In this week’s episode of the Contractor Momentum, we are joined by Travis Ringe, the owner of ProSkill Services, one of the best service trades in the Southwest. He shares with us how he built a successful business through his unique philosophy and mindset.
Hit play to find out how he gets consistent 5-star reviews for his business!
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ProSkill Services Website: https://proskillservices.com/
ProSkill Services Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/proskillservices/
0:41 Transparency in the business
- Dealing with the frustrations and headaches that transparency brings
- Deciding how transparent you will be in your contracting business
1:03 Introduction of the guest and his background
- Owning a plumbing business with his brother since 2009
- Starting out in the mortgage industry and managing wholesale mortgage
- Overcoming unemployment after a recession
2:09 The birth of Travis’s contracting business
- The setup and the official launch of their own plumbing service business
- Expanding to other services such as air conditioning and systems setup
- Facing the challenge of underperforming employees
3:10 Start of the expansion
- Enrolling in crash courses to learn more about other services
- Focusing on the dispatch of 8 trucks while working on the field
- The benefits of going to AHBAC school for 6 months
4:00 Sales during the first year of expansion
- Running on AHBAC revenue
- Staying on track with AC sales from 1800 to 2800
- Becoming known as the largest trained dealer in the southwest
- Excelling in specialty services like taintless water heaters, AC system installation, and water treatment
5:10 The business transformation
- Going from $600,000 in revenue way back 2012-2013 to earning $3.6 to 4 million in plumbing
- Expanded their contracting business by adding an electrical division
7:23 Advice to trade business owners that want to expand
- How to handle the initial challenges
- Fully maximizing the potential of your current trade before moving on to the next
- Exhausting vertical marketing, using your specialty and efficiently reaching out to your service area
- The importance of customer service
- The key to finding the right people, building the right team and using the right tools
- Why remarketing to the same customer base matters
10:15 Review-gating and the power of reviews
- Getting more 5-stars out of 3,058 Google reviews
- Avoiding review software that can be awkward to use and make customers feel put on-the-spot
- The process of review-gating that get feedback from 3-star reviews and place 4 and 5-star reviews on Google
12:22 Strategies in managing reviews
- What platforms don’t allow software that does review-gating
- The importance of true valuation and only using reviews from Google and Yelp
- Using reviews as a means to learn from and fix mistakes
- Promoting transparency in business practices
16:40 Why customer service is important
- Why Travis’s company stopped using review software
- The value of reaching out to the customers and asking about their experience
- The importance of giving clients the opportunity to vent out
- Asking for reviews from customers on the field
19:07 How to handle reviews in Google
- Frequently updating Google reviews
- The inherent problems that come with reviews from Google
- Why you shouldn’t just rely on review count
- What you can do without automated systems and platforms
20:31 Their commitment to transparent pricing
- Why your sales will NOT diminish if you declare prices upfront (unlike what some contractors believe)
- Waiving the diagnostic and service fee unless they go to the site and do the work
- Benefits of declaring the price on the phone as soon as the customers ask
- Tracking everyone who fills up the form on their website
- Using email forms as a marketing tool
24:00 The lead-capture tool
- How they capture leads in a way that no other contracting business does
- What details they collect from potential customers
26:30 Entertaining questions about pricing
- The beauty of explaining pricing calculations to clients
- Why they never charged an extra fee for those customers who lived farther away
- Getting customers to appreciate you because of your honesty
- Why face-to-face communication is still a good strategy
29:33 Success rates due to transparent pricing
- Achieving an excellent closing and turnaround rate
- What customer concerns we entertain
- Realistically using the lead capturing tool to promote the business
33:00 The bottom line
- Why it’s better to tell the price of your services upfront
- Taking advantage of the trust factor that customers look for
- How this can help your business save on resources
This episode was a goldmine of valuable information for trades business owners. I’ll definitely be applying a thing or two! Stay tuned for future episodes that will help you make the most out of your contracting business.
