Leveraging Software in Business.

In this episode, Mike sits down to have a discussion with Stephen Spence, the Managing Director at Project Map It. Stephen explains the utility of their software and how contractors can use it to increase sales. A point is made that many contractors often pay for software like CRMS and only scratch the surface of what they're capable of. As your business grows, it's essential to set yourself up for future success; unaddressed issues can compound and leave you with significant headaches later down the road.

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Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (00:03.613) So we're live, dude. How are you?

steve spence (00:05.134) I- it looked like I saw the countdown. I'm good, man. How are you?

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (00:08.817) I'm doing well. I'm happy to have you today. Yeah, we all fucking better be. Welcome back to another episode of the Mission Control podcast. It's your boy Mike Stearns with the San Diego agency. We've got a special guest, Mr. Steven Spence with Project MAPIT. If y'all don't know, you're gonna find out today. You're gonna learn today. Shout out to the team at Roofer. They helped bring the show to life. If you need clean and pristine proposals, roof measurements, instant roof quotes.

steve spence (00:11.854) I'm happy to be here.

Ha ha

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (00:39.045) a CRM that'll actually work for your company. Hit up the team at Rufr, link down in the description. Y'all know what to do, just do it. Tell them I sent ya.

Alright, so it's Friday. We're almost in 2024. How was 2023 for you?

steve spence (00:57.006) 2023 was good. I'm sorry, I'm fighting this cold, so I probably don't sound as sexy as I normally do. But 2023 was good. 2023 was good for the company, was good for my personal life. So I cannot complain and I will not complain.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (01:03.517) You sound great.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (01:12.016) Okay. What is Project MAP-IT?

steve spence (01:14.758) We're digital mapping portfolios. So imagine a map with a bunch of pins of all your past installs on a map. It's interactive. So it becomes a really good social proof tool, credibility tool, if you will. On each pin, you can load project photos of the jobs you've done. You can display all your Google, Facebook. We are our own review platform as well. So you can display reviews. So essentially social proof, right? Homeowners are looking for three things. Are you reputable in our area? Yep. Look at all the pins around your house that...

we've done installs for. Do you have good reviews? Yep. Click a button on our map, there are reviews. Do you have some pictures of the work you've done? Yep. Oh, what color shingle are you looking for? More A Black? Okay. You click a button that says More A Black and the map will change to only include those products. So that's what we are in a nutshell.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (01:59.753) Mm-hmm, okay. So why wouldn't I just take like a picture of like Photoshop pins and you know, not pay project map it.

steve spence (02:10.09) Yeah, so homeowners, especially nowadays, right? We're dealing with digital natives, right? 50% of the home improvement projects are now being asked to be done by millennials, people that grew up with phones and devices in their hands, right? You know this, Mike, right? So what can you do? They know what a Photoshop-looking photo looks like.

All right, and I've actually been on some inspections with some contractors myself, where they used Project Mappin. And for example, one scenario, husband and wife, they were trying to decide between a pewter and a charcoal black roof. They were able to pull up some pewter roofs with jobs that they did.

Very authentic looking pictures. It doesn't look like your classic, you know Google photo that you would find on Google images They were able to find some charcoal black photos and out of the out of the wife's mouth was this is why I love this Software I can see that pewter is the color I want because I'd rather see it on a house Than on the shingle board and she pointed outside where the shingle board was laying

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (03:12.777) Hmm. Okay. So I'm a contractor. I wanna build more trust and credibility with my target market. So I install this thing on my website and now people can click and they can see projects that we've done. They can filter it by shingle color or manufacturer, whatever their needs are, right? Is that accurate? Okay. So now you've got this thing on the website.

steve spence (03:14.919) Ahem.

steve spence (03:18.37) Yep.

steve spence (03:35.35) Yep, that is accurate.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (03:40.985) Is there more value than it just sitting on the website and hoping that people see it and engage with it?

steve spence (03:46.642) I feel like you understand our product pretty well because of that lead in question you just asked. We actually pride ourselves with three things, but two things we really pride ourselves on. And the very first thing is something that's not just the website. It's a sales tool. People like Rufr, we're partnered with Rufr and some other proposal platforms out there. We're partnered and really in deep with Engage. That team at Engage is awesome. So we are a sales tool. We will help.

a homeowner realize that you're the right contractor for the job because of our social proof deck that we have, our map. Sorry, you'll have to edit that out. But...

to answer your question, sales tool, that's what we are. I mean, that's what we're bred, that's what we're made for. So add it to your Engage Deck, your Prezi, your PowerPoint presentation, your proposals that you're using at the in-home sales appointment. Literally, when you open up the map and you click a button, it dives in to where that homeowner lives and they see pins around it. That wow factor, that credibility factor helps close deals just alone, just by showing the pins around that house.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (04:55.385) Yeah, that's really cool and I could definitely see how that would help if I'm a consumer and I'm getting pitched by a service based company. I could understand how that would certainly make me trust that person more and feel more comfortable working with that company. My concern is, in the spirit of transparency,

As contractors, there's so much cool tech out there. So many things that, hey, if you do this and then you do ABCD once you install it, like this thing will help you immensely. And what I find is that a lot of the times, you know, they purchase a technology and then they don't do the things necessary to get the intended benefit or the maximum capability out of it. Do you see?

Contractors struggle with the implementation of it on the sales side to where they're curating each pitch Maybe they've got a decker or a slideshow or they're using engage like in my mind if I own a service a home service company what I would do is like I would have my standard deck and then

I would make sure that before I go on every call that I modify a screenshot on one part of the deck where it shows that customer's neighborhood and all the pins that are, you know, around that neighborhood to help build the credibility. Do you see contractors doing that? And if so, like how do you guys help train them set the expectation of what they can do to best leverage that technology to convert more people into sales?

steve spence (06:20.446) Yeah, you bring up a really good point, right? In any software, and I know that you work hard on processes with your contractors and building in the right processes, you need to add it to your process. And we tell that on the sales call when we're doing a demo for a contractor that's considering using Project MAPIT. My favorite stat that I say during my presentations when I present about social proof is just 80% of the usage of software is done by 20% of the users. So that means 80%

potentially 80% of the Project MAP-IT users out there aren't leveraging us the way they could. So we've actually, funny enough, about two months ago have changed the way we train our customers. We've become more consultant-like in how to leverage Project MAP-IT unless, hey, this is how you add a photo, this is how you add a pin. Because honestly, they can do that on their own. So we've built out some digital training modules that I'd say has cut down about 60, 70% of our onboarding process.

because we've built out videos that are pretty simple to follow. We're not a tough system, right? We're not a robust CRM system. We're like adding pins, adding photos, syncing your Google reviews once, and then it does it for you. It updates your map with new Google reviews down the road. So we're not hard. So we've changed, we've shifted the way we've trained our contractors in that they look through these training modules. We'll always train them how to add a pin and stuff. That's always been there, it always will be there, but.

We've shifted from training them how to update Project MAP-IT to how to leverage Project MAP-IT. So for example, we set them, we have five steps. It's how to add pins, how to add reviews, how to add photos, how to add this to your sales process. We have a video on how to add it to your iPad and how to navigate it on a tablet. S