Lee Godbold is the co-founder of Junk Doctors. Junk Doctors reached $1 Million in sales in their 4th year of operation and $2 Million in year 5. In this video, the Junk Removal Authority talks about simple steps for you to take to bring your junk removal business to $1 Million a year in sales by Year 5. Check us out at https://www.junkra.com Subscribe to this channel for all the best junk removal industry info Like and follow us on Facebook at Junk Removal Authority
Good evening guys. It is a Tuesday evening. Another episode of Junk Removal Made Simple brought to you by the Junk Removal Authority. Going to have to make this call, this one a reasonably quick one because I’ve gotten an AdWords call of a customer. That’s interesting in using for Google AdWords management coming out of Atlanta. I have to make this quick because this is important. It’s ten things to get to 1 million dollars a year in sales within your first five years. Now, one of the first steps. I don’t have it listed this is one of my actions, is even thinking about 1 million. That’s thinking big right there, and to me now 1 million is thinking big. I get 10 million, that’s my goal right now. Where 2 million now, my goal now is 10 million but 1 million dollars when you’re first starting out or when you’re small. That’s a huge milestone to hit, and that’s what you need to be shooting for. A lot of these steps are simple. There’s nothing all that difficult. It’s going to take a little different mindset. Again, you got to think big. You got to think concerning investment. Investing instead of an expense. You can’t be thinking cheap when it comes to your investments.
Invest Properly
You got to be willing to spend money on your investments because if you’re not willing to spend money, you’re not going to get to 1 million dollars a year in sales. It’s going to take some foresight and investment in people and some investment in advertising. Investment in vehicles and equipment or you aren’t never will be to 1 million. You will never have a serious business. You just have to continually be scraping by like you hear everybody talk about all the time. Well, you know when 2 or whatever. The most important thing is answering the phone. Not all these are necessary in order, but this is the most important.
Market Your Business
I do a lot of cold calls as part of Junk Removal Authority. I call Junk Removal businesses throughout the country. I talk to them about our service offerings the same offerings about our AdWords management. Our call center and the websites we have. Any product I believe that would help their business out and become more profitable. Something I’m going to speak with them about. It amazes me the number of people that do not answer their phone, and it displays a month. Junk Removal is a convenience type of service for your customers.
So, it’s not something that they think is all that highly technical and there’s not a couple of things they really look forward. They look to a higher company, and there’s a bunch of competition out there. So, what they do is if don’t answer your phone they go down the line until somebody does, they could get to a franchise, and the franchisor is going to answer the phone for sure. Young doctors, there are very very few times that call.
Every so often a call that slipped by. Before our call center days. Every so often but you know we always, we call them right back. If we missed a call, we are calling it back immediately as soon as we got on. The only time we miss a call was when we got like three or four calls that came in at the exact same time. Answer your phone and your business will increase. If you’re not answering your phone now. If you’re letting it go to voicemail. People hardly ever leave messages unless from the previous customer. Previous customers will leave a message and e-mail.
Provide Effective Customer Service
You still need to answer the phone all the time with the new customers unless they were referred by somebody. I’m going down the line. Answer your phone, your business will increase tremendously. Also, at all hours, you put that on here. If you left your last job to go in the business world. You gave up any idea of when I’m on the clock, I’m working. When I’m off, I’m not. You are working 24/7 in your business. You were somebody else in answering that phone all hours 24/7. All hours or at least a minimum from like 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 pm like that. Trying to get 24/7 at all costs. Answer it professionally so don’t speak like “hello.” You need to tell them the company name and what your name is. So, for example, “Thank you for calling Junk Doctors. This is Lee how may I help you?” So, clearly enunciate what you’re saying.
Exhibit Professionalism
Be professional, tell the company name and tell your name. If they won’t book, try and tell them “Hey I tell you what.” Number one you need always ask for the job. So, after they ask for pricing. You run through the pricing. You tell them, you kind of describe pricing. Answer some questions they have. Then you need to say “Would you like to go ahead and schedule?” Always ask that. If somebody calls and asks for the price of an item. It states one item account pickup. “Yes, it’s going to run 120 dollars to pick that up for you. Would you like to go ahead and schedule?” Don’t wait for them to say “I will call you back.” “Check my husband” “Check my wife” whatever. Would you like to go ahead and schedule? That call right there we’ll get a lot of people to go in and schedule rather than telling you to know even whereas if you don’t ask that question a lot of times, they’ll continue on the call of another company to check their husband or whatever they do. They’ll tell you one thing and do something. Also, have a local number.
It’s crazy to me when I’m calling on somebody Junk Removal business. How many companies have 1-800 numbers? You’re giving up one of your most significant advantages. Being local is a huge advantage. You need to make your you take advantage. Advertising sales, you can be best at junk removal, you could have the best website. You can have the best-looking trucks. You know the best team members, and you can do a better job than anybody else but if you don’t advertise and you don’t want a sale, and nobody uses your services. Nobody’s going to have the pleasure to find that out. It is your responsibility. It is a social responsibility to your entire population in your area for you to make sure your good service gets to them. You were doing everybody a disservice if you aren’t advertising and making it easy to find your business. If you’re not calling people and telling them about your service or service that can help them out. Then you’re not being responsible. You’re not being accountable to your community by hiding your services from the residents in your area.
Apply The Best Advertising Techniques
You’ve got to be out there advertising. You’ve got to be out there selling. Advertising. Graphics. Guys, we get a 2500 dollar a month of people just sees a brand. Costs are about 1400 bucks for the graphics on our trucks. You get them cheaper too. It must not be that big. You want to be too wordy, and that’s about it. You want your logo, phone number, website and that’s about it. Your name is your logo that needs to make it clear you do junk removal. You’re like “We would put like demolition in a concrete room.” Other than that, that’s all you need. The rest of it, nobody pays attention to.
Don’t try and save a thousand bucks on vehicle graphics in this album about 10,000 dollars throughout the year. People book because they see. Chamber commerce, that’s just like networking. So, go to these events. Volunteer on these events and do stuff. It’s big and gets your name out of the community. A lot of times people enroll in the Chamber of Commerce. The entrepreneurs, they’re very well connected.
Generally, they are noble people, and they can help spread the word about your great business, and you can help spread the word about theirs. Cold call realtors, banks, organizers when you’re slow. So anytime you’re slow they’ll be just twiddling your thumbs. Get on the phone. Make some calls trying to draw up some business. This is being AdWords. This is the largest and what I talked about before.
Being cheap, don’t be cheap and skip out on that AdWords. Don’t think about AdWords as an expense if you go with a proven strategy just like the JRA. With us, managing your campaign. Approving AdWords campaign strategy even if you spend several thousand dollars on the Google AdWords as well as the management. Then you’re going to be getting a profit back in return. We can show you if you all want to see how return on investment looks like on Google AdWords. 919 4 669 3229 466939322 or email me at [email protected]. YouTube videos and other sites linking back to your website. We will help out any search engine optimization. You need to hire good people. Hire nice people
When you hire, hire on personality first then hire on strength. You don’t want somebody strong like an ox. They can work hard, but they’re not going to be good in front of your customers. You don’t want them.
Same-day service, so about 20% of our jobs are saying they’re service. I’ll think about that. Not only is it immediate income that very same-day, the very same-week but also think about how many customers. If you don’t know for same-day service, how many customers are going to miss out? So, when you miss, you miss out 20 percent of your potential. So, if you’re doing 50 jobs in a week, that’s an additional 10 jobs that you’ve missed out on.
Not only that, 10 future customers that you’ve missed out again. So, later on down the line, not an addition to 10 you missed this week. You know they went to another company. If the other company did a good job that’s 10 of the people you’re never going to get again. I mean that could be just those 10 people from that one week that could be 200 jobs that you missed out over the course of 30 years. That’s only one week. Take that and take that and let’s say it’s $200 job. Let’s divide that down. Let’s say 75 jobs, you miss out on 10 years. Then let’s do a little calculation here.
So, let’s say you missed out just that one week because of previous customers because generally, customers will use your service about every 2-3 years. So, let’s just say, for example, let’s say it’s 40 jobs. These 40 jobs and you have job calls just $300. Just that one week over the next 10 years, that’s $12,000 difference. Now, you got 52 weeks out of a year. You aren’t offering 52 weeks out a year at your current numbers. That’s not growing. You know that is the summit, that’s the same that you’re going to stay doing 50 jobs a week for eternity. You do a big job going, and you can get 1 million dollars. So that’s $624,000 you’re missing out on just by not doing the same base over several periods of 10 years. $624,000 you’re missing out of if you stay at 50 jobs a week. You know if you double your business. I mean you’re looking at 1.2-1.5 million dollars, make sure you’re doing the same-day removal
That has been one of the biggest things that allowed us to scale up to the level we’re at now. The 2 million dollars in sales compared to one of our competitors has been in business in this area. Just as long as we have and they are about $200,000 in sales or less maybe $150,000 in sales. So, make sure you’re up for same-day service. Presentation, pro presentation. Your appearance is actually better than quality in terms of getting business.
Now, you have to have good quality, but you don’t have to do the best job of removing items. You don’t have to be the most professional and have workers that are the best movers. Not the most prescient as far as the actual moving. You don’t have to have the most skill and the highest quality your junk removal, but you need to look like you do. You need to have clean trucks. Your uniforms need to be clean. The shirt needs to be tucked in. Your website needs to be super professional. Everything you do from answering the phone, scheduling the job to the team that arrives. They need to be shaking the customer’s hand. Introducing themselves, they need to be very courteous to the customer. Everything needs to be a pro presentation. That’s what leads people to be super satisfied and refer your business to friends and family.
Number 6 is follow up. Send your customers a thank you cards and give them phone calls. Just make sure everything about their service went well. That’s huge right there, it is huge.
It’s also an opportunity for you to have another contact with them. Which gets them thinking about your Junk Removal business.
You know they say it takes 6 times, you need to be into the contact with the customer before they retain your name even if they used your service. It’s challenging to make sure that you’re keeping in touch with them and stay in the top of the line.
Number 7, ask for reviews. As the end of the job, ask your customer to leave a review. Say “Bob we appreciate your business today if you wouldn’t mind. I’d love for you to leave us some feedback in a review on how we did online. Would you be willing to do that for us? Then say “Okay here’s what I’d like to do. I’d like to send you a link via where you can leave a review and let us know how we did. I really appreciate it.
I look forward to hearing what you have to say.” Right there always ask for the review. When you get more reviews, people will begin to trust you more when they’re looking at your company, and they’re choosing a junk removal service to use.
Number 8 is doing great work. Goes without saying. You won’t repeat business. You won’t refer it again. Make sure to do good work and when mistakes happen you going to damage people’s property.
You need to go ahead and repair. One of the best opportunities to get a raging fan about your business is when there’s a problem. Step right up and go above and beyond their expectations. Refund them the cost of the service in addition to paying for the repairs expenses. This can expensive, but it’s something to look to do positively. Get them and take that negative. The negative thing that occurred turn it to a positive by going above and beyond in fixing problems.
Number 9, Don’t be cheap. This is not to say be wasteful. There’s a difference, cheap means that you’re willing to spend that money. You’re not willing to invest. That’s basically what it means. You don’t care about quality. You don’t care about the long-term potential of this particular investment. That’s why it is an investment. This particular transaction it’s actually your investment. You’re looking at the number, and you’re like “I’m not going to pay that amount.” So, for example, our AdWords management you know to set that up right there. It’s a $3000-dollar expense, but it’s probably even that month you pay $3000 to us in addition to Google. It would almost always not a complete guarantee, but almost always it will be profitable in month one. Then it drops down to $1750, and it drops down to $1250 ongoing. Receiving $1200 ongoing. People will be that three grand in their head and they might just quit looking into it. Who cares if it is three grand at the start if it’s going to bring you profits on down the line. I can promise the example of AdWords, we spent how valuable our AdWords management. If we spent $300,000 over five-year learning and wasted $300,00. We spent well over that. We close to a million dollars on AdWords over this five years. It’s about $900,000 we spent, and $300,000 was wasted that we determined, but that was like “We were learning.” So, what we’ve done is we’ve taken that $300,000 in mistakes. Now, you have access to that in a fraction of the cost. I mean $1200 a month. That’s about $13,000 to $14,000 a year. You know to get to 300 grand. In 10 years, it would be 140, and in 20 years it would be 280. It would take you like 22 years before you get $300,000 wasted expense. Our campaigns can outperform yours.
So that’s just another example of not being cheap. Invest in trucks when you need them. Don’t go long. You need to be able to enable these same-day services. You need trucks, hire people a little bit before you actually need them. Always be thinking of investing and growing. You don’t want to be wasteful. So, you don’t want to spend money unnecessarily. Print advertising is a good example. Don’t spend money on print advertising. Don’t go out and just buy tools when you see them if you don’t really need them. They’re just going to get lost. Don’t be wasteful don’t be cheap when it comes to investing in your business.
Then know your numbers. You have at least a basic understanding of accounting. Also, you need to know every single week how your numbers are looking for that particular month. How much you earn this month? Are you profitable? Is your profit in 2 grand? Is your profit in 5 grand? Is your profit 20 grand or 50 grand this month.? How much are you profiting this month? What are your expense percentages?
Disposal fees for Junk doctors need to be somewhere around 8.5-9%. If they’re more than 9%. We’ve got somebody who is underquoting a job, but we need to raise our prices. Disposal fees have gone up for something. Fuel costs are about 6%. If we’re over 6%, then we might need to raise our prices or see if there’s a different way. We can run our trucks on different routes. We can do with our trucks or try maybe have another truck so we can eliminate rush hour times like a 5 to 7. That’s also with labor, our truck labor should be about 30%. If it is more than 30 percent. What’s going on? Can we try and discourage people from booking this 5 to 7 by opening up another truck? By buying another truck? In that way, we don’t have guys sitting in traffic and extra hour. You know what we can do to keep these numbers right? Guys, you have to know your numbers. If you don’t know your numbers like the shark tank. If you go on Shark tank and you don’t know your numbers, Kevin O’Leary is going to be all up.
He’s going to be up there with a dagger fist to shove it up. You got to know your numbers. If you don’t know your numbers, then you’re going to run unsuccessful business and leave a lot of money on a table. You aren’t getting 1 million dollars a year in sales. You are a businessman.
People who are watching this show even if you’re not yet. You need to understand. You’re going to become a businessman. So, if you’re not a businessman now and you want to get 1 million dollars. You don’t maybe think about 1 million dollars a year if you’re not thinking about running a business. It doesn’t matter, you’re that removing junk. It doesn’t matter, it’s beside the point. You could be doing anything, but you want to start doing 1 million dollars a year in sales.
You’ve got to be doing all these steps in here. You’ve got to be thinking big. You’ve got to be thinking about 1 million. Then you’ve got to know your numbers and how to get there. So, our average job cost something else you know. Our average job cost generally floats somewhere around $285 to $300. Not counting demolition work.
Our cost per job from AdWords. Our Raleigh location is about $32. Our Greensboro location about $32 or strong locations about $70 in AdWords on advertising expense per job.
I can tell you all these numbers right off my head. Our workers’ comp expense only about 3% of our gross income. I know them all. I know them by heart as soon as you see them out of the line. You need to correct them.
This has been a quick little video here. It is covering some great stuff. These aren’t necessarily the order of importance. These 2 are the most important. The reason why answering the phone is more important than the advertising and selling is because you spend money on advertising and selling. If you don’t answer your phone, you just wasted money. If you’re going to spend money on advertising and selling and you’re not going to answer your phone. Instead of spending money on advertising and selling. You can mail me at 10312 Chapel Hill Rd, Morrisville, NC 27560. Just for nothing and because I’ll take that money. I’ll put in better use. If you’re not going to answer your telephone, you will waste advertising money value. You’ve got to answer that call. I don’t care what you’re doing. If you are in the middle of the meeting, you’ve got to answer that call. You should’ve somebody else covering. You’ve got to be talking to that customer. You’ve got to be booking that job. Whatever you are doing, you’ve got to answer that phone. Make sure if you are unable to answer your phone, you have somebody that can be an instrument for you.
Our phone number +1 919-466-9322. [email protected]. Visit us at junkremovalauthority.com. We got a new site coming up. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Comment below if you liked this video, let me know. If you didn’t like this video, let me know. If you got any other questions, comments, concerns, post them right here in this video. I’ll respond, and we’re going to have everybody blow the hell out of their business in 2018.