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CATEGORIES: Podcast
On this episode of the Franchise Secrets podcast, Erik is joined by Tommy Mello, the founder of A1 Garage Door Service and the host of the Home Service Expert podcast. Erik and Tommy do a deep dive into sales, marketing, and recruiting for service-based companies.
While many business owners focus their attention on doing the work itself, creating processes and tracking KPIs is critical to success and growth. As Tommy and Erik detail in this episode, investing in your processes, your research, and your employees can allow an entrepreneur to make decisions based on facts, not feelings.
Listen to Erik and Tommy talk about sales, marketing, and recruiting:
Tommy’s background (1:02)
Tommy shares his journey to the point where he started A1 Garage Door Service.
Family business (2:38)
Tommy talks about working with family, including some of the challenges he’s had working with family members.
A1 Garage Door growth (5:36)
As Tommy noted, he didn’t plan for the company to grow as it has. He attributes the growth to managing the company with facts, not feelings. That means tracking KPIs and creating the type of raw data needed to make big decisions.
Embracing technology (7:00)
Erik and Tommy continue to discuss the use of technology, especially CRMs, to track KPIs.
Building up the company (9:40)
Tommy breaks down how he’s built the company to the size it currently is -- from creating standard procedures and manuals to tracking every part of the business.
Getting focused (12:22)
Erik and Tommy talk about becoming laser-focused on their core business and how they’ve managed to push away distractions.
Traction (16:23)
Tommy and Erik discuss the system and book “Traction” and implementing the culture into a business.
Next steps (17:26)
Tommy details what the company’s current plans are, including some aggressive growth targets. He also explains some of the things the company is doing to achieve those goals.
Sales (24:50)
Tommy shares how he’s built up A1 Garage Door Service’s sales and some examples of how to build relationships with customers.
Consuming content (28:17)
Erik and Tommy talk about how they read books and consume other types of content to become better entrepreneurs. Tommy explains his process for creating notes and points out a few books he’s read.
Recruiting (34:10)
Tommy shares his insights on hiring employees and employee management, including having recruiters.
Training (37:33)
As Tommy notes, there are three main focus points in training -- Operational, technical, and sales.
Poor practices among competitors (41:55)
Tommy shares some of the things he sees his competitors doing wrong and his philosophy on things like pay and tenure.
Lead sources (46:55)
Lead sources like Angie’s List and Thumbtack are a staple of the industry. Tommy explains how he handles those types of services but points to search engine optimization and Google ads as a far better value.
Final bits of wisdom (50:50)
Tommy shares a few bits of his insight.
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