Encouraging your technicians to set their own goals can create a sense of autonomy and purpose in their daily routine.

In this “Clip of the Week” from Cracking the Code, Gary Elekes explains how to empower your technicians by aligning their personal goals with the goals of your contracting company.

Watch the clip below, and visit EGIA.org/Show to watch the full show.

Question: Is search engine optimization (SEO) still important in today’s online landscape? What makes for good SEO?

Andrew Allen; Co-founder, iMarket Solutions:

On the technical side, a lot of things have changed with search engine optimization (SEO). Just a little bit of historical perspective, 10 years ago, SEO algorithms were relatively unsophisticated. Translated into digital marketing terms, that means they were easily manipulated. We were able to manipulate search engine results with back-of-the-house programming, key word stuffing, and lots of tricks, which was a lot of work, but you could manipulate the way that search engines presented results.

To combat that, Google has put in a lot of effort to decide who gets to rank for SEO. As we know for contractors, that translates into whose phone is going to ring the most, because if you’re not on the first page, you’re probably not going to get contacted.

Now, SEO has really become an earned media. You have to earn your placement on those front pages by doing several very particular things. One is structuring your website properly. It’s only 15-20% of search engine optimization but the scheme data – which used to be called meta data – needs to be structured properly. The code has to be written properly so an algorithm can read the page easily.

There’s also a whole laundry list of stuff you can’t do from a technical perspective, like keyword stuffing, hidden links, links that go to places they shouldn’t, links that go from one page to another that have no connection from a content perspective. Google Is working on algorithms to dismantle and disabuse anyone from trying those old manipulative techniques and taking steps to penalize people that are trying to manipulate the search engines.

SEO really is still the foundation, it’s the entry. After that 15-20% of site page structure, there’s a whole host of other things that help you rank for SEO and obtain the coveted top ten spots on Google search. A lot of the first page ranking is being handed over to the paid model but organic SEO is still important.

In this earned media – that’s the other 80-85% – you need to do things like have a good user experience. If a customer lands on your page and quickly goes to a different site to get their information, that tells Google you haven’t written a very good page. So, you did a good job earning a page view, but they didn’t like the page once they got there and left. That actually hurts you from an SEO perspective.

A couple of other big factors are authority and time – how long your website has been online and how long it’s been publishing content specific to a search term. Also, the amount of links that help people navigate to your website matters. It helps your SEO ranking if anyone else in the world has linked their website to your page saying, for example, “Hey, if you’re looking for information on mini splits in Toledo, Ohio, this company has information that with answer your query.” It tells Google that other people have landed on your page, gotten the information they wanted, and taken action.

We got penalized early on in the SEO side of things from a contracting perspective because a lot of people landed on the home page of our website, then picked up the phone and called. From a marketing perspective, that’s a huge win. However, Google’s algorithm read it as someone getting to the page and then leaving quickly. This hurt us because most of the time Google is looking for “stickiness.” They want people to spend time on the website, view multiple pages, read revues, etc. If you’re in the middle of an HVAC emergency and it’s 100 degrees, you’re going to pick up the phone and call right away.

Google finally measures that as good for SEO, but it took them several years to get there. So, the websites that are converting and providing good content are still able to dominate the SEO landscape. Outside of those things, Google has added new tools. You have to have an SSL certificate, so your entire site needs to be encrypted to provide a certain level of security.

How quickly a website page loads is now a really large factor because it contributes so much to user experience. If your website visitor has to wait 1.5 seconds, you’re going to be penalized by Google. The algorithm says your page is loading too slow, it’s bad for user experience, and your ranking will go down. These are all things that are hard to measure because Google doesn’t announce them. We have to consistently look for pages that are slow and make them load faster.

SEO is measured in months and quarters, so over time, you can improve. The biggest thing to focus on is consistently publishing content that contains the key words that you want your company to be cataloged for. That hasn’t changed and I don’t think it ever will. We often describe it as the lottery – for every new piece of content you publish on your website, it’s like you’re getting another lottery ticket. If you’re not publishing any new content and your competitors are, your chances of winning the lottery go down.

SEO is the foundation of anything you do in online marketing. You have to do it right and there are no shortcuts. Remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. You have to publish content, earn links, remain consistent and dedicated, and eventually you’ll see results. Make sure you’re measuring the results of your SEO, which is the second part of this question. Measure the number of phone calls you get, find out where customers came from to make that phone call, and measure the success of those phone calls.

This is the weekly Ask the Experts free excerpt. To listen to all of this or past calls, or to see the schedule and register for future calls, click here.

Any time you have the opportunity to serve, you have the opportunity to win.

In part four of a continuing series on summer training, Brigham Dickinson introduces the Pattern for Excellence to help you provide a “WOW” experience for you customers.

Plus, Gary Elekes talks about the importance of offering whole-home services to your homeowners, and Weldon Long teaches you how to overcome the closing conflict.

All that and more, on this week’s episode of Cracking the Code!

Consistent actions promote consistent results.

In this “Clip of the Week” from Cracking the Code, Weldon Long explains why creating healthy habits is the number one key to success.

Watch the clip below, and visit EGIA.org/Show to watch the full show.

Question: What can we do to motivate our sales guys to get to the next level?

Gary Elekes; Founder, EPC Training:

Motivation comes from within. It’s not something that you or I can do for them. What we can do is create an environment for prosperity and success – an environment that helps people feel motivated. You can definitely demotivate but you can’t really motivate people.

Getting up and going to the gym every day is something that you either like to do or you don’t like to do. I can force that issue by knocking on your door and dragging you out of bed to the gym but that’s not you being motivated, that’s me forcing you to go and creating an environment that’s meant to check and make sure that it happens.

Getting your salespeople to the next level is about challenging and inspiring them to question: What is the next level? Back in the day, $1.2 million to $1.4 million was the comfort advisor sweet spot. Today, closer to $1.8 million is the sweet spot, especially in the southern markets where there are minimum standards of 14 and above. We’re selling a lot more high-efficiency systems today than we ever have. The next level might be, say, $4 million per salesperson. For some of the company Weldon Long works with, $4 million might be an average mark for a comfort advisor, so maybe $8 million would be the next level.

You need to know where your next level is. You want to empower your salespeople and invest in employee development and training, and you want to challenge people with competition. Competition can be good or bad, depending on the context in which it’s framed. If you’re creating a competitive environment where people are having fun with it – The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack would be a great example of it – you’re in a position where that’s going to be helpful.

If you’re in a position of leadership and you’re creating competition – and it’s based on rewarding or enhancing the one or two winners – I think what happens is the rest of the team can be a little demotivated by that. So, create a culture of success. To me it’s all about culture.

In our businesses, we’re never done. Innovation is one of our core values. We’ve got a whole series of core values in our web business and we’ve been Inc. 5000 for four years. It’s our goal to get to year five and year six and try to innovate and achieve the next level. If we don’t keep growing and aspiring to be better than we’ve been – which is our definition of next level – we aren’t going to be successful.

We have celebrations each quarter, we have end-of-the-year celebrations, and all different kinds of things that promotes a success-driven environment. What we’re trying to do is to put people in the position to feel good about the work. So, next level to me is a culture, it’s a leadership style, and it’s a way to get people to feel satisfied about their work. It should be more of a journey and less of a destination.

This is the weekly Ask the Experts free excerpt. To listen to all of this or past calls, or to see the schedule and register for future calls, click here.

If you’re not changing, you’re not growing.

In part three of a continuing series on summer training, Gary Elekes concludes his customer experience CSR training and Weldon Long teaches you how to convert undecided leads into customers with a value-based approach.

All that and more, on this week’s episode of Cracking the Code!

What your CSR’s say on the phone reflects on the rest of the company.

In this “Clip of the Week” from Cracking the Code, Gary Elekes walks through five steps to help formulate your brand experience and incorporate that into a company-wide mission.

Watch the clip below, and visit EGIA.org/Show to watch the full show.

Question: Can you explain the calculation of gross profit per man day?

Gary Elekes; Founder, EPC Training:

Gross profit dollars per man day, or crew day, or hour, are all essentially the same. Obviously, we’d just be looking at an eight-hour day as a man day. A crew day would be 16 hours if you have a two-man crew. And an hourly basis would be based on the idea of dividing out by the hour. The divisor is just how you want to determine your own internal company measurement. It’s a relatively simple calculation.

Gross profit dollars that are produced are simply divided by the number of days we had on a job. If it’s a man day, we would look at $2,000 that we would produce on a gross profit amount divided by one man day would be $2,000 per man day. If you had a two-man crew, then that would be $1,000 per man day. If you were looking at that as a multiple-day job at $2,000 and you had two days of the two-man crew on it, you would have four man days. That $2,000 would be divided by those four man days, so you would end up with $500 gross profit per man day.

It’s less about the division and getting to what the hourly or man day number is, and more about understanding what the appropriate amount for your company is. Understanding what the number is that you should be producing. I can attest that according to our own budget, our overhead per day is $800 per crew per day. So, we target a minimum of $2500 gross profit per crew day to cover up that $800 per crew day cost when we price our jobs. The trick to the calculation is a lot less about what it is and more about what it needs to be for your particular company.

Each company can be different because your overhead is going to be different. Your building rent, your insurance, your vehicles, and your administrative costs are going to be different. A second really important point is how you derive your cost of goods sold. I would say that for 95% of companies, in my personal experience, the cost of goods sold or the chart of accounts are incorrect, meaning do not have an allocated fringe benefit. In the cost of goods sold, they have allocated fringe benefits and the benefits burden of the company’s payroll, tax costs, workman’s comp, insurance, all of those things are in the overhead line below the line. That’s not wrong, it’s just inaccurate.

In other words, the bottom-line accounting on profit is going to be the same. But if you put all of your benefits for your field labor, your production, your technicians, and your install crew all in the overhead, you’re misrepresenting what the gross profit line actually is. For example, FICA, FUTA, and SUTA are all tied to the wage. If I bid a job at one day and it ends up taking two days, not only do I pay the second day of wage, I’m also paying the second day of FICA, FUTA, and SUTA and the install benefits. It’s a double whammy and we’re not getting an accurate picture of what the costs of the benefits are as it relates to the wage. Therefore, that’s telling me my gross profit number is too high.

We want the chart of accounts to be something that people understand. Labor, benefits, materials, permits, subs, commissions, any type of subcontractor arrangements that you might have, rebates, financing, and customer promotions would all be examples of items that would be included in the cost of goods sold that would reduce the gross profit amount. You can always visit the financial section of the EGIA Best Practices Library and look at the budget process, the income statement examples, and the chart of accounts. The trick in calculating gross profit per day isn’t just about getting there but also making sure it’s accurate.

This is the weekly Ask the Experts free excerpt. To listen to all of this or past calls, or to see the schedule and register for future calls, click here.

The following resources have been added to the Contracting Best Practices Resource Library. To access these new tools, visit the Best Practices Library.

Videos

18.4 – Asset Purchase: Utilize the notes in the video for protecting your company during the acquisition of any asset purchase. The basis of the materials here are to insure you have some procedures in place to make certain, when acquiring, your company gets a fair and equitable transaction.

21.3 – Commercial Sales Process – Selling Needs, Wants, Desires and Value Proposition: We dive into the selling process, in terms of the skills necessary, but also the basics for commercial maintenance as a value to a client. Most commercial clients devalue maintenance as a product/service, seeing it as low priority. What makes it more difficult for a commercial maintenance sales person is the amount of “NO’s” we receive in the model. We also break down the communication model and benefits that apply in the selling of commercial maintenance.

21.7 – Commercial Proposal – Presentation Models: We want to develop a proposal and a communication model, or presentation system to guide a client into the price value discussion. The proposals are loaded here and are edit capable for you to customize. This video defines the discussion for how you may want to marry the presentation you use to your actual proposal and solutions/price.

21.8 – Commercial Maintenance Operating Procedures: This section of best practices focuses on the procedures to operate in commercial maintenance. We need to have an organized approach to operations or growth in the segment may become a negative. We follow KPI’s and budgeting processes, to effectively price and operate our crews (labor controls).

21.8 – Commercial Operating Practices – Marketing, Sales Process, and Selling Maintenance: We take a deeper look into commercial maintenance selling and marketing as a set of processes. A business that wants to grow into the segment or develop more clients within the segment, needs to organize its selling system first and foremost. Understanding how to grow and use strategy to have stable revenue. We also want to understand how to market effectively in zones, and target audience for who we want the commercial maintenance sale personnel to contact. The more organization and focus, the better we can measure our success pattern.

21.9 – Commercial Maintenance Forms – Used to Sell and Price: Utilize the forms defined in this best practice to insure the Commercial Account Manager identifies all aspects of a possible application for price accuracy. There are many variables that apply for a CAM and they need to be certain to view and price each aspect of any agreement which helps them create a price reaching our profit targets. Mistakes happen but having a segmented form process insures they will view each area properly.

21.10 – Commercial Maintenance Renewal Process: Learn the fundamentals of renewing commercial maintenance agreements. AS we sell agreements it becomes critical we measure the attrition rate of agreements, and minimize the attrition as much as we can, allowing us to continue to build planned labor events we get paid for, enhancing our cash flows and consistency.

Templates

21.9 – Building & Equipment Assessment Form: Building and equipment assessment form for pricing a commercial maintenance proposal properly.

21.9 – Commercial Maintenance Customer Interview & Survey: Commercial maintenance client interview set of questions and survey. Designed to capture the relevant information for your company CRM and organize for presentations.

21.9 – Commercial Equipment Survey – Detailed Condition Survey Analysis: Use this tool or create one that allows you to define the condition, age, and important demographic data about equipment in a commercial maintenance proposal. This allows you to create formalized proposal with appropriate information for service, repairs, maintenance and possible replacement.

21.9 – Commercial Maintenance Equipment Rental or Subcontracts Used: Occasionally we may have a rental or subcontract used on a commercial maintenance agreement and need to capture the data for pricing. Use this form to insure your pricing is complete on all maintenance proposals.

21.9 – Commercial Maintenance Field Equipment Form: The field equipment form details the absolute specifications of all existing equipment. This differs from building survey as this defines the age and condition, models makes, serial numbers and all aspects of work specifications we may face. The survey is a series of questions for sales process. Both are important and required to be accurate in creation of a price.

21.9 – Commercial Labor Detail Form: Commercial maintenance is a heavy labor style of work, and we use this form to detail the specific number of visits, and required tasks we may see on the actual agreement.

21.9 – Commercial Labor Tasks Samples – In Minutes for Pricing: The samples listed here are examples of tasks that can be defined and performed on a commercial maintenance estimate. It is recommended you design your own set of tasks to meet your applications. Use this as an example.

Documents

21.4 – Example Commercial Maintenance Pricing Model – Dual Overhead: A sample pricing tool that is based on the dual overhead method, and various example task times which are defined in the forms section. Once you have defined your task times for your commercial maintenance platform in minutes, a commercial account manager can effectively create a price by accessing the tasks defined by the need/the technician recommendations, and finding out the break-even. We use dual overhead since high labor style work requires us to identify the overhead relationship by accepting higher labor task work.

Log in to the EGIA Best Practices Library to access these new items, along with hundreds of other useful videos, templates, and documents to help you achieve success in sales, marketing, training, and much more.

During the summer busy season, an overwhelmed team can often lose sight of the bigger picture. Continued training can realign your technicians, CSRs, and salespeople with your company goals.

In this week’s Cracking The Code episode, Weldon Long introduces part two of a continuing summer training series to align your CSR’s behaviors with your brand experience and help prepare your salespeople for success.

All that and more, on this week’s episode of Cracking the Code!