Lead Nurturing and Calculated Growth with Jason Kramer

I'm Ryan Bell of Isaiah Industries, manufacturer

of specialty metal roofing and other building materials.

Today, my co host is Ethan Young.

How are you doing today, Ethan?

I'm doing pretty good, Ryan.

Happy that it's Friday.

How you doing?

I'm, I'm doing great too.

A kind of miserable morning here.

Um, had a very weird downpour and it's cold.

So not looking forward to that weather that's, that's hitting us, but it's here.

So time to get our pumpkins and start carving and, uh, get

Halloween underway, I guess.

There you go.

Before we kick off our conversation here, I do want to just

remind our listeners that we will be playing our challenge words game.

So.

Have your ears open, uh, for any words that kind of sound like they

don't fit into the conversation.

And then we will go over those at the end of the episode.

Um, anything I'm forgetting Ethan, or are we ready to dive in?

I think we're ready to get going.

Introduce our guest.

Joining us today is Jason Kramer, founder and CEO

of Cultivize, a consulting firm specializing CRM implementation.

With over 20 years of experience, Jason has worked with global and

local brands to help bridge the gap between marketing and sales.

He's here to share his insights on optimizing the sales process

and how to identify poor performing marketing campaigns.

Jason, welcome to Construction Disruption.

It's a pleasure to have you on the show today.

Thanks, guys.

Happy to be here.

Well, I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

Uh, personally, I get kind of excited about CRMs and

the capabilities with those.

So let's dive right in.

Um, for those, you know, who aren't familiar with you, could you start

us off by telling us a little bit about kind of your background and how

you've ended up where you are today?

Yeah, sure.

So the, the bridge version, because it is a Friday, um, even though this might

air not on a Friday, but, uh, we're just sort of, you know, relaxed mode here.

Uh, casual conversation.

So I got started as, um, as doing, uh, in marketing.

Uh, so marketing was my background graphic design specifically work for

agencies, uh, in Manhattan, um, different brands, global brands, you know, local.

Companies you never heard of, and doing that for a little while.

And then I saw my first sort of opportunity lightbulb idea, which was

back in the early 2000s, specifically 2002 is when I started my first company.

Um, there were agencies, right?

Of course, but then there were freelancers.

There really was no middle ground, you know, I'm not sure if the listeners

today and you guys probably know of like Upwork and Fiverr and all

these different platforms where you could go and get logo design and web

design, all these things, you know, from people all around the world.

They really exist back in like 2002 is excessively.

And so I built a virtual agency.

I took all the resources I had or the people I met.

In my agency years, and they had my copywriters, my video people,

my web people, and all these people at my disposal as I needed them.

And for 16 years, we built a lot of hundreds of websites, you know,

branding, all these great things.

Um, and at the end of that, I did a lot of email marketing for my clients.

And I started realizing.

Which we'll talk about today that a lot of companies are spending

money to generate leads, right?

Whether it be Google ads, whether it be going to home shows, whether it be direct

mail, whatever they're doing, they're driving their trucks around, right?

And that's a moving billboard.

That's advertising.

What they're not doing as successfully is managing all those leads.

Right.

And so that was the inspiration for Cultivize is what if we built a business

to help nurture leads and help salespeople and organizations do a better job

at making sure nothing falls through the cracks, but also connecting all

their marketing efforts to their sales efforts so they can actually figure out

which marketing channels are actually working and which ones need to be fixed.

So what are some of the key challenges that companies

face when they try to align?

You know, their sales and marketing efforts and how does call

device help solve that for them?

You know, it's a great question.

I mean, I think a lot of organizations, um, you know, it's seemingly that

they have the lights on, but it's kind of like in a dark room and

only if they had a really bright chandelier where they actually be

able to see kind of what's going on.

Um, and so the problems are having is that they're having inconsistent processes.

Right.

So, for example, people are calling them and like, Hey, Jason, you know,

we're interested in a new roof or, you know, building out this new project.

And if the person's ready to go, that's relatively easy for them to

manage because they send a proposal, they can close it pretty quickly.

But what if the person says, We're just thinking about it or

shopping around, or we might want to do this project next year.

That's where things start kind of getting a little bit messy.

And so the big problem is that they don't have any system to follow up with those.

And the other issue is that they're not nurturing.

And so you and I, all three of us know that people need to be

informed to make a positive decision.

And so, you know, you're going to buy a car, whatever purchase

you're going to make, you're going to do your research, right?

And a lot of that requires having access to information.

And I think specifically in the construction and home service

industry, you know, yeah, you could go on Google and you could try to

find things, but it's not as relevant as a, maybe a consumer product.

And so businesses have to educate.

The consumer about different things.

So, for example, really quick story.

We have a pool construction company we work with.

And so somebody that might not buy that 50, 000 pool this year.

Maybe they wait until next season.

So we have a sequence of emails that educates the buyer.

Here's things you need to know about buying a pool.

Here's things about, you know, the benefits from a health

perspective of why a pool is good.

Or another email might be here's the reasons why it's a good

investment for your home value.

You know, it's, yes, it's an expense, but when you go to sell your home,

it's gonna be worth more money.

And so all these emails are designed to make them feel warm and fuzzy

and to make them understand that, okay, the decision I'm making is

a big one, but I feel comfortable.

This is the right company that's going to help guide me.

And do good by me to make that purchase.

Um, those are the most fundamental things.

And the third piece is on the marketing side.

A lot of companies, um, Ethan and Ryan, we're seeing they're spending

50, 000, a hundred thousand dollars, whatever the number is on marketing.

And they only rely on the marketing agency to say, Oh, this is how many leads we

generated for Facebook or from Google ads.

And you're like, Oh, that's great.

Keep going.

Here's another 5, 000 a month to keep doing that.

But most companies don't know if those are good leads or not.

So just because the leads are coming in, they don't have any systems

and metrics to track the quality.

And so that's something we could help fix to be able to correlate the sales activity

to the marketing activity to be able to go back to the owners and to the marketing

team to say, Hey, yeah, you generate 75 leads last month from Facebook.

But 50 percent of those didn't close.

We didn't even get in touch with them because they were just garbage leads.

Right?

And so that's really helpful because you're going to ultimately

save money on your marketing.

If you know what marketing is working and what's not.

Yeah, very well said.

I mean, we certainly experienced longer lead times with metal metal roofing and

the nurturing process is so important to stay people don't land on our

website and buy a metal roof that day.

So,

They

um, No,

you know, you don't

be nice.

say, yeah, it would be nice.

Yeah, that'd be weird.

Probably that'd be a weird way to buy a new, expensive, uh, metal roof.

So let's talk about the lead nurturing a little bit.

You know, that can be a complex process.

What are some of the most common mistakes that you see?

And do you have any tips or advice on how to avoid them?

you know, it's, it's like a lot of things in life.

You sort of set it and you forget it, I think is the most common issue.

So what I mean by that is you might have a system that's capable to send out.

And let's talk about lead nurturing.

For those that aren't familiar, lead nurturing is not only just

sending a sequence of emails.

Over a cadence over a specific point of time, every 2 weeks, every

month, et cetera, but it could also be things that you're doing on

social media to nurture that person.

So, if you're in B2B, like, if you guys are selling metal

roofs to other companies, right?

And organizations, it might be interacting with that company

or that person on LinkedIn.

Right.

It might be phone calls.

It might be text messages.

It might be direct mail.

So nurturing isn't just one form of communication.

I think that's important to communicate depending upon your industry.

There could be multiple forms of communication, but I think the biggest

misstep is that you set something up and you should be like, oh, it's good.

It's running.

We're all set.

Right.

And you never go back to evaluate.

How effective is it?

Is it actually getting people to actually agree.

Make a decision quicker.

Are people opening our emails?

Are they engaging in our content?

Are they responding to our text messages to our phone

calls to our linkedin messages?

Um, you know, that's really important.

And then the other piece to is some companies don't have a sophisticated

enough system to let you know when somebody is actually engaging.

So you might know who's opening an email or clicking, but a lot of people

might actually not do anything with that email for a few weeks or months.

You need a CRM and a system that's going to say, hey, Ryan, Hey, Ethan,

Jason just came back to the website and this is what he was looking at.

You might want to call Jason, right?

Because that, you know, as I say, as we're all salespeople, you want to talk

to people when they're showing interest and signs that they might be ready to buy.

And if you don't have a system alerting you to that, because I will tell you

personal experiences happen for many of our clients, even for our own company,

because we do this for ourselves.

I'll see somebody's taking action.

I've seen situations where I've sent somebody like 40 some odd

emails, they don't open any of them.

And then boom, they open up an email, they go to our website

and Michael, that's interesting.

And then if I call them within like a 48 hour period, they

know who I am on top of mind.

I don't be like, Hey, I saw we've been sending you emails for

two years and you haven't been opening them and just open one.

Thank you.

It's more like, Hey, we haven't spoken a while.

Right.

And it's like, Oh, what interesting timing that Jason's calling me.

But they like, it doesn't always click for them.

Um, but the point is, is that I've closed so many clients because of that data and

that ability to know that they're engaged because they're ready to make a decision.

So I think it's really important and a missed opportunity that a lot of

companies don't take advantage of.

What do you think the percentages of business owners

or sales and marketers out there?

That aren't aware that that notification of engagement

is an option and see their C.

R.

M.

Maybe they have a C.

R.

M.

That doesn't offer that, but they maybe completely don't have an idea that that's

It's, it's like, Oh, it's like, Oh, in my, in my estimation

that this is not a study or anything like that, but just from doing this

for over a decade, it's like over 90%.

I mean, it's like it's one of those things where if you it's like I know

how to like, you know, change the oil in my car and do other things.

Right.

But there's not everything I know about the car because I don't need to know.

Right.

So it's like, if you don't need to know something and you're not aware

of it, then, yeah, it's it's something that just goes under the radar.

I feel like that has to feel like a superpower.

Just knowing that someone's gonna, you know, strike when the iron's hot.

Basically, I feel like once you get used to that, I feel

like it'd be hard to go back.

Yeah, I think that the, you know, to answer your question, right?

I think that the term that most businesses, not most, but some

of the businesses we talked to.

Yes.

They have heard the concept of lead scoring.

They may not really fully know what it is, but they got a good idea of like,

okay, it's something that's going to help me like rank sort of like the quality

of my leads and tell me who are the hot leads and who are the kind of cold leads.

So that they get, and that's something definitely has something

to do with what we're talking about.

So I wouldn't say that it's fully like they're completely unaware, but

they don't really fully understand.

I think what it actually means to be able to have that as a tool for their team.

yeah, that makes sense.

Very rudimentary understanding of what it is.

Hot, cold, medium.

Um, so you focus on done for you custom C.

R.

M.

Implementations.

Can you explain kind of what sets that apart?

Uh, approach apart from, you know, just a standard CRM, signing up for

something and trying to implement it yourself in your business.

Yeah, well, you said something interesting.

I love that the beginning of the call, you're like, you know, I think

you said, like, I love CRMs or, you know, whatever, something like that.

And I don't think anybody really loves CRMs, right?

It's like, you like them and they're, they're cool.

But I, I thought that was kind of like, you know, whatever.

But, um, but yeah, so the done for you is that we know, actually, there was

a great, um, study Harvard Business Review did, um, Years back, which

I still actually use that article and kind of our communication, um,

over 70 percent of businesses will fail at implementing their own CRM.

Now, you may say, Jason, why is that?

It's a high number.

And there's 2 main reasons.

1 is.

They're ideally or not ideally, I shouldn't let me say that they're

picking the wrong CRM 1st, right?

They're picking the shiny object.

Oh, my other friend who is an owner of this roofing company.

This construction company has HubSpot.

They love HubSpot.

HubSpot's amazing.

They think by buying HubSpot, it's going to equally be good for them too.

But all these platforms, it's going to be worse for them.

Not that they're not capable.

They require a lot of work.

They don't come out of the box, ready to go.

And magically, they're going to do everything you want them to do.

You have to know how to use the tools, you know, how to create it.

You guys are marketers, you know, you have to have good content.

You also have a good team, right?

That's going to use the tool.

So just because you have any CRM, if there's no adoption of it and

no one's using it on a consistent basis, it's not going to work.

And so all of that said, We do all of the heavy lifting and even

the light lifting for our clients.

So when a client comes to us, we're going to help devise a strategy on, you

know, their business, their business processes, their sales processes, how

they go about doing their marketing.

We're going to come up with a roadmap, and that usually takes just a couple of weeks.

This isn't months and months worth of process for us, which

we've done it so many times.

But we're going to say, okay, here's how we're going to do what

we call a phase one implementation.

The thing about CRM is it's a living and breathing thing.

You always have to kind of be tinkering it, and that's another, I think, missed

piece that a lot of people don't realize.

I think we talked before about a lot of companies have antiquated technology

that's 25 years old, and it's really not, it's almost like a disservice,

you know, and they're using it out of sort of reputation and behavior.

And so when we come in, we'll build a strategy, and then

we do all the implementation.

We'll build a strategy.

Connected to their website forms will clean all their data that they have and

make sure that we're bringing in good quality data and segmenting that data.

You know, who are your industrial or commercial clients versus

your residential clients?

Who are the repeat business?

Who is the new business?

Etcetera will build all these workflows.

We talked about we can help write all the content for the email sequences.

We literally do it.

All right.

Um, and then we'll actually train the team right on how to actually use the system.

But the big piece.

That is sort of like the, I don't want to say the secret sauce because we're

not certainly not the only ones doing it, but I think there's not a lot that do it.

We stay on board.

And what I mean by that is we're going to work with the marketing team, the sales

team, the owners every other week, minimum every month for as long as their client to

coach them, to train them, to strategize with them, and to make sure they're

getting the most out of that platform.

And that's something that we've seen a huge uplift in success.

Because now it's like they have an accountability partner outside of their

team that's keeping eyes on things for them to make sure that the system is

actually doing what it's designed to do.

And that's the, I would say, the biggest value add we provide is making

sure that their investment is actually bringing some type of return for them.

Do you have a favorite CRM platform that

you like to use to implement?

Yeah, a couple.

Um, so, and there's literally thousands out there, right?

And so, um, you know, and the reason that we like a couple, which I'll mention here

in a second is because I'm a big believer that you can't be an expert in everything.

And if we were an expert in every single CRM, we'd probably not be doing

our job very well because every system is, is, Pretty different in terms of

its nuances, but the ones we like the most in terms of their and you talked

about this a little bit earlier.

Um, the user experience is really important.

So, for me, the things we this is how we pick these 2 that I'll

mention actually 3 user experience.

Right.

It's easy to adopt to get the team to use it.

Um, mobile friendly, all these things.

The other second thing is, is that you get a lot for your value, right?

So you look at platforms like a Salesforce, which could be over

100, 000, very sophisticated, very capable, very expensive.

Not every company really needs that unless you're like an

enterprise level organization.

Um, so you kind of, kind of like, you know, have to look

at the value you're getting.

And then the other piece of support, you know, there's so many of these

companies don't really have good support.

They're just like, you know, watch this video or like email us

or like our support is overseas.

And you know, the people are difficult to get in touch with or to speak with.

And so you want to make sure you're working with a company that has really

good support because Things will break.

Things will happen that you need answers for.

And if you don't have that access to support, it's gonna

make your life very difficult.

Um, so the couple we like HubSpot, which everyone was probably

everybody's heard of, um, very reliable, very robust platform.

Another one we like, it used to be called sharp spring.

Um, so sharp, like the Sharpie pen and spring, like a springboard.

Um, it actually got bought by constant contact about three years ago.

Uh, so it's now called constant contact lead gen CRM.

Um, very capable tool, very comparable to HubSpot costs less than HubSpot can, but

can do everything that HubSpot can do.

So that's why we really liked that platform.

It's kind of like a secret horse in the race.

Not a lot of people have heard about that one.

And then the other one we like when companies don't really fully need

a CRM, but they need the nurturing piece because they already have a CRM.

We like a product called V Bout, which is the letter V and then B O U T.

It's a really awesome email marketing platform and a social engagement

platform too, which is a nice kind of component to add in there.

Cool.

Well, thank you for sharing those.

I have not, I I've heard of sharp spring before, but I was not aware of that

constant contact had, you know, happened.

Purchase them.

Um,

They did,

cool.

Yeah, I'll have to check those out.

And you know, I think it's funny you mentioned, I said, I love CRMs.

Maybe that was the wrong way to say it.

I think I like the, I love the idea of the potential of what CRMs can do.

Maybe that would have been a better way to state that.

I was like it too.

If I build my whole business around them.

sure.

Yeah.

Um, so we're, we're seeing a lot of digital transformation happening right

now across all sorts of industries.

How do you think the construction industry specifically can benefit from, you know,

integrating all this customer data that we have available into marketing campaigns?

Uh, especially when we talk about or think about a personalized

experience that you can give a lead.

So I'll go back to the client that we have that

does the pool construction.

Right?

So they're 1 of the largest in the, in the geographic areas.

There they are in.

Um, they spend a lot of money.

It's been 6 figures doing marketing.

Um, and.

And but all these things we're talking about, they didn't have in place

before we start working with them.

So, despite everything they're doing, you know, they were actually writing.

I don't have one of my desk, but if I did, I'd hold it up.

They're writing everything down on Manila folders.

That was their system and they just would have stacks of folders

on on their, uh, on their system.

Their counters, um, which is kind of crazy, right?

I mean, the 21st century, that's your system, right?

Um, and so for them, using data is we're actually working

on this right now for them.

So when you reach out to this company, they sell above ground pools.

They sell, um, In ground pools, and they call what they have this kind

of cool term called stealth pools, which are like semi in ground, but

they kind of the way they kind of put them into the landscape, it looks like

they're in ground, but they're not.

Um, so it's kind of like a cool, like new product they have, but then they

also have saunas, they have spas, right?

They have all these different things.

Now, somebody reaching out to them, interested in a pool.

There's no reason to send them any information about your spouse at all,

you know, because that's not what they're interested in and vice versa.

They also have different financing partners.

So if you're coming in for an above ground pool, that's a different financing

partner than you're in ground pools.

And so we're using all the information in the CRM so that when we send

out these nurturing emails, we're giving accurate information about

the product they're interested in.

Right versus just like a generic message being like,

hey, we're a great pool company.

This is why you should work with us.

And so that's just 1 example.

Um, another example would be knowing.

Um, so we work with a roofing company.

They deal with commercial roofs.

So they do metal, flat roofs, all these different things in the commercial space.

Um, and then they also do residential.

And so the communication is very different.

Their sales process is very different.

And so we utilize.

Something as simple as identifying is it a commercial prospect or

is it a residential prospect?

Um, we're about to start working with a company that does roll off dumpsters

for both residential and construction.

And so the same thing there, it's two different audiences.

And so a lot of companies not even using just very basic segmentation

in those examples, they're just sending the same message to everybody.

Can you, uh, explain maybe some ways, uh, on how you measure

the success of a lead nurturing campaign and kind of what KPIs

businesses should be focusing on?

Yeah, so, so I think, you know, KPIs are interesting.

So for those that don't know, so that's a key performance indicator, right?

So, In simple terms, like companies might be look looking at like, oh, did we make

more money this quarter than last quarter?

Like, that's a KPI, right?

Um, but in, in the world of CRM, I truly believe that you

can really get lost in KPIs.

You know, even if you are doing things like, you know, looking

and I don't know how many.

People listening today are even looking at like they Google analytics, which is like

has like hundreds of data points, right?

And it can be super overwhelming.

Um, but the point being is that the KPIs I look for, um, vary depending upon the

business, but some of the things are, you know, where are we getting our leads from?

Like, that's important, you know, as, as a business.

Um, and so, That's the first step.

You know, they're coming from the website.

They're coming from a phone call.

Um, some of the listeners might have like a showroom, right?

So like a lot of our, you know, home service based business businesses

have showrooms and offices.

So like, you know, they're walking in.

Um, but the other thing before we sort of get into like measuring where

they're coming from, you know, And one thing we didn't talk about, but I think

is a really good sort of just sort of free advice tip for anybody listening.

Make sure that the people answering your phone are asking.

Hey, thanks so much for calling us.

How did you find out about us?

And not only how did you find out about us, right, which should be asked

right away or within a few seconds, but they should have a drop down

and whatever system they're using to consistently choose to say, here's

the top 10 ways people hear about us, you know, from Facebook, from, you

know, our trucks driving around from a yard sign from a door hanger, direct

mail, radio, TV, whatever they are.

Um, because I will tell you that the companies that are.

More, um, I guess conventional and not kind of up with the modern times

or not even asking that question.

They don't even ask like, oh, how'd you hear about us?

And that's like a fundamental piece on the KPI to know where that where

your effort is, is actually working.

Um, another thing also on the drip campaign is how many people went

through that drip sequence completely.

Out of the people that went through completely, did any of them sign up right?

Like, what percentage of them signed up to kind of see how effective they are.

Some systems like the systems I mentioned just a few minutes ago, Ryan

could actually track and correlate to say this email influenced.

The purchase, right?

So you don't actually even have to, like, sort of manually figure that out.

The system is doing it for you.

Um, you know, the other thing that KPI wise, I think it's important that

some companies do track is, you know, how many calls is my team making?

How many individual emails are they sending out?

You know, like, follow up emails.

Um, you know, just basic things to figure out, like, what is my team actually doing?

To produce more business for our company, um, and now all these things that I'm

talking about, we typically would define what KPIs are important to the client

and then build a simple dashboard.

So everything is just, you know, like on 1 page where they could go

in and just see all these numbers.

Um, most often, I think companies, the thing also people like, well,

how often do I look at this?

Right?

Um, is this something daily?

I'm looking at weekly.

Um, I would say in the home services, we're seeing most of our clients

like the owners are looking.

What's happening in this 30 day period compared to the last 30 day period.

It's kind of what the average seems to be, you know, they're not waiting until

the end of the year to look at this data.

They want to see in somewhat real time, kind of what's happening,

where the trends are going,

So you've talked about email marketing a lot

in terms of Lead nurturing.

What are your thoughts on text messages?

Um, it's been a while since I've looked into it, but I remember reading or

seeing something that said text message marketing was blowing email out of

the water, which email always had, uh, from my understanding, a pretty good,

Rate, you know, or, or wanted to be kind of the main thing you were using

to keep in touch with your customers.

What are, what are your thoughts on that?

Is that still the case?

Is that, is there any truth in that or

um, you know, it goes industry by industry.

Um, text messaging is actually going through like a little bit of a transition.

So if you ever heard of, um, this new thing called DLC registration, that's

rolling out at the end of the year, right?

So, so basically all the major carriers, you know, cell phone carriers got

together and listen, I can't tell you how many, like, Political and nonpolitical

spam texts I get in any given day.

It's like kind of crazy.

So, um, so this DLC, um, sort of policy, if you will, that's being put in places

to mitigate that and to kind of like, try to get that suppressed the same

way with the whole spamming of emails.

Right?

And.

You know why most things in your gmail views gmail end up in a

promotional folder, you know, and that's that was their work around

right to get it out of your inbox.

Um, so, you know, the 1st thing I would say is that if anybody's trying

to get into doing text messaging, definitely go and apply to get this deal.

See registration.

It's not something you just automatically can get, you know,

you have to there's a whole series of things you have to go through.

It's not difficult.

To get approval to be able to send text messaging out on behalf of your company

through a very specific phone number.

So it's not like from personal cell.

It's like a dedicated number.

Um, that being said, I think text messaging is great.

Listen, everybody's got their phone right at their hip or at their desk.

And so they're going to see that message.

Now, you have to be careful and not certainly abuse it, right?

So, you have to do some level of, um, you know, humility and, and,

and sort of decency, you know, when you're, when you're doing it.

But I think it's an absolutely really good platform.

I mean, as far as statistics go, I will say this.

I'm a big believer that the right message to the right person

is going to get a response.

You know, if you're just putting out garbage, you're going to get garbage

back, you know, and so if you're not doing things strategically with good

purpose and good intention based on the people that you know, have a, you know,

a, um, propensity to, to know that they need what you're selling, then yeah,

you're not going to get good results.

Um, so there's, you know, multiple factors involved.

And that, and that, what you just said, that even carries

over into the SEO conversation, I think, with not producing garbage

content for the sake of trying to rank and, and that sort of thing.

So,

People are smart enough to read through all that.

yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're not read it.

Or not.

Yes.

That's true.

Um, Is there any advice you would give to any young entrepreneur

or innovator looking to disrupt the construction industry?

Well, I mean, just my advice is like, you know, as a

homeowner, you know, for, for over a decade, um, you know, I think

customer service is like a big piece.

Um, I can't tell you how many times I've reached out to people, whether it

be a plumber or a contractor, whoever it is, and I don't get a phone call

back or they say, hey, we're going to stop by there to stop by or that, you

know, and it's just, it's like, okay.

What are you even a business for it?

You know, like, I mean, it's just it drives me crazy.

I'm sure you guys have made experience similar experience.

So I would say that's the biggest thing.

I think that if you're trying to come in is like, have really good

customer service, you know, treat that customer as if like, you know, Okay.

They're a family member, you know, um, you know, one thing I think I live in a,

not a very huge town is about, you know, 30, 40, 000 people in the town I live in.

So I'm about an hour north of Manhattan.

And I've had conscious specifically more like, um, like appliance and

plumber type people come into the house.

I'm pretty handy guy, but sometimes things are just above my expertise.

Um, but I've had people like spend like an hour in my house, like being like,

like, I'll just give you free advice.

So I'll show you what to do.

And like, you can do it and they don't even charge, you know, And I've actually

hired people that later down the road who put in that effort and that time.

It's not like, Oh yeah, we could come to you.

But it's 195 service call just for us to show up at the door.

You know, these are people that like, no, we're just going to come.

We'll meet you.

We'll see if we can help if we can help.

Great.

If we can't, no charge, you know, and so now I'm not saying every

business can afford to do that.

You got a fleet of trucks, you got to pay for, you know, salary

for gas and all these things.

But I think things like that go a long way, you know, um, when you

have like, you know, really showing you're trying to help somebody.

You're absolutely right.

Now, just to add onto that kind of as a little experiment, I started

a handyman business on the side.

Um, it kind of happened organically with some people in our like neighborhood

Facebook group asking for help.

And then I was like, you know what I want to.

I want to see what I can do to generate leads and stuff

without any other input, right?

I want to put my own website up and kind of, that way I'm learning the process,

but I, every single home I've stepped into, I have heard exactly kind of what

you just went over there is that they can't get anyone to call them back.

They can't get anyone to show up on time.

And I've had to take my website down and I've been turning down leads for

the last, you Month because I just can't keep up with them and the people

whose houses who have become my clients.

I go back to their house regularly and you know, it's a small set of

people that just regularly have me come out because they can't get anyone

else to communicate with them really.

And, and so much, so much impact there, I guess, but, or so much potential if

you can just learn to communicate and

I think that's the biggest thing.

And if you could start off with that, I think you're going to be, you know,

light years ahead, you know, competitors.

absolutely.

Yeah, I was, I was going to say, I think you're spot

on because I'm a younger guy.

I rent, I don't own my own house, but I had a problem with my washer

like probably six months ago.

And I was surprised how many people just wouldn't answer the phone or like I, it

was kind of a cryptic thing or like it's a hundred bucks for them to even come

over to my house and take a look at it when it didn't seem like a huge issue.

I don't know.

I think you're, you're dead on with just working on that

customer service goes a long way.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, thanks so much, Jason.

This has been a great conversation and very insightful.

We're thankful for everything you've.

Okay.

Shared with us and with our audience, um, we're close to wrapping up what

we call the business end of things.

Is there anything that we haven't covered that you'd like

to share with our audience?

No, I think that, you know, um, just, you know, the

1 thing I'll say is, and if there's an opportunity, just kind of share.

I'm an open book.

There's a lots of resources.

I'm on the cult of ice site.

Um, the best thing people could do that are listening

if they go to after the lead.

com, so it's just like it's spelled after the lead.

com.

Um, there's a ton of content we put out every month in our newsletter.

You can sign up free.

We don't even ask for your name, just email address, and you'll start getting

a ton of content, you know, from us that can be additional resources

like we're talking about today.

There's also, we talked about lead nurturing today, and we

actually wrote a playbook.

Um, that could be applied to almost any CRM.

I could download that playbook, um, at that same site after the lead.

Um, they'll take you through all the step by step show examples of how

to build a lead nurturing sequence and campaign and what it takes

and how it could help the team.

And the last thing Ryan and Ethan is that if people want

to jump on a call me, I'm open.

I'm ready to go.

So, um, there's a link on there to book a call with me and, uh, happy

to kind of chat with any of your listeners about challenges they're

having and seeing if we could help them, you know, get over those challenges

Awesome.

We will put those links in the show notes for our listeners.

I like that domain after the lead.

That's good.

Yeah.

I like that.

Thank you.

Well, before we close out, there's something fun we

like to do to wrap things up here.

A session we like to call rapid fire.

These are seven questions that some are a little silly.

Some are kind of serious.

All you got to do is give us a quick response.

Are you up for the challenge?

Let's go for it.

Awesome.

Ethan and I will alternate asking the questions.

You want to start us off, Ethan?

Yeah, I can go first.

Um, Oh, I like this question.

Um, what's a business buzzword that you wish would disappear forever?

Ooh, business buzzword.

Um, I would say disappear forever.

Um, I don't know.

There's so many that I could choose from.

I would say man, that's a tough one because there's so many.

Uh, I wouldn't say disappear, but I would say the buzzword I

think that's overused is ROI.

Like people are just, you know, they always want ROI but they don't really

know how to track ROI and I think it's something they just sort of throw

out there without any real intention.

Um, Um, they're just like, Hey, we want an ROI.

We're like, well, we, we all want that in life and in business.

Right.

But how are we going to do that?

And so I think that's a word that, you know, people say sort of without

meaning, you know, a lot of an often.

Good choice.

Question number two, if you were a CRM feature, which one would you be?

Ooh, I think I would have to be like, like, um, probably

like lead tracking or lead scoring.

I think the idea of like, sort of like sort of spying on people and seeing what

they're doing and tracking all that seems kind of cool and exciting, you know?

Um, so I think I'd have to go with like, you know, lead tracking or lead scoring.

Good answer.

You're the ninja inside the machine.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I know.

Well, everybody see dark secrets.

All right.

Next one.

Um, I'm not much of a sweets guy, but I did have some good man of putting

the other night, but this is, this is relevant for the question, but, um,

especially at this, this time of year, but what's your favorite Halloween candy?

I really, anything chocolate, um, I is, is where I

go, but I will say on that I'm not a huge, like sweet person.

Um, but I, I always steal my daughter's, um, Sour Patch

Kids, not like the watermelon.

It's gotta be the originals and they gotta be like fresh.

They can't be like old stale ones that aren't soft, but, um, but Sour

Patch Kids are, uh, pretty damn good.

yes, they are.

we, I agree a hundred percent.

We just got some, they have gum.

Sour Patch Kids gum.

Oh, I've tried that.

I don't, I didn't like it.

No, I didn't like it.

No, it's been sitting in our drawer for, in our, in

our junk drawer for a while.

No one likes it.

So, uh, if you were trapped in a zombie apocalypse, what one person

would you like to have with you?

this is going to kind of sound like really weird, but like,

if you ever seen like any of, um, the, um, Oh, what is the name with the movie

with like, with, uh, Chris, um, the rock and, um, yeah, where they go, right?

Where they're going.

And they're just like, so I say the rock, he seems like he'd be a bad dude

to kind of have around and just kind of kick some zombie, you know, zombie, but

we've had that answer before.

yeah, why not?

We get a lot of Arnold and

Yeah, it was a good one.

the Brock and yeah.

Arnold's a little bit older though.

He might be a little slower now.

I don't know.

Maybe Arnold back in the 80s.

Sure.

yeah, yeah.

Um, oh, this is an interesting one.

If lead nurturing was the name of a band, what genre would they play?

I would have to think probably like alternative rock.

I think that's spot on.

Yeah.

Question number six.

What do you hope to be remembered for 100 years from now?

Oh, wow.

100 years from now.

Um, this is going to kind of sound a little bit kind of like, you know, sort

of cheesy, I guess, but, um, just as like a good, you know, good contributor

to the family, you know, being a good husband and father, you know, for anybody

that knew me through that, but also, you know, Um, on the business side,

I think just somebody that is always giving and sharing and trying to just,

you know, generally help people without really looking for anything in return.

Good answer.

A little sappy, break out the tissues.

No, I'm just kidding.

All right.

Last one.

Um, this is always an interesting one.

Um, what's a product or service that you purchased recently?

That's been life changing for you.

Product or service that's been life changing?

Um, I don't know how I would define like life changing, but I would

say, well, here, okay, so it's not really like, I don't know if I would

determine as a product that qualifies, but four years ago, I always wanted

to buy a boat and I bought a boat.

And that's been like and that's and that's we were talking before about

summer Fridays and that's why I have an excuse for my summer Fridays now.

Um, so I think buying a boat was definitely a life changing kind of thing.

Yeah.

Boat life is fun.

Well, life is fun.

And yeah, we live right near like the Hudson in New York.

So, like, I can go pretty much anywhere.

Anywhere with it, so it's, uh, it's good times.

Yeah, that's good.

I was, I was blessed to grow up with a boat and, uh, we had a

river that ran through our town.

So fun culture for sure.

Well, Jason, thank you again for your time.

Uh, you, you mentioned some resources earlier for anybody that wants to

get in touch with you specifically.

What's the best way to do that?

There's an email connect with you on LinkedIn.

Yeah, you can find me on linked in.

Um, but also, um, I would say, um, after the lead is the best place.

So, like, all my social media is there.

So not just linked in.

We do a ton of content, um, follows on YouTube on Twitter, whatever you like.

You know, we're pretty much on all the platforms.

Um, so yeah, after the lead would be the best place to get in touch with me.

Well, uh, before we close out here, we need

to recap our challenge words.

We were all successful.

Um, Jason, your word was

Chandelier.

The

and you worked it in beautifully.

Ethan, you had a phrase kind of yours was,

mine was banana pudding, which I kind of just put in the preamble

to one of the questions there, but

got it in.

And my word was pumpkin, which I usually wait until the rapid fire questions,

but I snuck it in at the beginning.

very beginning.

Yeah, that was impressive.

I might have made that a little too easy for you.

I don't know.

You know,

it, and actually I didn't have to try very hard.

It just kind of happened naturally.

So I was happy.

I was happy with my challenge word performance, uh, because usually I

don't know how to do it and I, I'm, I'm not, I don't love playing the

challenge words game, but we play it.

So congratulations to all.

Well, thank you again, Jason.

I really appreciate your time and everything you've shared with us.

thank you.

Appreciate it, Ryan.

And, uh, yeah, Ethan, this is great.

Uh, really enjoyed the conversation and, uh, hope all of your listeners

found it just as exciting.

Absolutely.

Well, thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of construction

disruption with Jason Kramer, founder and CEO of Cultivize.

Please watch for future episodes of our podcast.

We are always blessed with great guests.

Don't forget to leave us a review on Apple podcast or give us a thumbs up on YouTube.

So the next time we're together, keep on disrupting and challenging those in your

world to better ways of doing things.

And don't forget to have a positive impact on everyone you encounter, make them smile

and encourage them to simple yet powerful things we can all do to change the world.

God bless and take care.

This is Isaiah industry signing off until the next episode

of construction disruption.