This is a transcript of our recent Marketing Interview with Kenny Chapman of Peterson Plumbing.
To listen to the recording of the interview – click here.
Plumbing Marketing Interview Transcript:
Josh Nelson: Hello, and thanks for finding us on today's episode of Plumbing Marketing Profits where we interview the leading plumbing, HVAC businesses and business minds from across United States, and really get great insights on how you can be more effectively marketing your plumbing business or your HVAC business in today's economy. Today, we're really excited to have Kenny Chapman, the Blue Collar Coach, on the line with us. Kenny, how are you?
Kenny Chapman: I'm doing great, Josh, how about yourself?
Josh: Really good. I hooked up with Kenny recently at the QSC meeting down in San Diego and we got to talking and he's such a sharp guy. He runs the Blue Collar Coach and has had a very successful plumbing business out of the Colorado area. We're going to be learning how he grew his business, why he got into the Blue Collar Coaching, and obviously a little bit more about his company, how you guys might be able to do some stuff with him.
Kenny: Well, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here with you.
Josh: Perfect. I appreciate your time. So if you don't mind let's just start. Tell us a little bit about, you know about your plumbing company and your plumbing in HVAC Company. How long you've been in business, approximate revenue, number of trucks and just some of the demographic type information.
Kenny: Yeah, so we'll actually hear in a few days as we do this interview, in a few days, I'll have my 19th year anniversary, so I we started in 1994. We're a bit shy at 3 million. I think we're running 6 trucks right now and it may be an insult truck on top of that. You'll have to preclude me a little bit as I've got a leadership team that completely runs a day to day. I mean everything's accessible to me but I don't know if we've got 12 employees today or 14 because I'm not involved in the exact day to day. We do plumbing, heating, air‑conditioning, primarily residential service, we do some light commercial as well but no new construction in the western Colorado area, the corridor of Grand Junction to Montrose.
It's a small easy business to run at being a small company like that. But we are very proud of what we've accomplished and what we continue to accomplish because that little bit less than 3 million that we do, 95 percent of that we pull out of 80,000 people. So with our business model and the size of market that we have I'm very proud of our team, and our market share, and what we're able to accomplish.
Josh: Yeah, that's incredible. To pull that out of such a small market, you guys obviously do a good job and run a world‑class organization.
Kenny: Thank you for that, but also there are some things that I get the opportunity...For you being a marketing guy and helping people market I'm sure you see the same thing, contractors get a certain amount of customers in an area and they go, "Well, hey, let's go on to the next town and let's expand," instead of pounding the same pavement day in and day out. Because geographically of the way we're situated we had to keep pounding the same people and it worked really well. It's kind of a testament to going back to the same...Dominate your own market before you go elsewhere I guess is what I believe.
Josh: Absolutely. Great insight because you're right, the tendency is to say, "Let's go to the next big area," or "Let's go to the biggest area in our state." You've proven that that's not the best plan.
Kenny: Yeah, everyone's got their own goals but for us that's really worked well for us.
Josh: Tell me a little bit about how you got started in the plumbing and heating business in the first place.
Kenny: I had the opportunity to serve this great country in the United States Army for a few years. While that was a great experience it taught me that I did not like time‑and‑grade promotion. I needed to be rewarded for my performance. That told me I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I started studying, and reading, and really trying to uncover. To make a really long story short I ended up coming across the books of a plumbing and drain company that they also had some portable toilets. My real estate broker, I was like, "Just bring me all the listings you've got. I want to see everything that you've got."
He brings me this one. I'm like, "Mark, come on. Sewer service? I'm not doing that." He's like, "Just look at the numbers. Just look at the numbers." When I did, I didn't have two nickels to rub together at the time so I couldn't buy the business but it stuck for me. I said, "Wow, I didn't know there was opportunity and money in this stuff."
Then you fast‑forward a couple of years. I came across an opportunity. I was working at a local lumberyard. One of my clients had this small drain‑cleaning business that he did on the side. He built some houses and I started working in them. About six months later I got him to carry a little paper on me, and I took over a company that was doing $12,000 a year, not a day, or not an hour, but a year. [laughs]
That was trial by fire. I had no experience. I had no business being in business but, often times, that's how we start and hopefully, it will evolve somewhere from there.
Josh: During that period you basically took it from 12K a year to what's now a 3 million dollar a year, sustainable business, while doing the other things that you're doing.
Kenny: Correct. Yes.
Josh: Wow, that's [indecipherable 06:06] .
Kenny: Well thanks. It's available for anybody and everybody, but definitely some blood, sweat and tears were left along the way. Certainly, you've got to get lucky. But, you've got to implement, you've got to make a lot of mistakes. Fortunately, I'm a risk‑taker and we're willing to do that and it serviced us well.
Josh: Great. There's going to be a lot of good intimation on this interview. I'm excited about what we're about to uncover. Obviously, the focus we want to concentrate on in this interview is marketing. What went into helping you grow that, in such a small market, from 12,000 to 3 million? I always say, I feel like marketing comes down to three core components. There's the message, what you're saying, the market, who you say it to, and then the media, where you're advertising that message, and how you're getting the phone to ring. I want to really focus on those three key areas and then let you elaborate on what you're doing and what you've done, to accomplish that.
Let's start, or I think you have to start, the tendency is to go straight to media, so straight to, I know we do Yellow Pages, pay‑per‑click, billboard ads, but I think before you go there you have to think about the target market. You have to think about the message. Tell me a little bit about how you targeted the market. It's a small market, but how do you target a market and who your ideal customer is during that greater Grand Junction area.
Kenny: You make a powerful point that, certainly, as contractors, our tendency is to, we want the flashy, we want the, "Well, I saw this thing work on TV, and. I should be on TV." But, you don't know your message. You don't even know who you're speaking to yet, so I agree, you've got to know who you're going to sell to and with that, you've got to know who you are. The first thing that we had to come to terms with is we're not for everybody. That's OK. I believe in abundance mindset so we had to say, "OK. How do we pull enough of what we need to in our market from the people that we need to serve?" That is primarily the residential homeowner that really appreciates their time more than they do their do‑it‑yourself‑er‑type.
They want background check. They want clean. They want a uniform. They want to know who you are. They want to know that you're going to be there the next time they need to go to you. Regardless of the market that you're in, everybody listening to this interview, you might think that things are going on in your market. But, just because people are saying things in marketing pieces doesn't mean that it's actually happening.
Get clear about who you're going to sell to. That's what we did. We knew that we wanted the people that were OK with paying a little bit more. We've never been the cheapest. We never will be the cheapest. By far, we're the most expensive, like markedly higher. That's part of our differentiator. A lot of people, if you go to Chamber functions, or this or that, people say, "Oh yeah. Call Peterson. They're not cheap. You're going to pay for it. But, they're worth it." I'm totally OK with that kind of a referral.
Josh: Absolutely.
Kenny: From there I talk a little bit as once you know where you're going, then what makes you unique is what has to stand out to those people. I was talking about that all ready, is the people that we can convey a message to, and that they will get it, and want to play the same game that we're playing. Again, it's one of the hardest things in the world, as an entrepreneur, and/or a contractor, to realize, "OK. Everybody's not for us. You've got about a hundred other choices in my small market just in the plumbing side of things, and people are choosing them. We've got to know who we are so we can communicate effectively with who we want to be in front of and who we want to do business with, and that's not everybody.
Josh: This is a trend I'm really hearing as we get into doing these interviews and talking to million dollar plus plumbing, HVAC entrepreneurs, is in a lot of cases we're not going after the low‑end guy. We're not trying to get the person that's just looking for the handyman service, the cheap service. You can't be ashamed to be the higher priced player in your market, because that's how you're going to have a professional successful business. Also, you'll be able to attract the right kind of people by having the right messaging out there. You talked about background checks, clean, reliable. I imagine you're putting that in the messaging that you're putting out in the marketplace and you're advertising your promotional strategy.
Kenny: Well, exactly. Those things take dollars to create. Uniforms cost money. Background checks cost money. Better compensation to put better team members in front of your clients costs money. You can't be the lowest priced, or lower‑end, and have top‑end services. You don't get a 5‑star Morton's Steak at McDonalds. That's OK. Both companies are very successful. But they know who they are and people know what they're going for when they go in to get it. One of the things that really changed the game for me was when I came to the realization that when we started, I mean, I took over the company, the company was very low‑priced. The guy ran it as a part‑time job out the back of his truck, basically. If he wanted to go walking around money for cleaning a drain, he'd go do it.
I thought that was the model. I didn't know what I didn't know. Yet still, at the ridiculous low prices, which we won't talk about here on a national call, but I was getting price complaints. I still got price complaints then. Then, one day I woke up and said, "Well, I'm getting them now. Why don't I get them at the price that I need to be at in order to be profitable and grow this thing?"
Anybody listening knows you've gotten price complaints no matter where you are in the game, no matter how long you've been in business, no matter what your price point is. That's never going away. You might as well get them with a smile, put it in your budget, and just give back when you have to, or make things right when you have to. It's far easier to make those decisions coming from a place of profitability.
Josh: It's pretty clear you've got a really well‑defined market as far as you're selling at a higher‑end to people that own homes, the people that aren't overly concerned about price, but also that re looking for convenience. People that want somebody that's going to be able to come in, get it done quickly, get it done professionally, and be reliable. You've got your messaging that really speaks to that audience. Now we can start to talk about what everyone wants to talk about, which is the media and the different advertising channels. There are so many different things you can do to market a plumbing and HVAC business, from direct mail to radio, to networking, to strategic alliances. I'd love to get your feedback on the marketing mix that has worked best for you.
Kenny: Yeah. Well, as you know, as a marketing guru yourself, you know this is a moving target and it continues to move day‑by day, month‑by‑month, year‑by‑year. One of the things that did help us early on is I had the guts to jump into the Yellow Page at a different level than anybody had before. I, basically, bought some real‑estate in the book. That served us well for a while. Of course, as we all know, as those go away, and continue to go away faster and faster, that a lot of people were slow to change. Because we don't resist change, we were able to make some changes.
The other thing I'll say is it's not all about Internet. So, yeah, we do direct mail, we're still in the Yellow Pages, because they still do work at the level that we're in in our market, because we measure everything that we do. We've done radio and TV in the past. They didn't serve us well in our market. I don't know exactly why. Some markets it works amazing. Some markets, it doesn't. In ours though, it's such a small area, we don't really have a drive time. You're never going to get locked‑up in traffic. We tested those.
Public relations are big with that pre‑season in the heating and air‑conditioning business. As we're heading towards our first cold snap, my general manager will get on the phone and start calling the local news stations and saying, "Hey. Let's do a story." They're always looking for stories.
We think that we need to sit back and hope that the news calls us. We need to reach out to them. Networking groups, again, this is my general manager because I don't work in the business on a daily basis. He's involved in a BNI group. He got really involved in the Chamber to a point of he just came off of his last term as the president of a local Chamber in our market.
Home shows. We're always there. Sometimes some work better than others. But it's a presence. It makes you real to the customer. Then, of course, all kinds of different Internet marketing we're into now, between all the social media stuff, SEO, pay‑per‑click. We use lead‑buying services. If it's out there, we're doing it and testing it and then measuring it. If it works, we'll keep doing it and do some more of it. If it doesn't work, we turn it off and direct those dollars somewhere else.
It's important, I believe, when we're talking about marketing, to set that budget and know what you're going to spend. Then as something doesn't work and you turn it off, don't think, "Oh, those are profit dollars," turn it into something else and test those things. You can learn, obviously, from what's happening nationally, but you [indecipherable 16:51] in your own local market because they are a little bit different.
Josh: You've got, pretty much, an everything, all in marketing strategy. You mentioned, pretty much, all of the channels that tend to work well and some that some people think don't work well. That's incredible. I love what you said about public relations. It's not just about sending out a press release. It's about reaching out to the newspaper, reaching out to the radio stations, and trying to get your name in front of them with something that's relevant to the local community.
Kenny: Yeah. In my opinion, and what we've had success with with public relations is, these people, whether it's on radio or TV or newspaper, there are people sitting around today trying to figure out what they're going to write or talk about by the end of this week because they've got to turn something in to their boss. If you can make that easy on them, they're going to embrace you. Don't go to them without a plan. You've got to have a plan of what you want to talk about, why you want to talk about, how it's relevant to their market.
Remember, you're not going in and saying, "Hey, choose Peterson Plumbing." You're going in saying, "Hey, here's something the homeowners really need to know that affects your readership or your listenership or your viewership right now." And come from that angle, it's definitely not hardcore direct response marketing.
Josh: Right. Good stuff. Now, I hear a lot amongst the bigger plumbing companies that the Yellow Pages is still an active source of leads that can generate a return on investment. But from the smaller guys, they're all saying that it doesn't generate much. I'm curious, do you think there's a correlation in positioning in the Yellow Pages to the fact that you have, like you said, "gone big," as opposed to "going small"?
Kenny: Yeah. I do. To answer you question, yes I do. Certainly, for who we are, the further up you can be, the better. There's some of the lower budget, like the kind that want to attract the handyman‑type client, you might do fine with a little small ad. For us, having presence is important now, as Yellow Pages have hold weight back, we have as well, because they're not working as good as they did, but at the same time, that creates deals, that creates negotiation power.
But as long as you're tracking your stuff and you know your numbers. While we're on this yellow pages, one of the things that I learned that was a major hit to me is when I bought a company in Montrose several years ago which is about 60 miles from Grand Junction our target market.
So I bought this company and I re‑branded the whole thing. I've got this stuff figured out now. We're dominating this space. We said, "Well what do we know how to do"? And this is 2001 when I made this play.
I went in and at that time, in that book a full‑page Yellow Page ad got first position. So I went in. I bought it. We tracked it for the year. We got one service call from a full‑page ad, in a market of 50,000 people in a year.
It blew my mind. It really also opened my mind that we weren't present there. People didn't know who we were. We don't have team members wearing uniforms enter the restaurants and kids going to school together and different things like that.
You've got to earn that right. Make sure that if you're a new start up or you're just getting going, a lot of the grassroots stuff is really powerful until people really start having some understanding of who you are. Now again, that changes by market.
In Los Angeles, probably not as big of a deal as in a small farm community where everybody knows everybody, and all of a sudden I splash in like we're this big city company and everybody went, "Whoa, we're not doing that." Again, you got to know your market.
Josh: Wow. So you think the correlation there was just because you had the big ad and everyone saw you, they didn't know the company. They didn't know the people behind the company. They didn't recognize the brand, and so it became a failed marketing endeavor.
Kenny: Exactly. Yeah. I didn't know what I didn't know, but when I learned that, then I started studying that market a little bit more. It's far different than our market 60 miles away. Just because there of the smaller close‑knit farm community, people kind of don't leave. They're slow to change. So, they know the first five plumbers in the book and we're not one of them. They're not going to give us a chance. Just an interesting, painfully, expensive lesson [laughs] that we learned.
Josh: Yeah. Plus, it's a great insight. For those of you who are listening, there's definitely some great lessons that can be learned from that. Of all of those marketing channels, and actually one thing I did want to drill down on more is, you track each one of your lead sources, and how do you do that? Are you doing that by asking when they call in? Do you use call‑tracking numbers? What's your mechanism for tracking all of the lead sources?
Kenny: Yeah. We do both. We do track by the ID numbers or tracking number we use. Then we do have in our scripting for our CSR's to ask them where they got it because what that teaches you is that, sometimes, especially with the Yellow Pages, Yellow Pages have taken the biggest beating of everything. But some clients will still open yellow pages, find you, and go, "Hmm, I'm wondering what they're about." Then Google you and they call you from the Internet, and the Internet gets the hundred percent of the credit.
So we track, and the main thing is, obviously, where they actually dialed, what number they dialed, where they came from. Sometimes people might hear you on the radio or see you on TV but that source might not get credit.
It is important. I mean, for years and years and years, all we did was ask the question. We started out, that's the other thing, wherever you are, now software has gotten so cheap in different things, but back when we didn't have industry specific software, we started this stuff with a little check box next to our one CSR we had at the time and just, "Oh, that one came from..."
And it was Yellow Pages from the three books we were in, all we did was, "OK. That one came from Yellow Pages." So wherever you are, you got to start. Just start [?] development.
Josh: Start tracking it. I think that was an interesting insight that the fact that, yes tracking numbers are great. You can start to get some insights as to where your calls are coming from and quantify the return from the various channels. But like you said, don't put all your eggs...Don't gauge a hundred percent of the success on just that pure metric of number of calls from some specific lead source. Dig a little deeper and see maybe if they didn't meet you on a Chamber of Commerce event or see one of your TV ads, then go to the Internet and Google your name, or go to the Yellow Pages and dial straight from there.
Kenny: Right. Exactly.
Josh: From what you can see, the different marketing channels that you're running and obviously you have an everything‑all‑in strategy which is great, which one seemed to be driving the most leads right now as far as getting your phone to ring, new customer type acquisition?
Kenny: Well definitely Internet is the player. It's the one that's taken over everything. It is our best overall, and of course, we can dissect that even further, but Internet leads are king. Then after that, quite honestly, people that saw our truck is a huge, huge source for us. Again, small community very visible, we have crazy big box trucks. My head is about the size of the side of the truck. It's very, very visible. I resisted that for years until one of my friend showed me a marketing report.
He has the whole side of his truck with his whole team of his company. I always resist that. I'm not doing that. Everybody will think I'm ego. And this is before it was popular. It does work.
But we still get some from Yellow Pages and direct mail, definitely still works. Some of these things, their changing so fast, in my opinion, that everybody jumped out at direct mail and said, "Well it doesn't work. Everybody is getting all this junk mail."
Well perfect. Everybody jumped out. Now everybody is getting less junk mail, and direct mail recurrence are going back up again. Same thing with the Internet. As the Internet gets saturated, as the Yellow Pages did, and cost per leads go up based on PPC and SEO is even huger, huger's probably not a word.
But you get people in it. It becomes really important to adapt. And what I love about the Internet is that it's so adaptable and you can test a lot of different things and this and that. It's our number one for sure, Josh.
Josh: Excellent. I guess on the point of the wrapped truck, obviously it makes sense, it's almost like a driving billboard, but I guess, you're saying, having the personality branding on the truck has helped with convergence. If it was just anonymous truck that says call XYZ Plumbing at this number, necessarily wouldn't convert as well as a picture of the owner or picture of the team where they start to see the personality and buy into the brand and the personality behind the brand.
Kenny: Yeah. I totally believe in that and agree with that. Even though I'm gone from my plumbing business month at a time now, but I'm still the face of it from a marketing standpoint and people connect with people. They don't connect with company brands. They connect with people. I've seen companies and have had clients that they just can't do it. "I can't put myself on the sides." It doesn't matter. Put somebody else on there. It's really not about who it is. It's about what it communicates. People connect with visual far more than reading.
Josh: Absolutely. I think that's a great insight. I've never thought about it in those terms, as far as putting your face on the website. Putting your face on the truck. Putting your face on the ads. They can start to connect and resonate with a real person. That's a powerful insight. Going back to Internet. Within Internet, there's obviously pay‑per‑click and there's SEO and there's online pay directories like Angie's List and CitySearch and Yelp.com. And there's pay‑to‑lead‑source sites.
If you don't have this, you don't need to talk about it more, but I'm curious is to where most of those...Internet's the number one source, so it comes into those four main categories. Where most of the Internet type leads coming from?
Kenny: For us, it's between pay‑per‑click and SEO right now are our two biggest drivers. We do have very good organic placement on the plumbing side. We're working on driving it better on the [indecipherable 29:08] side. We've got pretty good SEO as far as placement goes. Contrary to some companies, and again, some of it is based on market, but we were on pay‑per‑click all the time, as well, as long as were not too busy, we can always turn it off. The two of those playing together have served us well, and they certainly have served us the best.
Then the other sprinklings that were in, be it any of the online directories, and then buying services like the ServiceMagics and the e‑local plumbers. Those trickle in some, but again, our market is very rural, and it's been slow to adopt to the Internet.
So when I had friends and clients that were crushing it on the Internet, I couldn't spend 500 a month, and I was like the only one doing pay‑per‑clicks. Again, you just got to pick your spots and because of that we're able to really diversify our budget.
Josh: Got it. OK. Good stuff. Any of the online marketing channels that you've stop doing all together where you felt like, "You know what, it's just not generating any return"? Or do you feel like there's something to be said for pretty much any online or offline advertising that you can do?
Kenny: Well, the main thing for us is so much of the Internet is now is [indecipherable 30:51] we found out we had to sign a big contract and guarantee huge dollars. We'll test some stuff. So much of it's by lead. On our operational side of the business, we're so good once we get the lead...I'm not patting me on the back, I'm patting my team on the back. If we get the lead, it's going to work out more often than not because we know how to convert. That's the other side to marketing is you can generate all the leads all day long, but if you're not converting, then you got to be cautious. We're able to play in a lot of space. To answer your question. We haven't really said, "If this doesn't work, we're out of here." Companies, like Yelp and Angie's List, we don't really play with them much in our market. Different things, we've got some local search stuff that we do.
For those of you listening, you've got to pick your spots and just test. That's all you can do. Again, that's what I like about the Internet is you can test.
Josh: Yeah. Excellent. Great stuff. As far as existing customer marketing. We all know that getting the customer is important, retaining the customer is important. What type of marketing do you do for your existing customer base at this point?
Kenny: Well, the biggest, I can't talk about current customer marketing without mentioning service agreements. If you're not big in service agreements, you're missing a big opportunity. All of us have shoulder season in the game that we play, and it's very important. So service agreements are our marketing tool more than anything in my opinion. We make a big push there. We direct mail, hard copy, newsletters, we eblast monthly enewsletters to our clients. Primarily, that's the way we'll stay in touch. Then of course, if we get slow enough, we'll do outbound calling to our current base, as well, just to get in and check out their system and go that route.
I'm glad brought that up because even the way that we're diversified here, we wouldn't be in business without our repeat customer base. Too many people overlook that. It's getting so expensive to get leads these days. Once you get that person, you got to coddle them and keep them happy because most people don't go away because they were really mad or got terrible service. They go away because of indifference so you got to stay in touch with them.
Josh: No doubt. Those service agreements, is that something you're selling before you get out there? When you're out there, try and get it while you're at the homeowner's house doing whatever you're doing? Where do you tend to push the service agreement or introduce the service agreement?
Kenny: It gets first touch on the phone, but it's the technician's responsibility to generate the service agreement on the service call. I see a lot of companies that sell really heavy on the service agreement on the phone. You got to do what works for you, but for us, I consider us a sales organization. We're not a hard charge sales organization. When clients call in, it's like calling to ask about a TV and then trying to sell you the extended plan when you haven't bought the TV yet. We just mention it, that your technician's going to talk to you about it. So plant a seed because, again, in marketing and advertising, people need to hear things more than once. We plant the seed and then the technician plants the seed again before he creates his options. Then he comes back in and then we get into the presentation.
Josh: Excellent. Then back to the newsletter. You send a printed newsletter that goes out to your entire customer base. Obviously, that helps with the retention of your brand, how often are you sending that mailed newsletter?
Kenny: We only do that once a quarter.
Josh: OK. Then monthly email news blasts?
Kenny: Correct, yes.
Josh: Excellent. Just since you mentioned it. I'm curious, you do outbound calling to the existing customer base, are you offering a paid checkup or is it a, "Hey. Well, come out, complimentary, and see what's going on with the system?" That's an interesting way to get the trucks moving when there's a lull for whatever reason.
Kenny: Yeah. We change it. We will drop down to a full on courtesy once in a while on plumbing, but primarily, we do paid inspections. We've done it both ways, but what we've found is there's no value in free. It's kind of the whole thing, "Let me give you a free brake inspection." "Are you really looking to check the safety of my car or are you really looking to sell me brakes?" I think that the customer, when they get the fact that it's an industry recommended service that needs to take place to keep your warranties in place and different things like that, and it's only x amount which is a discount of x amount from normally, then it makes more sense.
Josh: Awesome. This has been some great information. Anybody listening to this, they can't walk away with, at least, two or three gold nuggets that they can start to implement in their plumbing or heating business, I'd be very surprised. Fortunately, for you Kenny's got [laughs] a lot more to offer. So Kenny, tell us a little bit about your Blue Collar Coach or your Blue Collar Success Group and what's that all about?
Kenny: Well, basically. We created this company, the Blue Collar Success Group because we have had some national attention and recognition for what we've been able to accomplish with my team and my general manager and my inside operations manager. I have an innate desire to give back. This industry's been very good to me. My mentors have been incredible to me. Frank Blau, many years ago, tapped me to help carry his legacy and I feel that part of my responsibility. Frank spent many years on the road before flat rate pricing was popular, before any of what's going on today was even existent. Because he was willing to do what he did, it gave me a really, quick, easy way to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish.
Now, when I say quick and easy, I should say simple because it's simple if you implement, but the easy part [laughs] resides within us. We said we want to give back to the industry and we want to help people simplify this stuff so we created this company.
We've got mastermind groups where we help coach managers and owners weekly. We do a lot of sales and customer service training with technicians. We've got a "Done for you membership" that by video we train your technicians for you, now, because technician training is a big issue in our industry. They're the face of our brand. We spend all this time marketing and branding our companies, then we put not highly trained people out there and that becomes our brand.
However many trucks you're running, that's how many brands you have. You might think you've got one because you paid a marketing company to create one for you, but whoever shows up and whatever mood they're in, that's your brand. We want to give back and help people in this great industry.
Josh: Awesome. If somebody wanted to learn more about the actual coaching program where would they go for that information?
Kenny: Yeah. Go to www.thebluecollarsuccessgroup.com and then in the top right hand corner you'll see a bright yellow button. You can click on it, take a free test ride and see everything that's involved there.
Josh: Awesome. Now, I understand you also have a webinar coming up where, I guess, you're training on the secrets to growing a successful contracting business. I don't think anybody's more equipped to train you on how to run your plumbing business and HVAC business, and grow it than somebody that's done it, and somebody that's successfully gone from 12k [laughs] to 3 million. Who better to teach you than that. What are you covering on this webinar, and how could somebody get into this event?
Kenny: Well, we really cover a lot of the tools that are needed. I mean, heck, today you and I having this conversation, Josh is really...I hope my [laughs] passion comes through. I love this stuff, and we've created a lot of value here today for your listeners. I cover what we've done, and what works for us and what we're seeing change. One of the things, we've got our coaching group, but we run this company still every day. We're in the trenches so we see how things have changed, and they have changed dramatically in the last five years. They're changing faster than ever and that trend will continue.
We cover things from pricing to selling. We do spend a fair bit of time on how to help your technicians close more sales. Again, this is not hard sales stuff, hard charge. I don't sit down and arm wrestle with our customers. This is about teaching your technicians to become better educators. All I want them to do is educate the customer on what their options are and allow the customer to choose.
When your technician's become assistant buyers instead of sales people, really good things happen. And techs don't want to be sales people, we all know that, but they do want to take care of customers. We'll help you to, in this webinar, learn more about how to do that, as well.
Josh: I guess, where would they go to get registered? Is this a free webinar or something? What's the story behind the cost for the webinar in this training?
Kenny: Yes. Absolutely, this is completely free. It's just a way that we give back, and so you can go to www.sellingtechs.com. Go to sellingtechs.com and there's a couple of different time choices that you can choose from there, and jump in there and check it out. We'd love to hear your feedback, too.
Josh: Awesome. Well, Kenny, this has been a wonderful interview. I think you've given us a lot of great insights and ideas. I want to thank you for spending the time. Your passion, certainly, does come through on this call.
Kenny: Thank you for the opportunity, Josh. I appreciate spending time with like minded people, and what you're doing for the industry is great. I hope that your clients get a lot of value from our conversation here today so thank you, again.
Free Training Webinar from Kenny:
Kenny is conducting a webinar on The Secrets To Growing A Successful Contracting Business – Even In A Tough Economy. You can register for that FREE webinar by going to www.sellingtechs.com.
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