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Joe Crisara (00:00): If the client has to ask you for a solution, it’s too late, but you should have thought about a solution before you did that. Great service providers don’t just solve a problem. 15% of what they do solves today’s problem. About 85% of what they do solves the problems in the future. When you express those things, quality, reliability, safety, health, these are the reasons when somebody says, can you lower the price? And I always say, well, you know what? I wouldn’t be doing a good service if I were to cut corners on that

John Jantsch (00:28): Out. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Joe Crisara. Once a struggling home service contractor transformed his failing business through a pivotal aha moment that I think we’re going to get into today. And now he helps thousands of contractors increase their revenue by three to five times with his Pure Motive service system. He’s also the author of a book we’re going to talk about today. What should we do, how to Win Clients, double Profit and Grow Your Home Service Sales. So Joe, welcome to the show.

Joe Crisara (01:04): Well, John, thank you. First, lemme start by saying though, I want everybody to know this, that John Jantsch, I’m talking to the OG here, this dude, he changed my life. He didn’t even realize it, but the Duct Tape Marketing book and just, I did have a small mention in that book when I was first starting was we had our website that had the content we delivered and I was mentioned in the book, what an honor, I almost melted when I saw my name in print. But definitely John, it’s been the service you provided. It’s an honor to be here, an honor to help the home service professionals and any other service professional doctors and anybody else who needs to create higher value when they communicate their solution to the clients.

John Jantsch (01:42): Well, I appreciate that, Joe. I can’t decide when people call me the OG of marketing if that really just stands for old, but I’ll take it, I’ll take it. So I mentioned in your intro the idea of the pivotal aha moment. You talk about it in the book, and I know you’ve shared this millions of times, but why don’t you share that kind of what set you on this path?

Joe Crisara (02:05): It’s actually right in the very beginning of the book, which is that I used to think, John, that as a home service professional, I grew up from a blue collar background. My dad was a plumber and stuff like that. And so we were always doing everything ourself. We never hired a service even though my dad was in the service business, and so I was always trying to save people money on things. It was my paradigm that I looked at the world as a service provider. How can I do things a little for less money to help the consumer out in a way? Because I witnessed my father doing that. He’d go through our church and he would help fix all their plumbing problems in their homes without, and they’d offer him money. He’d be like, no, don’t worry about it. So I grew up with that kind of give service and don’t worry about it kind of mentality.

(02:48): Don, it almost drove me into bankruptcy and there was an aha moment I had where it was and I was trying to save a client money and I lowered my price. I wanted to keep them as loyal clients. I figured the best to do that, to show my love is to lower the price for them. And I realized that they didn’t go with me. They went with another company and I was like, huh, what happened? And then I went to a contractor meeting and it turns out one of my best friends had a competing competitive company, but we were good friends from going to trade school. He said he got the job and I said, well, what did you sell it for? How could your price be lower than mine? I already dropped the price by like 700 bucks. And he said, no, Joe, I charged because I dropped my price from 2,500 down to 1800.

(03:28): He said, no, Joe, I charged $9,857. I’m like, holy crap, let me see. So he had it in his briefcase. He showed me that the customer didn’t go with me and the reason they didn’t go with me, I simply did not offer enough service. I tried to lower the price and cut corners on the service figuring how could I find a way to do it for less money to help the consumer? And it turns out I wasn’t helping the consumer. And then since that moment in 1991 and 1992 was I learned that people are motivated by a better service and they will pay more money voluntarily without trying to suggest that they do. So as you can tell by that first story, I’m not a really great salesperson, but what I am good at doing is providing an environment where the customer can buy without selling them. Does that make sense, sir John?

John Jantsch (04:16): Yeah, a hundred percent. And I know you talk about offering multiple options to customers that there might be the here’s the basic package, but here’s what’s going to make your water heater perform for years if we do these kind of add-ons. And a lot of times letting people choose really helps. It’s a great way to more profitability, isn’t it?

Joe Crisara (04:35): Well, it’s like great customer service in the trust funnel that you have so wisely helped us develop and articulate very simply. And simplicity is one of my greatest values. And I feel like by looking at what you created in that we fit right into that trust funnel perfectly. Because if you think about it, it’s not just a water heater, it’s the things that go around the water heater. You can say, well, the doctor does surgery on me. The surgery doesn’t cost hardly anything. It’s the hospital, the surroundings, the environment, everything else that the serene room where it’s completely sterilized from top to bottom, that costs more money than the doctor truthfully. And so I think that we don’t realize that when you get Starbucks, you’re paying for a cup and you’re paying for everything, the real estate to find the Starbucks. And the same thing is true for plumbers or landscapers or anybody who does roofing and things like that.

(05:30): They don’t realize that the part that they do is only about 15% of it. But there’s other things like if you’re doing a water heater, well, how was the main shutoff valve? If it’s not working properly, let’s replace that to give options. Now, of course you did mention start the bottom working way up. Now here’s the truth there. Here’s the science of pricing, which is in the book. So I definitely recommend that if you wanted to read the book, it’s going to go over the science of pricing and it goes over giving one price and what statistics behind that, if you only give price, you’re going to have the lowest conversion rate and the lowest revenue and cutting corners on the work, you’re going to have low quality work. You’re only giving because which price are we going to choose? We’re going to choose the cheapest one, and then we’re going to say the next one is good, better, best, which is starting at the bottom and then trying to upsell people.

(06:12): The best way to do it though it’s found out because that will give you 40% people upgrading if I start at the bottom and say, here’s a better water here, here’s a tankless or whatever, and here’s the one that has more protection and warranties and stuff like that. So that would be the 40% upgrade, but you would have an 80% upgrade if you started with the premium option first and then tiered yourself down to the next one and then finished with the economy one. So if I was doing a plumber, I would say the top option would be endless hot water purification. You’d have a wifi connected shutoff valve to shut the water off in this house if there was ever a flood when you’re on vacation, things that go with it, a 12 year warranty. And the bottom option would be go to Home Depot and buy a tank and I’ll put it in for 1200 bucks or whatever.

(06:57): So the top option, and then also I believe in the monthly payment aspect, the teaching service professionals that not only should you make it the premium mid-range economy like I talk about, but also let’s make those prices affordable by anticipating that nobody’s got, if I did that thing with the endless hot water and the whole thing I mentioned there, it’s probably going to be $15,000. Some homes could be $20,000. So I can’t expect people to be pulling $20,000 out of their wallet when they just have no hot water, but I can ask ’em to do 1 97 a month for 10 years. Does that make sense? So definitely that’s everything. That’s all the things that we all those 47 years of the crashing this way, John, they have about 24 years of crash and burns and I got about 24 years of figuring out the right way of doing it. But the crash and burns are very impactful and they leave scars, and those are reminders of what to do the right way as opposed to do it the wrong way. Makes sense, John? Yeah,

John Jantsch (07:51): Absolutely. If you don’t learn anything, it was just a mistake. That

Joe Crisara (07:55): Was it. That’s it.

John Jantsch (07:56): Yeah, and it’s interesting too because I think we make a lot of assumptions like, oh, I don’t want to charge ’em 30,000 or whatever it is. They’ll never pay that. Well, we don’t know that. And it’s not even that they won’t pay that. It’s that they want the level of what that’ll bring them. When you gave that initial example, they may have actually not gone with you because they thought, well, how good could it be, right for that cheaper price?

Joe Crisara (08:21): That’s right. It’s like he’s lowering the price on me. He’s giving me a discount deal when it comes to heating my family. I don’t want comfort of my family, I don’t want discount, I want done. And I think that’s something about it. I think we all innately, I always make a thing, if I went to Paris, France or whatever, and I couldn’t even speak French, but I saw how many euros, if I saw a menu in front of the restaurant, it said 75 euros for this one and five euros for the one at the bottom, I would probably say, well, I’m hungry. I want to get the one that’s 50 to 75. I can’t even read French, but I do know it probably going to get more and it’s going to be better if I spend more, right? So I think innately we don’t give consumers enough credit for doing that. But one thing I will, and I have some golden nuggets reserved everybody to not only do that but make it successful. There’s a couple I call small bigs that I can share on this podcast. I’m going to give you some golden nuggets that if you do want to do a premium mid-range and economy choice, that there’s some key things that are going to make that pop even better, which I definitely can’t wait to share with you guys.

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(10:19): That’s oracle.com/duct tape oracle.com/duct tape. Hey, digital marketers, this one’s for you. I’ve got 30 seconds to tell you about Wix Studio, the web platform for agencies and enterprises. So here are a few things that you can do in 30 seconds or less when you manage projects on Wix Studio. Work in sync with your team all on one canvas, reuse templates, widgets and sections across sites. Create a client kit for seamless handovers and leverage best in class SEO defaults across all your Wix sites. Alright, time’s up, but the list keeps going. Why don’t you step into Wix studio to see more. I want you to unpack the concept of pure motive service because when you gave your intro, you were talking, or early on you were talking about how you just wanted to serve, you wanted to help people and that led you to almost going out of business. There’s an element of that in pure motive service. So tell me how that’s different than going out of business.

Joe Crisara (11:25): Well, I think everybody already has, certainly John Jantsch has pure motive service in his heart. I’ve witnessed it so I know what it is and I can define it very clearly. What it is this, it’s basically how can I provide a service that is, gives people a range of the quality and reliability that I can give them. There’s the highest quality and then there’s the lowest quality to let people have a choice at all that say, here’s the best way to do it and here’s the cheapest way to do it and here’s the way in the middle, more professional. And then I have one that’s a higher safety and health that has not just a water heater, but water purification, maybe flood protection. So we don’t have any safety issues in the home. Then we have the best service. The top option will have a 12 year warranty on it with no, can’t write a check for anything.

(12:12): The bottom option will have no warranty. You got it at Home Depot, I can’t warranty something like that. And then the ones in the middle will be five, seven years. So you see the warranty is expressed by how many years? I’m going to back it up and you could price, by the way, the warranty and service is a profit center that will be 38% to 42% revenue at an 80% gross profit for any service professional that’s out there. Whether you’re, I mean, landscapers definitely would need a service membership to keep track of what’s going on at the property. Really any kind of a service business needs to continue the service and anticipate what’s next and that’s the service there. But here’s the big, here’s the thing I was talking about this the golden nugget. When you express those things, quality, reliability, safety, health, these are the reasons when somebody says, can you lower the price?

(12:57): And I always say, well, you know what? I wouldn’t be doing a good service if I were to cut corners on that option. Now we do have other options that are lower if you want to choose that. So it’s kind of anticipating that people are going to negotiate. And so we’re kind of already built the negotiation into our options. So they look at the top one and they go, Joe, that’s a lot. You’re asking me for water purification, everything like that. Can we do anything less than that? So yeah, we could just go without the water purification. That would bring the price down to this. Okay, but I like the water purification, right? Yeah. So once you introduce, see Americans and everybody in the world when you introduce a solution to them that’s right for ’em. Now here’s the key word. I’m going to give you the golden nugget.

(13:37): Here it is. You arrived here and your question was perfectly designed to do this. I didn’t know if you knew that or not, but here it is. It’s the word because, so if you can’t articulate the reason why you included water purification by using the word, because you can say, Joe, I just added the water purification in because of your daughter, Amy, when you told me she had eczema. I just felt like that would be the better way to go with the solution. And Joe, I also did the 12 year warranty because you told me you work as an accountant and a bookkeeper. I don’t want to make sure you can focus on your job. Let me focus on the water heater for 12 years and you focus on your family and focus on your job. So you have to have the reason why, and that’s where our training comes in, is that how do we teach people to articulate the pure motives in a way that is really quality, reliability, safety, health, customer service, defined by your actions, by putting it into your solutions and not just lip service, I call it John, where people talk like, oh yeah, we’re a high quality company.

(14:37): Really prove it by putting it in your prices and make it relevant to the customer. That’s the word. Because that’s one of the pure motives is to say, not only do you got to do all that, but all that has to be customized and relevant. So it doesn’t look like the plumbers just, or some of the service guy, the HVAC guy or electrician or whoever it is, even the accountant or a divorce attorney. It could be anybody. You’re not just throwing stuff in to fluff it up. You’re putting stuff in there because you can draw a line to anticipating what’s going to happen and preventing that before we run into a problem, I would say this, great service providers don’t just solve a problem. About 15% of what they do solves today’s problem, but 85% of what they do solves the problems in the future. Does that make sense, Sarah? Yeah,

John Jantsch (15:24): Absolutely. And that’s not going to be for everybody, but the percentage of the market that wants you to anticipate and appreciate you anticipating the problem, they’re more than willing to pay a premium, right?

Joe Crisara (15:35): Well, it’s close to a hundred percent of the people will see the benefit. But here’s the thing about it. Now they may not be able to afford the benefit or that’s the thing about, so what we’re trying to do is get our consumer to say something like this. So instead of saying, this is a ripoff, get out of my house, we don’t want that to happen. So what we’re trying to get a hundred percent of the people to say, if they don’t want it, if they want it, we want ’em to say pick an option and there’s the words, what should we do? Which one do you like? What should we do? And so here’s the options, what should we do? And then the customer’s like, man, I just didn’t know it would cost this much. And I’d be like, I understand it’s a high investment, but it’s an investment in your family, so what should we do?

(16:11): And they’re like, Joe, is it okay if I don’t buy this from you? See now that’s a little different tone rather than get out of my house is the rip off. So it’s much better if they say something like, Joe, I think I’m going to have to go with my brother-in-law who’s less money. And number one, I appreciate your effort and nobody ever presented anything. I feel amazed that you did all this for me. They see the effort that you’re putting into the thoughtfulness behind the solution, and nobody is going to insult you when they see that you made a customized relevant solutions for them. They may say, you know what? I already signed a contract for my brother-in-Law or something like that. So the ones we usually lose are people who already had plan B firmly in place and there was nothing we could have done really.

(16:56): But they’re calling, that’s a lot of people called to see if they can find a cheap price on their brother-in-Law so they can go back and tell the brother-in-Law, there’s a guy cheaper. But what they aren’t expecting is somebody who’s way better than their brother-in-Law and they’re kind of conflicted. So what we’re trying to achieve is happy customers who not only use the solution but refer it because they say nobody’s going to take care of, if I had my mother, I would give her a peer motive service provider. I know I won’t have to keep dealing with this and my mother won’t have to keep calling me. This guy’s going to take care of the thing today and also make sure she has grab a cyst bars, she’s got a knee replacement. So he’s going to think about those things, not just wait for the client to ask us for it.

(17:36): The key thing I believe, John, if the client has to ask you for a solution, it’s too late, but you should have thought about a solution before you did that. If you’re teaching marketing, I would say, well, here’s how we do it. I thought about, you’re probably going to ask me who’s going to do these funnels or whatever. Well, here are some providers I have chosen that would be a great person for you. So you anticipate the next step because if you’re lost, I don’t know who’s going to do the marketing funnel. And it’s like, thanks John for creating another problem for me. In a way it makes sense there. So I think every service needs to think if I am successful with my service, then there’s going to be something else they’re going to need that goes with it. Am I going to provide it or am I going to provide a sister company or somebody to help with that?

(18:16): Because when that funnel gets stopped, it doesn’t usually get stopped by the consumer, it’s stopped by the service provider who failed to keep doing the next step that the referral step or the step in that funnel. So I think we are the ones service MVP and the book is the thing that drives consumers through that funnel that doesn’t just matriculate without an accident by gravity. It does it because a great service provider is moving people on a conveyor belt that moves ’em through that funnel and keeps moving it through the funnel on the referral step and the action step. And that’s why I think what we do fits so perfectly together because it’s like people like you are some of the guiding lights behind. It’s just up to the standards of guys like David Fry, you might remember him and sure guys like you, I had to live up to that standard.

(19:09): If it doesn’t hit that standard, I’m like, it can’t be in the peer motives. So there’s six peer motives and definitely it’s defined very clearly in the book and I think it’s something you can give. You can be the cool part about it. It can be transparent with the client and say, I did this for you. I made these options and the reason I made ’em is this higher quality on the top option and I give you a range of other quality and you can be as transparent with the consumer. And there’s people right now who advertise, ask us about our pure mode of service in the marketing. So they actually use that as a marketing tag. I have some companies that say, where we always give you premium mid-range economy options or the call is free if we don’t do that. So they actually promise that in the marketing now. So it does kind of feather into that. We’re not a marketing company, but definitely the actions that the experience that we provide people in the field or in their home is definitely facilitated and amplified by the actions of people like you who help broadcast at the consumer.

John Jantsch (20:06): Well, anytime, I’ve always said this, anytime your business is coming into contact with a customer in any way, shape or form, there is a marketing function being performed.

Joe Crisara (20:16): Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s where marketing comes to life. You’re promising before the doorbell rings and we’re executing that promise after the doorbell rings because if your marketing is promising something, I think that’s where a lot of market people, when they do marketing fall short, they can’t think of the USP or something that we’re going to do. The reason is their company doesn’t operate better in differently. So the key to getting that selling position where it is unique is by doing service that’s unique. We call do magic moments, which is praise the effort of the people in the home to get through victories and challenges, diagnose the people, diagnose the system, make premium mid-range economy options, and then manage the opportunity to get the job done or reschedule it. Because if you leave an opportunity behind, it’s not the customer’s fault that you forgot about it, you just emailed it and that’s it guys, that’s what a hundred percent of people are doing.

(21:12): 90% of ’em are just emailing the quote and leaving, I don’t do that. I’m like, dude, let’s email the quote, but let’s also make an appointment to follow through and make a choice on this thing. If you don’t want to make a choice, let me withdraw the bid. I always tell people, because I’m not here to sell you, I’m just here to make sure I manage this opportunity to help you. I always say that if the service provider can’t manage that opportunity when they’re selecting solutions, how are they supposed to manage the entire job they’re doing or whatever they’re kind of trying to do. So I always say this is a demonstration of the work you’re going to do by managing the opportunity in the home. I think that’s why I really feel like it was so honored to be on this podcast. I was like, duck marketing is a cloak that fits around. We’re in the middle of that thing and this is like a cloak of comfort I feel right now being on the show with you.

John Jantsch (22:00): Well, Joe, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by. Where would you invite people to connect with you and to find out more about what should we do? I know you work with a lot of home services, but this really applies to services. This just applies to businesses, a lot of what you’re talking about. So I’d love

Joe Crisara (22:17): It if people, it does connect with anybody who really, every business is a service business. I always look at it, even if you’re stuff, you’re creating a service to provide stuff to people. So we have our website called service mvp.com. If you go to that or if you wanted to email me at joe@servicemvp.com, we actually have a link. The book is on Amazon, it’s $25 and 95 cents, or if you get an audible, I think it’s 1995, but if you want to, I can’t do anything about the audible, but I can do something. We have a book funnel that if you email me, I’d be happy to send you the link to the funnel where you, all you got to do is pay for shipping for eight 90. We’ve sold over 10,000 books right now at this point. So we really, it’s off to a good start.

(22:59): We released it in March and this is our trust funnel. Use the material for such a very little amount of money that’s ridiculous and make more money first. And then if you want to examine what we can do for you to help your team and yourself succeed, and whether you’re a startup, there’s no better way to start than to make sure you create trust with you as the first prototype employee. Or if you’re a big company, which we have a lot of people, right? Remember you used to be living in Kansas City, I think right back in the old days. I did. May was one of our clients over there. You had one of our big clients. So definitely we have a lot of big companies and small companies that use this over 33,000 companies that use this. So definitely I would recommend doing that, Joe@servicemvp.com or just go to service service mvp com and get a free course and just try that. Make sense?

John Jantsch (23:48): Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we will run into you one of these days out there on the road.

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