Adam (00:21):
Welcome to Masters of Home Service, the best podcast for home service pros like us. I’m your host, Adam Sylvester, and I want you to crush it in business. The reality of business today is this, that people are getting more and more used to fast. Amazon delivers with an hours, and as home service business owners, we know that we can’t quite deliver that fast, but our customers don’t care. They want you to solve their problem now. They want the results now, and so speed to lead is so important. The faster the better. In fact, the longer you make a client wait, the less of a chance you have to get the job. Over 70% of homeowners buy just the first quote they get. They just approve whatever they get the first time. And so speed to the lead matters. My experts today, Cory and Ryaan, they are masters at this, and we’re going to give you a game plan for how to increase. If you’re a little slow, you need to get better. This is the game that we play in now. So Ryaan, Cory, thanks for being here. Appreciate it.

Cory (01:17):
Thanks for having us.

Ryaan (01:17):
Thank you.

Adam (01:18):
Cory, tell everybody who you are and what you do.

Cory (01:20):
Yeah. I’m Cory from Vancity Electric out of Vancouver, Canada.

Ryaan (01:24):
I’m Ryaan Tuttle from Best Handyman Boston.

Adam (01:27):
You guys are running some awesome businesses, and you guys have scaled ’em up nicely, and you guys are getting to your clients fast. Is that right?

Cory (01:36):
Pretty fast.

Ryaan (01:36):
Extremely fast, as fast as I can.

Adam (01:38):
What is fast? Let’s start there. What is fast?

Cory (01:40):
I think instant. I think instant is fast. I think if someone reaches out to you, there’s no reason why you can’t have an automation that responds to them instantly.

Ryaan (01:49):
Yeah, I’d say generally most customers when they reach out for estimates, they’re going to reach out to maybe two, three, four different contractors for an estimate.

Adam (01:59):
So we’re talking about the speed to lead. There’s also, there’s speed to just correspondence, right? So Cory, you’re talking about we can set up an automated text, Hey, we got your lead, or we don’t call it lead. We know you exist. We’re here. We’ll have someone reach out to you ASAP. That’s what you’re talking about in terms of speed to lead, that counts just a contact match.

Cory (02:20):
Absolutely. They’re on Google Local Services. They send you a message through, you’ve got an email response, Hey, thanks for reaching out to us. Can we get your contact information so we can get you booked in?

Adam (02:31):
That’s great.

Cory (02:32):
So at that point, hopefully they are stopping looking for a contractor.

Adam (02:36):
Yeah.

Ryaan (02:37):
Yeah. We’re doing the same thing. We’re leveraging Jobber to take in those estimate requests and generally we’re getting those estimates out within maybe 20 minutes, a half hour, and there’s all sorts of automation set up, so as soon as they submit that request, there’s a big thank you, lets them know our team’s already working on their estimate and somebody’s going to call if they have questions. If not, they can expect that estimate guaranteed within 24 hours, even through the weekend as well.

Adam (03:05):
Guarantee. Okay. We’ll get to that in a second. I want to go back in time a little bit just to tease our listeners a lit and then we’ll get into the nitty gritty. The meat and potatoes. Have you guys always been this fast in your businesses? Was there a time where you were slow and?

Cory (03:17):
No. I mean, I used to drive around to every estimate. Maybe you get in four per day, come home absolutely rattled. Then hopefully I booked off the next day so I could actually do the estimates and so pretty slow I’d say.

Adam (03:33):
Yeah.

Ryaan (03:34):
Yeah, same. I mean in 2006 I was handwriting estimates with carbon copy paper from Staples.

Adam (03:43):
The yellow thing.

Ryaan (03:43):
And you tear it off, and I never felt like my handwriting was good enough.

Adam (03:48):
Now there are people listening who still do that. We’re not mocking them. We’re on your side, but it is 2025, and we need to be aware of how the business world has changed. The marketplace is changing, and people don’t want the carbon copy anymore. They want an email, they want it text. They want to improve right now on the spot if you can.

Ryaan (04:05):
Well, not only do we want that on the backend, we want to be able to take payment as well. I was like, Cory, years and years when I first started out driving around, we might do 10 to 12 jobs after looking at 150 of those, and nothing’s ever covering that time to drive around the gas, the parking tickets. Anything else.

Adam (04:26):
Yeah, we’re going to get to how we can actually physically fast in a minute. Before we get there though, what are some things that you guys have in place just to make sure that your client knows, ’cause here’s the fear our clients have. They all have this fear. I just submitted this random form on their website that they said, and now I think my form’s going to go into this black hole. No one’s going to see it, no one’s going to call me, or they’re going to call me a week later and think that’s cool. So how do we put our clients at rest at ease? Hey, we got this, we’re on it. How do we do that?

Cory (05:00):
A feature I love is scheduled assessments, so when we quote something, even if you’ve sent us pictures or we have video, and we’re going to quote or maybe we’re quoting from a drawing, we actually schedule that quote in our calendar, and a lot of times the client will be like, Hey, what’s going on with this? And we’re like, Oh, we’re just quoting your job tomorrow at 10:00 AM That’s when your job’s getting quoted. So they’re just getting communication.

Adam (05:23):
It’s like how Domino tells you they’re making the pizza, the cheese is going on, now it’s in the oven.

Ryaan (05:28):
Same idea, almost like blockchain. You’re able to see that from the beginning to the end. We do something very similar as well.

Adam (05:35):
We use some automations to make sure that clients get a text when they submit, Hey, we just got your message, your request for work, we’re on it. Our team’s going to reach out to you. I’m not as sophisticated as you guys are. We’re going to get that in a second, but we do have a way to initially bam, because our clients expect that if you buy something on Amazon, you get the confirmation email. When you buy a flight, you get the confirmation email, and if your clients go to your website and there’s no confirmation, they’re just kind of like, what’s going to happen next? And you don’t want your clients wondering that kind of stuff. It doesn’t build confidence.

Ryaan (06:06):
Yeah, I’d say after being in the industry now close to 19 years, one of the biggest pain points or feedback we get from a lot of customers is they never hear back from contractors. It’s like, what do you mean you don’t hear back from them? I mean, isn’t that why we’re all in business? So that’s really concerning, and that’s one of the things we wanted to eliminate with the handyman business from day one.

Adam (06:28):
Okay. Let’s one by one, explain your process for what a client initially contacts your company to the next several steps. We’ve already covered the instant response thing. What’s next?

Ryaan (06:42):
So we essentially have the customers writing their own estimates. They’re going to put in a brief description for each task they need done. They’re going to have corresponding photos, and that allows our team to take that and put it into our AI agent and produce an estimate within minutes.

Adam (07:00):
There’s a lot there. Let’s come back to that. Cory, what’s your process?

Cory (07:04):
I think when we talk about the 24-hour estimating model, aside from us doing quotes, actually two other ways, they can talk to the virtual receptionist. They can actually get prices and book their job, so they’re not waiting on us. We also have the full online booking with all prices there. So again, they’re not waiting on us. Book your own job, schedule your job. The pricing is right there. As for our quotes, we do something kind of unique. If someone calls, wants a quote for their kitchen renovation, we will book a video estimate, and so that is me and the client at a scheduled time. We jump on, they love it, they show me around the kitchen. We go through each line item on my other screen I have Jobber. I am making the quote as they’re talking, and by the end of the call typically I can have the quote done.

Adam (07:55):
But Cory, you can’t quote electrical work from a phone. Come on. That’s impossible.

Cory (08:00):
I’ve done it since COVID. It absolutely can be done. If you think about it, you’re pricing should already be done. You’ve done these jobs before. An EV charger is an EV charger, a hot tub is a hot tub. You are only changing it a little bit based on maybe something you saw in that video.

Adam (08:19):
Accessibility issues, maybe.

Cory (08:20):
A brand of panel, something like this.

Ryaan (08:24):
We don’t typically go out and look at these jobs. We’re getting so many leads that we’d have to pay somebody almost full-time. And that’s where by leveraging Jobber, we’ll be able to create that experience not only for the customer but for our team on the backend. It should be a nice easy system, and I used to spend hours and hours every night creating estimates.

Adam (08:48):
Yeah, it’s a nightmare.

Ryaan (08:49):
It was a nightmare. I’d work all week and then I’d be in the office on Saturday missing soccer games and I’m in there estimating and trying to get the estimates out.

Adam (08:57):
What I love what you guys both saying is the timing of the estimate, because what so many of our listeners are doing, they’re going to Miss Jones’ house. They’re walking around the house, Okay, I’ll send you the estimate, and now they go home. Maybe they do it that night, maybe they do it the next night, maybe. Who knows when they do it, it’s so much better to just, your brain doesn’t have any clutter. If you would just give them the estimate right now, and Cory, you said you’re typing up the estimate as they’re walking around the house showing you this stuff, and so when you hang up with them, you’re done. Right?

Cory (09:25):
Yeah. I have many video clips of people saying like, Oh, okay, so when can I get the estimate? And I’m like, Oh, it’s done. It’s in your email right now. And they’re like, you should see their faces.

Adam (09:35):
Yeah. Wow. And so much easier. It’s so much enjoyable to run a business that way than to put it off and have to do it later.

Cory (09:43):
Well, before, remember, I said I would maybe drive around do four site visits and all that driving. Now my admin will book video estimates back-to-back in my account. I actually had to tell her to chill it out a little bit because I’ll spend all day doing those.

Adam (09:57):
So Cory, you went from speed to lead to race to face, right?

Cory (10:01):
Yes, yes.

Adam (10:01):
Race to face, getting in front of people’s face.

Cory (10:03):
Yeah, absolutely. You can still keep a very personal connection with someone over video. You don’t have to be in person.

Adam (10:12):
Yeah, and imagine you can do so many more in a day from your PJ’s at home.

Cory (10:16):
For sure. I was looking up the stats. My conversion rate has never really changed over the years. I kind of hover around 48%, but the number of estimates has gone from below a thousand to well over a thousand this coming year.

Adam (10:29):
Wow.

Cory (10:29):
Yeah.

Adam (10:29):
That’s a huge change. I love that. Great conversation. Let’s pause for a minute, as we always do to talk about Jobber. How has Jobber helped you guys in this whole speed to lead game?

Cory (10:41):
I think for me it’s scheduled assessments. I love letting the client know, Hey, we’re working on your quote right now.

Ryaan (10:47):
Yeah. For us it would be quote templates. We have a recurring maintenance plan that we have. We also have a home evaluation and repair estimates that we need to get back to, so being able to have those templates really speeds the game up for us.

Adam (11:02):
I’m a big fan of the automated text the next day, the reminder for the quote, Hey, did you get this quote? We make it really casual so it feels like a human senate. If you’re not following up on your quotes, regularly, automatically, then you are losing business. Go to jobber.com/podcastdeal, get exclusive discount, and start getting to your leads faster with Jobber.

(11:24)
Ryaan, talk to us more about the AI agent because that sounds really cool, and it’s allowing you to do estimates. Basically, anyone in your company can do estimates. That’s the key, not just you, right?

Ryaan (11:35):
Yeah, correct. Yeah. It was the one thing I could never delegate out. I could have a manager, I can have technicians, I can have office staff, but I’d still be in the office doing those estimates, and I don’t think we have enough time on this podcast to talk about AI and what it can do for these home service businesses.

Adam (11:52):
How does it work though? Give us an overall view. Someone goes through your website, they submit a request for I don’t know, broken ceiling fan or something, and then you’re able to send them an estimate with the AI agent that’s accurate and fast without ever going to their house or anything like that? Who’s doing it?

Ryaan (12:09):
Correct? Yeah. For years, when we started out 2018, business model is customer writes their own estimate up, sends corresponding photos.

Adam (12:17):
Well, how do they do that? How do they write their own estimate? Tell us about that form.

Ryaan (12:20):
Through the form, they fill out the website estimate request form. That’s on Jotform, which is hooked up through Zapier and Jobber, and they put in a little brief description of work for each task they need done. They need to have corresponding photos. So we just copy-paste that. We put it in our own AI assistant that we built out with our team, and it spits back estimates in seconds.

Adam (12:44):
So then if they approve it, what happens then? It comes in a Jobber dashboard approved. Then what happens?

Ryaan (12:50):
Yeah, we easily convert it to a job and schedule it. One of the things we do when we send out those estimates, we already put the next available date in the schedule.

Adam (13:00):
How do you do that?

Ryaan (13:01):
For that customer?

Adam (13:01):
How do you do that?

Ryaan (13:02):
We put that right in Jobber. It’s one of the line items.

Adam (13:04):
That’s done by a human?

Ryaan (13:05):
Correct.

Adam (13:06):
Okay, great.

Cory (13:07):
Love that.

Adam (13:08):
Yeah. Cory, are you using anything like this in your business? I’m curious.

Cory (13:12):
We use LiveSwitch for the video quotes. On the backend of LiveSwitch, they do have full AI and custom prompts, so I’m able to create a prompt that says, Hey, I want you to go to homedepot.ca. I want you to find materials. I want you to estimate the hours and create a nice quote for me. I don’t fully use it. It’s more of a double check, but similar.

Adam (13:35):
What do you guys think that having a really consistent pricing model has done to the confidence that your clients have. Their perception of like, Wow, this company’s really doubted in their pricing. Do you think the transparency of the pricing and how do you think that impacts the customer experience?

Cory (13:51):
I think if someone is asking you, the one thing they want to know so badly is price. How much? It’s the biggest question I get asked, and when you are able to say a backup generator that’s going to be around 25 grand. You got to think from the client’s perspective they’re thinking, Oh, he’s done this before. This is very standard for them, and that’s giving them confidence.

Adam (14:13):
But if you’re like, Oh, well, I have to go look, and you pause, and you hesitate, they’re like, this guy doesn’t do this very often, or he has to think about it.

Cory (14:21):
Yeah. The more confident you are, that’s going to rub off on them.

Adam (14:24):
Exactly. Yeah.

Ryaan (14:25):
Our estimates and our pricing has helped us find our market too. We’re generally in a higher-end market, and what we’ll typically do is we’ll take that request, and we’ll take the customer’s address and run that through Zillow, and if you generally don’t have a house that’s about seven to $800,000, we already know that you’re typically not going to accept that estimate.

Adam (14:47):
So knowing who you’re really marketing to really matters. Tell us more about that. So you have very target market for a handyman. Tell us about that.

Ryaan (14:55):
Yeah, so we’re on the higher end. We charge $85, we mark that up 50%, and then we take our materials and we mark that up 50%, and then we also have to account in any disposal, even if you have a bag of trash, we’re going to mark that up 50% as well. And so we’ve taken all that information and built it out into our AI agent on the backend, and that helps us create those estimates very fast.

Adam (15:20):
I think what really matters to our clients is they want to be able to choose their own adventure. They may want to call and talk to a human being. They may want to go online, submit. They might want to message us through GMB, Google My Business, which I would never do, but some people do. There’s all these different ways. 8 billion people on this planet, and we’re all different and they all think differently. And so I think we need to say, we need to be able to provide that opportunity for our clients to interact with us the way they want instead of the only way that we’re willing to do that. And I think online booking is a great opportunity for that. I think if clients want to go in there and just literally book a job for next Thursday, they can, and that’s really powerful.

Cory (15:59):
I love that. I don’t want to be holding your job up at all. I’m going to get out of the way and allow you to book at your convenience.

Adam (16:06):
And AI receptionist with Jobber, it filters through, it uses online booking so it knows.

Cory (16:12):
You can absolutely book a job through AI receptionist if someone wants to call sort of after hours when I have it set up.

Adam (16:19):
Yeah. Yeah. I love online booking. I remember turning it on July or August of 2023, and it just changed everything. I would wake up in the morning, I have jobs booked from overnight. It’s a game-changer. It’s a total game-changer

Cory (16:32):
That even request form as well. That’s an old beauty. Some people want to just leave something there for you and bounce, and that’s just what they want, and so we’re going to allow that.

Adam (16:44):
Yeah, Ryaan, we have a chat widget on our website that it pops up. You’ve seen chat widgets. It says, Hey, how can I help you? And if they submit that interact, then it immediately texts, it creates a text message thread, and so it ends up we text them and say, Hey, we just got your request. What can I do to help you? So suddenly it takes us away from the website and into our other platform, high-level, and some people want to do a chat widget. There’s all these different ways to interact with people.

Ryaan (17:11):
One of the things we’re updating now because constantly innovating. So one of the things we’re doing now is we’re taking that static request form where we get our estimates and we’re changing that into an AI chatbot that’s going to create the estimate for us on the backend as well. The customer won’t know, but the team will. So now we’re actually going to be able to eliminate our team having to go in there, copy-paste all the information.

Adam (17:34):
That’s awesome. But once you give a quote to somebody, follow-up matters. You guys are having a lot of success with this, right? Ryaan?

Ryaan (17:40):
Huge. Yeah. One of the great features that’s been very advantageous for us in order for us to capture and get more leads and to secure those projects as estimate follow-ups, we’re generally closing about 30% more. We can set up those automations, so we’ll follow up with a customer the day after to see if they’re still interested, and then the next day after that, so within three days, they’ve already heard from us three times about that same estimate while they’re calling and searching for other contractors to get other estimates.

Adam (18:13):
Yeah, a hundred percent.

Cory (18:14):
I’ll add onto that, too. Typically, when my follow-up quotes are going out asking about the quote, that client is getting back to me saying, I’m still waiting for another quote. And I’m like, Hey man, I’m already done. I’m ready. We’re ready to go.

Ryaan (18:27):
Yeah, same. Yeah.

Adam (18:30):
What are some other things that you think our listeners need to hear about speed to lead getting to people quickly? The more time you make them wait, the less opportunity you have to close the sale. 70% of people just buy the first time. What are some other things that your company has done that has totally put you head and shoulders above the competition in terms of getting in front of the customer faster than everybody else?

Cory (18:53):
I’ll tell you something on the follow-up for sure is asking for the job, especially a high ticket item, I believe that’s a new feature to Jobber, will alert you when it’s a high-value quote. And so I need this right? When we send out a commercial quote, I need to be hustling that job a little bit, right? Hey, I would love to do this job. What can I do to get this job? So just extreme follow-up for sure.

Adam (19:17):
You got to ask for the sale, right? If you don’t ask for the sale, ask for the check, you don’t get it. So you got to ask, Hey, are we ready to move forward? Hey, what’s the holdup here? Let’s go. Let’s go, right?

Ryaan (19:25):
Yeah. I mean, our customers, we have being able to look at the insights and reporting on Jobber, our close rate is about 48% of repeat customers. And if you go into our Google reviews and you start reading those reviews, it’s all the same thing. Got my estimate fast, scheduled it the same day. And so just by creating that experience, by the time the technician gets there, they’re so impressed with us that they’re already reaching out for more work while our techs are on site.

Adam (19:54):
Yeah, that’s awesome. I also think just having, if you can, and I think most people can, having a human follow-up is super important. And if you can it’s relevant for your business, having the person who initially talked to them follow up. So if the customer calls and talks to Jane, Jane should call the next day. Hey, John, did you get the quote I sent you over? Yeah, I just haven’t had time to process it. Yeah. Okay. Well, I’m here when you’re ready. I think that personal touch is really important if you can do it.

Ryaan (20:21):
I’m glad you mentioned that. One of the things we changed this year is having somebody from our team call the customer back. We noticed that we were almost too tech-heavy in a way where we’re creating the estimates. People couldn’t even believe it, and not all of our customers, they weren’t aware of how fast we were going to get the estimate and be ready to close that project.

Adam (20:43):
Some people were like, it was too fast. I’m not quite ready yet.

Ryaan (20:46):
So by calling them back, we noticed we ran a test last year out of 50 customers. We split tested it, we split tested it, and out of those 25 versus the other 25, 80% more people closed those projects. When our team just called back after they received their estimate, just to check in and let them know we’re here, we’re human too, and see if they had any more questions or wanted to add something more to those estimate requests.

Adam (21:12):
Are you guys ever surprised when clients say, I never got your quote. This ever happened to you? It happens to us a fair amount.

Cory (21:20):
20 minutes ago, I just followed up with a woman. It was two quotes. They were Hotmail email addresses.

Adam (21:27):
Yeah, Hotmail is the worst.

Cory (21:28):
So they went to their junk. I knew as soon as I saw the Hotmail, I knew it went to the junk. So I was following up literally between meetings here. One of those was a $90,000 quote I noticed.

Adam (21:38):
Just sitting there and didn’t know.

Cory (21:39):
Just sitting there. She’s like, I never got it.

Adam (21:42):
And the thing is, if we’re texting clients too, text, I’m not the kind of guy who has a bunch of red dots on my phone. I clean up my phone and my iPhone doesn’t have any notifications, but a lot of people have like 500 new messages, and they don’t see the text message that you sent me, the quote, it blows my mind. But again, there’s a lot of different people on this planet and we all think differently, and I would never miss a text, but a lot of our clients, Oh, I never saw it. You never text me. And you’re like, Well, yes, we did. It’s right. I can see it, but they just didn’t see it for whatever reason. And a phone call follow-up just solves that problem.

Ryaan (22:15):
Yeah. One of the beautiful things about Jobber in the backend is you can see all your communication, so we can actually see if that customer’s opened the estimate or not, which has been extremely advantageous for us.

Adam (22:28):
Totally. Yeah,

Cory (22:29):
I do, when I send my quotes now, I email them. I also text them just because.

Adam (22:33):
Yeah, I email first, and then I text, so that the automated is what happened last, which is I want the automated to be text by email and then text, and the next day they get a reminder by text.

Cory (22:43):
That’s a good pro tip right there.

Adam (22:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Man, what a great conversation. I loved this. I learned a lot. I’m going to boil it down to three things I think our listeners can do right now today, tomorrow to start making their business faster to lead. Number one is you need to have some sort of automated booking confirmation, text, email. Hey, we got your request. We know who you are. We’re going to get back to you as soon as possible. That can be done by a lot of different things, but you want to make sure people know, okay, they got my request and they’re working on it now, builds confidence. Number two is you should be able to ballpark your pricing. It doesn’t have to be exact, but they want to have an idea of the cost because here’s the thing, if it’s way too expensive, they’ll pre-qualify themselves right out, and you don’t waste time. So you want to make sure that you have some sort of ballpark. It builds confidence in your company. And number three is you should be able to let them choose their own adventure. Do they want to talk to Jobber Receptionist? Do they want to chat widget, text, email, call? There’s going to be a million different ways to get these leads in the door, and you want to give them the opportunity to choose how they contact you first.

Cory (23:42):
And the last one, Adam, there, extreme follow-up. Calling, asking for the job. We would love to do this job. You never know. You get a few more.

Adam (23:50):
That’s great, guys. How do people find out more about you?

Ryaan (23:52):
Yeah, if you have questions after listening to this podcast, you could find me in the Jobber service forum or on Instagram @besthandymaninc. And if you’re looking for a business partner, you can find me on LinkedIn.

Cory (24:04):
Awesome. I’m Cory. I’m all over LinkedIn for sure. And then you can find Vancity Electric on Instagram.

Adam (24:10):
Guys, last thing. Running a business can be hard. It’s rewarding. You guys are doing great. You guys have awesome businesses, but what makes you keep going? What wakes you up in the morning to just keep slaying the dragon every day? What motivates you?

Cory (24:22):
My why is sort of, I just want to see what I’m capable of. This life is short, and I just want to see what’s possible for me.

Ryaan (24:32):
Yeah, I love that. My family drives me. Just want them to be provided for and well taken care of. So I’m up early every day getting at it.

Adam (24:41):
Hustling. Yeah, that’s right. That’s great. Well, guys, keep crushing it. Really appreciate being here.

Cory (24:45):
Thank you.

Ryaan (24:46):
Thanks.

Adam (24:46):
On the next episode, we’re talking to a business owner who doubled her revenue by doing what most people are afraid to do: buying failing companies. We’ll dig into how she turned bad deals into big wins, what to watch out for in a buyout, and how to know when taking that risk is actually worth it. Follow or subscribe today so you don’t miss out. And thank you for listening. I hope that you heard something today that will help you get to your leads faster. It matters a lot. I’m your host, Adam Sylvester. You can find me at adamsylvester.com, and I want to hear from you. Tell me what you like about the podcast, what you want to hear more of, and let’s interact. I’m there. Remember, your team and your clients and your family deserve your very best. So go give it to ’em.