Welcome to Digital Marketing for Contractors, a podcast for home improvement contractors to help you crush your lead goals and take your business to the next level. Join us each episode as we give you powerful insights and practical tips on the best digital marketing strategies to help you grow your home improvement business. Let’s get started.

Meredith Medlin: 0:30
Welcome back to Digital Marketing for Contractors. I’m Caitlin Noble. And I’m Meredith. And today we are tackling a common challenge for growing contractors: scaling past the owner bottleneck.

Caitlyn Noble: 0:43
But we’re going to make this like a digital flair because we’re doing digital marketing.

Meredith Medlin: 0:48
Accurate.

Caitlyn Noble: 0:48
Accurate. So we’re going to make this a flair about how we are going to scale past the owner bottleneck. Owners, if you’re listening, we’re talking about you and how you’re holding things up on your end with all love and respect. We can say that because we are also the owner bottles. We’re also owners and we’ve also been the bottlenecks.

unknown: 1:05
Yep.

Caitlyn Noble: 1:05
So as I mentioned, if you’re a business owner and you’re doing it all yourself, from sales to operations, just specifically marketing, you’re probably hitting your limits. Today we’re going to cover why marketing fails without operational support and how to align your business sales process with marketing and when to hire or automate. Are we going to do all that in this short episode? I think we’re going to try. We’re going to definitely try. But let me just tell you, we have met a lot of amazing owners who have come to us in this exact position and we welcome you because congratulations, you have now grown large enough that you can no longer do it yourself. Right. Lean on an agency and let them help you do it. Let’s get into it.

Meredith Medlin: 1:49
Yeah. So the first thing we want to talk about is why marketing fails when your operations don’t scale. And, you know, marketing can bring in your leads. That’s the whole point of it. I hope. But yeah, that’s your goal. If that’s not happening, talk to us. But marketing is supposed to be bringing your leads, but if your operations aren’t ready, those leads are going to turn into chaos and eventually, ultimately turn into wasted money because you don’t have the processes in place to turn those leads into sales. What are you spending all that money on if you don’t have processes to convert them into leads?

Caitlyn Noble: 2:25
Definitely. And I mean, again, we’re the marketing experts here. Y’all are experts in what you do. By all means. But examples that we often see. Yeah. Jobs are booked faster than your crews can handle them. Poor follow-ups because the office staff is overloaded. What a good problem to have, but still a problem nonetheless. And then customers are left frustrated, which kills those referrals and that repeat business. So marketing, if you’re listening and you’re generating great business right now because you’ve got trucks out there, you’re sponsoring local events, you’ve got a nice ad in a local magazine, but you don’t have the staff to deal with it.

Meredith Medlin: 3:09
There’s going to be repercussions. Absolutely. So, you know, this is what we are referring to by the owner bottleneck. So if you’re doing too much, your business isn’t keeping up with that demand. And we really have to work on the foundation, which is the operations of it.

Caitlyn Noble: 3:26
Right. The operations. And there are tons of amazing support systems out there in the contractor world who define a lot of these SOPs, et cetera. Because if your marketing’s working, yay, you don’t want to put the cart before the horse.

Meredith Medlin: 3:40
Absolutely. And so if anybody listening is curious about what some of those tools are, should they reach out?

Caitlyn Noble: 3:46
Yeah, yeah. We’ve got some amazing partners listed on our website. Okay. And we can definitely point you in the right direction if you’re looking for operational support. So marketing is awesome. It can amplify the problem if the foundation isn’t ready. So scaling demand before scaling operations is like pouring water into a leaky bucket, like we just said. So we’re not saying anything like, hey, come use us, of course, but where we always see a lot of friction is when you and your company don’t have the staff in place. The tools in place.

Meredith Medlin: 4:22
The tools in place, perfect, Meredith, yeah, to handle the volume of leads that you’re going to be generating. Exactly. Exactly. I think another big thing is making sure that your sales team, sales processes are aligned with your marketing. Correct. Marketing and sales have to be in sync. Yes. I think too often leads are generated, but they don’t match the sales process or the qualification standards. And I think we had a podcast recently on bad leads, which would be like our unqualified leads, and definitely. I think that’s when you know whatever your marketing is targeting isn’t in line with what your sales team is gonna take and turn into a quality lead or sale, honestly.

Caitlyn Noble: 5:11
The most simple thing you can do if you’re starting to work with a marketing partner, doing marketing in-house, whatever it may be, share that marketing material with your sales team. Share it with the person who’s scheduling appointments or your call center. We often, you know, we may not be developing the TV commercial for clients, but we’re referencing that TV commercial to make sure everything we’re doing digitally matches. And then owners, marketing directors, et cetera, will take that creative and share it with their call center, share it with their sales team because it’s going to get mentioned.

Meredith Medlin: 5:52
You have to know what they’re referring to if they’re calling you and they mention some special offer. Yes. Or, you know, God forbid you are marketing in an area that you don’t service, or you could be talking to a potential client through your ads or through your content only to find out when you get to the sales process, like, oh, we don’t even do that thing that you just said. So make sure everybody is aligned with definitely who you’re going after and what you’re telling them.

Caitlyn Noble: 6:20
Yeah, definitely. So that’s kind of a no-brainer to make sure your marketing sales is in sync. Like Meredith said, we just had an episode about bad leads and what that harm can do to your business. So make sure you understand what correct lead qualification criteria means to your business and share that with your marketing agency. Standardized sales scripts and processes, tons of great resources out there for contractors. I again could recommend a million. Reach out if you need some tips and tricks on sales scripts and processes. And then again, like we said, those consistent handoffs. If somebody calls, somebody fills out a form on your website, make sure whoever is following through to make that appointment makes a note to the sales team. Hey, they mentioned that $1,000 off window offer.

Meredith Medlin: 7:14
Please. Right. Please, please, please. I think at the end of the day, that’s just the continuation of your customer journey. And so if the user or your customer has one experience on your website through your ads, through your commercials, and then hits the sales part of the process and it’s completely different, that’s going to create confusion. It’s going to slow down your speed to lead. They’re not going to know is this even the same company, that’s not the same offer, this isn’t the same energy that you were getting from whatever the ad was. So really just working on making sure that’s a cohesive process. Well said. Yeah. And stop being the bottleneck. Yep, absolutely. I think that’s an interesting thing. If you’re trying to do it all, I think one of the easiest ways that owners can be the bottleneck is if you are growing and you haven’t been able to let go of some of those things that maybe you need to delegate. I think that if you’re doing sales, if you’re doing marketing, if you’re trying to do everything, you’re doing operations, if you’re growing, you probably need some help with that. Yes. Obviously we’re here to help with marketing, but don’t be the bottleneck, delegate and elevate, as we love to say.

Caitlyn Noble: 8:28
Yeah.

Meredith Medlin: 8:29
And I think that brings us to the next part, which is knowing when to hire if you do need more help or when to automate.

Caitlyn Noble: 8:36
And automate’s such a sexy word. I think hiring can feel daunting. I was about to say easier, but then at the same time, it’s more expensive, it’s daunting, and you’re having to train, et cetera, versus leaning on automations and tools that can do it for you much faster in many cases.

Meredith Medlin: 9:02
And I think that automation tools have come so far. I remember eight years ago looking at Zapier for the first time and my brain exploded. And I did not understand automation, all the different triggers and filters and all the actions that it could perform. It has come such a long way. And there are tools specifically built for you. And by you, I mean home improvement contractors, the owners of the company who want to get out of the way and stop being the bottleneck. They have tools. And again, we’re partners with a lot of them. So give us a call, we can introduce you.

Caitlyn Noble: 9:44
And I would say probably the easiest one to inquire with right off the bat is your CRM. I guarantee if you are using a CRM, your CRM has automation features that you’re probably not using. Absolutely. So I’ll just intro this and then we’ll get more into the weeds. Please. But as your business grows, you’re going to hit a point where you just can’t scale alone. So how do you decide — hire or automate? What’s the rule of thumb?

Meredith Medlin: 10:17
Hire for judgment-based roles. Sales managers, project managers, director of operations, places where you need a human, a skilled human to make a judgment call, read the room, understand a person, a process or the motivation. That’s when I would hire. Automate repetitive things. Automate repetitive processes that you’re doing, any detail-oriented tasks like appointment scheduling, following up with a cold lead or a demo no sale, digital lead nurturing. And you can do that through email marketing, email, SMS. There are all different kinds of things. So remember, hire for judgment-based roles, automate for repetitive processes and tasks.

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