Transcript:
Well, welcome back to the Service Legend Podcast, episode number 23. We are doing a webinar format today. We have a special special guest, good friend of mine, someone I look up to and appreciate very, very much. Jody Underhill from Rapid Higher Pro. Welcome to the.
Show. Thanks for I’m glad to be here. Look forward to it, man.
Yeah, man. So, guys, you guys are coming on here in the group. I see a couple of you live. If you guys could just let us know if you’re here live. Just put in the comments. Hashtag live. If you’re going to catch this replay. You’re listening to this right now. Just type in the comments. Hashtag replay. We are going to be going over something incredibly important right now in the home service industry, which is hiring, finding a players. You know, there’s so much talk today about I can’t find anybody. I can’t find anybody good. Or if I do find somebody, you know, they mess everything up, whatever it may be for you. It’s a it’s a very common theme right now. So we’re going to diagnose this this challenge today. And the goal of the webinar is recruiting in-home service or the recruiting in-home services has changed, and it’s more challenging than ever. But the good news is there are simple tips that you can use to find, recruit and hire a players. Jody Is that possible in today’s landscape?
Yeah, we do it for over 100 companies every day. The thing is, it comes down to and we’re going to get into it and kind of go through and show the things that caused that to be able to happen. And what most home service companies don’t think about or realize is that a lot of times they’re sort of in their own way still doing things the way they were five or six years ago, whenever it was easier to get talent. Now that the landscape has changed, you have to kind of you have to change with it. You’ve got to be able to bob and leave and do the things that are going to now start to treat your candidates or employment candidates the same way you do customers and clients. You’ve got to be able to make it where it’s very easy for them to get information and to move through the basically instead of a sales funnel, move through a hiring funnel. Mm hmm.
Yeah, I love it, man. Also, guys, if you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, I know we have a lot of listeners that come on and listen to the just the audio version. Today’s session on the show today is going to be very visual to Jody’s gonna be running through some slides, so I would encourage you to maybe go over to YouTube and this will be on YouTube or you can go back to the Service Legends Facebook group and this content will be there as well. Now, if you guys don’t know Jody, I know a lot of you probably do. But for those that don’t know Jody just yet, Jody Underhill is an established Internet marketing and recruiting strategist who helps organizations leverage social media to share their message, to increase profits and recruit and retain a players on their team. He’s worked with digital marketer Darren Hardy, the publisher of Success magazine, winner of the Last Comic Standing, John Heffron, along with national and international corporations on marketing strategies. Currently, he’s the CEO of Rapid Hire Procom, and he has grown the business from inception to working with over 100 clients in just eight months, which is, I mean, just incredible. It really speaks to the delivery that you guys are doing because if you can’t deliver results and you can’t have a great experience, etc., I mean, you probably wouldn’t be saying that you do all that.
So the other thing is coming on here and saying that as well. So it’s a matter if anything with it is just it’s that we have kind of found a formula that works and it works very well no matter what type of home service company it is. And we’ve kind of we’ve proven it across the board with the traditional HVAC, electrical, plumbing, with garage doors, garage floor, coatings, if you name it, painting companies. And we’ve been successful with just about every one of them. And I can tell I’ll go into some reasons why some of them weren’t as we go. So there’s some lessons to be learned there as well.
I love it. Sweet. Well, if you guys are ready for this, I know there’s a couple of people here right now, and I’m sure we’ll get more on board it here. For those two people, I think there’s at least two people here. If you guys could type in a one in the comments and let us know if you guys are ready for this, this this content. What’s going on? Parker, I’d like to see you live. So what we’re going to do now is transition into the slides. Jody, is there any, any like prefacing that you that you want to do before you get going on the slides here?
It’s I mean, I know that some people are going to be listening to this on a podcast, so the you will be able to get just as much out of the podcast as you will watching the slides. So but the slides have some examples that you’re probably going to want to go and check out, because one of the things that I’m a firm believer in is I share relevant information. This is not a sales pitch of any kind. This is information that you can take and utilize today. And I’m going to pull back the curtains and show you everything that we do. I’m going to show you examples of the ads we run. And so you’re going to have you’re going to see exactly what our playbook is. And I welcome you to take that. And some of you may want us to help you with it. That’s fine. But if not, you’re going to get great information. So if you listen to this on a podcast, you probably want to go check out the slides because there are some things, some examples that you’re going to want to look at. But other than that, the rest of the content you’re going to be able to get just from my from my voice. So a lot there.
And if you guys are listening to this as well and you guys want more access or have more questions for Jodi after the podcast, just post those comments in the in the Facebook group and comments. I’m sure Jodi will come back through answering for you and be available here over the next couple of days if you guys have questions. Okay, Let’s not wake them. Let’s not make them wait any longer here. I’ll go ahead and let you I’ll add this to the stream, Jodi, and you can go ahead and pull up those slides and we’ll get rock and roll in here, man, and I’ll pass the torch over to you.
Cool. Tell me if you can see the whole thing looks good. All right. Awesome. So with this is the top ten tips for hiring techs in 2022. And I know we’re coming to a close on 2022, but the good news is it’s going to work just as well in 2023 because we’ve been a year ago we had maybe three or four clients. And then since then, now we’re well over 100 and we’ve learned a lot of things along the way. And looking at it in this session, I’m going to reveal why last year’s recruiting methods aren’t working anymore and what you can do this year and into next year. I’m also going to share with you a new social strategy that can generate higher quality candidates and why that is. And then also a simple solution to help you reduce ghosting, because I’m sure all of you, anytime you schedule an interview, no one is ever goes to you. I haven’t talked to anybody who has never not had. Someone goes to them and you can’t cure 100%, but you can really make a dent in it with a simple solution I’m going to share with you. So in looking at this, the truth is it’s getting harder to find quality applicants in every industry, especially skilled trades. But they are out there. You just have to know where to go in order to be able to find them and what message to put in front of them. So we’re looking at over the last two years, I’ve been studying new social trends and I’ve discovered a loophole that can almost guarantee new applicants without having to spend hours posting on job boards or sifting through resumes.
So I think hopefully that will sound pretty good to most of you out there and the opportunity of generating quality applicants. I personally didn’t believe it when I first saw it, and I didn’t start doing this in home services. It’s been about three years ago. I had somebody who was in one of my coaching programs, came back to me because my background is in marketing for local businesses. A lot like what Ryan does with for coatings and Painting. That was pretty much where I focused, but I had someone come back to me and said, Hey, I have I’ve been I’ve sold this thing we’re doing recruiting and trucking and I’m having trouble fulfilling it. So can you help me figure this out? And we stepped in and kind of figured it out for them. It was working like a charm. I was like, you know, this is pretty simple. So I went out and landed about 12 trucking companies in the next four weeks, and we were off to the races doing really good. And the thing is, with trucking companies, they provide a necessary service, but there’s a ton of tough to really identify a players and there’s not a lot of you just got to be able to drive a truck. And sometimes truck drivers aren’t the nicest people. Some are, some aren’t. But we sort of my wife kind of said, you know what, We need to look at a different aspect of this.
So we kind of looked into home services and we have a friend of ours who has a very large home service company that we reached out to, and within a week he said, Yeah, come out here, take a look at it. And we took over doing that. That was in June of last year and here we are today. So in looking at it, I’m going to reveal some of the trends that I’ve been following. And my, my commitment is that I’m going to show you ten tips for hiring it faster than you ever thought possible. The first I want to look at why you’re here. This is what I go through with every client that I talk to, every prospect that I talk to. I don’t do sales calls. I do what I call recommendation calls. Identify why they’re there ahead of time. Need service techs Need installation techs or crews. Need CSRs. Needs dispatchers. Dispatchers. The biggest challenge is typically looking for experienced talent. Then ask them. There you are. And I’ll explain that to you in just a second. Usually the best source for getting them has been techs have been indeed, and referrals. And most everyone needs a scalable recruiting system that’s predictable and saves time. Well, Umer is a term that I kind of that I invented now in the marketing agency world that I’ve been in. We use a stat called RR. You’re familiar with that, right, Ryan?
Yep. Yep.
And what does Mar stand for?
Monthly recurring revenue.
Right. Is there much monthly recurring revenue in home services? There are some, but it’s not the biggest thing, right? So what you are is is your unrealized monthly revenue from having an empty truck sitting there. And then when looking at that, what I’ve found is for most home services, the unrealized monthly revenue of an empty van or truck or trailer sitting there is typically somewhere between 30 and 50,000 a month. So that’s what we kind of look at as far as getting an A player in that truck and running. That’s the amount of money that they should be able to make if they are doing a great job. Now, what happens whenever I do this is then what do you think? They tell me who they want to hire. I want to hire somebody that’s got five years experience and does and talks to customers really well and sells a bunch like, great. You’re looking for a unicorn because if they’ve got five years experience and they’re a top salesperson at the company they’re with, they’re already working there, What is it going to what are you going to do to cause them to leave their company they’re working with and come over and work for you? There’s got to be something there. And I found a company that actually has the thing that you’re looking for. It’s called the Unicorn Feed and Supply Store. It’s in Ypsilanti, Michigan. I actually rented an Airbnb right above this. But you’re looking for a unicorn. You’ve got to have some unicorn bait in order to attract the players.
And that would be the unicorn bait that is. That’s a good one, man. Unicorn bait.
And it goes. The thing is, is that. Everybody. Is this worth their salt is already working for someone. So you want a player, you’ve got one experience. You’ve got to change how you’re positioning your offer. And the reason is because a players get you five star reviews. They recruit for you, they get more, get you more jobs, they have higher conversions, they have a higher average ticket. They inventory properly and they don’t cause you headaches at night. So what do you go about doing with this? Well, here we go. The tip number one is very simple. Get clear on your offer. What are you offering to a candidate that’s going to that has experience? Now, the easiest thing to recruit for is recruiting for attitude and aptitude and training. That’s easy thing to do. If we’re hiring apprentices and that type of thing, when it comes to hiring experienced techs, you’ve got to know exactly how to position it. Are you positioning your pay by the hour by monthly or yearly average? Do you have benefits? It’s pretty tough in this market to say, yeah, I pay $21 an hour and I don’t have any benefits and I want someone with three years experience. That’s going to be tough. I usually tell people that it’s going to be really hard to try to help them do that. One of the things is you have to look at your culture. Interview your current employees that are happy. And ask them why they like working for you. Sometimes they will tell us things that we don’t think about, just like our customers are. Avatar Pro of kind of explained our business in a way differently than what we do because it’s how it impacts them. And I’ll share that with you in just a little bit and then look at the job requirements. But you always want to lead with the salary, then the benefits culture and what’s going on. So if you run an ad right now, so tell me, the average salary for a for somebody that works on a crew in concrete coatings. Right.
So for us between 20 and $24 an hour.
Okay. So what about those 20 starting or is that somebody that already has some experience right now?
So we do like 24 technicians and I do not call them installers anymore, You know, part of professionalizing the industry. I don’t call them installers, we call them technicians. And so they start at 20 and then the lead technicians are 22 to $24 an hour.
Right. And so but $20 an hour is $800 a week, right? Mm hmm. What sounds like more to you $20 an hour, 800 a week.
$800 a week. Sounds really nice, right?
Because if you run $20 an hour, you’re going to a lot of times in the first entry level, around 18. And at $18 an hour, you get combative comments of like, well, I can go make almost that at McDonald’s flipping burgers. Yes. And so when you put if you run it so at $18 an hour, that’s 720 a week. If you run an ad at 720 a week, it gets more traction than $18 an hour. You don’t get the negative comments. It just makes a difference in their brain. Now, when you get to monthly at $20, at $20 an hour, that ends up being, what, eight and eight, 1630 200 a month? Mm hmm. The monthly didn’t really kind of hit that. Well, if you look at yearly, then at 20 bucks an hour, that’s 40 grand, right?
Hmm. Right.
20 times 2080 and 25 is 50 k. So I would do is run an ad going, you know, get paid to learn entry level $800 a week with a clear path to 50,000 a year. Oh, now it’s future paces what they’re going to be making. Right. So it’s get paid. The other thing is we run ads all the time saying don’t worry about paying for trade school, get paid $800 a week on the job training, get paid to learn with a clear path to 50 K plus a year. Now you start to get a different quality of applicant that’s now looking at it as being something that’s a career rather than just a job. Wow. That makes sense so far.
Yeah, and that’s what we need to I mean, for those that you guys are listening here, if you guys could type in comments, you know, if you guys have experienced this because, you know, you find team members that are here for six months or three months, but we’re looking for career minded team members because we’re trying to build a company not for today or tomorrow, but for the next five, ten, 5 to 10 years. So we need people to come along this journey with us. So with this tip, Jody were able to find more career minded individuals versus, you know, hourly employees, right?
You position it as a career rather than a job. Hmm. Because that’s what I mean. That’s what people need. That’s what they want right now. I want to see something that there’s longevity that they’re going to be around, that it’s not going to be just something that’s a quick stopover, that they can really make a career out of it. And then you’ve got people if they’re really good working, then I’m sure then as your company grows, then you’re going to have team managers, you’re going to have service managers, you’re going to have different levels that they can progress into. Because the other thing they want to know other than what kind of making this position is, what other advancement opportunities are there. You don’t have to go whole hog into that, but you’ve got to at least let them know there is room for advancement. So that’s that. And then finally, the job requirements and looking at do you want somebody with two years experience that knows what they’re doing but has a bad attitude? No. You know, you ought to look at what is going to be the best fit and we’ll get into a little bit more of that in just a second. So the first tip number one is get very clear on your offer and how to explain it and look at and test the different ways of positioning it so you can see what gets the most results.
Here’s a little hint. What I just shared with you was working with over 100 different companies. That’s what gets the best results. So that’s that’s how that works. Tip number two is don’t go where everyone else is fishing every time. So when somebody schedules a call with us, I have them fill in whatever has been the best solution for them finding employees. And they say job boards, referrals and Craigslist. Very, very few check the box for social media. Guess what? That’s where everybody’s going. So it’s kind of like here in this picture with the people fishing on the dock. How does the fish know which which bait to buy? Or when you’re lined up there and everybody’s using the same bait? It kind of doesn’t make you stand out. And if you’re going to the job boards where most people are going, then you’re basically you’re only getting the people who go there and then you’re only getting the people that go there that also have a resume. And the question is, is the unemployment line really the best place to find top talent? If you want to, you have to look at where are these people spending their time? Because like I said earlier, the people that you’re wanting to hire typically are already working for someone else.
So they’re not spending a bunch of time on the job boards. So you want to look at where are they going? One in four are working Americans or or more weren’t searching for a job when they found their current one. And 79% of jobseekers say they use social networks in their job search. So what does that mean? Social media is the king. People spend about two and a half hours a day on social media and everything we do and have found to do is on Facebook and Instagram. Now people ask us about Tik Tok and it’s like, Well, the thing is, it doesn’t work quite as the same as Facebook and Instagram because your videos have to be not only entertaining but funny sometimes. And we really haven’t had to move off of Facebook and Instagram to have to go find more people. Most. Technicians, installers, and you’re telling the technicians. But in other industries like HVAC, they hire installers because they’re installing systems. They’re not really spending time on LinkedIn. So Facebook and Instagram is where we spend our time. And then you get the the pushback of, yeah, but the new younger generation is not on there. Well, whenever the generation of news generation decided to leave Facebook and go over to Instagram, guess what happened? Facebook bought Instagram and said, Welcome back, millennials.
Come on back.
Come on back. Most people don’t realize is when you advertise on Facebook, you just check a box. You’re also advertising on Instagram. So you get both through one through one channel and looking at who uses it. 90.4% of millennials use social media. 77% of Gen X and 8.48% of baby boomers. And this is where I usually ask the question. I know you know the answer to this as far as what is the fastest grow. It is the biggest segment of users of Tik Tok. What age?
I’d love to hear that in the comments. Guys that are live. What do you guys think the biggest age bracket of Tik Tok users are? I’d love to hear some feedback as you guys are typing in the comments there for me. Jodi, It’s probably. You know. Maybe 35 to 45 year old women. That’s my guess.
All right. So the average is 55 years old. Wow. 35 years old.
And like my parents, man, they’re on their on tick.
So the thing is, is that they’re not the content generators. They’re the content users content. They’re watching the content. It’s usually younger that’s generating the content, but they’re the ones that are consuming the most of the content.
Wow. Yeah. Someone said 12 to 17. I’m not sure who that was because I can’t see the name, but that’s what we all thought. Like even in advertising, right? We’re like, Oh, it’s just for the kids. So. So you’re saying that that’s that’s changing.
All right. And the fastest growing segment on Facebook and Instagram are baby boomers. It’s people that are over the age of 55. And the reason is, I think there’s two reasons. One is it’s the only ones left. The other is grandparents going on there so they can see pictures of the grandkids because Facebook’s all about pictures, right?
Yeah, They want to keep up with, I guess, what’s happening, huh?
Exactly. So that’s from from that standpoint. And one of the things we have to get through our head and start to look at is how do you advertise for customers? Right. You have to look at advertising for customers, basically the same as advertising for candidates, because no one here. We put this out there for a homeowner hearts with three bedroom, two bath homes that pay their bills on time, have great credit and want us to fix stuff at their house. We fix stuff at your house dot com, but unfortunately, that’s how most companies advertise for employees these days. And they start off with, we’re looking for hardworking individuals with this much experience that have this the clean air. And then you tell them a little bit of and if you meet all those requirements, we might give you a job. Well, those days are gone. You have to start with the fact of what you offer to them and then get into the requirement. Secondly. Now the other thing with doing this with Facebook and Instagram is you can you want to advertise everywhere, every channel you can, because with Facebook and Instagram, with any social media, you cannot discriminate. If you go in and check the special ad category of employment, you can’t target by age, you can’t target by gender, you can put industry, but it really kind of limits you.
So because of that, you want to put the ads everywhere you possibly can. You only put them in the feeds in the marketplace and video feeds explore stories and stream videos, instant articles, even native and banner ads, and always make sure that the ads are shareable so you can’t control who sees it. And sometimes it may be the spouse or the parent or somebody else that sees this and goes, Hey, here’s an opportunity you should check out. And they’re able to share it. See, I told you I was going to show you some stuff that you might want to see. And then the other part of it is. You want to put a salary range on your jobs. Job listings include a salary range. Got 75% more clicks than job listings that don’t. And I said I was going to share some examples. These are exactly the ads that we run on social media. So you can see we’ve got an electrical contractor, a plumbing, plumbing, HVAC, and in the middle they were at Fitzpatrick painting. They were hiring experienced and apprentice painters earn up to $30 an hour. And we lead with why they should join and then put the benefits and the requirements set. Last page.
So this is awesome, by the way. Like, by the way, guys, the fact that Jodi is sharing exactly his ads, his exact strategies, and he runs a business that does this for us, but he’s sharing all of this with us. If you guys are getting some value from this and you’re excited that he’s sharing his ninja hacks behind the scenes here, if you could just type in comments. Ninja hack or something. Type in, you know, like the letter, I don’t know J or the number one something in comments because this is really, really cool. I mean, I didn’t think that you were going to share your exact ads here. That’s that’s pretty cool, man.
Well, the thing is, people ask me like, are you working with this company? And I’m like, No, they stole your ads. I’m like, No, you can’t steal what I give you. Because the thing is, is that you can do this and you can try to run it yourself. And I wish you all the best of luck. But the fact is that unemployed employment ads, even if you copied this exactly, you’re probably going to get rejected the first 2 to 3 times. You try to post them because there’s a little nuances in there. Like I said, these are running right now. These are exact ads that are running. But if it’s a new ad account, there’s a different things. But this will this will work. Here’s what I want you to pay attention to is the emojis in the text. It seems kind of childish, but it’s what gets attention and it’s what gets people to take action. And if you notice a theme on some of these emojis, it’s what we’ve tested and what works the best. So I really like the benefits with the green check, Mark always works best. And so those are the things that you look at. But again, some companies say, I don’t want to post a salary range on there. And I’m like, Well, get used to not having many leads because they have to do something to get their attention to cause them to see something that’s a better situation than they’re currently at.
Even if you’re hiring apprentices that are need no training and it’s a career opportunity, you still got to position it where they want to leave, where they’re currently at because there’s not that many people sitting around today that want to work, that don’t have a job. So always putting that, putting that in place and always putting the salary range on there. And don’t worry about it being I don’t want to I don’t want my competition to know what I pay. You don’t think people talk? Everybody get in. If you do put on there and how much you’re paying, they see that they’re going to have to raise the bar. It allows you to continue to keep your prices where they need to be. Tip number four is map out your hiring process, just like you probably have a sales process, right? Whenever you get somebody calls, you can’t just quote painting a house or doing concrete coatings on a garage, even if you know it’s a two car garage and have the measurement you’ve got to go look at it. Is the foundation cracked? Are you going to have to chisel some of that out? There’s different things. You can’t just give a quote over the phone. You can You have an idea that you have a process of every step they go through.
You’ve got to do the same thing with your steps and your process for hiring. So is it do you does it one two is a two steps is the three steps, and also make sure that the candidate knows what the process is going to be and if anything, Oh, it’s just easy. We get an application, we call them up, we do the interview. If we like them, we hire them. How is that working right now? You got to look at you get the application in. We go to the next step. We have them do a automated video interview so you can not only see what they fill out on the application, but you can see how they communicate, how they have they talk. Is that somebody you feel comfortable representing your brand before you ever take the step to have to talk to them? Then after that, after you interview them, what’s the next step? You’re going to hire them. How long do you wait to send them an offer letter? Once you send the offer letter, how long do you wait to in order to get the offer letter back? Once it comes back, what is the next step with HR as far as doing background checks and doing all those things? Or do you have them do a ride along and so that the candidate can can ride along with an existing tech and the tech can give you feedback on whether or not they should be hired? And I’m not saying what your process should be.
I’m just saying if you don’t have it mapped out where you and your entire team know what those steps are, you’re leaving it to chance. And just like you don’t want to leave leads coming into your company to chance, you don’t want to lead leads, candidate leads for employment coming into your business to chance either. So map out the exact process and then let them know what it is. Because the reason you want to let them know what it is is tip number five is let them know what happens next. Because 76% of jobseekers state that not hearing back after an applicant job application trumps the frustration of not hearing back after a first date. It’s pretty serious, right? I mean, you got to they want to know what’s going to happen. And today what I see happening, I told you I share some things with clients that were not successful and the clients who have not been successful utilizing our cycle. Our system works, boom, boom, boom, it’s automated. A lot of automation is a lot of things moving through is if you have somebody that looks like a good fit and you wait a week to interview them, what do you think happens? They’re gone. You’re never going to get an interview with.
There’s somebody that’s probably doing the exact opposite and it was like, boom, snatched them up off you, huh?
Exactly. So we have we’ve had them that like. So I had a conversation with someone that’s a pretty big name. And if I was to mention it, you know exactly who it is. And they’re like this This really isn’t working. I’m like, Well, let me ask you a question. Here’s an individual who has a great application. Here’s the resume. Their video interview is stellar. They were a former business owner. They have great customer service skills. Why have they not why have you not said anything? Why did you pass on that? Like we didn’t pass on them? Why didn’t you interview them? Well, we didn’t see it. That must have just come in recently. This was last month in October when I was talking to them about it. I was like, No, this came in in August and you haven’t taken the time to look at it and move them to the next step of the process. Tom kills deals just like what leads to come in time, kills deals with employment candidates, time kills deals. And the reason we know that also is that 78% of employers feel they do a good job setting expectations, but 47% is only 47% of job seekers agree. Just like you don’t leave it to chance with your customer knowing what’s going to happen next.
You don’t want to leave it to chance with what’s going on with the candidates happening next, because today the best candidates only have to wait 3 to 10 days to find a new job. If you wait more than three days, they’re gone. They’re not going to be there. So that’s tip number five. Tip number six is don’t require a resume for them to apply. How many of you right now and I can’t see it because all I can see is my screen. If I have have a resume laying around ready to upload right this minute. How many technicians do you think have a resume lying around ready to upload right this minute? That being said, I guarantee you if I went to your websites, the majority of your of your websites, the application page would look just like this information first name, address, city and then attach a resume. And it’s limited to 268 megabytes because I mean we’re document obviously in that big but. My question is, what device do you think, even if they have a resume, what device are they typically using to fill this out?
I would think maybe. What do you think? Indeed. Maybe, like, indeed, together.
Form their own. This is on your website, typically using their phone to fill this out. Yeah. Yeah. Ah, you’re pretty technical, right? Do you know how to attach a PDF on a form on a website on your phone?
Man, I’d have to.
I don’t. I’m pretty.
It take me too long to and I get frustrated.
Probably you’re just passing on it. Yeah. And then, then because then if you do that, then you got to stop and wait till you get to a computer to go sit down. And then who knows if you’re going to find the page you’re on before.
And you on and you’re on to the next thing anyways. I mean, like, you know, now I got dinner with the kids or now I’m going to Facebook. Now I got this thing to do or whatever.
All right. So I mean, and then like, you want to have it. So the other part I would suggest and it’s not even one of the tips, but this is have a different application page for each position that you’re hiring for that has the job description next to the application where they’re filling in the blanks. Now, in our application pages, we do that, we build out pages that look just like the company’s brand, all the branding logos. No one ever knows our name. We have the form and the next to it is the job description with the pay and all that information. And at the bottom of our applications we have it so they can upload their resume if available. And we find about 70% of the applications we get don’t have a resume attached. But it’s okay because you should be asking the same questions and even more than you’d be getting on a resume because we ask about their driving record, we ask about their they’ve had a felony conviction, and then the things that you typically particularly wouldn’t tell you on a resume anyway. So I don’t require resume. I won’t be any more of that dead horse. But it’s one of the I think it’s one of the things that adds friction to the hiring process and the day you have to remove as much friction as possible. The next thing. Number seven is use multi channel engagement. You’re probably using multichannel engagement with leads that come into your business with text messages and emails and phone calls. You want to do the same thing with the leads that are coming in for you from your candidates, for your employment candidates. And of all of them, if you only use one. Which one do you think you should use if you only use texting, email, or phone calls?
In the comments, guys. You guys could bring some engagement in here. Let us know that you guys are tuned in here. The comments, obviously, Jodi and I are here on the webinar and so we don’t get to see you guys and experience you guys in person. So the comments, that’s like the feedback and the engagement. We love that. My opinion it would be SMS would be the best form.
64% of prospective workers would rather hear about services of their job application via text than through an email or phone call. That doesn’t mean don’t do email and phone calls, but make the make a primary thing that you’re doing. Text messaging. Why? It’s how we communicate today. I mean, right now, even if a text message come in, I could look over to my phone and actually see it. And if I don’t answer a text message for ten, 15, 20 minutes, you don’t take it. It’s not the same as having to get a voicemail and listen to it. You can look at it. You respond in 15, 20 minutes. It’s not considered rude. It’s just because you get around to doing it just then and you can respond to it at 2:00 in the morning or whenever that you read it. The other thing is you can’t you can disregard a text message, but you can’t not see it. You cannot do anything with it. But it shows up on the top of your phone. You’ve got to see it. So the whole thing of I didn’t see it. Well, yeah, you did, because it’s delivered on there too, Right. So yeah, you did see it. And in doing the text messages, you want to make sure that you make it engaging. So this is an example of we send that we get that a thing comes in.
As soon as it comes in, we send a picture of the ad talking to the client, talking to the prospect as a person from a person. So, hey, Michael, this is Ali Day one. Somebody might have heard of him. We got your information on our Facebook campaign. If you have mechanical experience, clean driving record, go ahead and apply. It was kind of truncated here, but this is what it looks like on their phone. The reason we send a picture of the ad along with a text message is because what do people say about Facebook leads? They’re no good. The people don’t remember filling out the form. But I can promise you, whenever you they get this about 10 seconds after they fill out the lead form on Facebook, you cuts down on Who are you? Why are you calling me? Why do you text me? Where did you get my information? Sending them a picture along with sending them the text, the link to go to to apply. And it seems kind of simple to, Oh, you send out text messages and emails, but this is the structure that goes in behind the scenes, right? This is the same kind of structure that I know, Ryan. I know you do with your with service legend in continuing to stay in contact with with leads coming in for your clients is putting them in the nurture sequences.
Every day they get a different text message, a different email, something else with the call to action, go fill out the application. We get down to day four and we do something a little out of the box. What do we do? We send them a picture of a dog. So we send them a picture of a dog or a cat or goldfish. And this is our mascot. Every time somebody completes an application, Finn gets a treat. So Finn is counting on you. So it goes. It’s like, Oh, that seems a little childish. You’re going to send a picture of. You’re going to send a picture of a puppy? Yeah. Why? Because it gets people’s attention. It gets them to take another step and you’ve got to coax people through the process. Now, some of you might be able to coax them. I don’t know that I want to hire them. It’s not that they don’t want to go do the step. It’s that we’re busy with a lot of stuff going on and you’ve got to stand out and be different than what everyone else is doing. Then. With that said, the reason you’ve got to move quickly is because let me see. I’m in the wrong one. Here we go. The best candidates only have to buy it about ten days to find a new job.
So you’ve got to move very quickly. And then the other thing is you want to basically treat this whole system like you have a sales funnel, treat it as an application funnel and remove the friction every step of the way. And whenever you go to an application page, very simple, and your company truck, little stuff on there. So make sure your color is match and everything because people are always looking for something to be a scam. It so they fill in the blank of the job description next to it. Put a video on your application pages because the candid application rate goes up 34% when a job post or an application page includes a video. And it doesn’t have to be a Hollywood production video. It can be shot with your iPhone and it can just be some testimonials from the employees who already work for you. Remember back home, tip number one, I said you should ask the people who work for you why they like working for you When you ask them that, shoot it with a camera real quick. Put those together and make that the video that’s on your application page. Make it very simple. It’s no matter what you do, because when they go there and it starts playing, it stays on the page. The other thing I want you to think about on this page is make it a page that’s in a funnel.
The page. It’s in a funnel. You only want them to do one thing and that is convert. You only want them to do the one thing on that page that’s there for them to do here, is there for them to fill out the application. There’s not about us or service areas or anything else on there is the only thing they can do on this page is fill out the form and click submit. That’s all we wanted to do. As soon as they do that, you can take them to the next step. 51% of respondents would be more attracted to a company that had job postings with visual elements or videos than a company that didn’t. And the difference is like when your own using. Indeed, in those places, it’s like being at a job fair where you’ve got seven other companies doing the same thing. When you’re advertising on social media is you’re like, you’re a job fair, you’re the only booth and you’re not competing with other companies, you’re competing with everything else that they’re scrolling through. And I mean, they’re scrolling through quickly looking at cat videos or the latest knife or cutting brisket that come off the smoker or whatever pops up and you want your ad to grab their attention. And by having cool images and videos as that thing that’s going to cause them to do that.
The reason is because the year 2000, you had about 12 seconds to capture someone’s attention. In 2021, you only have about 8 seconds or basically that’s one second less than a goldfish is attention span. The reason the goldfish can live in a little bowl and swim around like that without banging its head against the wall is they can’t remember what happened 7 seconds ago. Right. That’s so you’ve got to be able to do that and grab their attention. And the thing is that both online and offline, you have to ask, does your brand inspire trust? So the brand is a story your market believes about the products that’s expertise and value that you offer. And so a business you walk into, most businesses start here. It’s like we’re going to put everything we can in there for sale. We’re going to put everything and just fill it full of stuff. That way anybody can. They have anything they want to look for. But really, what do you want? You want your business to look like the top shelf. You want it to look like the best thing that could possibly do the best solution. The best choice they can make is to come and use you as a business or come work for you. And the branding has a lot to do with that.
So much so that more than 80% of HR leaders say employer branding significantly impacts their ability to attract talent. So look at are your your trucks clean? The other thing is I said branded trucks, people, logo shirts doing work and your ads is what gets attention. Tip number nine is employee reviews. On average, candidates will read six company reviews before forming an opinion about your business and not just what’s on Facebook and Google. You’ve got to look at Better Business Bureau, indeed Facebook, everywhere. They can have a review. And here’s the thing. Look on indeed. Now, while you might not be running ads on indeed, or even if you are aren’t. Indeed, most companies have about an average of 3.1 stars. That’s because who goes and leaves a review typically on indeed employees who weren’t happy. You have to ask your employees to go leave reviews for you if they’re happy. Indeed. And on Glassdoor. The sad thing about indeed for most companies is they have about a three star rating. The good thing about that three star rating is it’s typically the average of 5 to 7 reviews. So it doesn’t take but two or three really good reviews to pop that up around four stars, because most employees will pass on a company that has has less than three and a half stars.
So you want to make sure that you’re doing that everywhere, that you can ask your employees to do it. Don’t tell them they have to and don’t tell you. You can reward them for doing it. You can’t get rewarded and you pay them for their time for doing it. It doesn’t matter if they leave a five star or one star, you still got to do the same thing. But make sure that you’re asking them whenever they feel comfortable doing it. To leave a review about their honest thoughts about how it is working for your company. Because the thing is, you really want to know. And then the final one is your secret sauce. What are you offering that others aren’t? And this doesn’t have to be complicated. I’m going to show you some examples here. And that is you have new trucks or your trucks fully stocked. Are they able to take the truck home and dispatch from home? Do you have on call or no on call? Do they get a gas card? One of the ones that kind of I didn’t think would be that big of a deal. What turned out to be the thing we got the most comments on was for AM, Heat and Cool down in Tucson, Arizona. We ran their ads and said fully stocked break room. And that got the most comments.
Tons of Snickers and Gatorade.
I was actually I had a call today with a company, a door company in Fort Wayne, Indiana. And the manager had seen a presentation. This presentation that I did, I did it an idea a few weeks ago in New Orleans. And he told them, he said, yeah, we heard about one of the things that I should have a fully stocked refrigerator. And I’m like, No, you have a fully stocked break room, not just.
Hey, you know what? They love it. Like, we’ve got the Rice Krispies, we got the water, the Gatorade and the summer we do. You know, obviously it’s like 115. It’s crazy here in summer in Arizona, we do Liquid Ivy little packets and those are stocked up and and like the smallest things they appreciate so much. And it’s incredible.
So I worked for the power company for about 26 years. And for ten years of that time I was a crew supervisor and I had about 100 men that work for me, men, men and women. And that breaks down into about 50 crews. And the thing is, they all have Gatorade in the morning. They have coolers on their trucks. But if you go out there and stop by and take them cold Gatorade or a cold, cold drinks, they look at it as basically it’s like the best thing that can happen to them that day, even though they’ve got a cooler, you know, they’ve got stuff in the cooler. It’s that you took the time and thought about bringing it to them. That’s what makes the difference. So and then, of course, uncapped commissions ability to make more money than what they can per hour if you have that in place. But those are the things that really make the difference whenever you put that and put it in there. So little things was we were companies that don’t have a ton of benefits, but if they have an iPad or if they have a gas card or different things, company uniforms is a big deal. A lot of times put those things in your ads because that’s sometimes can be the difference maker of if they’re going to work for you or choose to go work for someone else.
And our sales guys, I’ll add on there to Jodi is we got these I got one for service legend but we had these for for cardinal for the winner. And they’re just like they’re really, really nice. They’re they’re Travis Matthew. So like, you know, I love golfing and I remember I got these for the guys and they’re like, they’re like $120 per before the the inverter. And some people were like, wow. Like, you know, you’re going to spend 140 on a on a on a fleece for your guys. And I’m like, yeah, like, I mean, if I’m going to if I wanted this and I’m going to feel good and, you know, etc., like I’m not going to have my sales team go out there and close deals and be the face of the company and, and they don’t get the opportunity to wear this. And I remember we brought it in. They were like they were so excited. They were like, Do these are Travis Matthew? They were like, Oh my gosh, you know? So it’s really cool.
And whenever I got hats for, for our company is the difference is, as is, you can buy hats for $5, it’ll look pretty good. But it’s something about when you buy hats that are. Richardson hats.
Right. I love it.
Because I have I have female employees who knew the difference in a Richardson hat because they deal with so many home service companies. It’s like, yeah, the difference is getting a win. You’re so Richardson that you know that it’s quality and you know that it’s going to it’s going to last and it’s like anyway so it’s just people. Little things like that make a big difference and go a long way. You’re doing things that like that when it comes to attracting them, you don’t need to run the ads that you have, Richardson has, but those are the things, what they get there that help with the company culture and doing breakfast for them, or you’re sending them an extra $100 gift card on their birthday, sending they’re sending them their flowers on their anniversary, if you know it, the little things like that, that can go a long way. But you have secret sauce. You have a reason that people who work for you, why they like working for you and ask them, survey them, find out what it is that they like. So that’s number ten. So that kind of brings us to the to the close of it. And so if I said. Hopefully this has been a value for you. There’s some things you can take and implement right away. Like I said, I’ve shown you every I’ve shown you our playbook. Everything that you’ve seen on this in this presentation is exactly how we lay things out and how we do things. So you see everything in there. If you if you do, if it’s okay, if I can share with them, if they want to have an individual call, how that would work.
Yeah, 100%. Are you done sharing, by the way?
I’ve got one more slide that’s got a QR code and a if you want me to do that. Or I can just like.
Yeah.
All right. So if you’re, if you’re, if you’re on here, there’s a QR code, or you can go to meet rapid procom forward slash service legend. And it’ll, it’ll tag it that it came from service legend. Here’s what happens. I don’t do sales calls. I don’t do discovery calls. And most people do a discovery call and a sales call or call it a strategy session. I know I can ask you five questions in the first 5 minutes of our call to then be able to share recommendations with you of exactly what you should do for your business. Some of the things that I’ve shown you here, you can see the reason I call it a recommendations call is because I’m making recommendations that you can take and implement immediately. You may want me to help you with it, and if you do, great, I’d be honored to. And if you don’t, if you just want to take the information. The other part of it is I record every one of my calls and when we get to the end of it, I not only send you a proposal if you want it, but I’ll send you a link to the recording of the call so you can share it with your team and make an informed decision if it’s something you want to do. And if not, then you’ve got an exact recording of everything that I would share with you to do so that you can take an input with your team if you choose to. And people tell me all the time, That’s crazy. You’re giving everything away. Now I find the more that I give away, the more I’m blessed. And that’s why that’s my goal here, is to give this information. And if somebody wants me to help them, great. If not, I want the world to be a better place for the information that I’m putting out there.
Yeah, I love that man. And for those of you that are still here and that are catching the replay, what’s interesting is and this is why I was so excited to bring you on to this webinar is because, you know, here at Service Legend, we always talk about more profit, more freedom, more impact. You know, and Josh Nelson, one of my one of my coaches talks about these types of things as well. And we got some love here look great. But we always emphasize we focus so much on leads, appointments, sales, average ticket, etc. And we and we focus so much on the sales and marketing of the business to grow the business. And I think that we forget sometimes as entrepreneurs, as business owners, that, you know, our currency when we scale the businesses is not how good we can be at sales or marketing. It’s can we scale people, can we hire great people, Can we train good people and make them great? Can we find a players? Can we can we foster in an environment like Tommy does where, you know, people would take a bullet for a one, they would take a bullet for Tommy if they, you know, or for Finn, you know, if even probably, you know, But it’s like, how can we do that in a smaller business? You know, obviously, Tommy, you know, unlimited resources.
He’s been in business a lot longer than some people and he’s got a great business. And some people look at that and be like, Oh, you know, I can’t do that. You know, that’s not going to be for me. But man, we can do this as a small business. Let’s say you have ten people. Let’s say you’re you’re doing 1 million, 2 million, 3 million. You can still build an environment and atmosphere in foster and environment to where people would love to work for you and they would love to stay with you for years and help you build your business. And I think we forget sometimes at that, like that currency of people in labor is really as mission critical as the lowest cost per lead or converting as many leads into appointments or the higher closing rate, because you cannot scale your business without a players. If you try to scale your business with C players, you’re going to pull your hair out.
That’s the other thing that people ask me a lot like, How did you get involved in be able to do all this and work with Tommy Melo? And I’m like, and this is this is to the point, like you said, if you’re a small business, you don’t feel like you can do it. I met Tommy 12 years ago. I was speaking on stage about video marketing. That’s how long I’ve been doing marketing, speaking on stage. I came off stage and he came up to me and was like, Hey, dude, my name is Tommy Malone and I’m different. I’m like, Yeah, your I guess, I mean, I’ve got a little garage door repair company. I’m in Phoenix and I’m going to I’m going to revolutionize the garage door industry. And I was like, You go get I’m tired. Well, you’re 12 years later, 500 plus employees in 29 markets. He has. But when I met him, he had three trucks. And so it’s so I’ve seen it go from go from three to what it takes to get there. So the only people like, oh, it’s a big, small company. I don’t know if we can grow into a big company.
It’s the only thing that ever has. Starting small and growing into a big company is the only way companies have ever been created. So you have the same ability, you have the same things there. We all have the same type of technology. We all have the things, but it’s just a matter of putting it together in such a way that’s going to cause those people to want to work for you. And keep in mind, one of the things I need to add here that I need to add to my slides and Tommy taught me this is people don’t come to work for you, for your dreams. They come to work for you, for their dreams. Wow. Have you ask your employees what your dreams are? And I heard my editor my say this on stage a couple of weeks ago in Las Vegas. He said whenever he started to grow, his company was too big to big, big size is he realized that his dream had to be big enough for all of his employees dreams to fit into.
Wow.
So it kind of gives me goosebumps whenever I think about that. And that’s sort of what that’s what’s kind of what Tommy has created there is helping people to what is their dream? Is their dream to have homeownership, you know, put things in place to give them a home, but help them understand how to manage their credit, to buy all, to buy a home, or they want to send their kids to school, or what is it that’s going to cause them that you can do these small things that make them just basically I said, like was saying, take a bullet for you. That was those are the things that you have to look at and we all have the ability to do it. We just have to take the time to listen and then then implement.
Yeah, I remember when I when I was talking to Tommy about I mean, I talked about like a million different things, but I was talking to him about selling Cardinal and just different things that we were doing. And instead of giving me long lectures and whatever, he hand me a book about private equity and he had like he, he just wanted to make sure that I had not just like what his opinion was, but that I had real deal knowledge and information to make the best decisions for myself. And, you know, that’s what it takes. And that’s why people, you know, leaders create leaders. Leaders don’t create followers. Leaders have followers, but they don’t create followers. They create leaders. And I know just being around Tommy for just a little bit of time, I’ve I’ve experienced him is I’m a better person for a better leader for it. And you really see that in his business, you know, And like, I think we forget sometimes in our smaller businesses, you know, we have ten people, 12 people to build a culture to market ourselves. What I really liked about your presentation, Jody, was the the similar the similarities between marketing and hiring and how you are creating offers and messaging and the emojis and things like that. Because I think sometimes like, like what you were saying, you find people and indeed right in the employment line and I mean, I’m thinking back to me like I’ve never really like I’ve always just kind of like found opportunities through relationships, through people or things like that. And I think the best people that I’ve that I’ve that I’ve brought on is team members. I never found them on. On indeed. You know, they were a referral from a team member or they were headhunted at some level or hey, hey, my buddy knows this guy and you know he does this stuff and and so do you find that you are able to find more career minded people through this, this avenue versus the traditional stuff?
You know, the reason that I feel that you find that, first of all, you can’t limit who applies because everyone’s going to see it. Right. But overall, you wind up with a better quality applicant because they’re not standing in the unemployment line. They’re not they’re not sorting through. Indeed, every other day you’re getting it in front of them whenever they’re just scrolling through. And that’s the you mentioned referrals. That’s always going to be the best thing, right? Because you got people that are coming in that are sort of indoctrinated already because the employee is referring them. The other thing is and is always be on the lookout for people who provide great service for you. I mean, Tommy says he does that. He was here visiting me about six months ago. We were at Chophouse 47. It’s a big steakhouse here. And the waiter was just like, really did a great job. And Tommy gave him his cell phone number and said, if you ever want to if you ever want to work in the garage door business, I got a place for you. Here’s my number. Give me a call. Come visit me in Phoenix. He does this so he’s you know, it’s like, you know, he does what what he says. And we all have the ability to do that because once, you know, you go through the drive thru at Starbucks and the person’s, like, really friendly, that’s because that’s who they are, not because they’re being paid to be that way. And that’s that’s let me keep an eye out for that as well. We have we’ve grown ourselves from four employees to 25 employees in the course of the last year. And we’ve hired people from from Facebook ads. We’ve run we’ve hired people from. Indeed. But we also the people that said that are in the leadership positions with our company now, most of them came from other employees that work for us, that knew people that were of their caliber or better. And we always tell them, don’t bring in somebody that that you have to manage. Bring in somebody who can manage you.
Wow. I love that man. Yeah, it’s pretty incredible. Well, this has been really, really amazing. Hopefully, you guys have gotten massive value from this. Jodi, I think it’d be really cool to get you. We have something called the Service Legend Academy, and all of our clients get access to lead conversion training, sales training. And we have something called it’s like a vendor type like portal, where we have tons of vendors in there from. We have company cam, service Titan, we have drip jobs, we have flooring, we have distributors for products and equipment for painters and concrete coating companies. I think it’d be really cool to get you in there as a vendor for hiring and maybe we can come up with some special offer for the clients. But I think it’d be really amazing because I think so many times I talk to clients and we do coaching calls and things like this and they want to grow the business and they always focus on the sales and the marketing, the numbers. But they don’t, they don’t, they don’t count in. They don’t put in place the labor, you know, so like every three months. So for example, Cardinal, we’re doing like 200 K a month. I want to get to 500 a month by the end of next year or earlier. So it’s like, well, how do we do that? Well, the people in place to get there is almost as important as the money spent on marketing to get there, you know, and I didn’t realize that until know, starting to talk to guys like you and Tommy about those things. So it’s so important and I want to make sure that everyone has access to you and your services.
Cool. And the thing is, with that, it sounds great. Absolutely. Whatever. We can work out and do that because one of the things that we see is it’s a cycle. You got more leads you can handle, you got more techs, and you have leads, more leads, more techs, more leads, more techs. And it’s about level izing that in between, right? What you do is service legend and the Legion and that part and then having it so that you can kind of start to predict more. Because right now I guarantee you that most people do not have a predictable recruiting system in place. Right. It’s I have to hope I can find somebody who hopes not a strategy. You’ve got to have things in place that you know you’re going to be able to count on. And that’s what I said in the back in the second slide is that you need to have a reliable, systemized recruiting process that’s reliable and saves your time.
Yeah, a lot of man. Well, thank you so much for your time and your generosity to share, to share the actual ads and the strategies. Literally, guys, you could probably watch this webinar, this podcast, and go implement these things without even hiring Jodi. You probably wouldn’t get as great results if you hire Jodi. But what a gracious gift to you to share the ninja hacks. And Jodi, just again, for everyone that’s still here and on the replay, how would they get a hold of you? What’s the URL? Again?
It’s the easiest one to just not be able to know because they’ll come here. I’ll ask you where you came from. Just go to rapid higher procom in the upper right hand corner, there’s a schedule button and when you schedule there and when you answer the question, you, it’s like ask, is there anything else that would be helpful? Just put on their service legend and that way we’ll know.
Boom. And if you guys have any questions, post it in the comments. Jodi will be here over the weekend or early next week answering some questions. If you guys have any questions about hiring or hiring systems, etc., he’ll be there to answer. But I’ll tell you that. Guys, thank you guys so much for being here and for joining another episode of the show. Jodi, thank you so much to you. We’ll talk to you guys soon.
Thanks, everybody.
