Driving Operational Maximization

Do you know how to maximize your operations during the summer rush? It starts with aligning your people, processes, and priorities — then turning every opportunity into measurable results.

In this episode, Contractor University faculty member Drew Cameron shares his approach to operational maximization—keeping customers happy, employees motivated, and opportunities fully captured during the busiest months of the year. From driving more leads to optimizing every interaction, you’ll learn how to make the summer season your most successful yet.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Audio Transcription (in beta, please be wary of typos)

00;00;00;00 – 00;00;09;25

Are you driving? Operational maximization. We’re going to learn all about it on today’s show.

00;00;09;27 – 00;00;41;22

Let’s join drew now as he dives into operational maximization. Driving. Operational maximization. You can’t be all things to all people. When you try to do so, you fail miserably. And you’re nothing to anyone at some point. And customer experience suffers and it should never suffer. And so when calls are coming in, if you need a prioritization, okay, Defcon one through Defcon five and you need a prioritization schedule for both your service calls and your sales calls, you’re going to have my contact information at the end.

00;00;41;23 – 00;01;02;00

Email me and I’ll send you my protocol for that. But I’m going to go ahead and triage the opportunities that are coming in for the highest probability prospects. And so if I have an opening on my calendar, maybe for let’s say, you know, Tuesday of next week and you call me and you’re new customer to me, and you’re a five year old air conditioning system and you’re not my customer.

00;01;02;00 – 00;01;16;03

I didn’t put that system in. And you’re not my service worker and customer. You’re calling me and you have no calling. And I have an opening on Tuesday. I will schedule that opportunity today. Yes, I will, because I have an opening. Right. I’m taking care of everything else up to that point. Right. And that’s why that customer got pushed out.

00;01;16;03 – 00;01;37;08

If they’re willing to wait, then I’m willing to go. But I’ll tell you this come Monday, if I get flooded with calls, my service for giving customers that customer on Tuesdays getting bumped, they’re going right. We take care of our warranty customers. Our service are going to customers first, and then I take care of anybody who’s got a system that meets the protocols.

00;01;37;10 – 00;01;56;05

Let’s say, for example, an air conditioner that is ten years old and has no cooling. I don’t care if they’re my customer or not or under service agreement. Not. That’s a high probability prospect. And the same holds true with sales calls. And so you got to make sure that your, your call takers and dispatchers are working in coordination to fill that dispatch dispatch board.

00;01;56;05 – 00;02;14;22

You just don’t schedule things and leave them in there. You got to move these pieces around. Especially now you’ve got limited people you don’t want to be running six, eight, ten service calls a day, running more is not better for your people. You’re going to lose people. That’s not that’s not good. That’s not healthy for your company, not healthy for your team.

00;02;14;24 – 00;02;31;24

Right. So you may have to defer maintenance calls and start pulling your maintenance technicians over to run some service calls. The light ones like condensate leaks and and whatnot. And so you may have to do that, but don’t not run your maintenance calls. You know, make sure you’re reaching out to these people. You may have to just bump them to take care of customers with no cooling at that point.

00;02;31;24 – 00;02;46;05

And then obviously in the fall, in the winter, you do the no heating side of things, make sure you’re training weekly and coaching daily. If you’re not doing it as a group, you’re doing it. You know when you can tap into people again, your company meetings if their every week or departmental meetings or every week they’re sacred. They can should continue to happen.

00;02;46;05 – 00;03;02;27

We need to train our people, make sure they’re at the best of their game when we’re flush with opportunities, they need to, you know, again, I’m going to touch my people on a daily basis in the daily huddles and making sure they’re in a good place, you know, humanly first before I apply to their role. But I just want to make sure, hey, how are you doing?

00;03;02;27 – 00;03;24;19

How did you make out yesterday? You know what’s working for you? What’s not working for you? Hey, did you try that new script that we talked about? Did you try that that that handout that we gave you? You can also have some informational handouts, but you could also hand out something maybe on air quality or airflow or other issues that you want to address that you want to help people get education while you’re technicians are in the home.

00;03;24;22 – 00;03;44;14

Okay. Internal promotions again, if we’re slow and and the weather doesn’t show up and all sudden calls drop off, sales calls drop off or leaves drop drops off and I only have a few of them. Well, again, why not promote things internally? Why not create a flier, give it to my technicians and I can be out there with a, a special on replacement opportunities that I have.

00;03;44;14 – 00;04;01;17

No sales leads coming in the front door. And every service call, every maintenance call, we’re going to get out there. We’re going to hand out the promotion, you know, in the home. And so where needed, I can go ahead and have a promotion out there. You know, right away to drive opportunities. I’m going to drive technicians. It’s going to make sure my techs know, hey, I’m incentivizing you to make things happen.

00;04;01;17 – 00;04;25;21

I need we need more leads. Add on sales, bundle repairs, duct modifications, as, as well. Consider contests, and increasing incentives to incentivize behavior. So I need more leads. Guess what? If I’m paying $50, lead service just went $200 per lead. You get two. If you if you get to five leads in the next week, every lead after the fifth one is $200.

00;04;25;21 – 00;04;58;29

Leave. Hell, I’m paying 375 to create myself up a 200 lead every day of the week. If I have two desperate times, call for desperate measures. And so when things aren’t working the way you need them to, you can incentivize the behavior. And then when you get those leads, you need to optimize those leads and sales. Right. And so if my guys are running out there and they’re selling systems and we have a little bit of a backlog or we can’t get the equipment or something like that, portable air conditioners, temporary AC units, I might hook a hook up, hook up a condensing unit temporarily that I’ve got sitting in the in the back recycling

00;04;58;29 – 00;05;17;21

pile. And I might paint that thing blue or orange so that they don’t seem compelled to want to keep the thing, that I just put in for them as a temporary fix. I may go make a temporary repair. Okay. Just to buy myself and my team some time. If I have to. Okay. I’m going to make sure that I’m bringing all open leads to conclusion.

00;05;17;21 – 00;05;42;21

You got to make sure your salespeople are debriefing after every sales call, and they’re scheduling any follow up activity. You start running them more than three leads, you’re burning leads. And so I would only schedule people with a maximum of three new leads a day because they’re supposed to be doing some two call closes. And so with two call closes plus windshield time, plus, you know, if they have to do some paperwork or digital files and they got to put together, that’s a long day for salespeople.

00;05;42;24 – 00;05;59;12

Don’t run these people into the ground. This is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. Right. Happy calls. You got to be making happy calls to your customers after your sales calls. If you got to open leads. What, what we know is that, you know, sometimes people just are not, you know, looking to, you know, to act fast.

00;05;59;14 – 00;06;19;22

Interestingly enough, people will act faster on a replacement opportunity in the air conditioning season than they will on the in the heating season. But, again, if your salespeople are out there and they’re running out there and are quoting and they shouldn’t be trying to one call close everybody just because it’s hot and they’ve got a lot of opportunity and the schedules full again, stay relevant to the customer’s buying process.

00;06;19;22 – 00;06;54;04

If you don’t have enough salespeople to cover all the leaves that you got, then you need to hire more salespeople, and then you can think about getting, well, alongs, rehashed leads, app. It’s a great tool, where you I don’t want to say it should replace the salesperson, but it can, enhance and supplement, obviously, where where they fall short a little bit on occasion and send, follow up messages and little, little tweaks to kind of, you know, poke the customer a little bit along with some video links, educational content, and shows your professionalism and well and seeing like about a a 30% bump.

00;06;54;04 – 00;07;16;23

And so they’re closing, you know, 20 high 20s to mid 40s on the initial visit and getting about another 20 mid 20s to 40 on the follow up with the rehashed leads app. In his company. So offer incentives at the end of season as your as you head into the end of the season. And so at the end of the summer, you want to make sure that you have incentives to get people off the fence who maybe didn’t do anything for the summer.

00;07;16;25 – 00;07;38;27

Referral rewards could be doubled, self-generated lead, service could be doubled as well. Since the market is ripe with opportunities here, make sure that as a service in the service department that you’re reviewing all service invoices to make sure you’re maximizing the opportunities. Look for the diagnostic fee only as the PT you only calls where we only did a precision tune up, but we only do the diagnostic fee, or we got a $0 ticket in service.

00;07;39;00 – 00;07;53;16

And if you see opportunities where the opportunity met the 4k rule and you don’t know what the 4k rule is, you need to watch the cracking, the Code video, where I talk about what the 4k rule is, because that would have been an opportunity to flip a lead, and the customer wasn’t given all the information to make an informed and intelligent decision.

00;07;53;19 – 00;08;13;03

Maybe at the time, maybe they didn’t want to schedule an opportunity with a comfort advisor at the time. Maybe they just wanted to get back in business and get cooling reestablished as quick as they possibly could, and they made a hasty decision to spend $600 to repair the old thing. And it’s the old things. 12, 12 years old was 600 times 12 is 7200.

00;08;13;03 – 00;08;31;28

That’s more than 4000 that customer should consider replace. Maybe they didn’t want to at the time. Maybe, you know, time was pressing and they just, you know, made that hasty decision. But maybe by the end of the season they might want to be reconsider that. And I can maybe offer a refund or double the refund, you know, towards a replacement, you know, scenario.

00;08;32;04 – 00;08;53;17

So think about that. Okay. Buyback campaigns, which is exactly what I’m talking about there, especially at the end of the season. Follow up technician recommendations. Your technicians do some work when you’re out on the calls, but they don’t probably do all the work that they’re recommending. Their job is to go out there and and find things and diagnose everything and give the customers options to address every concern and every issue that they found.

00;08;53;22 – 00;09;11;05

It’s the customer’s choice and decision to make a prudent buying decision as to what they want to do. And maybe they only want to just take a baby step at this point in time. And that’s okay. But what about all those other recommendations? Is anybody following those up? You certainly should. Especially as again, maybe you get a window of time.

00;09;11;05 – 00;09;25;27

Maybe it rains for two weeks and it cools off. Follow up on the tech wrecks. Fill the schedule with the tech wrecks because your phone’s not ringing. What are you going to do? You got to maximize these opportunities. Get the juice for the squeeze. Everybody always says to me, drew, I need more leads. I need more sales calls.

00;09;25;27 – 00;09;52;18

I need more service calls and maintenance calls. Not necessarily. You’re not doing a great job with those that you got. And that’s why I’m trying to help you get the juice for the squeeze. And again, a person who would be hired to do this would pay for themselves. Somebody who basically follow up to Tech Wrecks, review all service invoices and handle rehash leads pays for themselves across the board.

00;09;52;20 – 00;10;16;27

Right? That is what we call an inside sales team. They support outside sales and service. You need to be thinking that way, okay? Contractors are heading in that direction. Many of them already had the best in class. Companies do have that customer experience and work should not suffer just because the calendar changed and the temperature changed outside. If it got so hot, you shouldn’t have to shortchange the sales call process.

00;10;17;03 – 00;10;45;04

The service call process, the maintenance call process, and try and shove more opportunities into the day. No, you need more bandwidth. Again, think about incentivizing customers to wait for that kind of stuff. How about policing your happy calls, making sure when you’re, you know, recording those happy calls that nobody’s upset with anything? You know, that your people are doing that the reviews are not allowing, for any, any tolerance or social media posts or not allowing for that customer experience to suffer there.

00;10;45;09 – 00;11;04;24

If I ever hear that my salespeople are not getting back to customers with quotes, they no longer work for me. You don’t get a warning, right? You were told how to handle leads. Management internally should be holding salespeople accountable, giving quotes on a timely basis. But when customers start calling and say, I’m still waiting on a quote, I have not heard back from your salesperson.

00;11;04;28 – 00;11;27;12

I left him voicemails. I’ve sent text messages. I’ve sent emails. Trust me, I’ve seen this happen. That is a cardinal sin. Why run the call to begin with if you weren’t going to play it through? So make sure you’re policing your people, holding them accountable, right? Offer free second opinions. If your customers aren’t happy with what your first technician told them, offer to send out a field service supervisor or the service manager to offer a free second opinion.

00;11;27;20 – 00;11;45;18

The customer, not happy with the initial diagnosis, also offer free second opinions on your competitors right? And be willing to go back and see their installation. Hey, if I don’t win the job, don’t do this. I understand you made a decision that you’re happy with, and I’m thrilled that you did appreciate the opportunity for having us out here again.

00;11;45;21 – 00;11;58;14

If you like, I can come back after. After the job is done, and I can make sure it’s up to industry standards and meets the, you know, the specifications of what you and I talked about and that you’re getting what you’re paid for. You’re not an expert, nor should you have to be. And I want to make sure that you get what you pay for.

00;11;58;14 – 00;12;17;17

I’m not going to come out and bash the competition. That’s not what this is about. You gave us the courtesy professional courtesy of having us out here. And I want to make sure that you get what you’re paying for, whether you do business with us or not. If I sold a job, I’m going out after the job. So why not go out and make sure that the competition is doing what they’re supposed to be doing?

00;12;17;19 – 00;12;38;10

Right? Here’s the thing that may change a review the day right. That may change the social media posts a day. Right? That may basically, you know, change if they use going forward or the next time out or who they choose to refer going forward. And it also gives me some, competitive intelligence as to what my competition is doing or not doing and how well they’re doing.

00;12;38;17 – 00;12;55;24

If I have to change my game and up my game now, I know what to do because I’ve gotten out there internal and operational stuff. Right. Set, set your somewhere that’s not set. You. It should be. Set your summer operational plan in motion with your team. Bring everybody together right in May. Probably time frame as things start to heat up.

00;12;55;24 – 00;13;09;26

End of April. For those of you already like, that’s already 90 some degrees down in Texas, so you probably already should be having this conversation. The rally team, the weather’s coming, the days are going to be long. We’re going to be targeting weekends. Who can I count on? Here’s what the on call schedule is going to look like.

00;13;09;29 – 00;13;29;27

Get people ready. Let them know. Don’t just wait till the weather shows up. Have a plan. Broadcast the plan. Make sure we got buy in from our team. Any concerns, any issues. Don’t just work these people to the bone. They will quit you staff and allocate your resources accordingly. Here. Make sure you have the things necessary to take care of your people.

00;13;29;29 – 00;13;47;06

Cool this. And fans and portable AC units for your people as well as for the customer. Right? Ice. You should have an ice machine or bags of ice that you’re bringing in, and you’re filling the coolers. You’re giving the company, coolers to people, and you’re giving the Yetis to the, you know, Yeti drinking cups to your people so they can stay hydrated.

00;13;47;11 – 00;14;09;13

You’re providing them with the electrolyte drinks, and you’re visiting the jobs and you’re taking them snacks and, you know, maybe popsicles and stuff like that, and you’re letting them know that you appreciate them, that they care that they matter, and that the work they do matters. Get it? I get it. It’s tough out there. So notes, they email, handwritten notes, text calls, signs of appreciation, acknowledgment both to the worker and to their family.

00;14;09;20 – 00;14;32;05

Hey, if your people working nights and weekends the family sacrificing, do not say thank you. You certainly should. All right. Acknowledge the family sacrifices by sending them to the movies or out for ice cream, or to dinner or to a ballgame or, you know, to, you know, something, something to do. Ax throwing, whatever. There’s some kind of outing that they can have when they do have that downtime.

00;14;32;09 – 00;14;55;10

Celebrate the wins daily and weekly, you know, send out text and letting them know who sold, who sold an add on solution, who, who sold bundled repairs, who sold a replacement system. Create that buzz amongst your team. When that popcorn starts happen amongst your people, they start ricocheting off each other. You know, that energy is, you know, creates inertia, creates momentum, creates acceleration as well within your organization.

00;14;55;17 – 00;15;16;17

Right? So make sure you’re having your daily huddles. Now is not the time to start compromising the way we show up in business weekly meetings, daily huddles. We got to be taking temperature of our people. I need to lay my eyes or ears, you know, on my people every day and just check in with the human eye. You know, the role will suffer if the human is struggling.

00;15;16;20 – 00;15;40;25

And now more than ever, people need to know that you care about them. It’s not just that they’re a buck and a means to an end. Okay, so show your humanity. Weekly meetings, okay? Text updates as to what’s going on. Weekly mini celebrations include the families and some of the events. Again, one of the things I’m going to share with you as I dive into the plan here in the last little bit, is including the families in the events.

00;15;40;28 – 00;16;18;28

Well, that’s it for this week, folks. We’ll see you next week. You’re on cracking the code until then. Bye bye for now.