’s job. If a customer is pushing back on price or that they say their
Brigham Dickinson: husband’s not home, let everybody practice that together in small groups and show them how to handle those types of calls, right? How to handle those types of objections. At the very end, you reward for the behavior you want. So at the very end of that meeting, you have a lot of cash in
Brigham Dickinson: your pocket. And whoever got a five-star review last week, you give them 10 bucks and you let everybody go, holy crap, that was awesome. Five-star review. You turn a service call into like a replacement call, whether it’s over the phone or in the customer’s home, you reward them
Brigham Dickinson: for that, right? If you take a plumbing call, you turn it into a heating call, you reward them for that. You reward for the behavior you want. If you have this meeting, you guys, from a leadership standpoint. It will change your business. Don’t stop doing these things. Start doing them and do
Brigham Dickinson: the, and if you’re doing these meetings and you can tell based on the outline that I’ve described that you can do it a whole lot better, do it a whole lot better. It’ll change your business from
Tyler Martin: a leadership standpoint. That’s great stuff. That’s a great way to end the show. Just one last thing, anything you want anywhere people other than your website, should people reach out to you
Brigham Dickinson: anywhere in particular? Yeah. So if you need help facilitating these group meetings, we can help you with that. If you need help holding your technicians accountable one-on-one to the technology that you’re investing in, let us help you with that. If you want us to hold your CSRs
Brigham Dickinson: accountable to being high performers over the phone, we can absolutely help you with that. Just go to PowerSellingPros, P-O-W-E-R-S-E-L-L-I-N-G-P-R-O-S.com. Click on the demo link. It’s big and beautiful on the front page of the website. And let’s schedule a demonstration, show you what we do, how we do it. And it’s super consultative. We can custom build it based on you
Tyler Martin: and your needs. We look forward to working with you. Yeah, good stuff. And, you know, one thing that before we started the show, we talked about, I think I’d brought up Ryla, as you say, Rilla or Ryla, or we always pronounce it wrong, but I would mention how several of my clients had had it
Tyler Martin: and ended up not using it because they, you know, it’s just kind of a shiny object and then nobody really gets into it. And you had shared with me how you guys on the technician side, actually in conjunction with Ryla, which gives you like coaching diagnostics and guidance and data,
Tyler Martin: you guys integrate with that. So that’s one other thing I think is worth before we wrap up,
Brigham Dickinson: just mentioning. Yeah. Good, good point, Tyler. One of the biggest issues that contractors have is they, they invest in this AI for technician recording and they don’t have time to comb for the data. Yeah, we do. We have an entire army of call monitors where we can monitor those phone
Brigham Dickinson: calls, and we can look to see if they’re creating an environment of safety, comfort, and fun. We can see if they’re earning the tour where the customer actually comes with them as they’re doing the inspection. We can make sure they’re providing at least three options and that they’re asking for
Brigham Dickinson: the homeowner to move forward with one of the options they’ve presented, as opposed to saying nothing at all, packing up the tools and leaving, right? It’s all those things that we can hold them accountable to, and we coach them twice a month, one-on-one, for about a half hour per session.
Brigham Dickinson: And it’s simple. The dispatcher schedules the call for the technician, and they just pull over for about a half hour in their van and we coach them. So whether it’s Rilla, whether it’s Sales Ask, whether it’s FieldSpark, whether it’s FieldPro, you know, the Service Titan iteration of Rilla,
Brigham Dickinson: we can comb through that data, provide feedback one-on-one. Could you imagine one service manager,
Tyler Martin: 20 texts, four calls a day, good luck monitoring all that data. Yeah, that’s tough. You’re not
Brigham Dickinson: going to have time. So instead of canceling it, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Instead, just let us monitor those calls, provide feedback to them on a regular basis, just like we do our CSRs.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s cool. Okay. Hey, man, thank you so much for round two. Can’t wait to have you back for round three. Thanks for sharing your wisdom.
Brigham Dickinson: Thanks, Tyler.
Tyler Martin: So my biggest takeaway from Brigham is this. Booking the call is not the win. A lot of businesses think they’re doing fine because the phone is ringing. But what happens after that is really where the money is made or lost. If you’re not creating a strong experience from that first interaction, customers keep shopping, cancel, or never fully commit.
Tyler Martin: The companies that grow aren’t just busy. They’re intentional about how they handle every opportunity that comes in. If you’re a business owner trying to grow and turn that growth into real profit, better cash flow, and clearer decision making, go ahead and book a no pressure intro call at cfointrocall.com.
Tyler Martin: That’s cfointrocall.com. Or check out my website, cfomadeeasy.com. As always, thank you so much for listening. I’ll see you on the next episode.
Related Episodes
- 8 Steps To Book More, Charge More, Lose Less – Brigham Dickinson
- The Hidden Revenue in Your Pipeline You’re Not Capturing – Ryan Fenn
- Why Most HVAC Sales Calls Fail Before They Start – Drew Cameron
- The $1M Revenue Leak: How Chiirp Fixed Home Service Follow-Up – Ryan Fenn
Tyler Martin works with owners on the numbers behind these stories: an accountant who works with HVAC contractors, a fractional CFO for HVAC.
