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A contractor was doing $15 million in sales five years ago. Then $12 million. Then $8 million. He's at $4 million now, and when Mauricio asked him what changed, he had no answer. He'd cycled through agencies, spending $15,000 a month, and couldn't say where a single lead came from.

Three weeks into a new engagement he handed the strategy calls to his office manager. That's the mistake, and it sits underneath the other six.

Mauricio Cardenal started Contractor Marketing Pros in 2017. Since then the agency has worked with more than 500 contractors, generated over 250,000 inbound leads, and driven more than $150 million in sales for clients. That work means seeing inside the business: the CRM, the sales process, how fast a lead actually gets a callback.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why you can outsource deliverables and execution but never the strategy or the results

• Al Levi's rule from The 7-Power Contractor that there are two seats an owner cannot hand off, marketing and financial decisions

• Marketing is one of four pillars alongside sales, operations, and finance, and it's the one contractors skip

• Nine out of ten contractors cannot connect their ad channels to actual revenue

• Why a $300 lead that sells a $4,000 job beats a $40 lead every time, so leads are never simply cheap or expensive

• 95% of the businesses Mauricio talks to never connect their CRM to their marketing

• Speed to lead is a discipline problem, since the tools that solve it have existed for over ten years

• ServiceTitan surveyed over 1,000 contractors and found demand rising, with the gap sitting at lead to appointment conversion

• The four fixes: automatic text in 60 seconds, missed call text back in 30, an AI receptionist for nights and weekends, and smart routing

• Why contractors take pride in not following up, and what that costs

• Ryan Fenn of Chiirp looked at over 500 million text messages, and the lesson was to text like a human rather than a marketing department

• How reviews now drive four things at once: local SEO, the map pack, Local Service Ads placement, and AI recommendations

• Why Facebook is where a smaller company can still compete in a market where Google has gotten expensive

• The ego tax, and why revenue is vanity while profit is sanity

Every mistake on this list is fixable in about 30 days.

Mentioned in this episode:

From $15 Million to $4 Million: The 7 Mistakes | Mauricio Cardenal, Contractor Marketing Pros

Mauricio's Calendar

The company was doing 15 million.

I was doing four, mainly because they didn't own the marketing

you cannot outsource the marketing.

lot of times,

people are

really impressed with revenue. And it's more about profit

Revenue is

vanity, profit is sanity.

This is AI in marketing for home service pros and the show for contractors who want to grow without wasting time or money. If you're in roofing, Hvac, plumbing, or any home service business, we break down how AI and modern marketing can help you book more jobs and close more leads, and build a business that runs without babysitting. Every task.

What's up guys this is Mauricio Cardinale. Today I am the host of the a marketing show today, the solo episode I want to talk about the seven marketing mistakes that I've seen after working with 500 plus contractors. I've been working with contractors since 2017. So today we're gonna talk about the biggest mistakes that I've seen after working inside the trades, that I consider to see that hopefully after this episode, you'll have a better understanding of the six you can avoid to make the best results for your business.

So one of the things that I want to discuss is first is that, overall, obviously when somebody does marketing, they don't want to fail. But there's things that happen, are happening in the inside that can really determine the success or failure of campaigns. So I want you to really grab a pen. We're going to talk about the biggest mistake first, because that mistake leads to everything else.

And then we're going to talk about what you can do to actually fix it, to get that, get the best results possible at the end of the day, this is about getting results for your business. And if you listen to this and apply the lessons from this episode, you'll be much more successful with any campaign or any results you do with marketing.

So I'll tolerable by myself. I really don't talk a lot about myself, but I've been working with contractors since 2017. I started the company in 2017. We worked with over 500 plus contractors. We've generate over 250,000 inbound leads, resulted in 500, over 150 million in sales for our clients. One of the things that I really want to stress is that the things that I'm discussing are not theories.

They're actual experience. After working with so many contractors and being inside the business, I not only get access to, the conversations, you know, the demos, all these different things, the actual campaigns. I also get access to the CRMs, the way they make decisions, how they handle inbound leads, their sales process. I really have a good understanding of how this works.

Is it makes me, it has made me realize that the steps need to happen in order for you to be successful in this. So if you're hoping listening, you will get a lot of ton of value from this. Here are the mistakes. Seven mistakes ranked first to worst. Number seven sits underneath all the others. So the first one is that owning your marketing.

I'm gonna talk specifically about what that specifically means, because I have a specific definition that I want you to understand, because it's not really just owning the ads, the assets, the creative, which is important. It's really owning the actual marketing decisions and also owning the results, not knowing your numbers. Again, that comes from number one. If you don't know your numbers right, you're gonna make bad decisions.

Speak to lead. We're gonna talk in depth about this. I've done many episodes about this. I'm sure you've heard a lot of guests talk about speed to lead and the importance of this follow up. And having not having a sales process, you wouldn't believe how many small businesses, even today, are not getting the best results with their campaigns because they're not really having a strong sales system.

And I've seen it firsthand by a lot of contractors, even ones that are doing really well. Had to have a tight, sales process that can really be beneficial, not treating engines as a core, piece of your business. I want to go on to the reason why this is really change over the years. It's become too important to kind of outsource, again, Facebook and execution.

Obviously, I'm not going to go and dive into how to execute a Facebook campaign, but I'll go over in detail over the things that need to happen for you to be successful. And obviously the eagle attacks. This really comes with making bad choices in your business that really costs people a lot of money and can really lead to failure.

First one is not owning your marketing. So 15 million to 4 million. Let me give you an example. So I started working. We started working recently with the client and we only work with them on a short term basis. And this client was they were doing about 15 million in sales. About five years ago. And over that time, they've gone from 15 million to 12, eight, eventually to 4 million.

And he can explain the reasons, he's gone to a marketing agency, to a marketing agency, and the same story, basically, they were to start strong, and then they would kind of fall off. And at the end of the day, one of the things I asked them during the meeting, because I was the one that actually talked to them and did the actual strategy was, did he have a CRM?

Does he know what his cost numbers look like because he was spending, you know, not a significant amount. It's not spending like 3 or $4000. You're spending like 15 K a month. So at that level, if you're spending 15 years, you know what? You know what what you're getting out of those numbers. So I saw them with everything.

Right. We talked about onboarding. I told them that in order for you to be successful, you have to use a CRM and you have to own the process. Within the first couple weeks, they signed right. They started off, you know, pretty strong. But what ended up happening is that eventually, within 2 or 3 weeks, they started handing off the calls to their office manager.

And the strategy basically, apparently who owns other businesses. And he said, okay, our marketing, my office manager was is equipped enough to handle that. Trust her that I had to all the calls because we'd require a pretty extensive onboarding process that really makes a success. At the end of the day, that's a big red flag. And when that up happening is that they worked for like a 130 and 60 days, they were spending quite a bit of money.

They didn't know anything about the leads. Where were they coming from. And, you know, they ended up going somewhere else. And at the end of the day, like you, you are spending money on ads. You have to know what what what it's producing and you're not owning the actual result. And that's really what's happening today.

The company was doing 15 million.

I was doing four, mainly because they didn't own the marketing and you cannot outsource the marketing.

This is the same common mistake that I see all the time. And what I mean by that specifically is this you cannot outsource a strategy. You have to own the actual decisions. You have to own the actual results. You can actually outsource the deliverables and actual execution to third parties, to vendors, to, you know, marketing, managers wherever you decide to hire.

But you cannot outsource actual results. That is, with you. You cannot do this. Right. So at the end of the day, your version is basically what I see consistently is they they hand that off, they delegate, and it's okay to delegate. This in your business, it's it's okay to delegate things in your business, but you cannot delegate, especially if you're a smaller business.

The strategy. Yes. They actually know what's going on because at the end of the day, you're just going to see, the, the, the actual numbers and understand the actual strategy and actual what is needed to be successful. By the end of the day. You are, the marketing manager, depending on the size of the business. If you're a smaller business, you're going to own different, aspects of your business.

You're going to wear different seats. You're going to be the sales manager, the marketing manager, operations manager, whatever that is. You're going to be wearing different seats. And as you grow in business in size, you're going to hire specialists. They're can actually fill that role. But until then, most of the time you do that at the end of the day, like this is something that I'll leave you talks about all the time, and it costs about the 7 pounds, contractor.

He says that there's two things. Two seats you cannot outsource. First is the marketing and second is the financial decisions. And I agree with them. Those things are really important. So if you actually own those decisions moving forward, you'll be more successful. And everything comes from that. This thing, number one, everything else comes from number one. Because if you own everything else, everything else will make sense with what we're going to discuss this, with the next mistakes.

So marketing is a pillar. It's extremely important. It's one of the four, four core pieces of business. Typically, if you look at sales operations, finance and marketing, for whatever reason, a lot of small businesses, a lot of contractors just completely ignore the marketing side. Right? It's it's for side three. It's four. Right. So you have to understand it's a pillar in your business.

Why are you, not understanding the strategy? It's your it's your business. You have to understand the strategy. At the end of the day, it's an assessment of what needs to be successful. You cannot delegate this, right. It's too important. So that's where that's where things have to happen. I'm going to talk about how to set this up for you to be successful.

Now stick number two again comes with fun. Mistake number one is not knowing your numbers. Nine out of ten contractors we talked to do not know their numbers. They don't know what their cost per acquisition is. They don't know what their gross profit is in terms of actual cost per acquisition. They know their cost per lead, maybe their cost per book deployment, but they don't know.

They can't tie the actual, ads, the actual channels to actual revenue because they don't know, and that's something that in a day you can hire a marketing agency to kind of help you with this. But if you hire a marketing agency, you're paying them 500 bucks a month or a thousand bucks a month. How much do you expect them to set up, like a ten a day?

This is their business and you have to set this up for yourself. You have to know where all the dollars are being spent, and even you would be surprised if the people that are spending quite a bit of money do not know what their numbers are. So what this means if you are a local business, you're going to have, it's going to be kind of similar numbers for all the trades, but in a day it's going to be understanding what your cost per acquisition is against profit, right?

Not revenue against profit. So if you give an example, if you, sell $10,000 roof, your gross margin is 30%, right? Plus commission, you're making about 2 to 20,500 bucks, you know, on that. So you can afford to spend about, you know, 3 to 1 on that. And you would that would make you happy with that. The results.

So that's kind of the numbers. Yes. Every business is different. But typically there's kind of ranges that are best practice that are really important for your business. If you don't know these numbers again it's a it's okay, but you can build this up with your own business to be successful with your campaigns, leads or inexpensive or cheap. A good lead might cost you 300 bucks, but my might be able to sell $4,000 job.

Another lead might cost only $40, but the job cost $200 to actually, sell. So it's actually one is actually more expensive. But if you run the numbers, it's actually much more lucrative versus the other one. And it's actually less expensive, less expensive, but more costly at the end. So you have to really understand the lead aren't expensive or cheap.

It's really about understanding what's your cost per acquisition and really getting deep into that number. And it's different from what that is. Setting up the dashboards to understand the infrastructure, to make sure you make good decisions with their marketing campaigns. So like I just said, right. Building the infrastructure, what I recommend if you guys are, this is 95% of people that I talk to and work with, they don't connect their CRM to the marketing.

Some people I've talked to, they are they don't want to give access or are hesitant to give sales, information to the agency because of XYZ. The reason what what what does that mean? Like you're you're not so you're so when you don't do that, you don't know what the sales look like. We don't know what the actual what's actually driving revenue to your business.

So you have to build the dashboards, get the sources tracking, make sure that everything is looking at the same information. Make sure you have a single source of truth to build the right, infrastructure to make help you make decisions. Again, if you don't do this, then everything you do in your business, especially with marketing, is going to be a guess.

And again, stop guessing, know what the numbers say, and really understand how to do this for your business. To make decisions, for your business to be successful. Mistake number three. Very common speed to lead the gold standard one hour. Again, this is all the information, right? Speed to lead is not really a new, problem or challenge. The tools that kind of solve this challenge have been around for over ten years.

So it's not really about, the the technology is about more of a discipline. Most people don't have a discipline to, to actually respond to a lead right away. And even with today, with all the metrics, I show you that if you don't respond to a lead right away, you can always end up losing the deal when you already have.

Contractors still on are responding to leads fast enough, and it's really about setting up the correct infrastructure to make sure you are, you are getting the lead and turning that lead into a to an appointment. That's what the whole goal, how to turn that lead. It's inbound call or form submission speed to lead. Having a follow up process and making sure you're doing everything you can to maximize the value of that lead to get the best possible result.

Again, like I just said earlier, this is not a technology problem, right? It's been around for a while. It's not about automation, not about AI. It's about discipline. Attendees that even today, most contractors are really failing this, this simple route. Having a speed to lead. Right? Having it turned on, having it, make sure you're sending the correct messages, understanding what the message is, say, making sure you're, you're you're addressing this information again, this is something that if you see, like on different Facebook groups and contractors are always complaining about, you know, you know, the marketing, right?

The leads are crap or whatever that is. But I've seen the inside of the business. I have the access, about how fast the respond. I'm telling you myself, these guys do not. Most of them do not do a good job responding to leads. So it's about making sure this is set up correctly for your business to be successful.

What an actually, what an hour actually cost. So what is that number? Right. What is the number that you need to understand how fast it takes for you to respond to a lead and turn it to a sale. Do you know that number? Right. Because the average day is not demand. It's not lead generation, it's operations. Here's what I mean.

Service side. And did a survey where they examined over 1000, contractors. And they found that PC demand has keeps increasing. So what that means is that there's more opportunities for leads because more, you know, more people are actually, finding, contractors online. There's more people using, you know, lead brokers. There's just more demand overall. There's more actual demand for people using these services.

But what's happening is that the the challenge is turning that lead into appointment. That's what what's what the gap is. So that's what service on and recommends. You have to know what the actual hour cost you to make these changes for you to apply this in your business. So how to fix, speed to lead? Typically we use quite high level, which is contractor link, which is the, the way they will version of a of a high level.

And we kind of implement this for our clients. But there's a lot of tools that can help you set this up and basically use the kind of tenets. Right. Having, automatic text within 60s, missed text call back within 30s another big one. I receptionists on nights and weekends. Keep in mind that the majority of the leads that come from emergency type of businesses when I'm talking about roofing, Hvac, and plumbing come after hours.

So by not having an AI receptionist or by not having someone to actually answer the phone and respond to leads after the business hours, you are losing a big opportunity. So keep that in mind. Smart routing. Again, this is the companies that do this. The high level have smart routing where they actually can have speed to lead, but also speed to appointment and actually have the, the tech, specifically that based on demographic, this is all done with AI, by the way, if you know what you're doing with AI can really gain an operational advantage with this.

So notice mistake number four. No follow up after the estimate. So quote in ways the industry defaults, this is something that for whatever reason I seen contractors really take pride in not following up again. It's it's about building of sales process training, understanding what the person says and building that and having a follow up system to maximize the opportunity for a sale.

Majority. If you see 20 or 30%, you don't normally know what the conversion rate on on leads. But then a day, if you look at what the numbers say, people don't really track what that number says. So they're saying sometimes they say 80%, 90%. Do they have a number in the dashboard? What is your follow up rate? So it's obviously different from, a referral lead versus a cold.

It it takes a lot more skill to close a cold lead versus a referral. So you have to make sure you have a system and a process for each one. And obviously it's a different skill answering the phone on a Google lead versus doing a converting a Facebook call. Facebook lead is very different. I call lead is the new lead that they answer.

So like I said before, right there takes skill and turning a lead into an appointment. And the sources are different, right. How my advisor is going to be different than, you know, Facebook is going to be different than thumbtack. You have to kind of figure out what works best for each channel and maximize the results, lead or not.

The problem with, the home services face, the guys that are doing well have about 25 lead sources. They have 25 lead sources. They're doing a lot of a lot of sales. They have Google, Facebook. Others say they have SEO. They have, you know, ten different lead brokers are using. It's it's not the man. It's the man is easy to generate.

It's understanding how to turn that lead to a sale. That's a big, big problem. Right. So the other thing too, that it's kind of a like a tactic and skill is that, overall, if you're trying to follow up with the people, especially if it's automated, make sure you text like a human and not a marketing department.

So Ryan Fenton from Chirp, they examined over 500 million text messages and the big thread that we talked when we had this conversation was, if you had this conversation and you treat it like more of a human, then you're going to get a much higher response rate. So keep that in mind when you do these things. The options gaps.

Another big mistake that I see is not having multiple quotes, not having pricing transparency. So this is something has changed. You know, this, something that has changed in recent years. Right? Some people disagree with this. I tend to agree with this approach because, especially if you have a good brand, because they can say that up front price they can help you with AI, with AI, search, with Geo, all these different things that really help with everything else.

You know, we, we we've had, multiple people. The biggest one of the biggest challenges they discuss is really not pricing enough. When you don't price enough, you know, you know, understanding the profit margins they need to happen. And that really kind of gives, you know, a recipe for disaster, right? Mistake number five. Not cheating reviews as the engine again, reviews are extremely important.

And when I talk about specifically the things that impacts, there's impacts for different things. But reviews are should be seen as a foundational part of your business for for you moving forward. It's not about hey, let's ask for review now. It's mandatory because it affects four different things, right? The four things that are effects is basically what I've talked about a second is that it can help you with all these important things.

The other thing to do before that is I want to talk about, Simpsons a little. So Steven Horne from Simpson salute. Really just fix one process. And this and his business and really help them scale for 21.5 to

million.

They didn't actually, spend more money on marketing or hire more salespeople.

They just fix

how they intake calls. So they went from, 60%

They went from lead to appointment rate to 80%. So that fix drove over 4 million in sales just from fixing that, leaking their funnel. So again, when in terms of, the the process of getting reviews, there's four different components that affects local SEO.

It can help you, it can help you, increase the local visibility of your map pack. The map pack. Right. These are high intent searches, AC repair near me. These are all things that can help you understanding what it takes to be successful. Google local service ads. Your profile feeds directly into LSA placement neglect and you pay for price again when you're doing the LSA.

Reviews are strong piece of this, so by not having reviews it can help you with getting more LSA leads and then I recommendations. I is become a trust algorithm. And obviously one of the biggest ways that I trust is by analyzing the reviews and analyzing the frequency, the velocity, analyzing the star rating, analyzing what they're saying, and a sentiment.

This is all, you know, this is all done with AI. It can really help you understand what it takes to be successful with this approach.

reviews are a distribution channel now. So this used to be a trust signal. But whether you're close or job now and there's so obviously a trust single but it's something that has to be part of your operations.

That's the main point of what I'm saying with this. All right. So here are some things you could do for the helping you get more reviews. Overall, what I've seen is obviously asking a person, right? Having the tech, the salesperson, the project manager ask before you, you do the assessment. Keep in mind, you don't need to do the job so you can ask for review.

If you if you did a quote correctly, I can help you with everything else. Automated text. Within 24 hours, you can have a, you can have an actual, you know, a process in the editing process that help you get more, more, know more reviews, respond to a review. Right? Good and bad. It's a recurring cycle that you and your, just to process, when you respond to every review, I can help you with the algorithms that can help you with SEO.

I can help, I assess how good are you are at the response. And obviously velocity. Velocity has become one of the most important, ranking factors and recent reviews. So by having a recent reviews, it can really affect how your rankings with all these different things that are working. Mistake number six Facebook ad. So I want to talk specifically about Facebook ads because obviously a lot of contractors have had success with Facebook ads.

But there's way more contractors that I have not success because I haven't really cracked the code. And I think the big reason overall is that there's two things I really prevent this. First of all, Facebook ads are a little bit harder to execute for the business owner, because it requires a lot of creative and also requires a strong back end and a strong speed to lead and sales process.

Because if you don't have that, then you're going to lose. You're not going to close jobs. The other thing, too, it's it's, you know, having the creative really prevents people from, from doing this. Google. Google is also typically, you know, if you're an emergency type of business, it's going to be a higher quality leads write higher quality leads overall, especially with other, say, inbound phone calls.

And it's also more hands off if you hire someone to do the Google ads or LSA, you don't have to worry about, you know, doing other stuff. The issue is this right, Facebook has become, you know, is going to be set to become the biggest ad platform in the world. It's going to surpass Google, by the end of this year.

According to eMarketer. Think about what that means. Google's been the king for, I don't know, ten, 15 years. They're still the biggest platform in the world. But the reason why I think Facebook is, although people have success, is that, first of all, in some markets and in some verticals, if you're in roofing, Hvac and some, like places like Dallas or, you know, like Boston, these, these high dense areas, it's going to be hard to compete on Google.

There's companies that have, you know, thousands of reviews and you're going to compete against these companies that your smaller business, it's just harder. But on Facebook it gives you a chance. And it's not easy to execute, but it gives you a chance. And that's the whole thing that I mean by that. So if you have the targeting is is already set.

But if you have really good creative, if you have good offers, if you have a good sales process, these are all things that are not expensive. But people do not do it really gives you an advantage. And the other thing too, it does it can help you generate demand. Google is dependent on search on the volume.

It it's really up to you control how much you can demand. But Facebook, you could really increase the volume and generate leads typically depending on the population as you can. So that's kind of the thing. If you execute correctly Facebook would be a huge opportunity, right. Free estimates that are on offer. This is something that, you know, besides having good creative, committing to the good, creating, having different images, testimonials before and afters, having, content, face to face content, it really makes a big difference.

But having an offer can really get people to get notice and really converts from a lead, convert somebody to a lead. And basically you have to give them a specific reason to act a real deadline to act with the reason. And that's something that is the thing. So it's really the same things over and over. You know, if you look at companies like Lee filter, Eric Holmes, these guys have been running the same offers with very different creatives, for a long time.

Right. And that's something that you can kind of model but understand. There's a back end system that helps you then be successful with with everything else. Right. If you guys don't do this right, and I want you guys to picture this scenario as you're a startup and you want to, you know, do Facebook ads and you're spending 2 or $3000 a month just just to get started.

It's up to you to really, do everything you can to make that money work. Is there a startup? You don't have a lot of money, so you have to make sure you're doing everything possible to, to, to address the situation and get the best results. Because you don't do this, then you're going to get not get the results.

If you do this, if you don't do this, then you're basically lighting money on fire. That's what that means. And number six, number seven is ego tax, revenues, a number that you want to brag about.

A lot of times, people are really impressed with revenue. And it's more about profit because it's the same thing, right?

Revenue is is vanity, profit is sanity.

And I don't know, they I've seen what this does is basically when you have a big ego, it's it's what I mean by it is not learning from your mistakes. That's exactly what I mean. If you learn from your mistakes, if you are making decisions and you're not learning from them, then that that's something that I think consider a big ego.

Because if you have nothing to learn by doing it for a long time, then obviously there's something that has it needs to be addressed, right? It has has, has to be a change. And I'll give you an example just to, to give you clarity on this. Right. If you've been doing marketing for a long time and you keep hiring multiple people.

But the problem, the problem is poorly you, right? You're not understanding how it works, what it does to be successful, etc., etc.. Right? There's many excuses of why, maybe by leads by the agency soft market. Sometimes these are true, obviously, but usually are not. It's basically following up and making sure that you are doing everything you can possible to make the best choice for your business right?

So you going to fix what you figure. So that's the whole point of this. Every mistake on this list is fixable in about 30 days. If you if you really own the process, understand the mindset, always the leads and you will have really be successful with everything else that makes, What what. That's right. So again, here are the seven mistakes.

It really stems. So number one not owning the actual marketing. Not knowing your numbers. Speak to lead follow up, not following up. Not reading reviews as the engine the offering creative on Facebook and then ego tax I think that I there's obviously more mistakes but I wanted to do is just kind of keep it high level. I wanted to keep a high level to help you guys understand that this is really from an owner perspective, talking to another owner, that if you actually do these things right, you understand the importance you're going to be successful, right?

And the chances of these be successful are, you know, much higher, not 100%, but much higher. And if you are not successful with a campaign, you can learn from it. And that's the whole that's the whole game. Right? So again, pick one. Make sure you do this, on your end. And then the ones that are doing this on consistently are the ones that are really outspending and are doing much better results.

If you guys have any questions, make sure to book a call. It's contact. Am I going to post on that calendar? We could book, call with one of our consultants. You can learn about our process. You can learn about your business. I can do an eye assessment to figure out what you're doing on your business to be successful.

But thank you, guys.

Thanks for listening to AI in marketing for Home Service Pros. If you got value from today's episode, do us a favor. Follow the show. Share it with a contractor friend and leave a quick review. Want help using AI or smarter marketing to grow your business? Head to Contractor Marketing pros dot net and book your free strategy. Call.