Jack Jostes:
Alright everyone. Here we are with Tyler Lombardo. One of the owners of MVP Snow n' Lawn in the Cleveland area of Ohio. I'm really excited to have Tyler here today to share how he went from having a bad internet presence, to having like you're one-page website. And worse he had a three-star average on Google with all these bad things to having a thriving business presence online.
Jack Jostes:
You've got a 4.3-star average on Google and I'm excited to hear from you. Well, how did you do that? How has that impacted the business? And we're working together in a program at Ramblin Jackson called Ramblin Reviews where you're actually collecting first party data, where your customer actually reviews you directly not on a third-party site like Google.
Jack Jostes:
But your own program and how you're using that to inspire your team. So, before we dig into that, Tyler, tell us a little bit. Who are you? Where are you? And what is MVP Snow n' Lawn? What do you guys do?
Tyler Lombardo:
All right. Well, Jack, first off, it's great to be here. It's a real honor to be chosen to be part of your podcast. I like to say that I do watch them on Saturdays when I'm trying to do a little bit of desk work. So, just to be part of that group that you've had on before this, it's a great honor.
Tyler Lombardo:
So, we're in the Cleveland, Ohio area. We have a lot of the suburbs west of that. But I'd say primarily we're in Rocky River. And we started off as a snow and lawn maintenance company. Primarily, snow is our biggest service when we started and it's still a nice big chunk.
Tyler Lombardo:
But our landscaping over the years has picked up quite a bit. We're getting into a lot of maintenance year-round properties where we're taking it all on from curb to grass. So, those accounts have been great for us. And so, I'd say primarily, we're in the maintenance space. We do one off enhancements.
Tyler Lombardo:
So, we do residential and commercial. Again, primarily maintenance but we do a lot of one-off enhancement projects. And since we've joined your team, those projects have gotten a lot better and a lot bigger from a financial standpoint as well. So, thanks, Jack.
Jack Jostes:
Hey, my pleasure. You guys do the work. I'm just helping people find you, so.
Tyler Lombardo:
That's right.
Jack Jostes:
Well, so, tell us and how long have you been in business. And you recently had a party with a pig roast and you were starting to tell me about I've never done a pig roast. What all went into that and what were you guys celebrating?
Tyler Lombardo:
All right. So, we've been in business for eight years. Me and my business partner Eddy who I'm sure would have loved to been here but there's so many other things you'd be doing rather than being on another Zoom call which is turned into the new norm for us. But-
Jack Jostes:
Right. Yeah. Thanks for being here.
Tyler Lombardo:
No, thank you. And so, we have a really great team. And I don't know if there's ever one person that can take credit for a great team. It's a conglomerate of everybody coming through together to not only find the best in themselves, it's the best and the people that are working around them.
Tyler Lombardo:
I do have to credit my business partner Eddie. He's on the front lines a lot with these guys, going through a lot of their life struggles, personal situations. And at the end of the day, I think that we all come out ahead by one that we truly care about every member of our team.
Tyler Lombardo:
That's really why we do this. If there was one day robots did all the mowing and stuff, I don't think me and my partner would be interested in it as much as we are dealing with the human factor of just building something great and bringing people around you to have it with.
Tyler Lombardo:
We have some good seniority here. And we do a lot of things to grow off of that. So, we had two guys in particular that started off with us three, four years ago. Mike and Lewis, they were a real good foundation for our company with the right attitude.
Tyler Lombardo:
We did a lot of employee referrals that just brought more of like-minded people together through that. And that's what we've used to grow the team today. And again, we have these guys wake up at four in the morning when they need to when it snows. They're there during 100-degree weather cutting and doing whatever the job needs to be done.
Tyler Lombardo:
So, that team atmosphere is something that we're really proud of. And there's a lot of ways that we'd like to reward these guys. There's obviously financial bonuses and stuff but especially with the environment that's going on now, we decided to host an event which not sure if the timing was right.
Tyler Lombardo:
I can second guess that all day. Thank God, everybody was fine after. But it was really a morale booster coming from these guys idling for four weeks, not working, to getting thrown into our environment which we have the spring season, it's very demanding and that was long days, six days a week.
Tyler Lombardo:
And we couldn't think of anything better to do than host an event for them. We did it at our office. It was a pig roast which is a labor of love. There's a lot of work that goes into not only picking up the pig. But then, you have to brine the pig which is basically submerging it and a bunch of salty goodness.
Tyler Lombardo:
And then, you're taking it out. Next morning, I think we're up at 4:00 AM, get the thing cut down and wrapped up so we could put it in its box to cook. I think we got the thing on at 7:00 AM and we weren't able to eat till 3:00 PM. So, it's a big, like I said a labor of love.
Tyler Lombardo:
I think it also shows how much goes into it. So, during that whole process, we were taking pictures of the pig, letting the guys know the day was coming. So, there was a lot of chatter about it. We hyped it up as much as we could. And then the visual side of it when people see a huge pig getting cut up.
Tyler Lombardo:
And then, of being 105-pound pig. We knew we weren't all going to consume that. But one of the things that we wanted to do is make sure that they brought plenty home for their families, so I know that was achieved. And we just had a really good event with the guys able to unwind, so we had no work that day.
Tyler Lombardo:
And another true credit to my team is our yard isn't the prettiest thing. And some of the guys got there at 7:00, 8:00 in the morning just to clean up the yard to have the party. And that just has a lot about what people we have around us here.
Tyler Lombardo:
And the fact that they were willing to make that sacrifice just for the event for themselves, out of themselves was... meant a lot to me, seeing them doing that. I mean, their power washing. I mean, it's probably the nicest my yard has looked in a while.
Tyler Lombardo:
And then, we also hired a photographer that was on, you recommended it and we're really happy that we did. And through the app, you got to see a lot of the joy that these guys were having together in a social atmosphere. It's awesome when you can see how much they can interact and have a good time and it's not just forced to be around each other because of work.
Tyler Lombardo:
I'd say that there isn't true friendships that have forged through working for us. A lot of them end up becoming roommates and all these other things that they hang out with each other. And that makes us feel really good too. And they do a good job of separating friendship and work.
Tyler Lombardo:
But at the end of the day, I want people to love the people that are around with just as much as I do. And ultimately, you help people out more. You're just more considerate of environments and stuff when you truly care about the people around you.
Tyler Lombardo:
So, we got to see that firsthand at this event. We had cornhole, we had big Jenga, the photographer again. So, it took a lot of action shots. But then, we also took team photos. And in our dynamic, we have our crew leaders but we encourage them to create a team name.
Tyler Lombardo:
So, we have teams like Full Throttle, the Avengers, Mario Brothers. And they're always hyping their teams up. So, it was really cool when we were able to have a professional photographer take some pictures of their teams and you'd go through the whole photographer serious one and then professional and then a fun one.
Tyler Lombardo:
And you could just really see how natural the chemistry was between all of them taking those photos. And the individual ones too. I mean, a lot of these guys they're taking professional headshots which they came out great. And it was just, again, really great to see everyone come together and be together in that type of atmosphere having such a great time.
Jack Jostes:
Great. Yeah. And you really do have a great team. And I didn't know that they had come early to help, get your space ready for it. That is awesome. And I personally just enjoy having those photos of my team from our events. Last year, we had our 10-year anniversary and we had a party. We invited some clients. We played the stump game, that's one of the things that we do at our events.
Jack Jostes:
And it's fun to look back on those. So, I'm glad that you have those. And it's really great for your marketing. And for those of you listening who are trying to build a team, showing people that camaraderie, showing them the events, those photos are really powerful in recruiting because you're ultimately marketing to people to choose to come and work for you. And part of that is that relationship and the experience with the other people.
The Impact Of Using Net Promoter Scores
Jack Jostes:
So, I'm curious. So, we are doing Ramblin reviews. For those of you who haven't worked on this with us, we're essentially sending out an email to MVP Snow n' Lawn clients asking for a score from zero to a 10 on how likely are you to recommend us to a friend?
Jack Jostes:
This creates a net promoter score. And I just checked your net promoter score is 75 which is really strong. 75 out of 100 is great for a small business. And in particular in landscaping with maintenance clients there's a lot that can go wrong. I can say that you're one of our top clients with this score.
Jack Jostes:
I'm curious. The part of the reason that we started doing this is it is part of how MVP acquires Google reviews because it automatically pushes people to leave a review on Google. But to me, the real gold is the score itself. The net promoter score.
Jack Jostes:
At Ramblin. Jackson, we have something called the gold standard, that's what we call it, it is the gold standard where projects need to be completed on time in budget. And our clients need to give us an eight or above is really what we're striving for in the net promoter score.
Jack Jostes:
And it meets our quality standards. And we have those very clearly defined. I'm signing off on projects at various points to help make sure that we're on that quality standard. For me, it's been really inspiring to the people who are behind the scenes that you've probably never even met Tyler that are working on your account, working on your projects.
Jack Jostes:
I guess, what has their impact been on your company? How are you using it? I remember one time we were having a call and you're like, "Hey, I've printed it out." You actually print out your score every month. What's that been for you and the team in the business?
Tyler Lombardo:
Well, so, the first part of the reviews is, I mean, the internal review is great. I mean, majority of the reviews that we would only get before were either right to Facebook or right to Google and not always were they great reviews and not always were they even customers to give reviews, they were just other people that just decide to leave a review for us when things didn't work out from even a sales quote.
Tyler Lombardo:
So, and it's very reactive when you do that because you're looking at that. And a lot of the customers just see that star is who you are as a company. And I never felt it was justified for us. So, with the ability for this internal review, what that really does for us is it gives us the direct information from a customer that we can see and either we can react to negative reviews internally which we've had a few.
Tyler Lombardo:
Obviously, with the 75 I mean, which I'd like to see us better than that, but we'll always push and there's a benchmark now to get better from. But we would respond to them and we can turn a complaint into a long-lasting customer just because they might not have mentioned anything to us and the review gave them the voice that they might not have felt comfortable having sharing it with us directly.
Tyler Lombardo:
So, there's that aspect of it. And then, the other thing is just being able to see how people feel about our service. And then, the turnout, the people that are doing them it seems we're getting a very good percentage of the ones that we're sending out.
Tyler Lombardo:
And I do a lot of the sales along with my partner and so I can always see, "Oh, here's this person, how did they go?" And when it goes out well, I can then shoot them a follow up. "Hey, we just saw the review. Thanks again." So, it does give us a little bit more ability to communicate.
Tyler Lombardo:
But I think the most powerful aspect that I've seen with it is this information is great but it's not just good for us as owners to say, "Hey, this is how sweet we're doing." But it's really for the team. So, this was the first time that the team was ever able to get that type of information from a customer if the customer decided not to send a great job email which a lot of them think it but it's just the action of doing it.
Tyler Lombardo:
Now, this system empowered that and brought them to basically walk them through how to give us our initial review. And when we posted those up, I was surprised to see how many reviews actually knew some of our team members' names which I found was really important.
Tyler Lombardo:
It means that they were social enough with them and introducing themselves. They bragged about which ones they're getting to like the friendly competition like I did that one, that's a great review. So, it gives them the customer perspective of how great of a job they were doing.
Tyler Lombardo:
And in this business, that can get lost and they can get lost very easily. So, again, that I would say is. And they wait for them. We do them once a month. And if we're running a little bit behind on them, they let us know, that's for sure.
Jack Jostes:
So, what are some of the takeaways that your team has had? Maybe tell us. You don't need to tell us who it was. But was there a time where you got a negative review that you were surprised about? And you were able to maybe call the client, or?
Tyler Lombardo:
Yeah. So, we've had some rough ones that, again, that we would call the client. And I want to say one was they expected a service that would have been in addition to be included in. And when we talked through it and it even says in our contract that this is an additional service. What I think is that sometimes people, if they're working through their budget, they might change some things off.
Tyler Lombardo:
And then, when your team comes and does such a great job but there's one thing missing, it's usually the thing that they caught. But it did give us the opportunity to go back and service the account and get it fully done. And so, that turned it into an upsell opportunity.
Jack Jostes:
Oh, nice. So, the negative review became an upsell?
Tyler Lombardo:
It did. And go ahead.
Jack Jostes:
Wow. And then, have you surveyed that customer again since that happened?
Tyler Lombardo:
So, it was one of our maintenance customers. So, yeah, that we stuck with them. But they didn't harbor that negativity if they would have never gotten this review. And they build this up. And then, all these other little things can start to build up if you don't solve that one core issue.
Tyler Lombardo:
And we've seen that with customers. So, now, we're giving them that outlet right away to express it. And it also shows that we're responsive. We never claim that we're perfect. We try to be very good at what we do. But nobody can ever say that no issue is going to happen. So, it also lets them know how important it is because of the response that we give to it.
Tyler Lombardo:
So, yeah. I'd say overall, it's not going to go anywhere. I can never see ourselves without it. And I think the aspect of sharing it with your team is probably the most valuable from my perspective. And then, the really close second is just our ability to get to those negative reviews to a customer right away.
Jack Jostes:
Well, yeah. I mean, and of course, you want to have your clients feeling like an eight, nine or a 10. And the real value I think is knowing when somebody is a seven, six or a five or a four or whatever, so that way you can call them and find out.
Jack Jostes:
I found most of the time it's a miscommunication. And I had a client, the Coronavirus has impacted all of our businesses in various ways. But months before the Coronavirus, we started, well, it's actually been over a year we've been using it ourselves at Ramblin Jackson.
Jack Jostes:
And one of our clients gave us a six. And I called him and he just didn't understand what we were doing because someone else in his company had hired us and that person doesn't even work there anymore. So, we're just doing this work.
Jack Jostes:
We're like an expense. And he's like, "Well, I don't even know what this stuff is." And we were able to get him back to a nine. And when the Coronavirus hit, he's like, "Hey, Jack, my accountant was like, what is Ramblin Jackson? I think we should cut it." Because they're looking at it.
Jack Jostes:
But because we had gone back and rekindled that relationship, this was now at least a conversation we were having. We were able to retain that client. And my business isn't really that different from yours, I build things and we maintain them.
Jack Jostes:
You're in the lawn and landscape world, I'm in the digital world. But if people aren't happy with what you're doing, you're going to lose the account at some point. And I think you're doing the right thing of pick up the phone, right? If you get a negative review, call people and say, "Hey, I saw you gave us a bad review. What's up?"
How Net Promoter Scores Can Help You Inspire and Retain Your Employees
Jack Jostes:
And that's awesome that you made it into an upsell. So, what are some of the ways that it has inspired your team? What are some of the stories internally since you've started sharing it with people? What's the response been?
Tyler Lombardo:
Well, I think one of the things is when some of the team members saw their names on it. And I overemphasize how important that is. Somebody that can have whatever interaction with you and we send these reviews a month later, we'll still remember your name and how good of a job that you did. And how that should make you feel that that you made that impact on just another human, that's just such a great interaction to have.
Tyler Lombardo:
And to press that as much as you can, not even in the work life but in a personal life as well. So, I know that some of these guys, some of my team members, may have never been acknowledged in a lot of different jobs and even in school and whatever the way that this is giving them the ability to. And to see them light up from that, it's really inspiring.
Tyler Lombardo:
And it just shows how with that information and how positive things can really impact employees to want to do more, to want to get recognized by their name. And I think it broke a social barrier of client landscapers and it made it, hey I am Mike and you're Rosie.
Tyler Lombardo:
And now, we still have the professional but there's a personal one that's coming in the middle which always makes things easier when you're solving issues on the field if need be.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, definitely. And then, for you as the leader of the company, you can share this in so many ways. I don't know if you guys have a way that do you have a group chat or a text message or anything that you guys-
Tyler Lombardo:
Yeah. We probably have five different ones and they're all exciting, believe me. But yeah. So, [crosstalk 00:25:37] we have them all.
Jack Jostes:
Well, so, you take a screenshot when you get it, right, when you get it. When I get an email note, I'm excited by it. I pay very close attention to this score. And I send it out. We use a program called Voxer. So, it goes out right away. And then, we're also talking about it at our company meeting.
Jack Jostes:
So, like you said, I think reiterating the things that people are doing that's positive and getting that positive feedback is one of the best ways you can inspire your team. And in particular, we happen to be shooting this during August where it's pretty hot, people are burned out.
Jack Jostes:
And reiterating that people are doing a good job and helping people can go a really long way even if their name isn't in there. I found that a lot of the people who are like I said at my company that are in very little client contact really do care about this quality score.
Jack Jostes:
What else are you doing to recruit? You're one of the few people that I've met that I work with where, I mean, recruiting is obviously a challenge. We're always looking for new people. But is it accurate? You don't use any H-2B workers and that-
Tyler Lombardo:
Yes. So, all of our employees are all citizens here. We're not anti H-2B, we just never needed to yet. And we're, like I said, a 24-person company. So, but we picked up maybe one or two or three year over year and we do a good job of retaining.
Tyler Lombardo:
One of the things that I would say is when we do hire, we don't hire on experience. And we have in the past and sometimes it does work out. But we really go on attitude and how much someone's willing to work, willing to learn. And we really sell a team atmosphere.
Tyler Lombardo:
And we let our team know that we're going to try to place you with the best people that we think are going to train you up. Openly communicate, if you guys have issues. We're constantly asking our team leaders if new people are working out and they can usually get a good sense within the first couple of days.
Tyler Lombardo:
I think we do have a really competitive work atmosphere that's healthy where they're all pushing to get the job done. They're all working just as hard. It's not our crew leaders are sitting in the car while everybody else is working. I mean, everyone's getting in there and doing their thing.
Tyler Lombardo:
So, the personality part is huge. And then, you can train the experience. But when you have somebody that comes in and is set on their ways and things their ways are the best. And they just bring the wrong attitude into a team environment and they don't last too long.
Tyler Lombardo:
And we've had two or three that they could cut grass like a champ but they just bounced around to almost every crew leader and we go, "Hey, there's nobody left here. You're going to have a problem with here. So, I think it might be a time to start looking internally that you might be the problem."
Tyler Lombardo:
And maybe there's a teachable moment here for you but It's just not working out anymore. And so, yeah. We have a great team that's been with us. And that's also great too. I mean, I couldn't imagine having to start with 20 guys again and getting this type of crew and it doesn't happen overnight. It is year over year improvements.
Jack Jostes:
Absolutely.
Tyler Lombardo:
And also, as your company grows, you can start focusing on a lot of those dynamics. When you're first starting, you're just trying to figure out what's going on. And sometimes you might not be putting the best people in the best places. So, we definitely went through some of those struggles.
Tyler Lombardo:
But once you start seeing it form and you get that nucleus going, you just build on that and that's where we're at right now. And hopefully, we can keep it as long as we can and grow to it.
An Impressive Digital Presence Can Increase Your Close Rate
Jack Jostes:
Great. What has been the result of your sales if you've done a lot online. You've done a lot with your website, the photos. But have you noticed specifically to the review average going from like in the threes to north of 4.3. Has that impacted anything for you as far as sales goes?
Tyler Lombardo:
Yeah. So, it's pretty loaded across the board, I'll dive into it. So, when we started, we did have a one-page website. I thought it was a very nice one page. It was professionally done and the images were cool.
Jack Jostes:
It was one of the... Yes. It was a very nice page. It was very good. No, it really was. Honestly, you had good photos of your team. Actually, it was good. It just wasn't going to get where you were trying to go.
Tyler Lombardo:
It was a very image-forward website. And we were on pay per click. And that took us to where we are before we met you. But it also was overwhelming and I would say it pretty much burnt us out where a lot of phone calls, just a lot of questions about things, a lot of lower end quotes.
Tyler Lombardo:
A lot of let's go meet this person, never even get a call back. But we were doing a lot of that. So, our close rate was probably 30%. And we're like, "Wow, we're closing 30%," we think that's pretty good. But we would have had to do a lot more of that to keep that 30% or get to 40% as a close rate.
Tyler Lombardo:
And we didn't know, we thought we had to just throw more dollars but we didn't know where better dollars were supposed to go. So, they say timing is everything and we're fortunate enough to catch you and your GIE seminar and it hit the nail on the head.
Tyler Lombardo:
And it was one of those aha moments like this is exactly what we're doing, that everything that you said was wrong. We're getting the exact same results from doing everything wrong that you said. And so, I don't know if you had a crystal ball or if there is a methodology to that.
Tyler Lombardo:
But this is what you need to do, that's right. And so, since we launched, since I want to say was in maybe February or March. So, we did have the full season in which you guys are under the gun, did a hell of a job headed across the line quickly.
Tyler Lombardo:
And I know that you said everybody is trying to get it done in that time frame. So, you guys delivered it on time, great communication. Put a lot of websites together. By far, this was the easiest one that I've ever worked on. I don't think I could ever go back to trying to do it any other way. So, but immediately our phone stopped ringing.
Tyler Lombardo:
So, we cut off all advertisement, no more pay per click. No more direct mailers. No more Valpak. And we put a lot of trust in what you were saying. And we sat and the phone didn't ring up out of the gates and it's not ringing a ton now but when it is ringing, it's turning into quality leads that people that are responsive to callbacks.
Tyler Lombardo:
Don't miss on their site visits, respond to our quotes. And I want to say our close rate is I'm going to put it probably in the 70% range now. We're weeding out a lot of customers if they get through. And we know they're still not a good fit before we even submit a proposal.
Tyler Lombardo:
So, we are telling customers things which we never did before. And ultimately, our transactions have been more seamless from that, if they're tough going in, they're going to be tough going out. So, if they're tough going let's just say, hey, I don't care. I don't want to get out of this. I don't want to get in it.
Tyler Lombardo:
So, yeah. We have seen our individual proposals have gone up dramatically where before, we were a $600 minimum and we used to have to say that all the time. We're still there. We're probably going to raise that just because we're not even doing that many quotes in that price range anymore.
Tyler Lombardo:
So, our price per quote has gone up greatly from the type of leads that we're getting. And overall sales reflect from that too. So, our sales, we had a very aggressive budget going into 2020. And with the virus and all that, everyone got scared and thought it blew the budget out the window.
Tyler Lombardo:
And 30% growth forward this year. We were $1800 more at the end of August than what we budgeted for the year. So, we're on track for that 30%. I think we're actually going to close even a little bit higher than that as we get our next wave of contracts and stuff coming in from the fall and winter season.
Tyler Lombardo:
So, best year to date. And every year when you're a small company you always have I think next year is the best year but this one is truly when I can say that it's not just the best from a number standpoint, from a quality of life, from a quality of work, from our team.
Tyler Lombardo:
And a lot of processes that we came into play. And I can definitely thank you Jack and your team at Ramblin for a lot of those ways of looking at our company differently and creating some of those things based on your guys' guidance. So, I'll be on your debt for this thing.
Tyler Lombardo:
You've been great from the start. And I and I couldn't imagine doing things differently. Because if I would have continued the same, I don't even know if I could have held up with the 200 quotes, we were doing a month.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. Well, thank you. And thanks for sharing that here on the show. The quality of life improvement is meaningful to me. I remember working with you and you were quoting everybody that called. It was bad. You guys were really burned out. Honestly, I mean, seriously pretty frustrated with the business which definitely impacts your life.
Jack Jostes:
I know that my business was that way at one time. And the key thing here though that you did though was you took some chances. You made some investments. But I think most importantly, you started saying no to prospects that were not the right fit.
Jack Jostes:
And I think that that's one of the most important things to do for the people listening. If you want to get your average project size up and your close rate up, I mean it costs a lot of time and money to quote a job, right. And I think people lose sight of the actual cost of that when they're just estimating everything.
Jack Jostes:
So, when you start whittling that down, your profit can go up, your quality of life can go up. And now, you're working on taking care of your team and having pig roast and stuff. So, I'm really proud of you guys for all the growth that you're experiencing.
Tyler Lombardo:
Well, no, thank you. And just how we can pick our employees, we can pick our customers. And before it was the mentality of us growing up, my inch was the customer is always right and you had to do all these things to try to get it. And it's painful.
Tyler Lombardo:
And so, there's a lot of really good customers out there, just like there's a lot of really good employees out there. You're going to have to go through some bad. But I think the key is recognizing that they're not going to work out before you get on the job then after.
Tyler Lombardo:
And some of those factors are, again, people are late to appointments. If they're nonresponsive to certain questions over a long period of time, you got to think when you're on the job and you're going to need some type of answer that they might not be around for that.
Tyler Lombardo:
There's also how much do they want to beat you up before you even get a price or they got a cousin that's a landscaper and so they're going to know what the price is going to be. Well, call your cousin. And so, there's a couple of key things that come out that you just start to recognize now. I meant, every job that somebody had a cousin or this guy and it never worked out. So, let's get it out of the way.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I have a buddy, Jeffrey Magner,who says that the way people treat you when you meet them is probably how they're going to treat you always. So, you can usually tell out of the gate. And the whole customer is always right thing, I think that sometimes people misinterpret what I'm saying about telling people no as not taking care of people.
Jack Jostes:
My perspective on it is like, hey, I have so much bandwidth to take really great care of my clients. And so, I can only have so many of them. But once they're a client like you take great care of them. Gary Vaynerchuk, I heard him say one time that the customer is always right as long as you want them to be your customer, right?
Jack Jostes:
So, if you want them to be your customer, they are right. It doesn't mean you can't tell them no or you did call them and be like, "Hey, remember when we remove that from the budget, we're going to need to charge you for that." You can totally do that. But being clear about who you want to work with is what I call the hell yes, customer.
Jack Jostes:
And we have a worksheet that we guide people through. For those of you who haven't done it, check it out at landscapersguide.com/hellyes. And that was one of the things here. So, I'm curious about the last question: do you notice your commercial clients? Did they notice your online presence or your reviews or anything like that? Or, is it primarily on the residential side?
Tyler Lombardo:
So, we were sending the reviews monthly to our maintenance for the first two months and we felt it was over communicating and we weren't getting a big response from them. But you are able to create a link that allows the client to go to if they do need to express something.
Tyler Lombardo:
So, we're almost using it as a call ticket in a way. So, that's a good tool just to know, hey, if there's ever an issue, I mean, you can call, you can do this. But you never know, people might have a couple and get a little courage in them and set a call in which I'm thankful for.
Tyler Lombardo:
They click on the review and they'll go to town that way which is fine. Again, we want to get everything addressed that needs to be addressed. I would say that from the SEO standpoint, we have been getting some new outside commercial leads.
Tyler Lombardo:
Some of them are substantial in size. Some of them might be a little bit too big for us which we know as a company that, yeah, we'd love to be there someday, but we're not trying to rush there and screw it up and never get back to it. So, we do have a strategic growth plan I feel from equipment and team members and all that.
Tyler Lombardo:
So, yeah, we would. We have been getting a lot of the commercial feeds on the stuff that we need. And one of the big pushes and I know this was unique when we first talked was in the HOA presence. So, I know how it's hard. You want to say commercial but then sometimes HOA people, or there's just a different language.
Tyler Lombardo:
And I think that we did a good job of getting to the middle of that to where if you're an HOA, you can still see it prominently that that's what we're doing. And then, if you're a retail spot, you can see that we're doing that as well. So, it's a good balance. I think we did a good job there.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. I think so too because in landscaping, HOA usually gets lumped into commercials. But a lot of HOA board presidents or whoever is going to be looking for the landscaper, they're not thinking of themselves necessarily as a commercial business in the same way that a retailer would.
Jack Jostes:
So, yeah. I think that that's good. Is there anything else any other ahas from a sales marketing leadership standpoint you want to share with people before we wrap up?
Tyler Lombardo:
I think that now we have all these different channels of how we can describe our company. And we have the ability to read more about us on our website. So, there's some information. So, we're not selling ourselves verbally like we used to so much.
Tyler Lombardo:
Here we are and we are seeing that people are knowing a lot about us before they even become customers. So, I'd say the consumers are doing a lot more research. Maybe it's a lot more time at their screens. And so, that is a great channel there.
Tyler Lombardo:
The ability to talk about how long their team has been with us and how our retention rate with our team is great. And you were not getting four guys that never worked for us, there's a consistency year over a year. So, that's another selling point that we have.
Tyler Lombardo:
And then, we go further down that our renewal rate is great. So, we're doing something right from a renewal standpoint where people are shopping and we're not losing a lot of a lot of our accounts year over year. And then, you pull it up into our process to get the job done and how much work goes into each account before we actually do it.
Tyler Lombardo:
We're investing in your property. We do surveys for a lot of accounts. We do all of these other tools to we want to know as much about your properties as you do and maybe even show you a few things that you might have overlooked. So, that's bringing the knowledge and experience into our sales process there.
Tyler Lombardo:
And then, I think the review is the last one, we want to know what your feedback is. So, you put that together and you do get a full circle from start to finish of what we're really doing. So, I don't know what we would add to that. I know that there's always change that you want to do.
Tyler Lombardo:
But I would say as a foundation, the ability to grow off of all of those things is great and it's exciting. And it makes us feel comfortable that we know that we're doing like you can always second guess yourself as a business owner, am I doing this right or that right?
Tyler Lombardo:
But I think when you put all of these things together and you see the experience that our customers and our team members are having, I would say that gave us a lot more confidence like, okay, this is our base. This is our foundation to grow off of. And we look forward to doing that.
Jack Jostes:
Great. Well, Tyler, thanks so much for joining us on the show today. And for everyone else. Check out Tyler, Google MVP Snow n' Lawn. They're in Rocky River, Ohio. And if you'd like to hear more interviews with successful lawn and landscape contractors about what's working in sales and marketing, check out our show on iTunes.
Jack Jostes:
It's on Spotify. It's everywhere. You can get a podcast. And you can read the transcript and watch the videos at landscapersguide.com/podcast. Tyler, thanks again and take care everyone. See you next week.
Tyler Lombardo:
Thank you, Jack. Appreciate it.
Jack Jostes:
Bye.