Talkin' Paint Podcast #9 - Follow Up Is What You Are Missing!

(00:07) So this is going to be we’re going to talk about follow-up let’s do it and just how important it is for people maybe you can I feel like you’ve probably got some more anecdotes and like stories to tell regarding followup and like the successes that you’ve seen with it you’re primarily preaching to these guys more than I am I don’t know if you have anybody in particular that absolutely every day we run into a situation where follow-up comes up right because it’s the biggest piece of the puzzle today we

(00:35) had a a business you know who started with us doing 20,000 a month and you know the biggest problem for them was predictable you know leads and a whole plethora of other issues inside the shop but can’t fix all those at once so I talked to him today a couple months after starting with us and he’s doing better but followup is still a major issue so you could be doing really well you could be doing piss poor and your follow-up still could be an issue so the biggest thing that we find is the consistency of the followup right

(01:10) because you get into these habits of following up only when things maybe aren’t going so well so that’s why it comes up every single day whether a Shop’s doing really well or whether a Shop’s not doing so well and I’m sure you can relate to being a shop owner you know if if you’re not on your game 100% I mean we’ve been live on calls you haven’t been on your game or when you have been and you can see the difference I will say that it is definitely more difficult to play catchup than it is to just stay

(01:42) consistent in the level of time that you can dedicate to follow up in a day so consistent followup is the key right because playing catchup is not ideal because usually what happens when you play catchup meaning that let’s say you haven’t been on top of the leads for a few days and you’ve been you’ve been doing whatever you you have to do in the shop or you know you took a day off or whatever it may be that you had going on the problem with that is that you end up coming back and leads have moved on they’re not as hot

(02:15) as they were because the longer a lead goes between being contacted the harder it is to convert yep 100% then they end up in our inbox and they’re frustrated with their lack of conversion or lack of sales people won’t answer they’re not sure I can’t convert them you know various reasons but I will be honest and say that the days that I am on top of getting to leads quickly and that when I have a solid game plan put together for following up with leads and like I’m utilizing the features inside of a CRM

(02:54) that remind me to follow up those are the weeks and streaks that I get where more jobs are converted and I think a lot of people don’t understand how important it is to utilize systems and tools that help you to follow up and to help you to make it easier right because can you imagine if you were getting 200 leads a month and had to follow up with every single one of them by hand every day right that’s for a oneperson Salesforce that’s not really possible no that would be insane now you have to listen you have to focus on you know the

(03:28) leads that you know are hot but at the same token you’ve got to make sure that you have systems in place to catch some of those other leads as well you know you’re not going to close them all right that’s for sure but you definitely got to have systems in place like you said yep I agree with that 100% the biggest and most obvious One is using a CRM we obviously have our own CRM that we’ve put a ton of time and effort into called grit suite and this particular CRM has the ability to follow up with leads that

(03:58) are inactive for x amount of days or that have been moved into a certain stage in their pipeline timeline the CRM even reminds you to follow up with them if you use the features inside of it it’ll remind you like if if you’ve got a Le a lead that’s two weeks old and you called them you texted them and you emailed them and you got nothing then you can set a reminder for yourself to hit them again in a week like these systems and tools are there they’re in front of you the problem is is that I

(04:34) feel like majority of these guys just maybe they don’t realize that it’s there or maybe they don’t think that following up with a lead that’s two weeks old is worth it no 100% I going be probably unpopular opinion here but the biggest reason I think a lot of people don’t do it is because it keeps them honest right they know that well they don’t know but they don’t want to be the problem right to their business not being successful successful and honestly that’s really what it comes down to right these crms

(05:03) they keep you honest they are predictable and that could be good or bad right if you can’t you know own your stuff then it’s bad but if you’re ready to take your business to the next level and you want to figure out exactly where in your pipeline you can grow where you need to put your attention to then that’s great but just know it’s going to keep you honest and I think I would agree that majority of the clients that we talk to don’t want to hear that they’re not doing their job they don’t

(05:32) want to hear that they’re not being a good business operator that they’re not on top of their sales gig but you know what the businesses that have taken that criticism and fixed it right even the smallest tweaks I mean they’re massive growth just massive growth it’s awesome absolutely I will fully agree with that 100% the key to this is that you’re not just paying for marketing agency like you’re not just paying for agency services you’re paying for somebody to provide you with a road map to success

(06:06) whether that road map be paved with leads that can be talked to or through efficiencies right and the bigger picture to that road map is somebody holding you accountable and let me tell you I’ve got plenty of clients I mean Tyler you and I we talk to these people every day they don’t want to be held accountable they don’t want to hear that their followup and their regimen is the problem and then it creates the you know the back and forth Dynamic of well you know what about this and what about that and
(06:37) what about this well the whole point of gitu is to be able to jump into the CRM for you as a client and see what your patterns are because if we can identify the pattern we can identify the fix but if you don’t utilize the tool then the data set is incomplete yeah and a lot of times too like people are saying hey I need more leads I need more leads and 99% of the time I feel like that’s never the solution when someone’s in that position when they say I need more leads it’s typically somewhere within that

(07:09) system right or in that pipeline of leads where the fix is actually right I mean we see it time and time again where it’s not more leads it’s you have one little tweak in your sales process right you’re not following up fast enough you know it could be a number of different things but you know it’s just it’s always something and when people are utilizing in the CRM they succeed when they don’t it’s Hit or Miss that’s simple as that yep and and time and time again we see that the shops that live

(07:39) and die by the CRM and the features it has are the ones that see success they’re the ones that are raking in an extra $30,000 a month they’re hiring new staff they’re putting out the effort they’re growing and they’re looking towards the next step it’s all of these guys that are utilizing features and keeping themselves honest are the ones that are succeeding and that is the truth that no one wants to hear and you know I put some social content out the other day no it was earlier today and I

(08:15) put that follow flop like 60c video out and I got a couple of DMS from people that were probably pretty upset they were very upset the immediate first thing that they went to was lead quality right yep yep 100% that’s always the deflection that most people have right yep it’s always the equality when the truth is is that they don’t want to hear that they’re responsible for their own business they’re responsible for their own sales and they’re responsible for the level of effort that they put in and

(08:48) the amount of energy that they put in into closing people and staying on top of being in front of people and let’s also talk about the fact that majority of this doesn’t have anything and let’s say you get somebody that’s on top of their game with followup right utilizing their tools they’re using the reminders inside of a CRM to remind them to follow up with people because truthfully if you use a CRM accordingly you can put your entire sales process on complete autopilot and make it so easy a caveman

(09:21) could do it right y that Progressive that commercial the other side to that is is that they’re not utilizing the rest of the features right so they’re not utilizing the automations they’re not utilizing text messages they’re not utilizing email they’re not trying anything outside of the normal sometimes you got to get different you got to change your approach and with these tools like grit suite and other crms the capabilities and possibilities you have for contacting people and delivering a

(09:56) message to people are damn near endless I mean they’re there for a reason right the game’s not simple anymore and I mean it’s never been right but followup especially is not black and white not in an industry too where these Services aren’t necessarily needed right just to be blunt so you have to get creative you have to use your YouTube channel right so you got to get creative in your followup and honestly I think one of the biggest issues with follow-up is people try and be too perfect they try to be

(10:25) too formal where we know and and we’ve tested this a lot is being informal is typically best right now again catchup is terrible spot to be in but at the end of the day none of us are perfect and we have to play catchup so being informal and being like hey man my bad I didn’t get back to you earlier been crazy here you know what do you say we get on a call and see if this makes sense for you still right it’s just something like that something super simple like come down to you know a normal person don’t

(10:53) be so stiff and don’t be so desperate and I think you know people will start to see much better result results I think the biggest epidemic that we’ve got in our hands here inside of this industry is that people live and die by their marketing agency 100% And they don’t put enough effort into their own pillars into their own cores into their own structure they build this insane overreliance on their marketing agency in order for them to survive when the truth is that and this is probably going to make me a very unpopular individual

(11:27) is that if you don’t have the other pillars or cores of your business built what are you going to do when you get a dip in the market like what have you been doing with the extra time that you have if you’re a business owner and you got guys in the shop working what else are you doing all day right listen if you’re not following up with leads and you’re not booking sales then what are you doing what content have you developed what things what else have you done to be able to put yourself in a better position today

(11:59) than you were yesterday and that’s one of the most frustrating parts for me is that guys live and die by the agency that they work with and don’t get me wrong the agency is very important but the bigger issue is that most of these guys don’t quite understand the level of everything required for Success right listen at the end of the day unfortunately and you could look at all the statistics out there in small businesses not many make it right so it’s no different in the detailing industry and I mean we obviously want to

(12:31) see everyone win but not everyone has what it takes so people have to get creative especially with all the new businesses popping up and they damn well better get following up on all their leads multiple times I mean I can’t tell you how many times I’m in the CRM you know for just customers scanning things looking for you know potential issues or problems to solve obviously and I just see unanswered lead unanswered lead unanswered lead I don’t care if it’s 10 minutes like that’s too late some

(12:59) sometimes unfortunately and you’re busy I get it but it’s too late but you can’t not touch them no you got to acknowledge them at least yeah you can’t ignore them it’s more about staying in consistent contact and even if you’re late you still got to say something because I’ve had that happen where I’ve missed the lead I’ve been a week late and I’ll hit them up and I’ll say hey I’m really sorry that I didn’t get back to you it’s been super crazy this is not how I

(13:26) normally operate I just wanted to make sure that I reached out in case you were still needing help with anything you know I do it like that and I do it from a place of being humble right being humble and being a human is the most important part about sales that’s the most important part about running a successful business anyway I think it’s most important part of just life you know what I mean but 100% definitely if you put that in business you know it it speaks volumes I think a lot of businesses get into that

(13:58) fight or flight mode right where they’re so desperate for the sale it literally bleeds right through the conversation whether it’s through text email or phone call right so many issues that we could probably talk about but I think that’s a definitely a big one where people they get desperate and they’re not humble they don’t know how to get down to that level and it ends up blowing up in their face