How to Grow Your Business with Sales Process and Technique

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Speaker B: Hello everyone out there in podcast world. Hope you're having a wonderful day. You're listening to or watching The Service Business Mastery podcast. I am one of your hosts, Church Blissett, sitting virtually next to my co host, Joshua Crouch. And we have another Josh on the show today, Josh Martin. And, uh, he is the director of revenue strategy, 34 Labs. And we're going to talk a little bit about AI. We're going to talk a little bit about, uh, teams and adopting AI. AI strategies in your business. It is definitely a buzzword, a hot topic. Uh, we talk about it all the time anyways, we've always talked a lot about automation and AI just naturally fits in there. But a lot of times people ask, where do we get started? How do we implement this in our business? And, and all that good jazz. And so I'm excited to talk to, uh, Josh number one about that because Josh, uh, number two and I. He is always number two.

Speaker C: I love how you just demoted me.

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, wow, he's number two.

Speaker C: I was not forewarned that I was going to get demoted during this episode.

Speaker B: You're welcome. So we talk about this all the time, but I'm, I'm excited to hear, Josh Martin, your take on implementing this and adopting AI strategies into the businesses. Before we get started, though, first I'll let my Josh inject anything he liked to and then if you will please, uh, share a little bit about yourself.

Speaker A: Sure, sure.

Speaker C: Yeah. Let's, let's start with, uh, three or Four Labs, because, like, Church and I have seen the name around, we don't necessarily know what it is. Um, so is this a good, a good, uh, intro for us as well? Obviously we have some, some stuff to talk about during the call, but, uh, who is Three4Labs? What do you do? They do. Just so the people that listening know.

Speaker A: Sure, absolutely. So Three4Labs is actually. It's a software company built for the trades. Um, so trying to solve problems with the trades. Major focus, obviously, in artificial intelligence. Really anything that's going to help out businesses within that world. Um, that as the digital landscape kind of grows across different industries, it's. It's hit the trades and contractors pretty heavy here over the last couple years. And it's kind of what you need, um, to be successful. Um, Three4Labs is wholly owned by Toby Mello. Um, a lot of people know that name out there. So this has been his foray into the software world.

Speaker B: Nice. Like he doesn't have enough irons in different fires.

Speaker C: I don't think he sleeps, to be honest. Tony, if you listen to this. Get some sleep, brother.

Speaker B: Right, yeah. Uh, that between that and his boat and Building all the things he's building. That guy's. He is always doing something. Um, but he's also the epitome of, of optimized processes as well. And I love the fact that, like, years, uh, ago, he and I were talking and his assistant hands him a stack of papers. And, like, we're on a zoom call or something. I don't remember what it was, but. And he said, oh, this is my mail for the day. And I was like, well, it's not in envelopes. Like, what kind of mail do you get? He's like, oh, no, my assistant's already opened them all up and only hands me the ones that are relative to me. And I'm like, oh, that's efficient. He's like, yeah, every single night. And I was like, that's still a stack of papers. He's like, yeah, these are the ones that I actually have to look at. And the rest of them have gone somewhere else to somebody else. I was like, that's. That is pretty, pretty, pretty awesome. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and, um, because you. You've done a lot, um, outside of the trades also. And so, uh, it's really cool whenever we see people bringing in outside thought processes into the trades.

Speaker A: Yeah, man. Um, so I guess I'll. Short story long. Um, I grew up in a super rural town and in Ohio. Right. So my, My first job was kind of in the trap. Bailed hay. I helped put roofs on. I painted roofs. Like, we built my. My uncle's house type of deal. These are all true stories, right? I really grew up in more tech consulting. Um, and it was. It's definitely a different world. There are several ways to operate, um, you know, out there that, that make you successful and they help you grow. Right. Um, and I was able to learn that, you know, that's one of the crazy things I got. I got lucky when it gets down to it. I got in, I had a couple buddies get into this small, uh, company. It's like build out of closet. It felt like, you know, and I, I went in and they were like, hey, we're going to train you, develop you, help you understand how to be successful in this industry. Um, and I did. And I didn't really realize what was happening, but, you know, I started, and I knew the revenue was around, like, I'll call it $15 million. Um, eight years later, like, it was at 800 million. I had no idea what really happened around me. I'd been proloaded a couple times. I was running Markets. And I was. It's like your head was on fire all the time. And I did a lot of sales coaching, a lot of sales training, because it turned into. It's, it's funny, um, people say that companies have to become technology companies to really grow. Like, yeah, it's, it's, it's a tech company that does this. It's a technically those banking. Right. Hear that more and more.

Speaker C: For sure.

Speaker A: Right. And to me, you know, it's, it's still about the people. So to me, I was like, you need a company that can train and develop people to be great if it's going to be a services company, because they are your brand. Right. So that was kind of my, my first run at a professional job other than trying to, you know, be in a band before that, which I don't know that I should talk about.

Speaker B: What sort of band was it?

Speaker A: Uh, we played covers and had a very, very good time in Wilmington, North Carolina for about two years.

Speaker B: Uh. Oh, we have a client in Wilmington, North Carolina. That's really cool.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's. That's right on the water, isn't it?

Speaker A: It is, it is, yeah. Okay. I thought so I bought this really cool lady that, uh, was at UNCW at the time, getting her masters. And, you know, she broke a band. We call her Yoko, but, uh, I call her Stacy. And been married for 22 years here now.

Speaker B: That's awesome.

Speaker A: Um, but, uh, you know, no, I, I got into this, you know, rhythm of getting into smaller companies and seeing them grow. Not purely because of me. Right. You know, I was part of it. So I just got to learn a lot of things over the last couple years, um, at 20 to, you know, say more. Several years, you know, here. Fairly recently. Got on with three, four labs. They had some products that I thought were really cool. Heard a lot more talk about, you know, the home services industry, how it's growing, how it's more stable, like AI can't make it go away. The tech industry is getting crushed. Now if you are a software development company, like, oh, yeah, good luck, brother. It's been cool to come over here, but still use my tech background. And, you know, with Fieldspark, you know, one of our flagship product products, it's like the coaching and the development component of what I've done for 20 years. It's a platform to help out with that.

Speaker B: So, so what is, what is fieldspark exactly?

Speaker A: Cool. Um, so it's, it is basically it's coaching software. So you, I mean, you guys talked about I hate doing this but um, there are ride along softwares. Oh yeah, I will not say the names. Um, but essentially Tommy was like, I can do it better.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Um, so he went out and he built FieldSpark, you know, for a one garage. Then we decided to commercialize that. Like hey, let's push this out to the masses. So it's everything you would think it, you know, basically for field services. Um, it will record the calls. The entire sales call breaks it down into categories, rates against the categories. Are you saying what you should say? Ah, you know, there's all the coaching behind it. Um, so it really helps that middle layer. Like I again was in sales management for a long time and having to go out on the road with somebody, write it all up in an email. Here's the things you did right? Here's the things I'd like you to work on. Takes all of that work and cuts it by 10 times. Yeah.

Speaker B: Oh yeah. Not only that, like the time and the technician acts different when I'm in the band with them versus like whenever they're, they're just doing their thing and

Speaker C: well that's, that's exactly what we're sharing. Before this I, we, we just recorded an episode a little bit of, we have a little bit of a break for record. This one jump on Facebook. First thing that pops up just happens to be relevant to this episode was in a Facebook group where people were talking about AI ride along softwares and just like online pricing. That used to be a conversation four or five years ago. I remember when we started talking with uh, Justin Riley and up Frog of like I will never put pricing on my website or people like oh yeah, this is great, I love doing this and it was just so polar opposite and I feel like there's still that with, with AI Ride along software because they're like well I don't want my, I don't want my tax. Or I think it's more them for self projecting like they wouldn't want to be recorded because they probably don't fly. Follow a, a sales system. They just have good calls and bad calls and then they lump. You know, they average them together to be okay or pretty good. But literally like.

Speaker B: Or blame it on the client.

Speaker C: Yeah, all that customer was weird or they had you know, this, that and the other thing instead of like well did you follow the play? Did you follow the system that we have in place so that way we can have consistent, repeatable, scalable results. Like you don't take a company in any industry. You're in the tech industry from 15, 8, 800 million in eight years without a, without a consist. I mean, obviously you have a good product or service, but a consistent sales system, you have to have that. And that's why do. I mean, think, think about what, what Tommy's invested in. He's. He's got lace for AI call analysis. He understands his call center, making sure that they're tweaking, just finding 1 to 2, 3% increments field spark for his field service team to do the same thing, to find these little, these little levers that they can pull to change the game for their business. Because he knows with the volume of service calls they run, a 1 or 2% increase is millions of dollars. It's not, it's not a couple hundred thousand, it's mil. Literally millions of dollars. And a lot of that since they already covered their overhead. That stuff's going for profit and it just changes the game. And that's why he's been so dang successful. And, and they always say success leaves clues. So if the most successful people in the industry are implementing technology to help their team, why would you fight that? I, I sometimes I don't understand the mindset of why you would fight that stuff unless you had some, like, religious reason to fight it or something. But I just don't. I don't see where you would not want this technology unless you couldn't afford it.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, I think there's also, there's the mindset of, uh, the technicians or the people that are out there, um, like that Big Brother type of thing.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: The people that are following the process, they're like, no, no, I, I want them to know that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. The people that aren't following the process are the ones that are like, oh, um, no, this, this is terrible. Like, it doesn't work.

Speaker C: Like, I think it's some. It might, it might be even a mix. Like the people that have been in the trades for 15, 20 years as. So they've seen the entire change in how technology has really become a heavy pen and paper. Oh, yeah, we're. I mean, that's how I started the industry of church. I know you did too. Like, it was. I just. My text would come back with a stack of tickets and I'd have to try to make headers, heads or tails. I couldn't read half the damn handwriting checks. We've fallen out of the paperwork a month later. It's terrible. Like, you look Back now. And you're like, man, how do we,

Speaker B: how did we do this?

Speaker C: How did we ever grow?

Speaker A: I didn't.

Speaker C: So like, it just seemed silly with all this. But we'd find checks in people's trucks after they, they handed in their trucks. I'm like, oh, there's some money.

Speaker A: That's. Yeah, I, I could, I don't know. I, I have really bad handwriting. So anything that involves paper is just like. I uh, I try to avoid it at all costs.

Speaker B: I uh, remember being the technician though and like I'd have sweat running down my arms and I'm trying to write on this three layer piece of paper and it's all smudging. It was, it was frustrating. I was excited whenever we got uh, tablets and we were able to do things electronically. That was amazing to me.

Speaker A: Yeah, it seems like a lot less clutter. You know. And the funny thing too is I think there's obviously that, that change and people in general, I think people like push back on change. You know, it's one thing but yeah, the tough thing is usually it's the record. I don't want to be recorded. Right. You know, with, with some of these things I was like, everybody's got ring. There's video cameras everywhere on everything. Like you know, it's.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: I don't know why, I don't know why crime hasn't just dissolved. Like everything is videotaped everywhere.

Speaker B: Yeah, well don't get me started on flock cameras. That's uh, a whole different rabbit hole to fall into. But uh, I, I agree with you though. Like. Well, even church AI note takers.

Speaker C: Churches evolved. Yeah. He usually, usually wears them. I know I have them somewhere. I don't, I don't need them a lot. We, we fathom recordings for every single conversation we have with clients and internal just so we have the notes. Like it. Turks got meta glasses. Like yeah, you can literally record anything anytime. Which honestly from a society perspective sucks because like people will be in a fight and people will reach to grab their damn phone instead of trying to break up the fight. Like that's how ridiculous. Yeah, they'd rather, they'd rather get social media followers than break up a fight. That's a, again a whole different conversation.

Speaker A: Right, right.

Speaker C: Holding stuff that's going down that you could maybe help someone out.

Speaker B: But I've found the technicians that give me the hardest time on being recorded are the same technicians that will listen to every single recording from a csr. Like they, before they even got to the job, they've already listened to the recording of the CSR conversation with the homeowner and they, they're like giving feedback to the csr, but yet, uh, whenever I ask them to get recorded, they're like, nope, not recording me.

Speaker A: Like, yeah, there's, it's, it's. I think when I did more of the ride alongs because again, I haven't really done the, the recording thing. Like, I'm not home services. That's what a product does. And other products, I've shaped it a little differently. I was like, if you're good, please share. If I can record you, we can get insights from actually all these great things that you're actually, the way you're positioning, the way you're talking to people, your tone, all those things. Like, if I can teach somebody that's new to the industry, like how to do those things, you're gonna, you could potentially change somebody's lives. Yeah.

Speaker B: And, and also, like when you're playing sports, the first thing that they, that you do is you go back and you watch the film like, where did I make a misstep? And where could I improve in the future? And there's nothing wrong with that. So, like, why wouldn't we want to do that in the field and make ourselves a better salesperson? But then again, you say the word sales and. And a technician just starts to cringe.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker C: I catch my, I catch my wife because she, she does, uh, some of the sales for us and we have one other salesperson for. I own a digital market. I don't even think I told you it before.

Speaker B: We.

Speaker C: I catch her watching her own Fathom recordings. I don't tell her to. She's a co owner of the business. Like, she doesn't have to do it, but she does because she learned stuff from those recordings that went well or didn't go well. So she doesn't do it again and repeat the, the step the next time. And I just, I know it's somewhat. It's weird sometimes to listen to yourself, but. Oh, yeah, so much to be learned. Like, we don't even realize the little ticks and little things that we do that could change a conversation, you know, especially when you're in someone's home for two hours on a regular service call. Like, there's a lot that can go wrong. You can have muddy boots, you can have something on your hand, it gets on the wall. Like just little things that Hummer's like, yeah, that. So a lot has to go right to, to make it happen. And they like these things are important to know what's going on inside. Just like why would you be against dash cams for your trucks?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Even. Because if somebody's not paying attention in a company truck, I'd want to know that considering I bought a 7,080 hundred thousand dollars vehicle for them to ride in.

Speaker A: I think it's always good for the owners. Right. It's always good for leadership advantagement. Right. And I think helping the individuals that are actually being recorded understand that, hey, this is good for you as well. Um, sometimes that, that like change management piece, um, when you're implementing, you know, any type of system, they have to, you know, the wifm. Right. What's in it for me? So helping people understand that, hey, you can go back and look at your recordings like you know, Josh, like your wife, it's like it'll make you better. Like if you really are taking this seriously and you want to be great, like this gives you all the tools to go out like you know, back to. I remember high school football. I live the glory days. Right. You know, I still got the VHS tapes at home.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: You know, you, we plugged them in on Saturdays. We checked it out. Uh, you should have been over here, all that fun stuff. But because I cared, I wanted to win, I wanted to do better, I wanted the team to be better, you know.

Speaker B: Ah, absolutely.

Speaker A: And it turns into, oddly enough it turns into like, like it turns into hiring.

Speaker B: How, how so what do you mean by that?

Speaker A: I think I'm sure you guys heard like hiring for attitude over aptitude.

Speaker B: Oh yeah.

Speaker A: You know, if you have those go getters and it was one of the things in, in my sales career I struggled with because I was like, anybody can do this. You just follow process. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, but finding the people that would invest in themselves to get better, that's hard.

Speaker C: And you don't usually know it right away either.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Say the right thing or have an AI generated resume that has the right thing. That's more common. Like we, we do a speaking of that we do, we uh, use who hire for our hiring and instead it's an eight applicant tracking system. We have like interview questions before we get on the interview. And then like the one way video interview like you can always can usually tell when they do the long form answer ones which ones were AI generated and which ones were not. Because it's like. Hm, that doesn't seem like like a real answer.

Speaker B: That's really wordy and you got no value in it.

Speaker C: That's a dead giveaway It's a book. Like nobody, nobody writes that much unless it's AI. Right, because we're all getting used to that and I've never read so much in my entire life.

Speaker A: It's almost like if there's not punctuation and spelling errors, it's not real.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: When it comes to like this, we're talking all this technology and like all these, these um, hindrances to get them implemented. What would you like, what kind of ways would you share to have that conversation with a team? Like, let's see, you got some also

Speaker B: AI, like work on adding that and, and working with teams implementing AI. Like how has that been? Because I mean some companies that I work with, they uh, are like, everybody wants it, everybody's excited about it. And then other companies, they're like, won't work in our market. We can't do it. I'm like, well you don't have to use it the exact same way that company a used it. You can do a different way. And like, there's like huge roadblocks. But how's, how, how do you make it work in your experience?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, you know, from an adoption standpoint is kind of what I start thinking about things. It's, it does go back to that with them. Like what it, what's in it for me, you know, to help them understand why you're doing things. Also, I think at a leadership consultant I got to work with a little bit, you know, through a company is this crazy like named Scott with one T. Those Scots are always, you know. Uh, but he was, he was special ops. He was, ah, um, what, Delta.

Speaker B: Okay, so he's special. Special ops.

Speaker A: Yes, yes. He was like, and he, he always said words mean things and I was like, I got it, Scott. But words mean a lot to people. Right? Artificial intelligence scares the crap out of people. Right. When you say AI sometimes maybe you should say we're going to use technology. Okay. Technology is not bad. We're used to that word. So for me that was just one of the little things that, you know, we've started to use. Hey, this is just technology. You don't need to understand the learning models, you know, the learning language with the LLMs and the machine learning and you know, let's talk about JavaScript and, and no, no, we're not going to talk about Python coding. Like, don't even talk about it. Right. You know, hey, this is technology to help you guys be more efficient so you can get your, your 40 hour week done in 40 hours instead of working 60 hours.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. Well, not only that. Okay, so there are so many times where people have injected the words AI or uh, artificial intelligence when they really. It wasn't artificial intelligence, it was just an automation that built out. And there are times where like, I've gotten so jaded now, uh, I can recognize them better now, but man, in the past, I don't know, year to two years, Josh and I both, we would see people that were like, yeah, this AI tool. And then we start messing with it and it's like, this isn't AI at all. This is just an innate in automation. Like, what, what are we do? Like, and then we would get so irritated and then it's like, all right, it's the buzzword. It's how you get clicks to get, you know, people, uh, looking when you're

Speaker C: doing a presentation, just put the word AI in your presentation. All of a sudden it's a packed house. Talk about automation and making your business more efficient.

Speaker B: Exactly. We, we literally ran into that. Like, we, we, we've talked about automation for years and years and we were presenting on stage and, and our presentation says something about automation and like it's crickets, but it says something about AI. And then we fill the room up and then we talk about AI. Uh, yeah, so we talk about, if we talk about AI, we lose them. But if we talk about automation, then they're like, oh yeah, that's exactly what I want.

Speaker C: I want automation, this data thing to move over here. I mean really, where AI is analyzing like huge score swaths of data, like two hour calls or you know, 100 calls from the CSR or the call center that week. Like, it's amazing at doing those things so you can be more efficient. Like we, we have some clients of ours that are on phone tap that they came to us, they had someone full time, like literally their only job was to listen to and analyze calls and make sure that they were classified properly so they had correct data. Imagine doing that 40 hours a week just listening to phone calls and making notes.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, I think that's for me, it's like for AI, I guess going down the automation path, it's like you have to have a workflow before you can automate anything. So if you don't have a process, like, you're doomed. Right. Um, you know, and then artificial intelligence even, you know, more on top of that, like, hey, you have to have the right learning model, you know, that write LLMs, uh, on top of that, your data has to be clean.

Speaker C: That is.

Speaker B: A lot of people don't talk about

Speaker C: that massive problem, especially in the home service industry.

Speaker A: Oh yeah, like just nobody knows how

Speaker C: to use the, nobody knows how to like when I do this thing in my CRM, what does it impact on the reporting side? And so they like we don't. And some of it's because it's unclear language. The language that people that operate in the businesses use and the, the, the language that software companies use are different and you have to like try to understand the definition. You're like, that isn't. I don't, that doesn't even make sense to me. I don't even know what that means. So then they just keep doing things the way that they're doing. Like this is the way it works for us. Well and then you go pull the data to analyze and it's like the LLM doesn't understand it either because now you got this hybrid of a mixture of what it should be versus what the definition of this word is. And it definitely becomes a problem.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that the products that are out there, they're getting better at that non structured, kind of messy data to read through it. You know, I know that's one of the, one of the things early on with you know, jumping back into field spark a little bit. Um, like it was like, is it reading the conversations properly? You know, um, what does. One of the things we capture is sentiment. So we talk about like positive sentiment. Like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that's buying signs, right? That's, you think, good. Then um, we have a negative sentiment that would be like, no, you know, and the AI was able to pick that sentiment up, you know, from the data captured, you know, through the phone calls. But what we found, sometimes we would see red, um, that a tech technician would be, say for a garage door. And it was a technician actually explaining, hey, if you don't fix this other spring, this door could drop on somebody and somebody could die.

Speaker B: That's definitely negative. But it wasn't the client's negative.

Speaker A: But it's, you know, it's, it's kind of one of those things is not bad like meaning from a, ah, from you doing your job and helping a customer make the right decision. That's what I've always said in sales. Just helping people make the right decisions, that's all somebody's doing. Um, so we had to really understand with the software and reprogram the LLM say hey, negative isn't necessarily Bad. It's just a negative sentiment. Um, so there's, there's so many things out there, you know, trying to figure out technology and then there's technology to figure out the technology. Um, it's, it's kind of true.

Speaker B: I don't think a truer statement has been said.

Speaker A: We're laughing because it's true. Yeah, it is.

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Speaker B: about where AI is useful in, in businesses. Where in your opinion, would AI just be like a noise?

Speaker A: It's a good question. I think sometimes. For example, I'm going to. This is kind of cool. I'm going to talk to some high school students tomorrow. Down the right path. Yeah, it's. It's kind of cool. I got a buddy of mine, he's done it for the last couple years and it's about like entrepreneurs. And um, so I was like, you know what? Everybody's talking about AI. You know what I'm going to do? I am going to go out, I'm going to make a. I'm going to make a PowerPoint, but I'm not going to build a PowerPoint for one. I hate it. Two, it takes me forever. Three, I was like, this could be kind of a cool experiment. Um, and this is where the noise comes in.

Speaker B: I'm.

Speaker A: I'm going to actually do a chat GPT. I'm going to, you know, do it with Claude and I'm going to do. I'm going to do it with Copilot. I have all three. Let's see what happens. So I got down the path with one and I was like, here, it's bad. I went to the second one. I was like, oh, these are all words. This is crap. And then I got into the first one and I was like, what if I take it what I had the product that I had from the one that I liked and put it back into one of the. You can just get lost in it.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

Speaker A: Especially Rabbit Hole. That's a lot of time.

Speaker C: Um, for sure, you don't know the outcome. You don't know what the outcome you want to be is.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: But not to add another tool, you should have tried Manus, man.

Speaker B: That's. That's another one.

Speaker C: Manus has done Some really good PowerPoint stuff for me in the past with. With very little, like, not a lot of prompting outside of some brand guidelines.

Speaker B: I'll tell you a really cool one too is Claude's, uh, PowerPoint integration. So, like, it, like when you open up PowerPoint, it actually has Claude in the PowerPoint with it.

Speaker A: Really?

Speaker B: And it'll like, boom. Like, I had lit, so I was in front of a class teaching it. Teaching, um, a class in, uh, Washington. And I was just demonstrating the different AI tools and their capabilities and things like that.

Speaker C: And.

Speaker B: And I opened up the PowerPoint presentation for the day and I opened up the cloud integration on the right hand side of the screen and, uh, showed people. I was like, okay, so take this entire presentation and change the color code to purple and pinks. And we watched it and it literally just changed the entire presentation. If the color codes previously didn't match the pink and purple, then it changed it also. It matched it, uh, but very well. And people like, oh, that was like, completely useless. But very interesting that it could be done.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I think that, you know the funny thing, and it's back to, like when you guys were saying earlier, back to the noise piece with, with AI. I've seen a lot of automation wreck shops, like, you know.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

Speaker A: Like, because they're like, oh, it's automated.

Speaker B: Well, yes.

Speaker A: Did you check it once in a

Speaker B: while, set it and forget it.

Speaker A: Yes. That's where things are lost. You have angry customers because an email was supposed to forward that went to one spot that didn't go to somebody. You know, that's. I've, I've dealt with that on several different occasions. Not necessarily noise, but I think sometimes there's a, an overconfidence that the technology will just take care of it. And you.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: You gotta kind of babysit these things.

Speaker B: You definitely have to do checks and balances on it all. Yeah. We talk a lot about in our presentation is optimize, automate, delegate. So like the optimization portion of things, like you need to optimize it prior to trying to automate it or delegate it. And that's one of the reasons why they're right there.

Speaker C: I'm waiting to see an indeed ad that says human in the loop as a, like a, like an actual position

Speaker A: that somebody gets hired for.

Speaker C: Just be the human in the loop. I know what you talking about. Like I talk about that too because we have some stuff running that we have it overseen by humans, but it is running. But I'm definitely not at the level of like just letting things just run. There's some people out there probably trust that stuff more. I'm like, I just know, I do not want to come in one day and realize we screwed something up big. Like you could, you could ruin yourself. And so it's probably going to take me a few years to get to the point of like, okay, this is really good. I don't need to touch this anymore. But the human loop I think is the, the piece that most people miss. Like it. We, we just talked about this with uh, CallRail in our last recording. These guys set up AI voice to help with overflow and stuff like that. But they, they set it up once and then they just kind of let it run instead of like analyzing the calls. How did it do? What do you want? What do you want done differently? What, how did it mishandle this one? What would you like done the next time that happens? And they don't change that process or they don't adjust it, they don't have anyone watching it. And that's where things. And it's like, wow, it doesn't work. It's just like anything else, right? It's. Well it doesn't work if you don't do anything with the information. The information is only good if you take action. It's just like I saw a quote and of course camera the quote now. But like it's not about applied knowledge because like you can read a Lot of books. But if you just read books and you don't do anything, it's useless. It's just a waste of your time. You have to apply the knowledge you learn through the books that you read or the videos you watch for it to be valuable. And I think to the, to the point of. We've talked about this a lot today is there's can also be data overload. It's like, what do I do with it? And that's, uh, that's. I feel like that's where AI can be really useful. It's like, okay, I got all this data. Break it down for me, dummy style. Like I'm a fifth grader. I have no idea what I'm looking at. Break it down. What can I do with this? And it does usually a pretty good job of taking that information and making it something useful that everyone can understand. Even if it's almost like a foreign language to you.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that where it does play out well, I think we're People again get into trouble. They like, they're like, this is the agent in the loop that's handling everything. But it's not a very specific use case. For example, I'll go back to fieldspark again. We've had folks that have, you know, picked um, up the platform and they're like, cool, like, tell it to make my salespeople better. I'm like, no, no, no, it's a platform, right. You know, you, you have to like. And we have a customer, a great customer success team that works with people to actually, hey, let's make sure that you're, you know, your sales. I, I don't like to call it process because that's a different to me after as a sales coach. But they're like, but your, your sales framework, right. And the, the questions that you want asked, the information that you want to pull from your customers, uh, the things that you want your, you know, folks to say out in the field. If you don't have that down, well, the system doesn't know what good looks like in your eyes.

Speaker B: Yep, that's true.

Speaker A: So I think, you know, uh, that was.

Speaker B: And yeah, that's not the exact same for every company either.

Speaker A: 100%. And that's, I think with, you know, our platform, that's what we wanted. Like it's all different. Right. Like you get your own thing and it will learn around your model, your framework to be able to help your really your management level and help people grow. Um, you know that that's. But if you don't have that. That's.

Speaker B: What would you say. Yeah. What would you say to those who maybe even wanting to sign up for it, but they don't even have that laid out properly?

Speaker A: Here's what I tell most people. If you have more than like two folks that are selling, you have it somewhere. You know what I mean? Somebody just needs to take. And. And this is where maybe AI. You can just bl. Like, hey, this is what I would do in a sales call. It might build something for you that's a little bit. And then you tweak it.

Speaker B: Yeah. Like a rough, rough outline.

Speaker A: But. Yeah, but like I do when I, when we talk to companies that are like, hey, I got five technicians. My goal is to double in size next year. Well, then you need 10 technicians. Right.

Speaker B: Like this period.

Speaker A: Like, and if they're selling, you know, or if you have a sales team, like, you're gonna have to double that to grow in size or people are gonna have to do twice as much work.

Speaker C: Well, that's the hardest part when you grow a team like that. You talked about hiring a little bit. Is if you don't have a system or framework or a way for them to run the play, you're just hoping that they're gonna get in the van, just do what they've always done, and then hopefully it's going to be good. And that can lead to wildly different tickets across your entire ecosystem. And then when you're looking at how do you support that on the back end, you don't know because some jobs are more profitable than others. You just have no. There's just no consistency and the con.

Speaker B: And that's how it's been in the past.

Speaker C: It has. This is your. Either, uh, that or uh, you dispatch for dollars. Right. And you just send the best technician to the best opportunities, which still has a lot of value even today. Because obviously everyone's different in their. Their journey. But sometimes that's not plausible. You don't have a. Or like a best performer where it's like this, this person's a killer. I know they're going to sell the new system on this one. And it also, if you always rely on that, that if that person leaves, you are screwed. You are so dead in the water. And then that person pretty much can tell you whatever they wanted they don't have. They don't have to fit into the culture because they know they kind of got your wrapped around their finger. It's just not a good place for any business owner to be. To be in a Place where you rely on one or two people to like generate the majority of your sales. And that's where a system and that's where we were talking before this like. And there's a lot of great coaching organizations out there. There's a lot of great sales coaches. If you don't have a system, get with a coach to find a system. Brian Burton's got one that's super affordable for technicians. Like $299 a month. He teaches whole blue collar closer system. Doug Wyatt with Synergy's got scripts, uh, and all kinds of things you guys can run. It's super affordable. But get a system installed in your company. Pick one and get it installed. Like Tersh and I, we went through CEO Warrior. We did the Road Warrior. We sent all our guys out to Road Warrior all the time. They ran the play. We practiced the play back when they got home. They ran the service call the same way. So I could send tech one or Tech five. We have maybe seven techs at that time and most of they say things a little differently but they'd run the play very similarly across the board which allowed for growth and it made a lot more consistent and steady.

Speaker A: Josh, you said something earlier that um, um, I'm kind of curious about. Again not coming from Yalls industry. You said, um, uh, dispatching for dollars. Like I was like that makes perfect sense to me. Right. But you said you send your best technicians. Are they the best technicians? Are they the best salespeople people?

Speaker C: Best salespeople. Usually yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, it depending on it could be.

Speaker C: Yeah, it could be like you know, someone calls in, you can tell it's a complicated issue. You could send like your best.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, your best um, minded converting person for that. That doesn't happen as often. Usually when dispatching for dollars they mean to send the best salesperson. Best salesperson of the best opportunity or the best closer to the best opportunity.

Speaker A: So again I came from, it was from the tech world. Right. Um, so what I ended up doing is doing coaching with people that were, they're actually like software engineers. Because if you like, if you think about it, you're talking to people about a problem. Like if you put in somebody out there that doesn't know much about an H vac, but it's like, hey, oh, and slick back hair and you know, gold rings like salesperson people are going to hate them. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But in, in the, so in the tech world we put salespeople out to talk to executives and we work with like Fortune 500 companies. These are big companies B2B. I personally, I could talk most of the tech talk pretty well, but I was never an expert. Right. So what we started to do is say, hey, if we can take our technical experts and uh, you know, in the home services, that would be the folks that are really good, like master technicians, not salespeople. And then we taught them the skill set of uh, sales and not, not necessarily upselling or getting people, but like, sure, sir, hey, provide good, like, like information based advice to your customers and

Speaker B: give them the options, let them, let them decide.

Speaker A: Uh, uh, yeah, and then you're just providing advice around it like, hey, option one, two, three. Very. You know, that's, that's pretty standard out there anymore. This is, you know, your good, better, best, best. Here's why you might want to do it. Good. Here's why you might want to do this, you know, So I, I think for me it's like, um, sometimes also understanding that, uh, going back to like, hey, we, we send our best technician. Well, there's two different skill sets that you have in people out there when they're doing two different jobs. There's a sales job and there's actually fiction, broken stuff. Just little things to think about in my mind. So I dealt with it again in a different industry and I'd be like, man, you could just vocalize the problem a little bit better with people. You'll be so much better at pulling in business. Um, and quite honestly, the, you know, the, the, the customers would be happier because I want to take your advice, but you're not like explaining it. Yeah, explaining it the right way. And then also the, the big things that I've, you know, we've seen as we're, we're coaching folks, it's like, um, they just, they're afraid of the ask. Yeah, right. You know, it's that last, that list. People call it closing. All it is is asking, hey, you want me to do this? I'm here. And people are like, well, uh, all

Speaker B: right, we'll send you an invoice, we'll send you an estimate.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Literally. Literally.

Speaker C: Because of that problem, there's, I don't know if Josh, if you've run into Joe Kasara, he literally, essentially coined the phrase what should we do? Because nobody wanted to ask. So he coined a phrase that everybody knows him by now, um, because he said, what should we do? And I was like, oh, it's Joe.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker C: Yeah, so, but it's because they don't know how to ask or, and there's A lot of psychology behind that too. I've listened to Brian Burton talk about that, Doug Wyatt with synergy and some of these other people. And it's like there's a lot of psychology about how they go about asking, but it has to be comfortable.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: Like if, if it doesn't, if it feels forced, it's gonna feel forced for the homeowner and then this is gonna feel icky. It's like, that was really awkward. Almost like make your skin crawl type of moment.

Speaker A: And so you, uh, like in it, I guess. Back to like, tone to me is very, very important with people. Like, if they don't feel comfortable, like, it doesn't feel good and they won't, they'll clam up. They won't make a yes or no decision, which is really what you're looking for. Like, I don't care if it's yes or no, but like, I'd like to know what to do. Like.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: Um, and if you're not, if you're in the middle, well, I haven't given you enough information to help you make a decision. And that's part of my job.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Um, because you have a problem, you need it solved. You called us. Right.

Speaker B: I can fix it.

Speaker A: Right. Yeah. I'm here. Um, so. But putting that in a, in a way that makes people comfortable is going to be. It's. There's a lot to it.

Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. 100. Josh, you got anything? We're running up on time.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, this is great conversation. I think there's a lot of, A lot of good nuggets here for people that are listening.

Speaker B: I agree 100%.

Speaker A: No, I just, you know, I think, um, you know, again with, uh, you know, three fourth labs, we got some other products that are actually coming out. Yeah. Here in the, in the next probably three or four months. We have some products in beta, um, which would be fun.

Speaker B: Could you talk about those?

Speaker A: I can give you a little teaser. Uh, okay, so we have one that's coming. Uh, it's called Execconnect. So if you start to think about as you get bigger, like, what's an A1 garage. Right. Um, trying to actually keep in touch with your folks that are out in the field when there's a couple layers at an executive level is important from a culture standpoint. Like, they want to know that you care about them. But, uh, it is immensely hard, even if you have a team of 50 people, to be like, hey, I just want to make sure that I remember to tell Joe Happy birthday. Right. I like when Dan, who had. He struggled in the beginning, but I gave him a little grace and now he's really coming along when he. He closes his first million dollars in a year, like, I want to make sure I give him a shout out. It really, it's, you know, the, the, the purpose is in the name. Right. Keeping executives connected with folks that are out in the field. Um, so that's something that's going to come out here. I, I think we'll probably roll it in the next three or four months. Okay, cool.

Speaker B: I'm excited to check it out and see. Yeah. More about it.

Speaker C: Just so people know, though. So it's three or four labs, but it's the number three. Three. The word spelled out four. So three f o r labs.com if you want to check some of that out. Otherwise I'm. Unless you guys own 34labs.com. Like the worst good domain to add T. T is like a domain horse. So I, I've logged into his thing the other day. He's got like, tur. Co t org ter.

Speaker B: Whatever. I got Josh. I got Josh's too. Just waiting for.

Speaker C: I'm trying to find, uh, one of the domains because I was trying to fix something for us.

Speaker B: What? I don't remember what you were doing, dude.

Speaker C: I'm like, you can go crazy with that stuff because it make. They make it so easy on GoDaddy or whatever just to check out and buy. Oh, buy all these domains with all these different things. Anyways, cool. Josh, it was great hanging out with you today and, uh, learning more about Field Spark and talking sales and systems and all the fun stuff.

Speaker A: Ah, I really appreciate it, guys. Um, A.I. maybe automation too? Uh, yeah, a little bit. Church, Josh. Absolute pleasure, guys.

Speaker B: Uh, we appreciate it.

Speaker A: Touching. We'll, uh, keep rock and roll.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Speaker A: See y'.

Speaker B: All.

Speaker A: Thank you for listening to this episode

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