For episode 2 of The Change Order, CEO/Co-founder of Hatch Chris Bache, joined us to talk about how effective communication can make or break a company. The episode starts with a conversation about how the idea for Hatch was created after trying to track down unsold leads for another home improvement company.
“Long story short, we ended up putting together like a series of cadences that use data in Salesforce to talk to people about why they didn’t move forward, and we got a 95% response rate. So, we ended up like text, email, and voicing almost 100 customers and 95 people responded. Out of those 95, almost 60 of them gave some sort of feedback about price or experience…the reason they didn’t move forward. And, we took all those responses and gave them to his sales management team. And, they ended up selling $400,000 in additional windows doors, which is what his main business does. And, they were able to do that in under 30 days…”
This incredible growth was the result of simple automation and messages that encouraged customers to explain why they didn’t buy so their sales team could go out and address those specific issues.
Chris then discussed how the absence of communication with your customers is a huge mistake that can be costly for your business.
“You sell somebody on September 1; they don’t get an install until November 15. But they don’t hear from you at all, or they submit a lead on your website to be contacted, and it takes 48 hours to get back to that person. It’s because we’re all running a million miles a minute. And we’re operating a business and running a business and making payroll and dealing with issues and all this stuff that sort of goes along with operating and running a business that we take the communication piece for granted. I don’t think it’s exclusive to Home Premium services. I think this is a business problem that a lot of people deal with, but especially in home improvement.”
Using automation tools for communication can give you the peace of mind that your customers are getting taken care of while you’re busy running your business.
Finally, we talked about advice Chris would give to businesses trying to scale.
“And I think when I first started my business, you know, you have these grand visions of like, what it can be and how big it can be, and all this other stuff. But, the key is to do little things, experiment, learn from them, iterate, and then find stuff that gets big in scales up. I think it applies to really like any business, or person or somebody that may listen to this and say, ‘Hey, like, I’m thinking about starting a home improvement company.’ Just go get one job, don’t think about 30 or 40 or 50 a month, but just get your first one, get your second one, learn from it, because you will do things wrong—because I did. And then you know, apply that. And then think about scale, once you figure out a rinse and repeatable process, and it stuck with me. And I think, you know, I tell my team even now, and we’re like 60 people, it’s like, still do things that don’t scale, figure out how to how to help our customers as best we can prove our theories, and then build out a way to make it really big. So that’s always helpful to me.”
Hatch helps contractors nurture leads into customers and customers into raving fans with communication automation tools. Learn how to get started at usehatchapp.com.
