Embracing Technology and Efficiency in your Sales Process with John Jacob's Strategies

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But I was always kind of the coder kid , the kid up in his room on his computer , not really going to be in the family business , Always my big brother who's going to take it over ? But he took it over and he realized how much they sorely needed some technology solutions .

There were still pen and paper , everything , the entire company running six routes , running route sheets back and forth . It was just crazy . They didn't accept credit cards , there was no website and more Around 2013 , my brother I remember this text I got he's like , hey , you want to help me with the family business , Like let's really do this thing .

And it was awesome because I came in and worked with my brother and within two years we more than doubled the business . We took it from six routes to 10 routes in the LA area . It was in pest control at the time and it was just amazing .

That experience was so transformative for me of just realizing how much opportunity there is in home services with just some good technology put in place , and it was just an awesome experience growing that family business . It was a whirlwind selling that business and my parents got a great retirement out of it .

And then from there I was able to leverage that experience and that passion and knowledge and raise some money in venture capital and start building software for home services and then stumbled into painting as well .

I think we're starting to realize that as a society where all these kids went to college and got liberal arts degrees and they now don't have any jobs , they don't have anything . Now they're maybe trying to get a job as a painter or something , but if you're so we've kind of Society kind of forgot .

Oh yeah , you could actually have Go to trade school , you should go to trade school , actually get your hands dirty and actually work for a living . But I think that's starting to come back around and realize people are realizing oh , I can actually make some money at this and so that's awesome .

So you guys basically went into your parents' company and installed some technology and systematized it and doubled it in one year . Is that what you said ?

But to be totally honest , the ongoing tension of running a family business , kind of the old guard versus the new guard , was not something we thought would keep our families' Thanksgiving still tasting good and be able to really push that business as far as it needed to go .

And so we kind of all sat down the table like what's the best course of action here , given the differences of just running a family business ? There's difficulty and we saw that growth curve that we had built and saw a great opportunity to sell and we took advantage of it . We're glad we did . In hindsight I think it was a good move for that business Cool .

Like that's anything that happens out there you handle that , anything that happens in the office I'll handle . Of course there's some overlap and so immediately right , they had a computer system that they weren't fully utilizing . They had redundancies on everything , which is pretty common trend .

I hear some older businesses still running , right , they're like , oh well , we do the bit when voices online , but we make sure to print everything and file it as well . It's like , okay , let's reduce these redundancies . We have a computer system , let's actually use it .

But there was , you know , the obvious ones of overnight , pretty much after I came in , we found a field service management software that allowed all of our field reps to have iPads . So we're no longer using physical route sheets , right ?

So I was like number one let's get everybody away from physical route sheets , get one real-time dispatch using iPads out in the field . Like it's such a no-brainer and such huge efficiencies there . Number two was just literally an online presence . There was kind of a website but no real SEO strategy , no real approach there .

And in 2015 , which actually 2013 when I was there , but 2013 to 2015 , there was so much opportunity in SEO by just taking it a little bit seriously in SEO . I think more people have come around to that . But man did that do wonders for us , just making sure we had a website with consistent content on it . We had some authority built .

It just went so long . I think obviously we did a lot around . Where I put a lot of work in is around our sales processes .

So when I came on there was no real commercial division to speak of and I was able to stand up the sales processes for commercial and close the Westfield malls in Southern California , which was huge customers for us , punching way above our weight for a family-owned business like us had some real commercial clients come in , which was huge .

But I think the other piece was around and this is really part of what the insights was that led to Hoist is we just came up with standardized price sheets for most of our services on the residential side and for us , when we had been doing only in-home estimates for everything we did when we actually had the opportunity to sell over the phone .

It was exponential in terms of our growth and just overall efficiency . So on a busy week we'd struggle to get reps out there to do estimates . So customers were waiting two , three days . Often it was frustrating for field reps trying to do their other stuff when they couldn't get that in . Worse the close rate was like 30% .

So we'd spend nearly two hours pricing a lead just to get told we're too expensive or it wasn't a fit . It was constant frustration from homeowners , us all the sides . So I sat down with my brother , forced ourselves like okay , we're literally going to , kind of Steve Jobs style , draw a grid here .

What are the nine products we sell for residential and how do we make sure to fit into that and come up with a pricing model that works ? So we really hit the books and did that . But committing to that price sheet for us , which was ended up being more than nine grid I think you had like 16 boxes on it that kind of fell into .

But committing to that standardized pricing for us did wonders in terms of the overall sales efficiencies , close rates and more and just shifting the primary sales method to phone sales for that business , which we were in pest control , by the way .

I don't know if I mentioned that , but shifting that primary sales method to phone sales for our pest control business , that's really what unlocked our growth more than anything else , and just overall efficiencies .

I think there's more interest in that now and then people are realizing oh , this can actually be . An effective strategy is to , like you said , not go out and spend two hours on someone who was just tire kicking , where you could have just saved yourself that two hours and called them from the office or from wherever , or hopped on Zoom .

I think Eric is doing Zoom calls .

And maybe that includes some remote stuff , but maybe it's just better qualification .

So I think , first and foremost , let's make sure to use our time efficiently . For most people listening to this show , the time constraint is going to be the main bottleneck , not necessarily lead volume . You can go buy more leads . You can spend more money and get more leads in the door .

There's possibilities to do that , but oftentimes it's the time constraint of that salesperson , the owner , most times going out and selling . That's going to be . So let's work backwards in that bottleneck and use the time efficiently .

So I think , first and foremost , a good sales system should include a really good qualification system , and this isn't about being like , well , I want to make sure it's worth my time . There is that element , that's true , but I don't think it's in a dismissive way .

I think it's a disservice to the homeowner and yourself to take that time if there's really no chance of ever working together ?

I mean , fundamentally , I talk with a lot of painters who don't think enough about qualification You'll hear me talk about this a lot because they end up literally at someone's home , having driven out there taking the time to do it , realizing like , oh actually , this job is way too small , like literally just too small .

Or they're asking for things that are beyond our scope , like we don't do pool coatings because the default workflow for many painters even they have appointment centers that do it . It's just like get the appointment boat , get in the appointment schedule as soon as possible , but I think that does us a disservice .

You might have a higher qualification rate and more estimate appointments , but that's going to drag on your close rate and , obviously , your time . And so I think the first thing I want to talk about is how are you qualifying your leads ? Let's take that seriously and think about what are the qualifying questions that are really important to you .

Obviously , one's service area , the services they're asking for . There's some other more creative ones , which is like do you have your own paint ? Are you looking to paint yourself ? Because that will weed out a lot of people who are really looking for someone really really cheap , right ? So some of these classic qualification questions .

But a lot of painters are not asking these questions consistently .

But I think , next from qualification , you have this idea of like okay , we have that basic information , what is the process by which I get that for either an in-home estimate or producing an estimate from that point and I think that's oftentimes where things are missed as well let's say it's a husband wife duo , the wife's book and those appointments get them

scheduled on the calendar . So many times there's not really information passed along from one party to the next . You show up , you're asking all the same questions . I mean , I talk with painters who do their own scheduling , and even for themselves , right , they get the inbound call driving from one job to the next . They're trying to qualify that lead .

They add them to the Google calendar while driving . They don't really add any details . They show up like okay , what did you need done ? That's a really poor sales experience from the perspective of the homeowners , right ? Talk with a lot of homeowners and that's a really common frustration which is , like , I told you everything I needed done . I even texted it .

I filled out the form on your website you show up , you have no idea what I need done and we're spending half of our time of the estimate just like walking around the house figuring out what I need done . So it's that process you capture the customer's needs Like .

Think about this in terms of the buying experience and the customer experience , not just your goals as a painter and your time , like there's so much , but I think it does come back to that bottleneck of the painter's time . So the two main things I've touched on so far is what is the qualification and what is the like ?

Information flow from that qualification to the point at which you're in front of the customer trying to sell them . Let's make sure we're not asking stupid questions . I see the same question over and over or things they don't know or language they don't understand .

Or do you advocate like they should actually call everyone who schedules , or make sure you get on the phone with them and then , like , go through a list of questions and talk to them , or either way you don't care , as long as they're doing some sort of qualification .

It's very deep but even like drip jobs has the appointment booking screen that asks you and you can kind of customize those , and there's a lot of other software that have that , whether it's in your Squarespace site or your WordPress Like . Think about those questions because they can do a lot for you to filter out whether someone's going to be wasting your time .

I would say I don't think it's a good idea to have a raw calendar or a QT schedule on your website . There's going to be people booking further out than it's probably ideal , going to be people who maybe aren't serious about the project . I don't think that's a great idea .

I think there's good to have another step between that so that you can really verify that client and make sure that they're serious and that it's a fit . Fundamentally , you're not wasting each other's time . I feel like it's Carl Utter who wrote a great book on painting sales .

He always talks about like look , there's kind of these third buckets overall , one third of people you get in front of just have no chance of closing . You shouldn't be in front of them . There's a third that are just kind of going to close . Like even a mediocre sales person is going to close 30% . There's this last 30% .

That's up to you and I think if you have better qualification you can weed out that first bucket . That's like shouldn't you be in front of them ? And that to me is just a waste of everybody's time is to drag on the overall industry . That's what I really want to try to avoid for all parties involved . Okay .

But I think if you think about like qualification , then hand off and we think about that flow like an order . I think the next thing is producing a price . So there's a stat that floats around that if you're not providing a bit on the spot , it's you are significantly less likely to close .

Right , it drags your clothes down , right , but like a full five or six percentage points on average , which makes a huge difference on a painter's bottom line . But I think producing a bit on the spot is difficult . It's difficult if you don't have the experience and if you don't have a software that supports you . Well , if you lean on software to produce it .

But it makes all the difference in the world and I found too if you have the confidence to not have to go out to the truck and spend that 15 minutes to produce that bid and come back but you can actually do it as part of the qualification education process .

It's huge and the number one way I've seen people do that really well is that before they drive to their estimate they're doing pre-work if they're using kind of traditional estimation software .

So if you're using a drip jobs or paint scout or any of the great software out there , right , spend the night before hopping on Zillow or the morning before hopping on Zillow assessing that home . Start the bid , get it 80% done . You have a lot of the information you need . You got the basic job breakdown .

That way you're not trying to go out to the truck copying and pasting that information . You're there , you already have kind of a ballpark in mind and you could produce that bid and just the couple rounding out those last little details . So I think really think about the process by which you produce a price and make sure that's repeatable .

Like you know , for our pest control business we could boil it down to a price sheet . Obviously , painting is not that simple . There's more nuance in pricing a painting job and I think that's important to capture that nuance preparation more Like there's so much nuance in it .

But I think having a strong estimation process is huge a part of a good sales process .

Yeah , I'm trying to close on the spot , but I like the point you made it doing the pre-work and then , so you don't have to like leave and go out to the car and then , you know , spend a bunch of time outside the home and maybe even try to do the quote in the home with .

And that's something that Jason from Contractor Freedom , that's something he has his sales team do . He does like he has a huge sales team . They do like 10 or 15 million in revenue per year and so he trains a sales team to actually do the estimate in the home .

Because then you'll have more of those interactions with the homeowner and their family and they're often offered like , oh , would you like some cookies ? Or you're kind of at the kitchen table developing that estimate and they're kind of hosting you almost and there's just more opportunities to build rapport and feel like you're part of the home , sort of thing .

So I think doing that pre-work , like you said , can can allow you to to to have more face time with the homeowner , so you're not like going off by yourself and then it's weird coming back in , you know , do you have to knock on the door or do you just go right in , and so those are awkward moments there . So I like that idea .

Like the confidence , the rapport building , you don't have to focus quite as much on counting and calculating , right , You're just making sure what you're seeing is aligning with your expectations and adjusting accordingly and there's just a world of difference when you go in with that kind of preparation ready , ready for that close , you can focus on that relationship

instead of counting and calculating . It goes a long way and for many companies I've seen the really smart ones they have the admin side to do that pre-work of building that bid out , right .

So when the admin is doing that booking , they then hop into PaintScout or whatever they're using and they go build that and scaffold out that bid based on a little bit of information they have , and you'd be surprised how much that saves you so much time when you're out in the field , right ?

The average estimate appointment doesn't necessarily need to be 45 minutes an hour . You can get it down to 20 , 30 minutes , still have a great close rate and still effectively be closing those jobs . And I think obviously the other piece , right Qualification , handoff , that qualification , the estimation , and then obviously , last but not least , is follow up right .

How are you asking for the sale ? A lot of painters are kind of like , well , this is the price . They don't even ask , like , can we paint your house , We'd love to paint your house Like that's huge ask for the sale , right . That's more like sales tactics I want to talk more about , like the sales process . But follow up right .

There's a huge percentage of follow ups that , if you stay consistent , it's amazing how many times those bids will actually close . You think they booked with someone else but then that fell through when you actually , because of your follow up , are able to close . And there's a ton of ways to accomplish that .

But I think more than anything , it's have a system , have a playbook , who's doing it , what's the cadence , what's the follow up messaging ? And something I've learned more recently which is huge is like , do your best to have a reason to be following up right , Not just like , hey , just checking in , just following up .

It's such a weak positioning and like there's no urgency at all to create . But if you can , as much as possible create a reason to be following up . So it's like hey , our schedule is filling up for March . I know you wanted this project done before the end of March .

Hit me back , let's get this on the schedule for you , Otherwise we won't get the job in , as I know you need it done . Or a more ideal one would be hey , did you ever

get in touch with Jimmy , who's the electrician on your project ? You know I referred him . Were you able to get touch with him ? How did that work out ? Right , you have a reason to kind of connect and reconnect with them . Another one that I think is great is hey , I noticed something on your bid . Give me a ring and they're like oh , what did he notice ?

And it's like there's a lot of things you can come up with to have noticed to be able to create some urgency around that conversation . So they're wondering is the price still valid ? Is it going down ? Is it going up ? Like what does he need to tell me ? And it really has worked really well for me in terms of follow up .

So think about not only the cadence , the system , who's doing it , what's ? The content of those follow ups is really huge as well . So I think , when I think about the fundamentals of a good sales process , those are really key pieces of that .

So I just wanted to get you scheduled so we can move forward or whatever . Do you have any strong feelings about how long you should follow up ? You know , especially if you have , like some sort of automation , like if you're using drip jobs or go . Yeah , that's a great way to do it .

If you don't have any kind of recurring email marketing going on or there's not a specialized reason , the homeowner is telling you it's scheduled for future date , then obviously you know , I think about 90 days is what I would call dead , and I think a touch point of like give or take every 72 hours after you send that bid is probably about right .

If you're not doing that , it's probably not quite enough . So you want to be hitting that for quite some time . You know a few weeks and it's it's . It's funny because I thought that I'd be spamming homeowners and selling like this , but most times they're very thankful , like oh , yeah , I've been meaning to get back to this project .

I'm glad you've been bugging me . Yeah , you got fresh on top of my mind , like I'm ready to move forward now , right . I do think there's also this idea of really listening to your customers needs through your process and tailoring your process to the customer's need . So if their thing is . I want to do this when my kid leaves for college in April 15th .

You don't really have a reason to follow up until after . Maybe you ?

The phrase I love more than anything is like this job is perfect for me and my crew . We would love to do this project and homeowners like , oh really , my house is perfect .

There's something about that excitement and genuine enthusiasm that goes a long way for people realizing OK , this guy's not just in it for the money , there's something here that's a good fit , and I mean that genuinely Like . I love doing that work and seeing the results on those projects .

But again back to follow ups and your sales process , tailored to customers , needs Schedule . The next time you're checking in OK , great , you really need to get another bid , no problem , when's that scheduled ? Great Schedule on Friday , can I call you after they come by , and then we can make sure to compare apples to apples , right ?

And then I think , obviously , throughout your whole sales process , there is like thinking about the clothes and really building the clothes . That gets more into sales process stuff , which is a lot of people will write great stuff there , whether it's Hermosi or the Carlutter guy .

There's lots of great people and it's like just pick that system , though I think more than anything , the lack of a system is what leads to so much bleed and marketing dollars and wasted hours . It's just unfortunate in the industry .

So I think that's , I think those are really great pieces of advice . Going back to the remote estimating process , one of the things that I'm really interested in talking to you about is hoist and its ability to facilitate that , because one of the you know , I was in one of Eric's .

It wasn't the one at PCA , it was one he did before that , but he presented on to have his sales process and also the remote piece to it . Even though the sales process really doesn't change when you're doing it remotely . It's just the technology that you're using is a little bit different , but the core of the process is the same .

Like with the things that you just mentioned , it would all be the same , but there are some differences .

Obviously , you're not there physically , so one of the concerns that people had of the remote sales process was like how am I going to know how big the surface is that I need to paint so I can do my production rates to generate the price and I think hoist might be able to help with that situation . Is that right ?

So we worked for over a hundred painters doing their marketing , appointment setting for them , and we had a full in-house call center marketing team so we'd be placing those leads and scheduling those in-home appointments .

But we found so many times the main bottleneck was the painter's time , like we could get more painters , more leads , but we couldn't get their appointments to get them in home . So that was a big part of it .

But I met a couple painters in that time who were selling over the phone and they were doing way higher volume , like bananas volume , and that's what led me to like , oh my gosh , this is so much similar to where I was

in the pest control business back then . That price sheet and selling over the phone and getting that exponential growth and seeing that breakthrough , not having that bottleneck , having a better consumer experience it was huge . And so that's really what we set out to build and the main thing is , in the painting industry there's a lot of great software .

We've mentioned of a couple of them today and there's a ton of ways to get leads . At this point it's almost commoditized . That's why we got out of that business specifically right .

Tons of ways to get leads and there's a lot of ways to even produce a bid pretty well and a lot of ways to drip jobs like follow up on bid process , do job costing and more , like great production tools , huge tools out there , and there's CRMs . They do exist right For the follow ups and more . But there's this really messy slice .

And the messy slice for painters is I have a lead , I need to gather the needs from that customer , build rapport and get them to a point where I can produce a price and get enough information from that customer that I can accurately produce a price .

And the way that I solve that problem right now , as the average painter is I drive , I schedule time with the customer , which customer doesn't want to do . They don't want to meet with you for the vast majority of the time . They just want to get to a price right . You're one of many vendors they're just trying to get a price .

So I have to schedule with a homeowner , which takes its own heavy lifting to do , and I lose leads because I can't get on the schedule with some people . Then I need to drive to their house , which is going to take 30 to 45 minutes , maybe longer , depending on if you're a spread out area .

Then I walk around eyeballing the rooms and I have either the notes in my phone is most common what people use or a pen and paper and I'm kind of jotting down right , they got two small bedrooms , they want repainted , they got a big kitchen and a breakfast nook , right .

Oftentimes I'm not even measuring , I'm eyeballing , maybe chicken scratching a couple of square footages down , and then from there I take that stuff and either we'll go out to my truck , read that , hop in those numbers , ballpark the square footage and produce as many come back .

So that slice , though , of driving to the home just to gather with the home that we need two things we need the information about the home , right . What's the makeup of this home ? What's the condition of the home Like ? When was it last painted ? What are the surfaces look like ? And then , obviously , what work does the homeowner need ? Done that I provide ?

So sure they need new floors and they need all this other stuff . But what can I actually provide as a company ? I can do the paint and I can do this couple drywall repairs . They've got going on right and so , if you think about it like , that's actually the only two pieces of information I need .

Now there's other bigger issues of sales process that need to be solved for that . We talked about Qualification , handoff , their sales , even tactics around rapportability and more that are essential . I'm not saying those need to go away , but that specific piece of just gathering the needs from the homeowner and data about the home .

That's what we solve for and that's where we fit and that's what this tool is . So we do that in a couple ways . First and foremost , we have incredible data like no one else , about the interior of homes . So we have room by room square footage and room makeup for every home in America . So our algorithms and data sets get you 90% accuracy .

You give me a home , you give me an address and I'll tell you that kitchen square footage will be X . We have that within 90% accuracy . So that one data point alone is huge right . And we combine that with our qualification process , which we use these lead forms to qualify customers .

You know it's similar to like you would have a Calendly booking on your website . You put it on your website . You can also share individually , text it to them if you get an inbound Lots of different ways you can share it .

But it's basically a dynamic set of questions that starts at their address , augments a bunch of data against it and then ask some really smart questions that are tailored to what they need done . So , for example , they enter their address at auto completes for the Google right and then it pulls in . It's a three bedroom , two bathroom house . It's 2200 square feet .

It was built in this year . It pulls that stuff down automatically . Then it asks is it a full repaint , partial repaint , exterior cabinetry ? What are you looking to have done at your house ? And then , depending on the data we get and the answers of the homeowner , this is a dynamic qualification form and so for them it takes maybe two minutes .

They don't have to measure anything At the end of that process . They have completely built their estimate for you . It's done . They don't see that price instantly . Your phone then pops up and Hoy

says hey , you have a new customer who wants a bid . Here's the price based on your labor rates and labor standards based on the geometry . We know the home . Here's the actual price that you could ship it out and here's why we're confident in that price and what the information is .

Now obviously it's not going to be for every single home and every single project . I would not recommend , especially where the industry is at right now , that everybody sells remote overnight . The way Eric is Awesome . I have so much respect . He's really pushing the frontier forward . It's incredible .

But I feel like overnight there's no reason you should be driving to any job below $3,000 . That's if you think about your time you're investing and how much drag that is in your sales process . It doesn't make sense Close that job remotely . Focus on the really heavy hitter job . Spend more time in person with those customers .

Let's make sure your windshield time really makes sense and then if you actually unlock this remote sales process that we have in Hoist , you have this opportunity to run small jobs really profitably because you're not sinking six hours .

When you think about the two hours on average to deliver price with around a 35% close rate , that's like six hours to win one job . Are you really going to spend six hours to win a $1,200 repaint ?

No , but if you can win that without investing any of that upfront time 10 , 15 minutes reviewing a bid and sending it over that could make a ton of sense for your business economically . So that's what we built , how it works in practice and some of our technology .

And if they have a lower job size I'm like , okay , well , that's not good , you're probably undercharging or you're just going after too many small jobs and you're spending too much time closing it and deal with the production and their margins are usually bad .

But with this , if you can just , like you said , send them a form , they fill it out and you didn't have to really do any work , you get the bid back and you say , okay , well , it's only a $2,000 job , I'm not gonna go out and do the full sales process .

You know , maybe have a phone call or some abbreviated process and but I'm gonna give them the bid still and that's gonna cut , you know , save me a few hours of work and so you could , like you said , still produce that profitably .

But then if you get a larger , if they fill out that form , you know , okay , this is a five thousand , six thousand , ten thousand dollar job . Okay , definitely gonna do the full sales process with them and do the walk around and and be there in person and spend that extra time . So I think that's that's a really powerful tool that you can .

You can serve that underserved market of you know , the folks wanting , you know just a partial paint Of their home or whatever it is . It's also we found like you .

Now your property to room repaint , just turn them down where we're able to sell those remotely at a huge profit margin . They're actually turn out pretty , pretty incredible for us . Now , I don't get too hung up on the small job component because that's only one piece .

I think for most painters they'll want to actually avoid those jobs , maybe not even sell them remotely , which is fine .

I think what I'm advocating more than anything is really good qualification and sales processes that take the busy work out of everything and make sure you know before you go if this makes sense right , like , for example , the way that we're running it . I sell paint work right . Obviously the way we're running it is I come through , leads Come through .

We just explain . We want to make this as quick and painless for you as possible . I'm gonna shoot you a link takes two minutes for you to complete and after that for most bids we might not have to do an in-home estimate , 90% of inbound leads fill out that form . For our company 90% , and so we have huge uptake and there is .

There is a drop-off , though I think it's important to call out . And so for those 10% who don't want to fill it out , we can still run our standard estimate process . It doesn't like mean the leads gone and if they balkers with great , no problem , we can get over there . We still do our similar qualification process , but we don't get that same advantage .

But obviously that's a choice you can make in terms of intent . But from there , right , there's that piece of . We see that lead come in and we see that house is built in the 20s , it's in that historic region , it's got a ton of decorative work to done . All right , this is an in-person estimate . Right , we follow up . Maybe we give a soft range .

No , we're thinking this is gonna be like an 18,000 dollar job . This is a huge house , historic home . I want to make sure to do this right and , before we even drive out , right , we have that information .

And so I think , more than anything , regardless of my software built , which is pretty awesome I think I'm really advocating for really good qualification and sales process , regardless of whether you're , you know , dabbling in remote or whether that's in person . I think there's just huge opportunity there we're leaving on the table .

But if you use hoist in a vacuum , just in itself it's incredible handoff for the piece of the sales process we're talking about . So the qualified lead comes in , you walk up to the house and you have all the information on that home .

You know every single room , room size and what needs to be done in every single room , and you know the price already , like you're ready to go and share that proposal straight out of hoist . So in terms of that handoff , it's incredibly tight and clean . Now we probably have work to do to think about .

You know we have a zapper integration for getting leads into hoist , so if you're getting leads from anywhere , you can just have them automatically dump into hoist , which is huge . So even if you kind of use it as a sales copilot for any of your lead sources , you never even had your homeowners fill out those leads .

You're getting all that data augmented about every home before you even go . So it helps you kind of do that prep work that we discussed automatically . You don't have to sit on Zillow and think about it and write it down , it just all puts it all in one place . So I forgot the original question . I'm sorry .

We haven't gotten there yet , but we're eager to explore that as well .

You click on it , you fill out the Angie thing and all of a sudden your phone is ringing with people who want to get in person . Actually , what I wanted was a price , and if you're the one painter reaching out that says , hey , you know what , instead of scheduling in home , just take two minutes , I can get you a price .

The qualification rates if you're on these paid aggregators like this are way higher using this approach , because that's really that customer is digitally native . They're looking for a price . They're more trying to drop by from that perspective , and the number one way you build trust with someone there is Starting the conversation with a price as soon as possible .

That's that kind of consumer is . What they're looking for is a price . It doesn't mean it has to be the lowest price either . I want to be clear just selling that price and beginning that process doesn't remove your quality and differentiator .

As a painter , it's really important to talk about the overall sales process and what that fits into and how the idea of a price builds trust right . Tesla isn't selling the cheapest cars by any margin , but they just put that price in the website . That has not created a race to the bottom for them and just this inevitability is coming .

Like homeowners more and more want this . Like Since Amazon hit its stride 10 years ago , things we never imagined being sold online or sold online car insurance . I remember when I was in high school I literally went to the guy's office and we sat down .

I gave him my report card to get my car insurance mattresses 70% last year was sold online by 65 year old dad bought his mattress online like a A mattress and like that is the trend . That's where it's going and homeowners are changing quick and I think that's a while till it really trickles down to home services .

But it will go there and I think it's important we get ahead of that in a way that's really sustainable and that we as painters own ourselves , instead of a large company coming in and taking this all from us .

In some sense , I I think there's a really unique opportunity in window for painters to evolve with homeowner needs , serve them better , really optimize our time and just make the industry so much better .

Any last words or words of advice or anything else you want to ask of the audience ?