Brian Johnson on Refocusing Pioneer Overhead Door - EP.289

0:00In terms of the sales process, yes, we're regularly tweaking every little piece of that because every little piece matters. Where do you park the truck? How do you get out? What's the first thing you say to the customer? How long should you talk to the customer before you get down to the nitty gritty? When do you bring up the investment? If you give them four different options, which option do you present first? How do you handle objections? How do you handle no? Are you comfortable with them not being happy with certain things? All of those little pieces we review and we regularly look at and strive to get better at.

0:42Alex Bridgeman: Brian, thanks for having me in the office and showing me around. My pleasure. How long have you been in this space, Remain Me? We bought the company in 2023 and have been here since day one. Gotcha. You mentioned adding a training facility that you just pointed out a little bit. Yeah. When did that come about? So early on, I got linked in with a garage door group of similar owners. And in that process, we're regularly talking about, okay, what do we do to set ourselves apart? And what do we do to try and get a little better? What kind of support can we provide our technicians? And we made the conscious decision that we don't want our guys learning in someone's home.

1:28And so we built the training center probably about 18 months after we bought the company. And we certainly do a lot of technical training here in the shop. We also do all of our sales training here in the shop. But it took probably 18 months to kind of figure out how we wanted the company to look and feel moving forward.

1:50Alex Bridgeman: In that 18 months, what questions were you thinking about on how do we want this to look or that to look? What buckets of processes did you look at? Yeah, so I would say, at least for me, I'm slow on the uptake. So it was drinking from a fire hose day one. And I mean, I bought the company with no industry experience and limited experience in owning and operating a company. So it really did take me 18 months just to figure out what I had. It was a great company to begin with. The numbers looked really well, but I didn't really know what I had. So it took a minute to figure that out. And then it took a little bit longer to figure out what direction we wanted to steer it moving forward.

2:38But I would say, again, being involved with other like-minded owners and having the opportunity to really talk through how they managed and navigated that growth piece and the operations side really helped shape what we wanted to do. And then we've got our leadership team in-house, and as we talk through how we want the company to look and feel, all of those things kind of took shape and are still taking shape. It's a work in progress. But we knew early on we wanted to have a focus on the customer experience. And so we're all, we're customer centric. We care about every interaction that they have with us, whether it's from an initial view on one of our advertisements, seeing our marketing in a mailer to the first time they call in.

3:32How's that experience with one of our customer service representatives? What's the buildup to actually a in-person meeting with one of our service professionals? And how does that piece feel and operate while they're on site? And then finally, what is the closeout and the continuing marketing to them look and feel like? So we knew early on that we wanted to strive to be great at that. And again, that's another thing that's a work in progress, but we're definitely focused on that customer journey as it relates to our specific space.

4:10Alex Bridgeman: On that customer journey, as I was walking in, your front desk was answering a customer. I could hear a little bit. What helped you understand the customer journey the fastest when you first bought the business? The best thing is to think like a customer, right? We all have stuff break. And being in the home service industry, that's when we step in. And so you think about we've all had interactions traditionally with the fix-it guy or the handyman or when something breaks. And so when you look at it from a first-person standpoint, it's a little easier to think through, okay, I've had people in my home.

4:46And I've had companies that have done a good job and companies that haven't done a good job. There's a big range. Yeah, there's a huge range. And historically, in home services, I think that there was a certain stigma to how jobs are run or how companies are run. And I would say the HVAC plumbing groups probably a couple decades ago kind of caught on that there's a better way to do it. And the rest of us have slowly caught up. And so really, it's easy to draw from your own experience because those of us who have had a toilet break or a spring break in their garage or their AC go down when it's hot, we know what that pain is like.

5:28And so our job on the flip side of that, certainly at Pioneer Overhead, is to recognize that most of the times that we go out, we're going out because there's a pain point in the garage. And what can we do to help the customer relieve that and help make sure that it doesn't happen again?

5:49Alex Bridgeman: We were talking about podcasts before. Do you find that most of the HVAC lessons fairly cleanly apply in garage doors? Certainly the principles apply. I mean, the customer service side applies. Their process that they run is a little unique. It's a little different. And so at Pioneer, we kind of have put our process together from a number of sources, whether it be from the HVAC industry, from our own garage door industry, from standard best practices to things that our technicians come up with that we work through. I was sitting with our service technicians here before the podcast this morning, and we regularly relook at the entire process.

6:36And from our standpoint, we chop it into different buckets along the way, right? So I'm focused on making sure that the customer is happy and comfortable and educated before the technician even shows up. So that we're doing as much of the heavy lifting on the front end. So that when the technician shows up, they've gotten to know them a little bit, whether it's from a text bio or from an email that we send out. they know a little bit about pioneer again from a an intro email the next piece that we're looking to implement here is that they'll have either a video or an email that's sent relating to the issue that they're having and the options that we expect our technicians to present and so from a from a service call standpoint we break that piece down to fix okay can we fix the front end so that the customer, when we show up, has seen our face, knows our branding, understands what a service call should look and feel like.

7:42And then when the technicians at the home, how good do they do? How well are they able to convey the different options that we have? And we expect our technicians, we don't think of them as salespeople. We think of them as educators. Like our job is to educate you on the systems on your door. and give you an array of options to solve whatever problem there is from the top end let's get you a new door system to the very bottom end of let's just fix the specific thing that's wrong today the unique thing about that is i say system because the door operates and functions as a system one problem can spill into two or three or four or a dozen different things that are going on with the door.

8:30And so if we don't do the education piece with the customer, they don't know. They see, oh, my spring's broken. Just fix my spring. Well, the spring is just one symptom of maybe a larger issue with the door. And so we expect our technicians to go out and educate the customer so that they have all of the info they need to make an informed decision. And then we want to give them multiple options in that buying cycle where they can make a determination on what they want to do. And then on the back end, we want to make sure that the, with the customer, again, that the billing's painless. You pay right, you know, tap your card right on our, right on our iPads or our telephones to pay.

9:14And the invoice is sent back to them by an email. And then the, the continual, continual marketing with them as we move forward. So that whole process has taken shape with us and is, is continually being modified, but that takes time to get that right for your group.

9:38Alex Bridgeman: We kind of jumped right into it, but what were you working on before buying Pioneer? Maybe what stood out about the business? Yeah, so my background is finance. For 20 years, I was in the lending industry, whether it was doing construction loans for builders or helping businesses buy commercial property to own and operate their business out of. So I kind of hit like the atypical midlife crisis. I got 20 years into the career and thought, is this what I want to do for the next 20 years? And I was happy working banker's hours, you know, really enjoying things, but felt like there was another opportunity that I could take.

10:22And so I spent probably two years working through companies and being in the lending industry, albeit I've always been on the production side. I knew enough on the underwriting side to get myself into trouble. So I looked at dozens and dozens of companies, maybe hundreds of companies. A lot I dismissed immediately just because I knew it was not the type of industry I wanted to be in. A lot I dismissed after an initial quick spread of their P &L or their tax returns, and then whittled it down to companies that made sense financially and were interesting. And so it was, you know, the career leading up to that point gave me kind of the tools to make an informed decision.

11:08But again, yeah, my background, I went to school for economics and spent 20 years in finance. And so it was a definite departure from what I was used to.

11:19Alex Bridgeman: So yeah, were there like two or three industries or maybe themes that stood out to you as you were looking through businesses? I definitely it was really more of a math question for me. In the lending industry, you lend to a debt service ratio. And that was a key indicator for me. So like I said, I cut certain things out that I knew I didn't want to do. I'm not a food guy, so I didn't want to own a Wendy's or McDonald's or some type of franchise. I also felt like I probably wasn't a franchise person. So that cut out big things like loop shops or tire centers, things like that. I knew I wanted to own and operate my own thing.

12:01Other than that, it really boiled down to locale. I'm from Utah. I wanted to stay here. And then how the company operated and did. And so I didn't know anything about garage doors. I didn't know anything about home service. you know i jumped on this company when the previous owner was looking to sell it and the frontline numbers made a ton of sense and the more i got into it the more i appreciated the reoccurring nature of of the service and the sales that are in home service and really just kind of made the jump somewhat ignorantly but yeah that was three and a half years ago and what did you

12:47Alex Bridgeman: do to maybe before closing to like learn about the industry and the business or like what helped you the most like pre-close pre-close so i had a i have a neighbor who owns and operates a plumbing company and my water heater broke right as i was underwriting pioneer overhead and he came over and he got talking with me and i had mentioned hey look i'm looking at buying this and he said oh oh, you know what, I need to introduce you to a friend of a friend. So this guy was partners with Ellen Rohr and Al Levy on a drain company in Utah. They were like the franchisor, and he was the primary franchisee in Utah.

13:35And he said, look, I know these guys, and they're also affiliated with Tommy Mello. And Tommy's a big name in the home service space. and in the garage door space. So he linked me up with Tommy and Tommy and I talked. Tommy wouldn't even know me from Adam today because it was three years ago. But he and I talked maybe a half a dozen times. And he talked about, you know, how passionate he was for home services, how he felt about garage doors in specific, what he thought about the industry. And, you know, we talked And that certainly helped. So that was one of the primary things that really helped me figure things out.

14:21I'm also, my other neighbor is a CFO in the auto industry. And I twisted his ear a little too because he's a numbers guy.

14:31Alex Bridgeman: So we talk numbers. You're going to help the neighborhood here. Yeah, no, we've got to. It helps where you live for sure. Yes. So I talked to him. I pulled two or three other people. but I really have some people that I trust that I appreciate their opinion and I talk through. And of course, my family, I included my family in that decision. And really in the end, it was something that we felt comfortable with doing and making the change. So what did the first day or two look like, feel like in the business? Would you work at first? Everything. So I will say I vastly underestimated my ability to own and operate a business.

15:14I had no idea what I was doing. Granted, the last company I came from was a startup and I was employee number one. But there's a big difference moving one seat over, like a world of difference. So when I first bought the company, we were and still are to some degree very heavily commercial rated. So we do a lot of commercial projects, a lot of big commercial installation jobs, a lot of commercial service. But day one, day two, really the first year, really was holding on for dear life. One of the things that made the company a great buy financially made a horrible buy operationally, which was there was no office staff whatsoever.

16:01The previous owner was the atypical technician turned owner. he was the estimator he was the bookkeeper he was the accountant he was the ar person he was he answered every single phone call you know he mailed the estimates he paid all the bills like literally there was four trucks seven technicians and one owner and so that was a rude awakening to come in to have very little in place in terms of operations. And that was a wild ride for the first year, first 18 months. It was long days, long nights, a lot of stress, trying to make sure that, you know, we didn't drop the ball.

16:48Alex Bridgeman: Your EBITDA probably went down too as you made some back hires too then. Yeah, thankfully we've been pretty conscious about how we've grown the company. the old owner did a great job of what he was good at we've managed to really start increasing our service as a function of total revenue and so we've been able to grow and maintain the the EBITDA at or even slightly above what it was so we've been really fortunate that we've linked up with some other great companies that allow us to ask questions and we're part of this garage door group that is helpful too. And yeah, that it, it's been quite, quite a few years for, for us to, to get to this point.

17:33Alex Bridgeman: So is it more evenly balanced between residential and commercial now? We're getting there. So residential is where we're getting there. When I first bought the company, we're probably 80, 20, maybe 85, 15 commercial to residential today. We're probably closer to 60, 40 the big thing for us is to have as a function of revenue a higher percentage in the service and so we're really focused on maintaining our install thresholds while trying to increase our service again as a percent of total revenue so keep install steady yeah but all growth comes from service yeah yeah that's the goal the service is really what that is is the valuable piece in terms of a margin standpoint and from a from a a cash management standpoint to service you you've pay to play right we come out today we fix it and you pay today that's not the case certainly in commercial installs you're under contract you have to front a lot of the money it can take anywhere from 30 to 120 days to get paid.

18:46And so you're floating inventory, you're floating your operating capital. So yeah, it's definitely a different world. Yeah.

18:55Alex Bridgeman: Was there any working capital squeeze when you first bought the business as you had these projects you're carrying balances for? Yeah. So thankfully we were pretty conscious of that going into it. We got a loan to buy the company. And as part of that, we funded a small working capital account. And then the old owner was kind enough to float a lot of the inventory. So he had a lot of inventory that he had paid for, but we ended up installing the work. And he floated that for me, and we paid that off as we did those specific jobs. So that ended up being a blessing that we didn't have to come out of pocket with all of that to begin with.

19:41But it was, it still got crunchy. Like there was one point, maybe six months in that I had to make a big order of inventory. Because again, in the commercial space, you can get a job where you've got to lay down one or$200 ,000 to buy the inventory. And I had to draw on some credit to do that. Thankfully, that was the one and only time I've ever had to do that. But it was a little, it was tuck and go for a minute, just from a cash management standpoint, before we really got our feet under us.

20:16Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, we've heard of owners who had to remortgage their house or refinance their house to cover a big job. Yeah, that's really scary. You know, you go into it with your eyes wide open and you hope that you've done enough, that you know enough to make the right decision. leveraging your house is a scary thing right because you you've we've heard of jobs go bad i have friends and companies where you know they're under contract with big-time contractors in the state general contractors and whatever reason they go they go bad they go south they don't get their money and things can things can go bad quick if you're if you're not careful yeah have you noticed as service revenue increases that you find financially there's some there's more there's greater stability in the business overall and i imagine that would show up in a lot of different ways yeah so as we run our reports and our analysis that does show a little healthier on the balance sheet for sure having that in place is good now the other thing that helps and i'm unique is i'm a saver so you know i could pull a bunch of money out of the company and and buy stuff personally but that's just not who i am so i leave most of the money in the company and thankfully that's been very beneficial to us because we haven't had to get any other type of operating lines or any type of credit i just fund the growth from saving money from the company so we've been pretty lucky but to be able to to do service and get paid the same day yes that's the that's the standard that's what you're looking for for pioneers specifically because of who we are and who we've been we've got such a name in the commercial space that you know we're going to stay in that and accept that there is some cash crunch to to operate in that in that space as a quick sidebar we use mercury for our banking yeah do you use them as well or no so we're we bank with the local credit union and they've been a good partner and you know we haven't that's not something that i've really looked at uh since i bought the company mostly asking because mercury has a like a high yield savings treasury account yeah where we can get 3.6 percent oh okay which is very good yeah so hopefully you're getting three plus percent on to be honest cash i'm not even sure i'd have to go and look at that and see man that's definitely something worth looking at it's more than the quarter of a percent or whatever you get sitting it in your checking account much more you can even have a you know charles schwab or vanguard account and just buy like a money market yeah or a short-term bond fund that gets you i mean if you have a million bucks that's 40 grand a year yeah that just shows up yeah that's a great idea yeah we thought about doing that because for durable trades we've called some of the initial capital we have a an investor shareholder who their only shareholder is wells fargo and so there's some weird like banking holding company act stuff that they need us to follow so we can't do it yet gotcha once we own a company any cash we carry can be invested in a money market or high yield savings yeah and you start doing the numbers and you're like wow that's actually really dramatic yeah and i'm i mean 40 grand could be like your travel budget yeah for sure and like just not having to worry about that.

23:51Yeah, yeah, that's a great idea.

23:53Alex Bridgeman: Getting back to service, it's so interesting because the simplicity of residential service, getting paid at the end of the job, no customer concentration, seems really appealing. But a lot of owners have told us there's lots of money in commercial if you do it well. Yeah, there is money in commercial. It's a different approach for sure. like when you go out to home you're dealing with the decision maker whether they admit it or not you know every now and then you're you're going to hear a husband or wife say i've got to talk with my partner oh we know that's that's not true they're just they're just trying to put you off so when you go to home by and large you're talking with a decision maker when you go to a business that's rarely the case you're usually talking with a facility manager or a general manager or a shop guy, at least in our space, and you go out and you give them an estimate and they say, well, we've got to run this up the flagpole.

24:55So unless it's something dire, the sales process is different in the commercial space. Now, you're absolutely right. You can make more, you can make a higher ticket average in the commercial, but there is an offset to that too, right in our space you rarely can go out to a commercial job without dragging a trailer and lift because doors are usually taller than eight or nine feet and we don't like our guys being on ladders much taller than eight or nine feet and so you're dragging and at an expense to get out there the other piece for us is you go to a commercial door you're usually going to need two guys to go out whereas in residential you've never sent two guys on a service call so So yes, you can make more money, but if you're looking at a top line revenue, you're going to miss a big piece of the financial picture because there are definitely expenses that go into the commercial side that you don't experience in the residential side.

25:57so the other thing about commercial is there's quite a bit more ramp up period to get a technician proficient on the commercial side than there is on the residential side just because you're dealing with bigger doors a broader array of brands different styles of doors so we we install and service sectional doors which are the same type of doors you would find on most homeowners garages we do rolling steel doors that are steel slats locked together and that they run on a track we do rolling sheet doors like a storage unit door we do high speed doors so doors that you would see on maybe high-end auto dealerships things like that so to be able to get a technician up to speed in the commercial space takes a significant amount of time and so there's there's definitely some more barriers to entry on the commercial side than the residential side but yes it is just like residential service if you do it right and you do a good job you can you

27:02Alex Bridgeman: can make money have you found that certain pockets within commercial are more profitable for you than others like are you are you shooting for a consistent margin across any commercial job you do or are certain ones that you you're just not going to get that margin if you go after that business yeah there are property types that we know we we probably would pass on and those are are area dependent and location dependent to some degree but for us our process is the process so if our guys run the process when they're out on site then then our margin is is guaranteed so The only variables to that are if we do a hard bid, say we go out and we say we'll do the work on this job for a specific dollar amount, and it ends up taking us much longer than we anticipate, that's the margin killer.

28:00But usually we bill on the commercial side, we bill by the hour. So if we're out at a job and it takes eight hours, we're going to bill you for eight hours of time. So yes, there are a lot more moving parts. the one piece that's easier to sell in the commercial space at least that we found than in the residential space are preventative maintenance programs or membership programs you know if your garage breaks in your home you're annoyed of course if your overhead door breaks at your business it's dire like we have companies that require us to be out within a certain amount of hours 24 7 yeah yeah so thankfully we don't get called out late at night very often but certainly during the day if if one of our high priority customers call we'll pull guys off other jobs and go fix their door because we're under contract to do that and so when your door goes down at a manufacturing facility or a trucking facility you're losing money when it's not operational so because of that it's an easier sell to go in and say let's put you on a preventative maintenance program say and we'll get out and we'll tune up and loop each door semi-annually we'll do anything preventative that we need to to retain the warranty on the door the motor the systems and we'll have kind of a forward-looking eye at it to see if we notice anything that may be a problem down the road like and i tell guys there's nothing that's going to stop there's there's no way to know when someone's going to run their forklift into the door the next day but or the airplane through the hangar or the airplane through the hangar which has happened or the helicopter through the hangar door which happened last year too like it happened helicopter um yeah we put a bunch of doors we don't do hangar doors but we do we do a lot of doors in hangars that our sectional doors and we finished a nice private hangar here in in utah and a month later a guy was taken off in his helicopter and he caught the the he caught one of the hangar doors that was open and thankfully thankfully no one died but there was some serious damage but we get stuff like that and i say the same thing i say hey i want their i want the forklifts drivers name a number because that's who I send all my Christmas cards to.

30:30Thank you for keeping us in business. Feel free to run into the door anytime you want. We'll get back out to get you taken care of.

30:37Alex Bridgeman: That's funny. Yeah, we can't fix your helicopter, but we can fix the door. Yeah, we'll fix the door. You're on your own for your helicopter. Order magazine more expensive. Oh, for sure. Yeah, the door is nothing compared to it. I would assume a new set of rotor blades or whatever. And all the recalibrating and balancing for those. Man, that's nuts. for preventative maintenance in commercial, I imagine there's a couple like key channels that you get those ones. Like you do the install and you sell the service agreement afterwards, or there's a previous residential customer owns a business, then calls you.

31:14Alex Bridgeman: And there's just the calls out of the blue to you to fix something. Even if you're not, you didn't do the install and have any relationship with them. Yeah. Is there one or two of those or maybe all that you focus on and feel like are most fruitful for a new commercial service business? Yeah, for sure. So to be honest, that's a piece that we layered on only recently. So within the last 12 months, we've started really trying to build that piece out. So in terms of the sources that you can find, you were right, right? An existing customer that we go and put new doors on a facility, that's a conversation that we have with the customer when the doors are done.

31:55Typically, our customer is actually not the end user. We're working with a general contractor. So we have put in place, you know, our office team reaches out on any install that we do to recommend a preventative maintenance program. And in reality, to retain the warranty, it's required. So that's an easier sell. Historical jobs. The company's been around since 2003. so we've got a wide base of historical customers and clients so that's low-hanging fruit cities and municipalities bid out that work contractually so we're we we participate in those bid forms so like for example Ogden City put it out to bid and we we won that so we do all of Ogden City's facilities.

32:47The Department of Commercial Maintenance, we've got a contract with them on some of their buildings. So bigger cities and municipalities are definitely great sources for preventative maintenance because they're responsible for fire stations, airports, their public works buildings, all of their outbuildings. You know, you could sign a contract and they could have hundreds of doors, which is great. So those are the low-hanging options that we go after. There are some other options too that's kind of planned 2.0 for us as we continue to build it out. But the membership programs, the preventative maintenance, I would say we've tried to rev that up only recently within the last 12 months.

33:36Alex Bridgeman: What do you feel like is working the best so far? in terms of how you've approached it? Existing customers. Yeah. So it's a very easy conversation when we hang the door to go grab them and say, look, it's brand new, but if they're getting high use, they will wear out quickly if you don't pay attention to them. So existing customers for sure. The other thing that we try to have in place is any service call that we go, when our billing group sends them the invoice, we try to have them also bring that up. Hey, look, we were out. we fixed this one door we noticed you've got 30 other doors on the facility let us send you some information on our preventative maintenance plan and and we'll go through that we just we just did a walk through with a big the largest plumbing company in the state and they've got 30 or 40 garage doors and they wanted us to take a look at it and we had that conversation with them like hey yes of course we're going to come out but you really should just let us come out every six months get our eyes on it loop and tune the springs making sure that everything's calibrated and we'll the the doors will last longer the components will last longer and we'll catch anything before it becomes a major issue yeah so our existing and our our existing customer base is the best the best source of of those types of deals right now have you found the like the ideal way to write the contract or are there any are there any worthwhile experiments with trying to pitch the contract this way versus that way or having the service agreement look like this versus that yeah that's a good question there are different ways to set it up we've got a standard contract in terms of what the customer wants we'll we'll defer to them if they want an annual maintenance if they want a semi-annual we do monthly stuff for super high use doors what we work on a preventative maintenance we typically say look we come out at a reduced labor charge and we expect to be able to handle this many doors over this period of time and and we write that into the contract and then we we bill it as we send guys out and so they get a little break on the labor that they would pay had they just called us out in general.

36:03The other thing that they do that I intimated earlier is they get put into our priority status too. So if you are a contracted company and you call, we come out. We'll leave someone else's job and come out and help you if you're under contract with us. That's the commercial space. The residential space has a little more structure to it because it's just a set plan. You know, we've got our dependable door club and that if they if they are comfortable with that, we recommend doing a monthly. A monthly fee for that, and then that that buys them a an annual Lubentune. It buys them discounted product when we need to come back out.

36:44It gives them some some added benefits that you wouldn't get otherwise if you were just to call us, you know, out of the blue.

36:52Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. One thing I find so interesting about it is if you have six technicians each doing four jobs a day. I'm thinking like residential, maybe commercial takes longer, but depending on the job. But that's 24, 25 jobs a day over a week. That's 125 jobs. that's a pretty big sample size to like try different things just see what works and say hey this week we're going to try pitching things this way we're going to try you know this strategy or this thing here and there's lots of little experiments you could do throughout the year even just within the week that give you like a real statistical sample size yeah are there things you're like testing out now just to see like how does this work versus that work yeah we we regularly tweak the process and we record every service call that we go on our guys have a an app that they record it so that we can go back and listen to it and pay attention in terms of these the sales process or the educating process we ask them to do on site that is a work in progress and that that really boils down to the individual technician's desire to be great you know you can have the step-to-step process you want them to follow you can tell them they need to smile when they get to the door you can tell them how to knock or how to stand you can tell them how to build a good relationship and rapport with the customer and you can put them you can give them all the tools in the end it's it's up to the guy that's boots on the ground whether they embrace the process and want to be great or whether they just go through the motions but yes we're regularly tweaking every little piece of that because every little piece matters where do you park the truck how do you get out what's the first thing you say to the customer how long should you talk to the customer before you get down to the nitty-gritty when do you bring up the investment you know how do you approach that if you give them four different options Which option do you present first?

39:00You know, how do you handle objections, right? They always have an issue with it. How do you handle no? Are you comfortable with them, you know, not being happy with certain things? You know, all of those little pieces we review and we regularly look at and strive to get better at. In the end, though, one of our core values at the company is to own the experience. So we have three core values, and one of them is own the experience. No matter what experience you're in, take ownership of it. And so we look to the technicians. We look to our installers. We look to our office staff. If you're in an interaction with a customer, own it.

39:45Be great at it. Seek to make it as positive as possible. We were talking again this morning in our sales meeting. Can we be unreasonably hospitable, right? Can we go above and beyond what the normal expectation is when you have a blue collar guy show up to show up?

40:02Alex Bridgeman: It's a good book, by the way. What's that? Unreasonable Hospitality. Yeah. It's a great book. Yeah, it's a great book. So how can we implement those things so that when that person leaves, they're happy with us. They're happy. They feel like they got a great value for what they got. And if they're in a conversation with someone down the road and they say, hey, you know, I've been having issues with my garage door, that person who interacted with us should say, don't call anybody but Pioneer Overhead Door. And again, it's a process. We're all trying to get better at it and we're working through it.

40:42And so that's the goal. when I first bought the company within the first week I did a ride along with one of our one of our senior technicians and again I had no idea what I have so we went out and there was a broken spring we got out there and this technician had probably fixed 10 ,000 broken springs and they didn't have a sales process there was no sales process whatsoever you had one option the spring to fit fit your door which that's not the case you've got a number of options of springs depending on what you want out of it but anyway when we went we ran up to this call the technician ran in shook the lady's hand he's awesome people love him and he looks at it he's like okay i clearly have a broken spring work let us get it taken care of and we'll knock on the door and we'll come we'll come let you know when we're done like it wasn't 15 minutes that he had the spring off a new one on fixed done and it was it was over and back then we charged 389 bucks that's what you paid for a spring whether it was a non-insulated door or the nicest door that you could buy you paid 389 bucks 15 minutes later he's knocking on this lady's door and she walks out and she's upset because it's only been 15 minutes and we're trying to leave and get paid.

42:10And he said, look, you pay for the expertise, right? I've done it a billion times. You're paying me because I'm great at my job. And that stuck out to me as we drove away. And that to me was the inception, at least the pioneer on how people interact with price and value. She got a really low price, 389 bucks is cheap to get your spring fixed but she felt like she didn't get a good value because we were there for 15 minutes so over the next again over the next 18 24 months we and working with all of these other people in the industry we carve out the process that we run now and we expect our a technician we book a any service call for two hours so we expect it to take up to two hours.

43:02Now, I don't want them out of there anytime under an hour, no matter what they go out for. But let's stay with that same example. So today, if we were to send a technician out to the same lady's house, we park the car differently, the truck differently. We approach the door differently. When they knock, they know the type of mindset that the technician should be in. We get to know the customer before we even want to talk about what's going on. We want to know how long they've been in the house, how many times they use the door, how many people use the door. Do you have kids coming and going or pets coming and going that we want to consider or be worried about?

43:41How long do you plan on living there? Are you going to sell the house anytime soon? What do you do for a living? We want to get to know the customer. We call that section of the sales process, the BRT, build the relationship of trust.

43:55Alex Bridgeman: And also if it's recorded, those notes added to that customer's profile. So we know that there's two dogs, there's three kids. Yeah. So if we go back thereafter, the technician can look it back up and say, oh gosh, I remember Mrs. Jones. She works out at the base and has lived here for 20 years and never wants to leave. Okay. We're going to recommend a different solution for you than the person that is like, hey, I'm renting this house. And I literally want the cheapest possible option. So again, going back to that same experience. So the technician's going to take their time. Then they're going to say, okay, tell me what's going on with the door.

44:36Obviously, you've got a broken spring. I'll tell you what, I'm going to take care of that for you today. Is it okay if I do a full inspection on the entire system of the door? The panel system, the torsion system, the motor system. we're going to run a 29 point inspection and make sure that everything is else's is working properly because if you've got a bad spring it's likely that your cables are messed up your drums may be having issues your bearings may have a problem your rollers may be worn out and used your motor may be overworking like it's it's a system so we're going to look at everything we're going to spend some time it is that okay customer and they always say yes right we always want to know.

45:20And so now when a technician goes out to that same person, they spend that hour of time with the person. And then we present them with that report. Hey, these are the things that we're concerned about. These are the things that you ought to be thinking about down the road. And these are the things that are working great with your door. And then we, based on that information that we have, we recommend one of these four options. And guess what? Our cheapest isn't$389 anymore. It's more than that because we're giving you more. And we run that process and the average customer goes out and they may, depending on what they want, they may pick a much more expensive option.

46:01Say they walk out spending a thousand bucks, but they're happy to leave us a five-star review and say, this technician did an amazing job. I love the experience that I had. I'm so happy. Guess what? They got a new spring on their door, just like the lady did three years ago. But we've been there for an hour and a half or two hours. And they see the value that we're trying to present to them in that process versus, you know, I'm here for 15 minutes, pay me so I can get out of here onto my next job. And that, that very first, that was the first ride along I ever did as the owner of the company and that i sat and chewed on that for months before i was like we're changing we're going to change how we do it at pioneer yeah this is not going to work

46:48Alex Bridgeman: do you have do you service titan to capture the inspections and all the photos and everything yeah so we use service titan we've got some pre-built forms that we expect them to use and then some pre-built templates that we expect them to use when they present the options to the customer we had our car serviced recently and they did the same inspections but it was a video so there was and it was like five to ten second clips across each component or part there was a picture or a short video of the brakes and then the tires and oil and they like yeah pull it out here's the here's the new oil and like here's how it's working yeah and i thought that was pretty unique because they had the voiceover too yeah that's that's unique what we want to do is we want to do some show and tell so we want to go back and knock on the customer's door and we don't want to be there unless the customer's there we want to get to know them and understand what what their intent is with the with the service call so we're going to bring them back out into the garage and i tell them it's literally show and tell here's your old roller here's a new roller you know they're rated for 10 ,000 cycles or for any cycle count that we have there.

48:05Would you like us to put these old rollers back on or the new roller? Here's what a bearing, your old bearing is plastic and nasty and full of dirt. Here's a new bearing. Would you like us to put a new bearing on? Here are the old cables. Here are these new cables rated for the airline industry. You know, they're never going to break. And we want the customer to have a tactile experience at that point so that instead of us just saying oh you need new rollers cables and bearings well let us show you why we're recommending that and we use that in conjunction with our 29 point inspection so here's the problem let me show you a solution and then what do you want to do it's completely

48:45Alex Bridgeman: up to you right there's a lot more trust that way too actually showing them here's the worn out part you can see it here it's praying that probably that resonates a lot more i bet yeah yeah now Now, step 3.0 for pioneer overhead is along the lines of a little more technical. So the next piece that we're working on is providing the customer with that information on the front end. So Service Titan allows us to code jobs. So we know typically what's wrong before we go out. So let's stick with that spring example. So what we're working on right now Is right now when the customer calls in and we go out They get a job reminder, email, or text And that has a technician bio, right?

49:33Okay, your technician, John, he's coming out He's been with Pioneer for this long He likes puppies and long walks on the beach And he's a softie, even though he's all tatted up Whatever it is, right? in the future what what it's going to be is it's going to be an embedded video so instead of the customer receiving a text they're going to receive a text with a video in it that's john saying hey i'm john i'll be your technician i live here i'm local these are my hobbies i'm really looking forward to helping take care of you in your home thank you for thank you for trusting pioneer they're going to get that the next piece they're going to get is if we know let's say it's a broken spring we're working on a video series that's a 30 or 40 second clip of let us explain to you what goes into to pricing a spring when our technicians come out we've got a hundred different spring options depending on the size the weight and the warranty that you want for your door so we're we We don't just quote you, oh, a spring is going to cost$389 anymore because we've got options for you, depending on how long you want that spring to last.

50:47Do you want us to have a warranty on it? So if it breaks, we come back and fix it for free. What, you know, we can get a powder coated spring. Do you want a certain color of spring? Do you want, you know, different material of spring? So what we're doing now is a video series that we're creating as a company where depending on the job type, they're also going to get an intro into, we know you've got a broken spring. Let us give you a little bit of information about that before the technician shows up so that you feel educated on what they're trying to tell you when they get there. and we're going to extrapolate that out to all of the different services that we provide and chunk it down into bite-sized videos so that they can do it say they want us to come out for a a new door install estimate right and they call six companies which happens all the time well maybe we're quoting you a really nice high-end steel back polyurethane insulated door and company B is quoting you a same looking door, but with much less technical ability to it or a much inferior door option.

51:57Outside, they look pretty much the same, but the guts are different. And so we'll have a video series also to talk about, let us explain to you the difference between this type of door and that type of door and that type of door so that the questions that we know the customers are asking get answered before before a technician goes out so that's step 3.0 for pioneer is really being to being able to educate the customer on the front end of the sales process all through text through text text email or linkage so we'll either send them a link to our to our youtube page or to our social pages we'll do a text or an email the other thing that we utilize is ringless voicemails so we'll send a voicemail directly to them on occasion that'll say hey you know we do a lot of that on our our follow-up process i wonder if you can send a voice memo too like a voice recording yeah you could send a you can send a i don't uh yeah you probably

53:02Alex Bridgeman: could you could send a voice recording through text i do that the iphone to iphone works well I don't know iPhone, Android, or vice versa, if it's any different. But that would be really interesting. We had our furnace serviced back in North Carolina. And they used Service Titan. And they had texts to let us know they were on their way. But the problem was they used four or five different phone numbers. It was a different number for the tech. And then the other tech had a different phone number. And then there was the main phone number. And so I was trying to save the number so that when I called, I knew it was them.

53:38Alex Bridgeman: But every time it was a different phone number. So I was just like adding, do I add five phone numbers to one contact? That doesn't make any sense. Yeah, right. And so if there's a way to make it all one phone number, that'd be sweet. We've also started using Ramp. And when they texted to set up the account, the contact already got added to my phone. Oh, nice. It had a logo and I didn't have to add it yet, but they had the logo and name of the company. in the text conversation already there that's nice i don't know how you set that up but that would be kind of cool too yeah all of our outbound communication gets sent from service titan so to them yeah those are things that we would and they may have so the way they do it is they give you the the base subscription and they got a bunch of pro tools so they may have that in one of the pro tools that's just not something i'm familiar with but that's on my wish list now after seeing that like oh i want i want to figure that out yeah that'd be cool there's a lot of power also to the like video and explaining like sharing your name you're just the basic i think it's in i think there's a section in never split the difference about the power it's a great book by the way yeah yeah and it talked about how there was you know if you're in a like a bank robbery situation like you're a hostage or something yeah like saying like introducing yourself to the to the guys saying you're like yeah your names that gave you a meaningful better odds of not being harmed in any way yeah no that i've read that book more than once that's one of my go-tos and we i i have the technicians do that too oh nice yeah because yeah you're talking about his so he he did talk about the bank robbery this is chris boss but he also talked about an airline experience where you know you're lined up at the counter and people are given people are in stressful situations he always says hey my name's chris and he makes sure that that there's a an interpersonal relationship and then the late night dj voice yes yeah the late night dj voice but he does that and i do that all the time it drives my wife crazy because i'll be like hey what's the brian discount or now that we're best friends you know what's the friends a family discount and yeah it drives my wife crazy but i do that all the time too like even the like basic stuff like a late checkout just being friendly like it's you a long way yeah oh for sure and you know none of it's new you hear all this stuff you think oh yeah that makes sense customer service isn't new taking care of people isn't new it's just for some reason a lot of companies forgot what it's like and you know from going back to the value piece people only complain about price when there's an absence of value like if we do a good job of indicating the value that we that we're providing and give people options you don't hear them complain about price as much when they complain about price is when they don't see the value that you're trying to trying to offer and And so a lot of the service side really is just taking care of people and giving them a really good experience.

56:48That's easier said than done. That's not easy.

56:51Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I'm also a big fan of how fast like companies answer the phone really quickly and don't have as many of the automated or even any automated like this call is being recorded for quality or press one for this. Like, yeah, they all go to the same person. Yeah, some. So some states force you to do that. Thankfully, Utah does not. That's nice. They have done studies. If you don't answer the phone, it's something crazy. If you don't answer the phone within like 20 seconds, people will just hang up and call somebody else. The easiest things to implement AI in is in the phone side.

57:27And we dabbled with an AI receptionist and we had a horrible experience. Everybody hated it.

57:33Alex Bridgeman: Oh, geez, really? Yeah. And we thought, oh, this is going to be great, right? We'll just turn the AI lady on and she'll solve all our problems. And we did that for about three months and had so many people frustrated and not happy. They knew they were talking with a robot that we turned it off. Now, we do keep our AI receptionist on. Her name's Emily. But we keep Emily on after hours. Yeah, that makes sense. Because, yeah, we don't have... I'm not going to ask my people to stay up at 2 a.m. so we still will accept a call at any time and emily is good she's getting better but if you call after hours she's going to take it she's going to shoot us a text and if it's an emergency someone will get it move on if not we'll get to them the next day but yeah that that ai is still we're still working through that piece yeah did you try it for you tried it for all hours okay we tried to turn on well what we tried was what you'll find is you have call volume spikes and and dips right and as a small company we only ever have one or two people that are dedicated to the phones so if you get three people calling at once someone was going to voicemail my initial thought was well let's not get them to voicemail let's at least get them on the phone and so we We hired this AI company to be the overflow is what we called it.

59:00So if we had three or four people on the phone on a call, it would automatically get answered by Emily. And Emily would try to work them through a process. And she was OK. And let's be honest, probably in the next year or two. We'll all go that way because it will be indistinguishable from a live person.

59:19Alex Bridgeman: It'll get better. Yeah. But today, that wasn't the case, at least in our experience. And so we turned it on and we had a lot of people annoyed and we we turned it off for overflow. So we felt like at least our experience, it was better for a customer to get sent to voicemail and let's say, hey, sorry, we're crazy busy right now. We will call you back as soon as we get off the phone and then send them to an AI. Yeah. Yeah. Could you see like a measurable difference in like books, jobs? no we didn't we didn't see that what we saw was a measurable measurable difference in people complaining so people would you'd hear it on their the call transcripts with emily you'd be like you know we know you're a robot i want to speak to a live person yeah yeah and and i get that too if i had my preference i would rather speak to a to someone now again in in a year or two or maybe less the ai's that piece may go away because they'll just be so good and so conversive and so able to answer your questions that really what you want is you want to get your problem solved if a computer can do that and you can't it better than a human that might be one thing that goes away in the next in the next couple years but again for us in the immediate future we're still answer we just hired another customer service representative because our call volume is a little high right now so we're still going to have a live body answer on the phone good good nice i've noticed even like uh i'm excited for ai to keep getting better with speech to text yeah i like speech to text for texting and emails whisper flow is pretty good clunky on the phone but the desktop version is is really good is it okay yeah so the siri has been bad for a long time yeah that not doesn't really seem to be getting better but some of these other tools seem to be getting better and yeah i'm excited about that okay okay yeah some random things like that but in closing like what are you excited to see get done this year like if we're you know it's christmas here yeah what are you going to look back and be i think most most pumped about you You know, one of the interesting things about growing a business in my experience is you don't recognize the little wins that end up making a big impact.

1:01:44And having underwritten hundreds of businesses in my previous career and having bought and sold a few and now operating Pioneer Overhead, the thing that sets businesses apart is the operations, right? How good are you at operating a business? And the hard thing about measuring that is the tiny little wins along the way, the little pieces along the way. For me, there's got to be joy in the journey, right? We've recognized that we have some pretty lofty goals of where we're trying to be as a company in the next three to five years. And we certainly have markers that we're trying to hit and goals that we're trying to achieve.

1:02:25it's the can you are you happy with the day-to-day and and how you are and and who you are every day a pioneer overhead we we blur the lines of what the typical employee employer customer relationship looks like we're interested in our employees or is their home life happy are they do they have happy hobbies are they out doing things other than work are they progressing as people like We talk a lot about that here. And so to answer your question, you know, by the end of the year, what do we want? We certainly want to grow as fast as we can. But we want team members here that are happy to work here and that are motivated and that have upward mobility.

1:03:12And we want customers who are raving fans to bring in another great book that have positive experiences with Pioneer Overhead that tell their friends and family about us. And if we're doing that, the growth will come. There's always little things to tweak in the company. But in terms of, you know, if you step back and take a holistic look at it, that's the goal. Team members who are happy and thriving and moving forward in a positive manner and customers who love us.

1:03:43Alex Bridgeman: I love it. Brian, thanks for coming on. This has been a lot of fun. Pleasure. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it was nice to meet you. Thank you for letting me. Absolutely.

1:03:53Alex Bridgeman: Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of Think Like an Owner. If you enjoyed the show, please consider leaving us a review and telling a friend to help more folks find Think Like an Owner. For full episode transcripts in our weekly newsletter, please visit our website at tlaopodcast.com.