Service Based Business Society Podcast

Season: 1
Episode: 13
Title: Would You Like Fries With That?

Hello, and welcome to the service based business society podcast. I'm your host Tiffany-Ann Bottcher. At our weekly episodes, we will dig into everything you need to know about scaling your service based business without losing sleep. With my experience in creating over seven figures per month, and a passion for marketing, finance and automation, this show will provide tangible tips and techniques for scaling your business. Let's get started.

Welcome back to another episode, today, we're going to talk about a couple of different things. The first one we're going to talk about is the season of summer. They call it a season because I want us all to remember that although summer comes with some amazing pieces and some challenges, it really is just a season. And before you know it, we'll be back. It'll be September, and back to regular life. You know, I was recently walking down the road around 10:30 In the morning, I had already worked. I had, you know, gotten up early. And I decided I was going to take, you know, an hour or so and head outside. And as I'm walking down the road, I'm realizing that I'm having this internal struggle with guilt. Because it's 10:30, it's work time. And I should be working. And as I'm continuing to walk down the road rather than enjoying the fact that I'm out on this walk. And it's a beautiful morning. And I am realizing that the kilts are really getting in the way of enjoyment. And so I thought, you know, I'm gonna share this struggle, because I think we all go through moments of guilt and feeling obligated to do things in our business, wondering what the right thing is whether we should go left, or we should go right? Whether we should be sitting at the computer, or whether it's okay to go for a walk. And as I'm continuing to walk down the road and thinking how this is, this is actually fairly ridiculous that I'm out for my walk. And I'm having this internal argument. One hand, unlike, you know, I caught up early, I got all my work done, I worked you know, I work more than enough hours, my team is good. You know, I've checked in with everyone, everyone's good. Clients are good. Don't have any meetings for a few hours. There is actually no reason why I can't just enjoy my work. But then on the other side, I think Oh, but it's, you know, 10:30 and that's work time, you know, I need to be sitting at my desk. And I really started to try and dig into why what was making me feel this way. You know, I often joke, you know, when we start our own businesses, it's, yeah, oh, the boss is pretty nice.

But at the end of the day, he was kind of feeling like, I have this feeling of obligation. Even though there's no reason there's no grease in me, I can't go for a walk right now. I felt obligated to be doing something else. And so I made a decision, a concerted effort in that moment, that I was going to start scheduling in joy. And that some of these things that we kind of take take for granted as normal.

I really wanted to start putting on the calendar in a way that made sure that they actually happened. Because what happens on my calendar at least tonight, you know, I would love to chat to more entrepreneurs about this. So, you know, we can chat about it in the service space business society, Facebook group, come hang out, let's chat and dig into this. I can't be the only one who's feeling like, you know, there's this sense of obligation and why? Why do I feel like at 10:30 in the morning, I must be sitting at my desk. And you know, we continued down the road and I continued my thought process and I decided in that moment like I said I was in the scheduling and the joy and it kind of hit me that there were a few things lately.

Now I often joke that if it's not on the calendar, I will forget we live and die by the calendar because there's always a time before. And so if it's on the calendar, no problem. But it's that you know casual will call you tonight. Nope, not on the calendar will not forget or will not remember I will definitely forget, you know or it's the Oh Oh, well, this weekend we didn't have a date night with the partner. Well, the calendar looks open. So before you know what someone says, Hey, have you free your Friday night, and you're like, you looked at the calendar, and nothing on it scheduled. And someone else, you know, it's like, oh, Saturday night, oh, we can do it Saturday night, there's nothing on the calendar. And before you know it, weeks have gone by with no date night, you know, hours have gone by No phone call. And so I wanted to start making a concerted effort to schedule in these pieces.

That really should be the normal, you know, schedule in the pieces that kept the joy, it didn't want to be feeling guilty as I walked down the sidewalk. So that was last week. And now this week, I'm really trying to make this concerted effort. And even as I was planning for today's podcast episode, I was realizing that I needed to do a better job, I needed to really sit down and look at the calendar and decide that the appropriate amount of time was being put into different things. The fact of the matter is, as a business owner, I can love my business. As a mom, I love my kids, as a wife, I love my husband. But do I really feel like everyone's getting the appropriate amount of time now, but to be honest, I feel like all of them are being shortchanged. There's just not enough time. And that is when we really have to decide what matters. As a business owner, I can say that my personal success feels very tied to my business. And not just from a satisfaction rate, we all, you know, have bills to pay. And it's often I find a challenge when you know, take on a new client or a new project or whatnot.

You're not saying that that new client or new project is more important than some other part of your life, but you're taking metal and when you are saying I'm going to do a good job. And sometimes that gets in the way of other things. And so, you know, I have tried to put in more thoughtful effort. And so I'm challenging you to do the same as we, you know, really come into the, the meat and potatoes of summer, if you will, you know there's a lot of barbecues, and there's opportunities to go to the lake and go out with friends or take the kids out or maybe your parents out. There are opportunities to live life and not be on the computer, or not be tied to your phone and maybe you want to go camping. But perhaps you like to camp where there is no service, we need to remember why we started this journey. And I say we because I'm talking to myself too. We need to remember that the flexibility that comes with the responsibility needs to be enjoyed.

There is really no reason why I couldn't go for that walk at 1030. There's lots of days where I couldn't, because I have meetings or have other commitments. But on that particular sunny day when I was going for that walk, there was no reason why I couldn't go for that walk. And I should have enjoyed that walk and not guilty about it. So I challenge you to really do a couple of things here, number one schedule in the joy because I am. And I want to make sure that I'm living life and enjoying my business. I also want to remember that summer is just a season, and September is just around the corner. So let's enjoy the weeks that we have. And I've already started my future projects list for September. Because I always feel that in September, everyone is reengaged and his kids go back to school.

Holidays kind of wrap up. You know, if you're in sales, you'll realize that August is a tough month because a lot of people you're selling to or not even around. So, you know, in other businesses, it's the opposite. but summer is just a season and we must live life and enjoy scheduling the joy and not take for granted the fact that we have extra responsibility. We have extra risk to manage as business owners, and therefore we need to enjoy the fact that we have more freedom, we need to enjoy the pieces of flexibility that we have. So like I said, I'm working on this myself and I cannot be the only one that has these waves of guilt. And it really just ruins the moment.

So if you've ever experienced this, I would love to chat about it. Come hang Now in the service based business society, Facebook group, let's talk about it. Because there is strength in community, knowing that we are all on these journeys, of building businesses and success in what however way that serves the life that we want. So talking about that, and really deciding what that means for you and your business. So for my own business, it means really accepting that summer is just a season, and my kids are only going to be little ones. And so, yes, summer is going to come with some challenges. But knowing that that's okay, there's still 24 hours in a day, and I'm going to be all in. In the other actors, I'm going to enjoy the flexibility when I have it, because it's not always they're going to remember why I started this journey at all. So I hope you do this. As a busy business owner, we all know that you want more traffic, more phone calls, more website visits, realistically, all of the more things that can bring additional sales.

So if you were looking for 40%, more phone calls, 64% more exposure in searches, and 143% increase in maps, listings, then it's time to optimize your Google My Business Profile. Right now your business management agency is giving away the eight step guide to optimizing your Google My Business Profile, and the guide is totally free. Down in the show notes, you will find the link to grab that guide, you'll be well on your way to more calls, more traffic, and more sales. Now, let's dive in to the real topic of this week's episode, which is customer value, and growing and offering additional services to your clients and really extending that customer lifetime value with the age old expression? Would you like fries with that? Now, since this is the service based business society, chances aren't we are not talking about actual fries. And that is correct. It is an expression. And we really want to look in our own businesses for these complimentary service services to our initial offering.

So defining in your business model, what is the entree? And what can you offer as a side? You know, is it the fries? Is it the Caesar salad? What does that truly mean in your business? Does that mean you should be offering a complimentary service? Does that mean and when I say complimentary, I don't mean free. I mean to complement to offer additional value or enjoyment to the client. If we want to look at different pieces and how this ties together. Often, your client can receive more for less. If they go with the XO flip think about a car at the mechanic shop. So the car comes in at the mechanic shop for one service car comes in, you know mechanic can go with the car, drive it into the shop lifted up on the hoist, go through all of these steps at the end of the service into lower the voice, they need to double check everything and they need to drive it like the fact is whether they do service a or service B or service A and B at the same time.

You only have to start the setup and the end once. So the fact is you can sell service A and B together for less than service a and service B. Same thing. If you need to go to someone's home. Maybe you traveled to the client. If you're already there. You don't have to include additional travel time. If you're going to add it as an extra line, then you maybe don't mean to go through the whole invoicing process. You know, you're already invoicing now you're just adding a little extra to the existing invoice all of these types of things to basically say when we had things we can offer more to the client. And you know, nobody likes when they get an invoice. And it says, you know, we did this work. And it was $100 and they use oh well. Shouldn't we fix this too? And they say oh well, had we done it while we were already there. It would have been $25, now it comes out, we have to do all these steps and blah, blah, blah. So it's gonna be another $100. You think, Oh, my goodness, why didn't we just do it at the same time? You know, and it's, well, you didn't max for us to do that. Clients don't know what they don't know, you know, if someone thinks, oh, well, you know, you're fixing the car, well, it would have been so quick to just do it, well, we already had this part. But the client may not know that.

So we offer better value to the customer, when we foresee what they need, they don't know that it's much less expensive to do. The second piece, while you're already there, they don't know that they could have, you know, if you're painting, you could have painted the hallway, you already had all the painting stuff out, you were already at their location, you already have the colors picked, you know, you had, you could have stayed an extra hour, the end of the day and and done this whole extra space.

We, as business owners, need to see what the client needs. And we need to offer and explain that I think we always go to the web, and we want to keep it affordable. We want, you know, the client to be able to compare apples to apples. And we do. That's absolutely true.

So if you are dealing with a client who's possibly collecting up a bunch of quotes, let's go back to painting examples. We know that, you know, our prospective client is calling and they're getting some prices. And we are going to paint the bedroom. And so we know that in a full day, we could paint the bedroom and the hallway. But if we just press that, then when they compare it with that art to a competitor's price, the competitor will look less expensive, the end number on the quote will look less, even though they're actually getting. So what we want to do in that case, is we want to Prince, this is the bedroom so that they're comparing apples to apples. But we also want to say I can offer you a discounted rate and the setup will already be included. If you are using the same paint color, we can offer you a discounted price the whole way. In that instance, you are utilizing the fact that you've already have, you've been to the paint store, you've got the paint, you have the color picked, you have the paint brushes, the rollers, you have all these things that already dirty with that pain, you're still going to have to clean everything at the end, but you're only going to have to do it one time.

Now, if the client comes to you, and then says, I do want to go ahead, but I actually want the hallway to be this other color, that's not the same, we're no longer going to be able to capitalize on the fact that you're only cleaning one set of brushes that you already have paint colors and all of these things, you can no longer offer the same discount. And so when we look at what our clients need from our business, we need to say, this is what they need now, but these are the additional pieces, these are the fries that can truly offer additional value, we are not taking advantage of a client here we are offering our expertise and knowledge saying I can also do this, there is nothing worse than getting on the phone. Now going back, I have worked, you know, in the accounting department for many years, early life. And so you know, you got a client who's on the phone, disputing an invoice. And so I mean, I've had so many of these conversations where the customer will phoned in and they will say, hey, so you came and it was, you know, you came in in order to determine what was wrong. They open everything up. It took hours and hours just to get inside to see what the problem was. Yep. Okay, I'm following the story so far.

Then they decide this is what's wrong. And they break it all down. And they say, Okay, I'll send you a quote, for the repair, close it all up. So perhaps someone's been there all day to figure this problem out. Then you've sent them the quote, and you say, Oh, the fix is super simple. But we have to take the full thing apart in order to get to that little piece.

So many times I have heard Well, why didn't we fix it when it was already taken apart? You already had it apart? And it's oh well you know We didn't know if it was approved and this and that now, we can't always offer such value. Sometimes we need to order the part. It's going to take weeks to come in, we can't leave things apart. That is 100%. Understandable. But there are also situations where realistically, we need to offer better value to our clients and say, Hey, although it might be a little bit disruptive to our process, why don't we just get on and phone when everything's apart and say, Hey, I have everything apart, it's only going to take me an extra two hours to fix it. Now, well, it's apart. But if I have to come back, it's going to take all this extra time that is offering good service that is seeing the process. So whether it's offering an extra service at a discounted rate, like in the painting example, or whether that is utilizing and capitalizing on some costs to offer a better discount in the mechanic example, you know, the saying, hey, if we only have to put the car on the hoist, and do all of these pieces, once we can do more things for you, or it's, it's deciding, hey, we just need to hit the pause button. Before we put this all back together, we just need to call a client.

All of these pieces are different ways of offering more value to the client, while also offering a better service. You know, one of the pieces being listening to past episodes, customer experience, is so important. And often we run into this issue where from an operations perspective, what is easiest, it's not always the best for the client. You know, it's, it's saying, hey, you know, we actually prefer you to call in you to call in, not mail it, or I need an email, but not call. Customers are in the film. If you're on the phone talking to someone and they say, Hey, can you email that to me, as a client, you think I'm telling you what I need right now, on the phone. Maybe from, you know, an administrator perspective, you think, oh, it'd be so much easier if they just email me the details, I can copy and paste it right into the work order. Sure. That isn't the best customer experience person is already on the phone. And so seeking things from the customers perspective, offering that better value, because at the end of the day, offering that better experience offering more value actually serves the business. Because if you go back to the painting example, if we have a six hour day painting the room, what are we going to do with the last two hours of the day, chances are, it's not going to get built out, chances are we're not going to drive to another job just to start the setup process again. So we actually as a business are significantly better off if we can take those extra two hours and build them the existing client, even if it's for slightly less, that is creating efficiency at its maximum maximizing the billable hours and offering the customer great value. So you know, as much as we think upsell equals, you know, more cost, what we actually want to do is offer more value. And offering more value isn't always just adding more cost. It's also offering the cost in a way that is more efficient for the business. And for the client. As you're planning in your own business, take a look at the billable hours, take a look at you know what types of jobs are not taking all day, but not leaving enough time to go somewhere else, you know, to four hour jobs is very different than one, you know, one six hour job and when to our job.

We don't want to only leave enough time to not be able to have enough time for anything else. I hope that makes sense. We don't want to only have enough time to go home early every once in a while Sure. But for the most part, we want to maximize our billable hours. So we need to structure our business in a way that offers value to the client and value to the business. selling this way is a win for everyone. So our tangible tip for this week that we can implement today and see a benefit tomorrow. Is taking that time to go through. Maybe look back over the last 30 days, looking at what time wasn't well utilized, and what could we have offered in that time that would have been valuable to both parties. We want to make sure that we are offering our pricing whether that be proposals on the phone, you know, whether you do a full electronic proposal, however, that however you're offering that you want to make it easy for the client to compare apples to apples, you know, huge you adding additional things, and then including it in a bulk price only makes you look more expensive.

So you want to make sure that you're offering it in a way that's super clear. You want them to think Oh, wow. Oh, this is great. This is easy, yes. I wasn't going to paint that whole way till next summer. But I can't beat this pricing thing and to do it now. When the customer feels like they're getting great value, and you know that you aren't maximizing your resources, billable hours, in such a great way. This is when everybody feels like they're winning. So take that time to go through and look at where those opportunities were and start to implement those in your business starting right now.

Well, we are all out of time for today. If you guys have not joined the service based business society Facebook community, make sure you head on over to Facebook and we can continue the conversation. Be sure to also follow the show by going to any podcast app and searching surface space business society. Click subscribe, click the fifth star and leave us a written, review. Have a great week and we will see you soon