3 Reasons Why You Need to Get a CRM for Your Service Business Right Now

What's up this is Keith with KeithKalfas.com and welcome to another Blog.

If this is your first time here and you would like to learn about how to start and grow a landscaping or window cleaning business and other related Service Business type stuff.

Now if your frustrated or scrambling when trying to collect and remember your customer's contact information, phone number, email address, home address and other related notes to your customers and clients.

In your service-based business.

If you don't have at least and "MVS" that stands for "minimum viable system" in place 2 manage all of your customer data. Then this can spiral into an overwhelming issue really fast.

Grow Your Service Business with Jobber

Not to mention, integrating all of your customer contacts with an invoicing and billing software that allows you to collect payment from customers, collect signatures from customers, create work orders and schedule work, integrate all this into a calendar so you can actually get all the work done, and most importantly, storing all of this information in a place where it's safe from hackers and not spread all over the place.

Well, there are plenty of free options on the market today, like all of Google's free suite products. And the Google calendar is absolutely awesome by the way. But right now in my business, I'm using an awesome software and mobile app called Jobber. I'll talk more about Jobber later.

The real challenges come when you try to grow your business beyond the one-man show who's primarily performing one-off jobs. 

And what do I mean by this? I'm talking about tracking data and analytics.

Reason #1

You can identify rhythms, get feedback, and keep your finger on the pulse of your business.

Here's an example of some things you can track.

1. Customer acquisition cost
2. Client repeat rate
3. Average ticket per customer
4. Average ticket price per job
5. Annual revenue generated per customer
6. Annual revenue generated per service
7. Revenue generated per demographic
8. Marketing expenses, labor costs, overhead costs.
9. Time tracking etc.

When you start taking the time 2 plug-in all of the data relative to all of your customers and the projects you are working on each day.

And it only takes an extra 60 seconds per job.

What happens over time as you start seeing a bigger picture that's being painted right in front of your eyes. And it's exciting because when you have a vital stats dashboard that's displaying all of the rhythms that are going on inside of your business.

Then you can start making much wiser decisions on what direction you want to take your small business in. See, before a CRM, you might be blindly running around performing tasks and jobs 4 random customers all over the place which is great. But without tracking all of the data and recording what actually happened, then you might not even know what's really working in your business.

Sure, your business is your baby and I'm positive that you have a good sense of what's going on.

But could you imagine walking up to a water meter outside and guessing how many gallons of water are being pumped through it per day based on a gut feeling? 

Could you walk into a gas station and tell the cashier that you felt like you pumped 15 gallons of gas?

Could you fill up a shopping cart at the grocery store sense that there's about $100 worth of groceries?

Sure I know that you can track all of your expenses by looking at your credit card statements. But what if you could see the frequency of your purchases? 

Don't miss the chance of listening to the Untrapped Podcast with Keith Kalfas 

Back to your business. what if after 1 year of tracking all of the data inside of your business, you realized that your average ticket price for the job was far too low to justify having such a large service area and that you were actually wasting time driving 10 miles away to serve a portion of your clientele?

What if after tracking the data for only 1 year you realized that one of the services you were offering was taking up over 30% of your time spent working and was barely making you a prophet yet another service you are offering was making you money hand-over-fist. But now you can see the cold hard data right in front of your eyes.

For instance, in my own landscaping business, I knew that doing ornamental tree trimming was pretty good money because I've got a system down where we can do it really fast and do a great cleanup job and get in and out of a property in a timely manner. But after tracking the data 4 a year I realized that ornamental tree trimming was actually our most profitable service by a long shot.

And that doing standard, hourly garden bed maintenance and trimming bushes was actually our lowest profit margin service. So off of that data I made the decision to raise our minimum pricing for offering garden bed maintenance to a $300 minimum to ensure that no matter what when I step foot on a property, I'm getting paid.

Also after tracking the data in my business for only one year, I looked at how little profit I was making by offering services 3 cities away over on the wealthy side of town because I was told by all of my contractor friends that that's where the money is at. But after all of the drive time and sitting in traffic I wasn't making anywhere near the amount of profit that I thought I was.

Based on looking at the raw data I made the decision 2 create a service area and then drastically raise the prices in the form of a travel cost and built it directly into any quotes for customers that are outside of our service area.

See I didn't just discontinue service right away, what I did was I raised all the prices drastically to ensure that I was making a profit. The goal of running a small business is to make a profit, not to be a people pleaser. But because I didn't have the cold hard data staring me and the face I was able to keep lying to myself and telling myself that I was doing a great thing by driving to Timbuktu to serve a bunch of ungrateful clients.

God if I only would have started tracking the data sooner I could have made more informed decisions about drilling down and marketing my prospective clients that light only within my service area.

Reason #2

Having a CRM equips you with the information that allows you to make strategic decisions based on data, not off of gut feelings.

Having a CRM allows you to see where your business is actually at not to mention that it allows you 2 keep accurate records of all of your projects, invoices, and routing. 

Reason #3

Having a CRM puts you in the league of professionals because your customers perceive you as having your act together. 

Your customers get...

• A project proposal that's broken down and organized into line items emailed directly to them.
• The opportunity to accept the terms of that proposal directly from their smart device.
• A way to put down a money deposit securely tracked and backed up by a digital signature.
• Timestamps and notes about the progress being made on large jobs.
• A way to add change orders when they want to add on extra work 2 current projects.
• A final invoice and invoice marked as a paid receipt for their personal records.
• A chance to get on the schedule for more work in the future or for recurring work.

As I mentioned earlier, you can achieve most or all of these things inside of the powerful software platform called JOBBER.

Jobber has been around for years and is one of the most widely used and trusted software CRM platforms available in the industry today.

Jobber has customers and clients ranging from landscapers, two painters, window cleaners, soft wash companies, plumbers, handyman, lawn care services, snow plowing companies, hardscaping, and general contractors alike.

In my own service business at Kalfas Professional Services right here in Metro Detroit Michigan. My team and I chose to jump on board with a Jobber for 3 Reasons.

Our 3 Reasons for joining Jobber are.

1. We needed a reliable software that was versatile and that could fulfill all of the requirements necessary for tracking the data and running a successful Landscaping and Window Cleaning Business in 2020.
2. We wanted a software that has a great mobile app and runs fast on mobile devices. (Without bugs and freezing)
3. We wanted to team up with a software company that was investing in "future-proofing" their company by continually upgrading and API integrating their platform with our other automation and soon to be partners, like Responsibid, NiceJob, SendJim, PinkCallers, Google Calendar, QuickBooks and so on…

Grow Your Service Business with Jobber

So… We decided to go with Jobber. Now. Even though Jobber is awesome and allows you to do all of this important stuff with your business.

Jobber isn't perfect, but the software team over at Jobber is taking feedback seriously from real contractors who are out in the field actually doing it. 

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