Run the home-services playbook stack

1. Who this stack is for

The stack is for the home-service business: brick and mortar, with trucks, routes, technicians and tradespeople. What follows is offered as the common things, drawn from work on so many businesses of this kind, and as what you probably need to look at. Each of the big business types covered alongside this one is said to be like one in five of the owners it is aimed at.

2. Ads, where there are none

If the business runs no ads at all and everything comes from word of mouth, this is the first common thing named. Where ads meet home services, the competition, for whatever reason, is just not that sophisticated. If you simply run lead ads and then phone the people who answer them, you do exceptionally well.

3. The website

Experience here also suggests that, in general, the websites of home-service businesses tend to be really, really bad. The usual page hides a button nobody can find, with a label such as talk to a rep, or a request for a quote or for an invoice. The view here is that this is horrendous, since nobody wants to sign up for that. These businesses still get traffic, because demand across the whole industry so far outruns supply. The fix named is page optimization.

How to build the page a visitor lands on is SOP 37 — Lay out a landing page. A page whose one ask is a quote or an invoice is also taken up on SOP 197, section 3.1.

4. Supply constrained: sell fewer, at a higher price

Since demand already runs ahead of what the business can handle, the fixes named are to add a sales motion, add a rep whose job is nurturing leads, and push the prices well up. It is fine to sell fewer jobs. It already has more work than it can take on, so it might as well bring in more cash and spend it on hiring.

5. Why the trade lags at sales, marketing and price

Nothing forces them to be good. The view here is that home-service businesses are typically poor at sales because they win work without having to be good at it. They are typically poor at marketing for the same reason. That, in this view, explains why price tends to be their constraint.

The commodity belief. Part of the reason they are price constrained, for owners in home services, is that they believe what they sell is a commodity. Maybe yours is one, but that is a choice you make.

6. Three ways to win, and a guarantee around the fears

A reminder, since there are common themes here: a home-service business can beat its rivals on one of three things: speed, risk or ease. They are called your three vectors of value.

What the customer fears. Ask what a customer is most afraid of. The fears named: the job will run over budget, it will run over time, and it will be a headache. Build your guarantee around those. Choosing a guarantee and writing its conditions is SOP 7 — Choose and condition a guarantee; stacking two and naming them is SOP 8.

Pick one and lean in. The recommendation here is to choose the one you think you can absolutely win on, and lean into it. Speed, in this view, is an excellent one for beating other firms.

7. Speed when others do part of the work

The pushback that naturally follows: you use subcontractors, tradespeople working under you whom you cannot control. The reply: you can, if you are willing to pay them more for faster work. Put every obstacle of this kind through the same questions:

• Is this impossible, or is it only more expensive?
• If cost is the only barrier, can I build that into my price?
• If I build it in, can my price earn me more than the extra cost? The answer here: probably.

8. Raise the price when demand outruns supply

Especially when you are supply constrained, the first reaction to having more demand than you can handle is, in this view, to raise your price.

The fear, and the reply. Everyone is afraid of raising it. The owner says: we close 80 percent, and we have no room for more work. The reply: then close 40 percent instead, at three times the price. To the objection that there is no way that could be done, the answer is that of course it can, and that it has reportedly been done a zillion times.

Choosing a price in the first place, and the rules for doing it, is on SOP 82. Putting a new price to the customers you already have is SOP 83 — Write the price-raise letter with a vanishing discount.

9. Pair the fixes, in order

The sequence. One practice here is to pair the solutions in this order.

• A sales motion first. Install a video sales letter; how to build one is SOP 207 — Build a video sales letter. Add a step for nurturing leads, so that a higher share of your leads is reached. Then follow a closing process, which wins still more. The closes, and the objections they meet, run from SOP 97 to SOP 112. Taken together, this squeezes even more demand in.
• Then the price. Now you cannot handle the demand, so the brakes have to go on, and that is why the price goes up. With the higher price and far more demand, doubling the price while sales volume holds level might be possible. You might even double it and see sales volume rise.
• Then the cash. What follows is that cash flow soars.

10. The margin example

Here is how cash flow climbs, since this is said to be super common among home-service businesses.

The retort. It is heard a lot: our margins are 15 percent, but that is the industry average. The view here is that the thought should go. The answer is not to measure yourself against the rest of the industry at all: in this view, the others do not know what they are doing, so an average of them is irrelevant. Go back to the basic mechanics instead: if demand is greater than supply, the price should go up.

The example. A normal home-service business might be running 15 percent margins. Say you raise the price by 50 percent, described here as not crazy at all. Pair it with the better sales motion: a video sales letter, leads that are actually worked, a closing process followed, and the new price in place. What has that done to profit? The answer offered is that it quadruples it.

This is said to be done all the time with home-service businesses, and if you know where to look, there is said to be a great deal to gain.

11. Follow it through to the supply side

The whole of it is a stack of solutions, given so that you can put it in place and win. Play it out. Cash flow goes up, and you are still supply constrained. Good: pay more, pay referral bonuses, and put more into recruiting and ads. You have to carry the fixes through in their natural order.

Treating a shortage of capacity as a demand for talent is SOP 200 — Treat a supply constraint as demand for talent. SOP 201, section 6.3, gives a trade business's stack of the same shape: the sales process first, paired with price, and the freed cash spent on hiring.

12. How long it takes

Taken in turn, the steps are said not to take a ton of time: two weeks is the suggestion, while one of them takes longer. By kind, they sort into decisions, a one-time asset, and process training, which comes up three times. A couple of weeks is the figure again; the price change is a decision; cash flow is an output.

13. Reach every lead within seconds

Why it is on the list. It is the last point on the list, and it is there because, in this view, it is worth saying: a lot of home-service businesses are seen doing an atrocious job at sales, and at nurturing leads above all.

The case. An owner closed 55 percent of the leads he got, though he got only two to three a day. He had hired one person whose single job was to phone each lead the moment it arrived. She had no other duties. The owner knew that if he could reach a lead within 15 seconds, his chance of closing it doubled, tripled, quadrupled, reportedly.

Can you afford the rep? Some of you will say you cannot afford a rep to nurture leads. The answer: you cannot afford to go without one. Suppose you now convert 5 percent of your leads and you move to 20 percent: that is four times the revenue. Could four times the revenue pay for a new rep to nurture leads? Probably.

The general standard for how soon to make first contact is SOP 90 — Reach a new lead fast. Which channels to open on, and the double dial, are SOP 91; the first week of follow-up is SOP 89.

14. What this page does not decide for you

• Which step is which, in the timing. One step is a one-time asset, process training comes up three times, and one step takes more time; which is which is not said. Not established on this page.
• Whether the margin example holds sales volume level. The four-times answer pairs the price raise with the sales fixes; how many jobs are sold afterward is not given. Not established on this page.

15. The checklist

Step	What to do
1	If you run no ads and live on word of mouth, the pattern given is simple lead ads with a phone call to each response
2	Look at your website: a hidden quote or invoice button is the common fault named
3	Add a sales motion and a rep to nurture leads, and push the price up; selling fewer jobs is fine
4	Pick the vector you can absolutely win on, speed, risk or ease, and lean in (the recommendation here)
5	Build your guarantee around the fears: over budget, over time, a headache
6	For each obstacle to speed, ask whether it is impossible or only more expensive, and whether you can price it in
7	When demand is greater than supply, raise the price
8	In the sequence here: a video sales letter, nurturing leads and a closing process; then the price; then the cash
9	While still supply constrained, spend the extra cash on pay, referral bonuses, recruiting and ads
10	Weigh a rep who calls leads the moment they arrive against what better conversion would bring in

16. Where this sits

• The next stack, for services sold to other businesses and for software: SOP 206 — Run the B2B service and software playbook stack.
• Rating an offer on the variables that make up its value: SOP 3 — Diagnose an offer on its value drivers.

17. What this page does not cover

Writing a lead ad and recruiting tradespeople are not covered on this page.