From $10M to $100M: How Home Service Companies Scale Sales Fast

John sits down with Zac Dearing (Mantel) to break down how top HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies are moving from “proposal tools” to true shopping experiences that help homeowners buy with confidence—and help teams close more, faster. They dig into hard data from Mantel’s platform and homeowner survey: why Tuesdays are the biggest sales day, how response time and proposal view time (“eyeball time”) predict closes, and why a 10-point jump in proposal strength correlates with ~$960 higher average ticket.

 They also cover remote/virtual selling (and what a high-fidelity, open-cart experience can look like), pricing transparency (69% of homeowners try to find a price online…only 15% find something clear), extended-warranty strategies, and what changes between a $10M shop and a $100M shop (hint: ruthless simplicity). If you want a concrete playbook for modern sales—benchmarks, coaching levers, and systems that scale—this one’s for you.

💡 What You’ll Learn

• Shopping-Experience Selling: How Mantel helps contractors present interactive options, not lectures—and why FSM “order recorders” miss the moment of influence.
• KPIs That Move Deals: Response-time and proposal “eyeball time,” plus how to use them to coach sellers.
• Proposal Strength → Revenue: Why better option range, add-ons, and personalization lift ticket size (~$960 per +10 points).
• Benchmarks That Matter: Calibrating close rate, average ticket, attach rates—and avoiding dirty denominators.
• Remote/Virtual Sales: When to use it, how big firms are testing it, and the emerging “open cart” follow-up model.
• Simplicity at Scale: The shift from 2–3 sellers to 30–40+, standardization vs. autonomy, and raising the floor without capping the ceiling.
• What Homeowners Actually Want: Clear pricing, reputation, comfort, utility savings > brand logos—and how to price extended warranties for real adoption.

🎙️ Host
 John Wilson 

🎙️ Guest
 Zac Dearing — Mantel 

Homeowner Shopping Attitudes Survey 2025


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John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC

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Chapters

• 0:21 Guest Introduction and Early Ventures
• 4:58 Mantel's Mission and Industry Insights
• 20:25 Standardizing Sales Practices
• 22:07 Achieving Simplicity in Large Organizations
• 26:51 The Future of Remote and Virtual Sales

Transcript

OAO 252

John Wilson: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I'm your host, John Wilson. During the day, I run a $30 million home service company. Plumbing, hvac, electric drains, restoration. Uh, and for fun, I run a podcast talking about how to do the same. Today on the show, we have a special guest. We have Zach Deering from Mantle.

Welcome to the show. 

Zac Dearing: I'm excited to be here. 

John Wilson: This'll be fun. Long. What? What's the, uh, longtime listener? First time caller? Yeah, it's something like that. Longtime listener. First time caller. We start most of these like one-on-ones with Zach. Walk me through mantle. Yeah. So gimme the 62nd, like, what are we doing here?

Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. Uh, so the 22nd on, mm-hmm. Born and raised in Dallas, Texas. DF 

John Wilson: Dub, 

Speaker 3: DF dub, big D worked at Amazon along with a couple other places. One day through my mom got exposed to the experience in home services, and that's what led to [00:01:00] Mantle. Um, specifically at Mantle we're on a mission to help the best contractors like Wilson.

Let's go, um, delight homeowners and close more by really creating a shopping experience. Mm-hmm. So that's what we're focused on. I would say that if I think back to like my earliest sort of like what was the formative 

Zac Dearing: experience when I was 11, I had a computer assembly business, cd, PCs, and I built my first online shop.

Oh yeah. That's a very primitive website. So now fast forward some 20 plus years later, right? We're helping phenomenal contacts build chapter, do the do the same. 

John Wilson: It was like a computer repair, 

Zac Dearing: computer assembly. So I had my, I, I like to joke. It was like the business had the best margin profile 

Speaker 3: ever. 'cause I had no office.

My dad took me to Fry's. Mm-hmm. And my, the salary labor was nothing. Yeah. Because it was just my own time assembling in my bedroom. 

John Wilson: That is funny. 

Speaker 3: People say, I wasn't nerdy, I just don't believe it. 

John Wilson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, something we don't dive into enough and I, I need to is like, what was your first entrepreneurship 

Zac Dearing: Yeah.

John Wilson: Journey? 

Zac Dearing: Yeah. Um, 

Speaker 3: what was yours? [00:02:00] 

John Wilson: I don't think I had one. 

Speaker 3: Really? When was the first time you like made a buck? 

John Wilson: I worked a lot. Yeah. But like, I just got jobs. 

Speaker 3: Interesting. 

John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. I got into this out of like necessity. Yeah. And then. You know, my scorecard says I've been good at it. Yeah. But yeah, I got into it outta necessity.

But we had, um, we had Steve Carroll from Kelso Industries on like billion dollar contractor. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. 

John Wilson: And like on that episode. He started like affiliate marketing. Like that was, his background was like affiliate marketing. Really like slugging links. It was like, that's crazy. It was crazy. Yeah, it was crazy.

And after that I was like, yeah, I need, I should ask people this more because, 'cause that was not where I took that conversation to go. Totally, totally, totally. Uh, which was pretty funny. Um, yeah, he was like, he went from like slugging affiliate links to like. Building the, uh, I think Sam's Club like ad centers.

Okay. That went from like 10 million of EV [00:03:00] EBITDA to like 150 million of ebitda. Yeah. In like six months or something crazy. And then like now built a, you know, billion dollar contracting firm. But yeah, it is interesting like where people totally, where people start. Totally. My fund story about entrepreneurship is when I was like 20.

You know, 13. 

Speaker 4: Okay. 

John Wilson: I was like really like investing in myself and like learning how to like, make money. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

John Wilson: Uh, so I was reading all the blogs at the time, like Mr. Money, mustache and Financial, Sam Ryan. Yeah, of course, of course. Fire. What was your fire though? Totally, totally. Yeah. Uh, and what was funny is I wanted to build a media business.

I was like, I'm gonna go build a blog. So I bought thinking sense.com and I started blogging and I'm sure it's down by now. I think I got like six blogs up and I wanted to build this like affiliate slugging business. And like a decade later, like over a decade later, we've now built totally, totally like an industry, you know, uh, like a large industry media business, which is just kind of funny that like, that's, that's what we did that.

But yeah, that was probably one of mine. It was [00:04:00] just unsuccessful. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Zac Dearing: Uh, well, ZD PCs, uh, wasn't exactly a, a, a giant financial success either. Yeah. And I guess technically my first 

Speaker 3: business was. Slug in Pokemon cards? Hell yeah. In the bathroom of my elementary school. Hell yeah. Like some Charar and particularly the Japanese one that were particularly rare 

John Wilson: legal.

Some 

Speaker 3: black market trade. Yeah, some black market. Fourth grade. So I guess that would be my first venture. Um, followed by Z DPCs. And you know, really it's just been a. And a hockey stick from there. Yeah, 

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More book jobs, less wasted spend and no more missed revenue. See it in action at the link below. Start winning more jobs today with Boca. Um, alright, so we, we've started [00:05:00] working on mantle. Yeah. Now what we do need to add is, I've warned the sweater that you're wearing. Oh, this thing a lot of times. Oh, this thing?

Zac Dearing: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

John Wilson: Uh, we need to set up a link to like a merch shop. 

Zac Dearing: Noted. I'll go tell the team. 

John Wilson: Yeah. 

Zac Dearing: I'll go, I'll go tell the team that we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're diversifying it out. We're branching out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not just phenomenal. We're actually Yeah, yeah. Not, yeah. We're 

John Wilson: actually a clothing brand now.

Zac Dearing: Yeah, yeah, exactly. 

John Wilson: Um, but yeah, closer is, uh, is, you know, Mantle's brand. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. So the way I think about it, it's a little bit confusing and I'd like to say like, uh, probably our marketing department has some, has, has some work to do. You're looking at the marketing department, right? I assumed, um.

Mantle's, the company closer is really about our partners and our users. So fundamentally, we're on a mission to help incredible contractors delight homeowners and sell more. It's not so much about us, it's really about them. And so part of that experience of creating a sales platform, shopping experiences, helping.

Comfort advisors, selling [00:06:00] techs, techs, ISRs, close more. And so that was the spirit or the genesis of, of closer. Internally, we like to joke of it as like our, our, our, our lifestyle brand is kind of taken on a life of its own in terms of the requests we get. There's not a way you can buy it. Uh, maybe we should take that under con consideration.

It seems like there's a lot of demand, but the way I'd really think about it more than anything is it's really the manifestation of we are here. To help contractors. Mm-hmm. Really create shopping experiences and clothes more. And this is the physical embodiment of that. 

John Wilson: And also clothe, so yeah. And also clothes.

So we're gonna add a link, uh, if you want a closer sweater. Socks hat. Yeah. Jacket. Just leave, you know, kind envelope. Yeah. 

Speaker 4: It'll be 

John Wilson: fine. Okay. So we started mantle. We're here to sell. We're, we're here to help contractors sell delight customers and help contractors sell. Who, who's like, who's using a mantle.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Um, so we feel really fortunate that in a relatively short period of time, [00:07:00] we have some of the best contractors across the country using our, our, our, our platform. Um, primarily HVAC, plumbing, electrical, even though we're actively getting brought into other home services, uh, service lines, um, we're having some conversations with Garage Door and Foundation.

Oh, sure. Yeah. In a variety of, of, of others. And kind of the way to think about it is. Across all of these different service lines. Inside home services, you kind of have a common problem, which is you are trying to help a homeowner who is typically making one of the most expensive purchases they'll make of their life, right?

Mm-hmm. A new heating cooling system, a new tankless, a new garage door, a new roof. You're trying to help them navigate through that experience. Yeah. And historically as an industry. Our solution to that was we're gonna put a bunch of specs in front of someone and we're gonna have someone just lecture at the homeowner for 20 minutes.

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 3: And John, I guess I would ask you a question, which was, when was the last time someone lectured at you for 20 minutes before you could spend [00:08:00] $20,000? 

John Wilson: I don't know, but I don't buy very much. I mean, software, I guess maybe I do buy a lot. Softwares businesses. Um, yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Like, I don't, I don't know.

I don't usually like go through a, like a homeowner buying experience. 

Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. But, but I guess if we even think beyond just the homeowner, right? Like when you're typically shopping for things Yeah. Are you being lectured at. 

John Wilson: It might be a bad use case. I don't, I don't think I shopped for anything.

Okay. Like I didn't have to buy my own car for like 10 years. Okay. I just sent somebody to go buy it. It was awesome. 

Speaker 3: Totally, totally, totally. Which I think really like, but it does sound like a terrible experience. Yeah. Which I think it really resonates with this idea of like the idea of being in control and being able to navigate through it and being empowered to make the choices or of someone Yeah.

Make the choices for you. Yeah. Um, and so I think that's what we're really all about is how do we help? The plumbers, the HVEC technicians, the electricians sort of create these shopping experiences for their homeowners. 

John Wilson: I, what I would imagine is common feedback [00:09:00] is, Hey, I already pay for something like that through, uh, ServiceTitan.

Sure. Or house call or Yeah. You know, house call, call impulse or, yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Totally. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. I think what's interesting is, um, I think a common. Um, question we get is sort of like, Hey, there's a lot of like proposal tools out there, right? Like what's mm-hmm. Different. And I think about that from a few different lenses.

One, like, no one needs another proposal tool. No one needs another rehash software. No one needs another thing that's gonna happen before the homeowner walks through the door. What does Wilson, or what does TR Miller, or what does eco need? Right. They need a partner to help them take a homeowner who a few days ago did not realize they're about to make one of the most expensive purchases of their life and really help move them to action.

Mm-hmm. And that's how I think about sort of what we're building. How do you put in front of the homeowner quickly and easily a personalized, [00:10:00] interactive shopping experience. It gives them the information to realize that hey, the right choice is the variable, or depending on what part of country you are modulating.

Mm-hmm. Um, furnace and AC with all of the add-ons and the 10 year warranty. And that's really what we're building. Um, in terms of why folks are commonly choosing us over what's in their FSM. It's just because the FSM wasn't really built for creating a shopping experience. Right. It was built to record an order and fundamentally Yeah.

In these purchases. You are trying to move a consumer to an action and to an outcome, and that's what we're on a mission to help phenomenal contractors do better. 

John Wilson: Mm-hmm. Cool. Let's dive into this, uh, like some tactical stuff here. So that's what Mantle does. Um, what are the best. Companies in the US doing Yeah.

Like how can we improve? How can I improve? Yeah, totally. Like what are we seeing? What's the data tell us? 

Speaker 3: Totally, totally. It's great. It's a great question. Uh, so one sort of [00:11:00] just like fun thing about the data is Tuesdays are good days. Um, when you look across the country, like Tuesdays are the big sale days.

Tuesdays are the big sale day by revenue. Um, so Tuesdays are the big days. So if you are lucky enough to work on a Tuesday, get excited. It's not that much bigger than Monday or Wednesday, but it is definitely bigger. Um. But I think more specifically, tactic wise, what are the best organizations doing?

Mm-hmm. I think fundamentally they are creating experiences that are driven by the homeowner. What does that mean? One. They're helping to educate the homeowner about who they are and about what is going on in this purchase. Yeah. They're not just throwing a furnace image and saying, Hey, this is 80, uh, thousand.

BTU's with an 80% afu. They are working to build and understand what matters to that homeowner. Two, letting the homeowner drive the experience, right? Rather than lecturing at or presenting to the experience that you hate so much that you literally walked away from the car person and shipped it off to someone else to take care of it for you.

They are [00:12:00] empowering the homeowner to really drive the experience. And then three, they're giving the homeowner choice and not just choice in the sense of here's this option, this option, and this other option, but rather actually allowing them to mix and match and truly create an interactive. Shopping experience.

And what we see from that is that owners feel more empowered. It helps combat the natural, the natural distrust in these purchase processes and then allows them to feel more comfortable and select their system that's right for them, which is typically or can typically be a more expensive, uh, with more add-on than maybe the tech even thought walking in if they were sort of presenting with their own wallet in mind.

John Wilson: Mm-hmm. Do you have like an attach rate that's like on, on a KPI? Like what's attached rate, what's average ticket? Yeah. Is close rate, like what, what are we seeing across industry is like this is normal. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

John Wilson: I think benchmarking is always just fascinating to me, but to people in general. [00:13:00] Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Totally.

Totally. And speaking of, of of benchmarking, um, it's something that. We think is really, really important. Mm-hmm. Um, and valuable, maybe even more than important. And actually there's a new, uh, feature that we're rolling out that will allow our users to actually be able to see how they're benchmarking against the other user of the platform.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So you're able to really dive into the detail and not just see as an organization overall, but see how Phil is doing mm-hmm. Compared to all of the other plumbing sales out there. So it really resonates. Um. I'm gonna give you the slightly unsatisfactory answer that I think when it comes to, to, to, to close rate an average ticket.

It so depends on the specifics of the situation. Um, I feel like often as an industry, we hear people banty about like, I have a 45% close rate, or whatever the case may be, without knowing more of the specifics. Mm-hmm. It's hard to really know of whether that's good or bad. I just like how 

John Wilson: many tgs, how many marketed leads, exactly.

Is the data clean? I think we found that a lot is like [00:14:00] somebody would be like, dude, I have a 70% close rate, and it's like. Well, we found out we're dismissing most opportunities that we didn't like and it's like, well, actually it was more like 35. And it can be that different. 

Speaker 3: Totally. Totally. And also it's like how do you count if someone gets declined for financing?

Right? Yeah. Does that go into, yeah. Was that a sale or not? Does that go into the denominator or not? I think and I think as a result, well 

John Wilson: that was an interesting, we did an interview for, uh, with Premier Home Pros. Yeah. And they count that, which was a philosophy I'd never heard. But they're like, Hey, our sales was this, our revenue was this.

The delta's big because we book the sale. Like they don't do it for tax or anything. Sure. But like, Hey, we sold it, but we got declined. Yeah. Like, yeah, we sold it. Yeah. So like, I'm like, yeah, that is interesting. Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. I, yeah. I think it's, we've seen variety of different handlings of how you handle, uh, finance declines and like whether that should be counted or, or, or not.

John Wilson: On average, do people not count it? 

Speaker 3: I think on average people. Do count it with the idea being, I, I think it's really a [00:15:00] question with so much across any organizations, like, what are the behaviors you want to drive? If you don't count it, then you are letting whoever is that person, seller selling tech, you're letting them off the hook.

If you do count it, now, they are more motivated to try to go find, you know, that secondary person who's willing to be a signator on the loan, right? Because they know that this is going to count against them, and so. On the margin more, more motivated 

John Wilson: only for close rate? Like people aren't getting like a partial commission or something?

Or is there like instances where people do get partials? 

Speaker 3: Uh, haven't seen partial commissions. I think it's for close rate, but often close rate will then feed back into batting order and other ways that you're running your sales team or there might be a minimum like number you need to hit on, on the, on the, on the close rate.

I think the thing that we've seen. Is people respond to numbers. Yeah. Um, and they respond to the information that's presented to them. And so whether it's inside our, [00:16:00] our, our application or elsewhere, the sellers are get to understand how they are, where they stand, vis-a-vis their peers, both in their organization, other organizations that helps drive.

Behavior. But at the end of the day, like you can't manage something that you can't measure. And the first step is how do you make it really easy for the seller? Mm-hmm. For the sales manager, for the gm, for the owner to be able to manage the key KPIs that will really move the needle. And I guess one of the things I would say is also, like we've talked a lot about average ticket and close rate.

What about the average amount of time it takes for one of your techs or cas to respond back to a homeowner Via text or calling? Yeah. Yeah. Like historically, that's been something that's never been talked about as an industry 'cause there hasn't been that visibility. Yeah. Once with our platform, you have that visibility.

You're able to really drive a different conversation or another stat that historically hasn't been talked about it, which is what's the amount of time homeowners are spending on your proposal. Mm-hmm When you leave the home. And you haven't let close, like eyeball 

John Wilson: time. 

Speaker 3: Eyeball time, yeah. Average view time.

Right. Um, and what you will see is across different organizations, across [00:17:00] different sellers, you have different eyeball time. 

Speaker 4: Hmm. 

Speaker 3: And that ends up being, coming a really interesting metric for how well is the seller really building something that's relevant to the homeowner and getting them sort of invested in that and reengaging with that.

John Wilson: Yeah, that is interesting. Like what's the correlation? Is there a correlation like, Hey, more eyeball time equals higher close rate. 

Speaker 3: More eyeball time equals higher close rate. Quicker response time generally equals higher close rate by how many points. Um, on response time. It's so varied by organizations that you have certain organizations that very consistently cluster at a few hours.

Mm-hmm. You have other organizations that's longer, that's Harding that's harder to like decipher meaningful data. I think what becomes really interesting and something we haven't talked about yet is proposal strength. Yeah. Historically, organizations have been forced to say like, Hey, did you present three options?

Right. Did you present four options? And that's an attempt to say, did you do a good job with this proposal? The [00:18:00] number of options is one dimension, right? Mm-hmm. There's really a wide variety of different dimensions that impact how good that proposal is. 

John Wilson: Like what are some other ones? 

Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. So number of add-ons, right?

What is the range between the most expensive and least expensive option? Mm-hmm. How personalized is that proposal to you, John, versus to the person next door? 

John Wilson: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Um, additionally it looks into just what is four HVHP specifically, what is the range of equipment? Are you just quoting all single stage stuff or are you quoting a variety of different stages of equipment?

And then lastly, if relevant for the organization and if the seller's in power to, did they throw on an optional add-on, like a generator or a water heat or a main panel upgrade? And what's interesting there, and we call it proposal strength, it's assessed in real time. It's evaluated in real time, and there is then feedback given to the salesperson.

Of saying, here's what the person did well, here's where they could do better. A 10 point increase in proposal strength is correlated with a [00:19:00] $960 increase in average ticket. 

Speaker 4: Hmm. 

Speaker 3: And so that rate there is a really actionable thing that the sellers on day one or the users on day one, the selling text on day one, get to benefit from when they're using mantle.

John Wilson: When someone comes on to mantle like, I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking about the data and the way we can coach from it, which sounds pretty dope. How many sellers? Is that the word that we're using sellers? Sure, we can use that. How many sellers is average for a company? Like is three sellers? Yeah. Is, yeah.

10 is one. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Good, good. Good question. Um, I would say like our sort of like. The organizations that we're currently working with are the larger contractors. When you think about sort of the, the, the, the industry as a whole, but typically folks have on the, on the lower end, two to three sellers, and on the higher end, we're working with some organizations that have 30, 40, 50 sellers.

Mm-hmm. So they're pretty wide, wide range. Yeah. That is wide. 

John Wilson: What do you think the value difference [00:20:00] is from two to three to 30 to 40? I mean, 30 to 40 like, 

Zac Dearing: yeah. 

John Wilson: I would imagine that becomes more of like a staff redundancy, like how do we onboard people faster? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, two to three is like standardizing.

Speaker 3: Yeah, it's good. It's a good question. Um, two to three. There's probably more low hanging fruit, right? Because. To your point, there probably was no sales training or minimal, right? Maybe they send 'em to a best practice organization. Probably the three people are doing different, and now you're just actually providing visibility in some standardization.

You're also just helping them with low hanging fruit of like, mm-hmm. Hey, let's make sure that we're using the automated personalized follow-ups, that things aren't falling through the cracks, right? Let's make it easy to follow. The best practice of writing a personalized handwritten note, which you can do using Smart Quote in 60 seconds is pretty cool.

When you get to larger organizations, it is organizations that in general, they are doing a lot of things really well, which means in order for them to pick up a few more percentage points on [00:21:00] close rate or another 500, a thousand, 2000, $3,000 in average ticket, you really have to go from Good to Great, which.

It's actually funny. There's literally that book here on the shelf of Good to Great. And that's what you're really talking about, right? Which is how do you really fine tune the machine? Yeah. Some of it is being able to slot new sellers in, but a lot of it's like, how do you provide visibility? 'cause if you're at an organization with 30 sellers, there are some people that are really phenomenal and there's some people that aren't.

How do you raise that floor? Mm-hmm. And then also, how do you tell that top dog, right? The person who's always been the best in the team, that you're really good. But now look at your benchmarks about how it compares to everyone else. Mm-hmm. And maybe you start to realize that there's even further room for you to run.

Yeah. 

John Wilson: For the ones with 30 to forties, that one location or multi, 

Speaker 3: uh, in that case, there is a couple locations there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

John Wilson: I'm trying to think, uh. Maybe like four seasons or so, or like Parker, but there's probably not many that have 30 to 40 in one location. Correct. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. If you think about that.

I think so. [00:22:00] This also is 

John Wilson: helping you benchmark across geographies, which I think is important to note. 

Speaker 3: Totally. 

John Wilson: Yeah. When people are like bringing on a solution like this, how centralized is sales, like sales training, or. Like across multiple markets? Like how, how do you think about that? Or how do they think about Yeah, I think it we're picking into what the best do.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think what's interesting about like what does the best do, and I was asked recently the question of like, Hey, what's the difference between a $10 million shop and a hundred million dollars shop? Yeah. And it's, that's a good one. It's simplicity, right? The a hundred million dollars shop really intentionally mm-hmm.

Tries to guard to make things simpler. Yeah. Well, you have to. Absolutely. It's so ridiculous. You absolutely have to. Yeah. And even when you try really hard to be simple, it's still complex, right? Yeah. You're in multiple trade lines, right? Yeah. You're maybe covering now, um, a, a area that is measured in hundreds of square miles.

You have hundreds of trucks, right? Yeah. This everything, even if things only go right 1% of the [00:23:00] time, that absolute numbers getting bigger and bigger. And so I think you really see. That this drive towards simplicity and consistency. Mm-hmm. And trying to measure and manage outcomes becomes a lot more important.

Um, I think what's really interesting is I think true consistency across the sales process. We don't see a ton of that, even in relatively well run, some of the best organizations. You might, you, you, you definitely might not, right? Yeah. Like I think it's just interesting that there is still a decent amount of variance.

Mm-hmm. 'cause at the end of the day, you are sending a human into a home. Yeah. Yep. Every home's different. Yep. Every customer that you're sitting down with at the kitchen table is different. And so how do you try to provide the ability. To truly create a personalized experience that's tailored to John, that's gonna be different than the one that's tailored to Brendan or Sarah.

Yeah, yeah. Or Tommy. Right? Like how do you truly personalize? 'cause [00:24:00] even you just said it earlier, right? You're like, I'm not like most shoppers, right? Mm-hmm. And I would guess most people probably don't really think that they're like. Other people, right? Oh, in these ways I'm special or different or peculiar.

So how do you try to create that personalized shopping experience that works for you and every homeowner? 

John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. It feels a bit like Pareto to me, where we should be only caring about like the 20% that moves the needle. And maybe that is like speed of follow up. Yep. Quality of options. Um, but I, I think there is a.

This is something we worked on and this is back to like what matters the most. Yeah. So like, let's be simple, but uh, when we first started like driving a process, we overprocessed it to the point where it's like, hey, you have to say exactly this thing. And it like, people buy from people. So like, can we get directionally there?

And then can we allow you to like. Do what 

Speaker 3: you need to do. Totally. 

John Wilson: Because I think, uh, like how we build rapports, how I build rapport is gonna be different than how you build rapport. 

Speaker 4: Totally. 

John Wilson: Uh, so [00:25:00] like how I sell is gonna be different than how you sell. Totally. Um, but yeah, I do, I do like the idea that there's a few things that matter the most, and it probably is, like you said, the, the intentional focus on simple and how do we focus on the least amount of things that drives Yeah.

Yeah, that totally resonates. I mean, we're, uh, you have, we're not a hundred obviously, we're like 30. But you have to be so intentional on getting stuff simple. And it's almost like you go through the stage at 10 where you're like, you almost like complicate everything on purpose. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. '

John Wilson: cause you think you are supposed to complicate everything on purpose.

Yeah. And then you get twice that size and you're like, I. We can't do this. Like I can't scale like this with 50 different commission plans and all these different random things. Like it has to be one. 

Speaker 4: Yeah, 

Speaker 3: yeah, yeah. Totally. Totally. And I think you brought up something really important, which is fundamentally we as an industry are largely speaking, sending people into homes, right?

And so it's like how do you really elevate the tech? Yeah. Selling [00:26:00] tech the ca, to really do what makes them. Really phenomenal, which is probably build a relationship. Mm-hmm. And do advanced system design or advance like diagnostic, depending on the exact role. And then use the tools around them to take care of everything that they're either not good at or they don't enjoy doing, so that they can really focus on being.

Really human and present and attuned to the person across from them, and particularly as more and more of our interactions are animated by AI and all of these things. Now, whether it's like good or bad, like to some degree doesn't really matter what any of us think because it's going to happen more and more.

The ability to really elevate the human and make them really centric to the process while using AI and technology to make them even better and allow them to focus more on what they're doing in the home, we think is really important. We found is really impactful mm-hmm. To drive phenomenal results. 

John Wilson: Yeah.

Where do you think sales is heading over the next couple years? 

Speaker 3: Uh, for home services specifically? I think you're gonna see more people doing remote sales, right? Meaning that you're [00:27:00] not always sending someone into the home. You having, are you seeing 

John Wilson: that more now? Like are people transitioning to it or, 

Speaker 3: definitely, it's one of the questions I get most frequently is, Hey, how was, how does mantle work if we're having someone from the office call or zoom in?

And there's actually some really exciting, um, uh, there's a really exciting product that we're releasing around, uh, on, on that, uh, very, very soon. So I encourage people to, to, to, to, to stay tuned. And I know it's something that the, the team here at Wilson is particularly excited about. Yeah. I don't 

John Wilson: think we've actually talked about this at all in the show, but we like remote cell.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Which I think is really interesting. And I think what becomes really exciting is today the way that folks are for forced to remote cell. It is a pretty limited experience if you're calling on the phone. Mm-hmm. And maybe the person's looking at something, but how do we make that a high fidelity interactive experience?

Yeah. And so it's very clear that is where one trend is going. And then the other trend that is [00:28:00] underpinning it is just, 

John Wilson: just to dig in. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

John Wilson: Does size or scope change that 

Speaker 3: say more 

John Wilson: like, are the bigger companies all doing one thing or is it like a bell curve? 'cause what I can imagine happening is like.

The smallest companies are in person. The middle companies are moving to remote selling. The biggest companies are back in person. Yeah. And it's this curve. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. That's interesting. Um, definitely don't see a ton of small companies doing remote selling and probably wouldn't suggest they do. I think what we're seeing today is it's not so much whether you're large or medium sized.

It is more just like how much is there an internal advocate that's willing to reimagine it? So you have certain very scaled players that. Are very much committed to a strategy today of being in person. Yeah. Um, and then you have certain skilled players that are starting to experiment with it. And I think what's really interesting is the conversations I have, even from organizations that have fine tuned in-home experiences about them [00:29:00] starting to be like.

Remote curious. Be like, Hey, Zach, like how could this work? Like, uh, I feel like at times, like I'm almost a little bit of their safe space to be like, so like, what would this look like? Right. This idea is as it's clearly like they're thinking around the back of their head. And I'd say the other thing that clearly, um, lives in that space as well is online job, right?

I think it's, 

John Wilson: yeah. 

Speaker 3: Clear. And we uh, we do every year a homeowner survey to understand from real homeowners, like what are their attitudes? And it's clear that there's a lot of interest in online shopping. Like over 69% of homeowners say they tried to look for a price online. Yeah. Only 15% said they could find anything that was very clear.

85% couldn't find anything that they could understand. Yeah. And so that's clearly another trend. And I think the third trend, um, that we're seeing, and it's really more of a recognition of a pain point, is. We as an industry don't do a great job around discovery. We don't do a great job of really understanding what a homeowner [00:30:00] cares about.

Mm-hmm. And tailoring our solutions to that problem. Mm-hmm. That is a third trend that we see a lot of opportunities around, particularly in market environments where you see unit sales off in August, uh, down 30%. Yeah. You see harder macro climates being able to make sure that you're truly delivering a solution that resonates.

Mm-hmm. With the homeowner is becoming more and more important. Yeah, that makes sense. 

John Wilson: We, uh, our director of sales, he describes it as the three, uh, like methods of selling. So the first method was like very product based. So like, Hey, here's this, you know, gas valve, it's a single stage, this is what it does, here's the brand.

The second one is like beginning to offer options. So it's like, hey, here's a single stage, here's a two stage, [00:31:00] like this one has a different gas valve. And then the third one, or like very closed ended questions like attempting to start a conversation. And the third one is what we practice. It's consultative selling and it's a much more conversational, uh, I'm sure sales will continue to adapt.

There'll be a fourth model one day. But, uh, that seems to resonate with what you're saying is these three different models of selling. And like, you know, we started just like probably everybody else in the first one, just like, Hey, here's a product. Like here it is, here's a box. Do you want it? Yes. No. Um, and really talking about the manufacturer, the brand, when, like, I think you've got data that the homeowner doesn't care about, that 

Speaker 3: it's not nearly as important as the reputation, the comfort, the utility savings, like brand.

6%. The train 

John Wilson: is a good, yeah. Nobody gives a shit. No. No one 

Speaker 3: knows. They always think it's Honeywell on the wall, even though you and I both know that Honeywell doesn't build equipment. 

John Wilson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's interesting. Um, and so bigger emphasis on online [00:32:00] sales, bigger emphasis on like, sort of the remote.

Yep. I don't even know if it's like remote. Virtual, 

Speaker 3: virtual. Yeah. Like 

John Wilson: I would almost call it like a open cart experience. So when we first started moving down the road of remote close, which again, I don't think we've talked about at all on Yeah. On this show, but, um, 

Speaker 3: which it could be like really fun, uh, to get one of your remote closers on, on here.

I just talked to that process. It like 

John Wilson: interesting. We do a lot. Like it's, it's, uh, it's a lot. But when we first started moving towards it, our marketing man, uh, manager at the time, director of marketing, now, he, he was like, oh, this reminds me a lot of, like, I was on Guitar Center 

Speaker 4: and 

John Wilson: I was buying a bass guitar.

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

John Wilson: And I left it in my cart and I got a phone call like later that day or the next day. 

Speaker 4: Sure. Of 

John Wilson: like, Hey, we saw you left the space in your cart. Do you want a discount or do you want something like that? 

Speaker 3: Sure. 

John Wilson: And it reminds me a lot more of that, where it's like. We will get more data to be able to [00:33:00] act on faster.

Yeah. Than just like, hey, somebody's furnaces is broken. Or at least that's my hope for it. Yeah. Is that we'll be able to transform into like, can there be 30 like remote closers in a call center, just taken down cold quotes and open carts and yeah, like I think that would be kind of a fun sales experience.

Totally. 

Speaker 3: Totally. 

John Wilson: Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. Um, alright. What is the craziest thing you've ever done to win a new client? 

Speaker 3: Oh, man. Um, I feel like you've done your research. Um, well, I, I mean, if, if craziest is marked by like me feeling it three weeks later, then it would definitely have to be with Mike Barnhart at Eco.

Um, I, uh. I made an excuse to sort of be in Columbus. Mm-hmm. And schedules were such that he was like, yeah, you know, just casually passing through. Columbus schedules were such like, exactly, let's go for a run. So I was like, okay, show up. Ran in high school, haven't run much since, and Mike just [00:34:00] takes us out on a run.

And like when I set out on that run, I was like, I will run slightly faster than Mike the entire time and we will run however far Mike runs. And like my only goal is just like, keep up. Doesn't matter. Right? And so I thought like we'd go out for two, three, maybe four miles. Eight miles later. Uh, that's funny.

And Mike, at a certain point was Zach's like, you seem like to, like, you could just keep up. So like, I just like didn't think the need to sort of like dial it back ready. And I was like, yeah, that's what I'm just, that's what I'm here for. So I definitely felt that for, for, for a few days. 

Zac Dearing: And so I think that might be my, my, my craziest story so far.

John Wilson: That is, that is funny. We, um, over the years, I, I have definitely used the. I happen to be in town. Yeah. Um, it is shocking how many doors it opens. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think it's good. I'm trying to remember. Usually for me it's like site visits. Like, yeah. Oh, I really want to go and like meet, I just wanna meet these guys.

Yeah. Um, or, [00:35:00] or. Like, Hey, this guy has something to teach me, or this person has something to teach me. So yeah, I happen to be in Columbus next Thursday. She's like, what are the odd, it's the wildest timing. Wait, 

Speaker 3: Thursday doesn't work for you? Oh, I guess Friday's what I, yeah. I'm actually here for two days.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

John Wilson: And um, yeah, it's, yeah, it is kind of funny. We've. That that is a, that is a funny one. I've, we've done Columbus, we've done, uh, like New York, we've done Florida, I did Texas once where Oh, amazing. Where I was just like, Hey. Yeah. 

Zac Dearing: Like, I just happened to be there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You happen to be a lot of places, right?

Yeah. It's very, 

John Wilson: it's very convenient. We, we just did a, like a video. I think it's probably gonna air after this one. Yeah. But it was funny where we did a lot of like questions on. The data that you're pulling from this annual homeowner survey, which we can put the link in the in the show notes, but like what do you think homeowner contractors are mostly getting wrong about the selling process?

Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. Price is only the most important thing if you choose to, and what I [00:36:00] mean by that is 70% of homeowners say that price isn't their number one consideration or buying factor. 

John Wilson: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: I think the second thing is there's a real hunger. For transparency of pricing and understanding what people are, are, are, are, are buying.

Um, and the third thing is just AI search. Mm-hmm. In the data, it's not super relevant yet. It's about 3%. Um, it's becoming. More relevant. Sure. But still the vast majority of people are going to Google or using contractors they already have or asking a friend. 

John Wilson: Yeah. The non-price isn't, or price not being the first Yeah.

Is, uh, interesting. I think we all want it to be that. Yeah. Uh, it's maybe the loudest objection. It's the most within control. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

John Wilson: Um, yeah, that was interesting. So something that I thought was interesting, and we will rehash this inside that video too, but I, I just think it's like. Fascinating to me was the extended warranty.

Yeah. We, you know, we had this discussion where it's like, what would people be willing to pay for an extended [00:37:00] warranty on a system? Yeah. To go from like one year to 10 years and your, the data was like 500 bucks or something? Yeah. 5 63. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I would've, I would've assumed like 2000 or something.

Sure. Crazy like that. I did, we were looking into our extended warranty and how we thought about it. 40% of Americans. Buy extended warranty. Sure. As far as like who would potentially buy this? Sure. 'cause as we were thinking about it, I've never bought an extended warranty. Yeah. So I don't, I don't know how to get in that mental framework.

So I was like, okay, who is the market for this? Yeah. Apparently 40% of Americans, 

Speaker 3: which then also becomes interesting in that question, specifically possessed everyone what they would pay for it. So it's very possible that 5 63 is a reflection of a bunch of people who would've never bought it. Along with or dragging down the, the, the average.

So I think that's a question that's really interesting about what is the meaning that you make out of it. Maybe one of the things that we'll do is if folks that are curious and if they reach out to you, you can, you can get them to, to, to me, we'll actually share that. What [00:38:00] percentage of homeowners had values over a thousand dollars for that question.

That becomes the interesting segment. 'cause if you start to see that there's a lot of people willing to spend $3,000, then there becomes an interesting way about how you think about pricing a one year versus a five year year versus a 10 year. Mm-hmm. 'cause maybe you're intentionally not trying for everyone.

To buy it as sort of paradoxical or uh, 

John Wilson: or potentially you go the opposite way where you price it so cheap that everybody buys it. Totally. So something that was interesting, you know, how we think about attach rate for indoor air quality, there's an attach rate for Target on like how many, uh, extended warranties did we attach to each invoice?

Sure. So, and it was something like 39%. Yeah. Which is a lot. Yeah. And my guess is because the dollar amount is so small Yeah. That people just say yes to it. And then when they say yes, like suddenly they can cover the big catastrophic event. Sure. So I think the data is like either one. It's less valuable than we thought.

Speaker 5: Yeah. 

John Wilson: Stop there. [00:39:00] So maybe like we don't sell it, or the alternative is it's less valuable than we thought. So maybe we sell it for a lot less, but we sell many more of them to cover the gap. 

Speaker 3: Or maybe there's a third possibility, which is it's really valuable for some people and it's not that valuable for a lot of other people.

And so therefore, if you do want a lot of people to attach, which you could say strategically, there might be reasons, then you need to sell it pretty inexpensively. Or just pre-B, bundle it in, right. Or if you really wanna sort of truly target the folks, you price it to almost a premium and let those folks en enjoy it.

Yeah, 

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John Wilson: This was awesome. I am really excited. We did a couple interviews, we have some more data coming out. Uh, I wanna read the annual homeowner survey. Yeah, totally. Uh, to have a little bit deeper. 'cause I think that'd be a, a ton of fun.

Um, but we've been working with you guys since, I don't know, like March? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Think so. Yeah. No, it's been awesome. Uh, so big wreck from us. I 

Speaker 3: appreciate that. 

John Wilson: If people wanna get ahold of you, like how can they do that? 

Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, totally. Um, so you can email me, Zac c Zach at. Use mantle U-S-E-M-A-N-T-E l.com 

Zac Dearing: Also, just go to Yeah, yeah.

Use mantle.com [00:41:00] and you can, uh, you can, you can, uh, sign up to, to learn 

Speaker 3: more and then also, 'cause I know it's near and dear to your heart. Yeah. Um, use mantle.com/survey. And you can really reach your heart's content. Yeah. About where the modern homeowner is. It's fascinating. It is. It is. It's really surprising.

Surprising to Brandon and I. It was just some really good data completed, Brandon. 

John Wilson: Yeah. Particularly. Particularly. We'll put a link in the show notes too. 

Speaker 3: Perfect. 

John Wilson: Thanks for coming on today. 

Speaker 3: Great. 

John Wilson: If you like what you heard, make sure you check out owned and operated.com. Sure. You gimme a five star review wherever it is that you're listening to shows and hit that sub button on YouTube.