Systems Systems Systems
What are the different types of systems you can create for your business and what purpose do they serve? Let's talk about that.
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Who is Mike Crow?
Mike Crow is a Marketing and Business Expert who has built and managed multiple 7-figure businesses, including two 7-figure inspection firms.
For the past 15 years, he's coached thousands of other inspection business owners and has personally helped 100+ companies grow to $1,000,000+ in annual revenue. He has also helped multiple single-inspector operations earn 6-figure annual revenues (some surpassing $300,000).
Mike can teach any entrepreneur how to systematize and market their business to achieve their personal and professional goals.
Transcript
Hi, this is Mike Crow, and I run home inspection business.
Speaker:In fact, I've run a couple of home inspection businesses.
Speaker:You know, true joy for me, though, has been helping literally
Speaker:thousands of home inspectors build really solid home inspection business as well.
Speaker:We can help a single man operation be able to do over three hundred
Speaker:thousand dollars a year,
Speaker:maybe all the way up
Speaker:to 400 thousand dollars a year as a single inspector operation.
Speaker:Even better for me is the 80 plus companies that we have helped
Speaker:be able to build million dollar home inspection businesses.
Speaker:I would like to help you be able to do the same thing.
Speaker:Everybody might grow back here, and we are moving into one of the last
Speaker:two parts of the book, the
Speaker:E myth and the E myth Revisited now.
Speaker:I'm pulling my notes from the original E myth book that I used years ago
Speaker:to help fix my company and straighten a lot of pieces up.
Speaker:The new book out there is The E myth Revisited.
Speaker:So feel free to take a look at that.
Speaker:And it's actually a better read, easier to read,
Speaker:but I'm pulling my notes from the original book that I studied.
Speaker:Chapter 18 is Your Systems Strategy, Chapter 18, so your system strategy.
Speaker:One of the things we've talked about is systems, systems and then more systems.
Speaker:OK, and he's coming back to even defining what a system is here.
Speaker:A system is a set of things, actions, ideas, information
Speaker:that interact with each other and in so doing, alter other systems.
Speaker:So systems affect other systems.
Speaker:All right. Systems are kind of a preset way
Speaker:that things work in a lot of different directions.
Speaker:And so basically says, in short, everything's a system.
Speaker:He says, my office is a system.
Speaker:The way we answer the phones is a system. My car is a system.
Speaker:You know, when I'm
Speaker:talking with home inspectors, I tell them we inspect systems all the time.
Speaker:We inspect heating and air conditioning systems
Speaker:and plumbing systems in structural systems.
Speaker:What I do as a coach is I try to take a look at the business system,
Speaker:especially the marketing system inside the business system, to help move forward.
Speaker:He says that there are three kinds of systems, and he's absolutely correct.
Speaker:There are there hard systems, soft systems and information systems.
Speaker:Now, the hard systems are those inanimate unloving things,
Speaker:kind of like our vans or the colors that we use, OK?
Speaker:And the soft systems are the animate living or ideas.
Speaker:And he said a soft system might be the script like for Hamlet, as he says here.
Speaker:And then the information systems are those systems that provide us
Speaker:with information about the interaction
Speaker:of the other to the heart systems and the soft systems working together.
Speaker:So the heart systems is pretty straightforward.
Speaker:The heart systems is probably one of the biggest parts, and
Speaker:you might take a look at it.
Speaker:So, for instance, I am very blessed now because we have an eight thousand
Speaker:square foot office and I have the studio inside my office.
Speaker:All of this is a system.
Speaker:And inside our office,
Speaker:we have these white boards and all this that you write on with dry erase markers.
Speaker:I just buy some more dry erase markers.
Speaker:The other day, he talks about in his office,
Speaker:they had the dry erase boards as well, and they were using markers on them.
Speaker:And part of their system was that after somebody was done with a meeting room
Speaker:or set up or whatever part of their job was to clean off the white boards.
Speaker:Now, the white boards didn't have adjustments and they had white walls.
Speaker:And so what happened was they would end up with all this blue smudge
Speaker:and everything up on the walls and everything.
Speaker:Now, I will tell you,
Speaker:some people have literally taken the whole walls and turned them nowadays
Speaker:into white boards.
Speaker:We actually have an Airbnb that we have right across from our office here.
Speaker:And on one wall, it's all basically a white board.
Speaker:But in the old days and even in this office,
Speaker:we still have some white boards that are set.
Speaker:And what he was trying to do
Speaker:was he was saying, hey, we need to clean off the boards.
Speaker:And they would clean off the boards,
Speaker:but it would leave smudges on the walls and it became quite a problem.
Speaker:And for like three or four weeks, they were working on this,
Speaker:trying to figure out how do we fix this because we want a nice, clean office.
Speaker:And they worked on it and they worked on it. They worked on it.
Speaker:They try to tell people
Speaker:how important it was to clean it up, how this and how to do that.
Speaker:And it really became quite a nuisance.
Speaker:And then finally, somebody had an idea that they put into place and immediately
Speaker:created a hard system that solved all of those problems.
Speaker:All they did was they took the white boards
Speaker:that were up there and put a clear piece of Lucite all the way around it.
Speaker:So when they're cleaning off the boards
Speaker:now, it's not going onto the walls and they're not writing on that.
Speaker:Lucette So there's no writing on it. They have to clean off.
Speaker:And so they put about four inches all the way around.
Speaker:So just think about that.
Speaker:The two necessary components of conflict, the essential conditions for innovation,
Speaker:and then the conditions gave birth to a new system.
Speaker:And that third component basically was needed to translate conflict
Speaker:into a remedial action or will. All right.
Speaker:So by extending four inches out from each side of the border,
Speaker:that Lucite color literally stopped the blue
Speaker:ink carnage, as he calls it, here in its tracks, OK?
Speaker:And in one fell swoop with that system.
Speaker:And I want you to understand, when you put systems into your business,
Speaker:this sort of thing is going to happen, too, in that one fell swoop.
Speaker:The walls were clean.
Speaker:Our people were delighted.
Speaker:And the clients were amazed.
Speaker:You know, one of the best thing that ever happened to me,
Speaker:and it happened a lot was is this a franchise, OK?
Speaker:People were asking me if my business was a franchise.
Speaker:I love that question because it told me I was building.
Speaker:A real prototype that could become a franchise
Speaker:at some point, and I actually thought about making it a franchise
Speaker:and then I decided not to I decided to coach individual companies.
Speaker:So I'm kind of the UN franchise model.
Speaker:I'm the franchise prototype, though.
Speaker:I mean, we still teach you everything a franchise would teach you, actually,
Speaker:so much more than the average franchise would teach.
Speaker:But all of it comes down to what kind of systems do
Speaker:we have in our business to help make sure that those things happen. So.
Speaker:A hard system for producing a human and totally integrated result.
Speaker:What kind of hard systems are you putting into your business?
Speaker:The purpose of that system was to free you up
Speaker:from having to worry about the blue smudges on the wall all the time.
Speaker:And so I built a lot of systems inside the home inspection,
Speaker:the routine of the home inspection.
Speaker:The way we wrote the report, all of that to make things easier.
Speaker:And, you know, Gary Keller had the book out called The One Thing.
Speaker:And one of the things he said in there was what's one thing you can do
Speaker:that will make everything else
Speaker:or make other things unnecessary or at least make things easier?
Speaker:And those are systems.
Speaker:And so when you build those, it becomes very powerful.
Speaker:In fact, I like to call them stackable, because some systems
Speaker:you're always tweaking with, but some systems like that Lucite color.
Speaker:OK. Once they did it, it was done.
Speaker:They never had to do it again. That's a stackable.
Speaker:And I love that.
Speaker:So going on to the second part was soft systems. All right.
Speaker:So we all know that things need to be sold, so
Speaker:how are you going to get things sold?
Speaker:And here's one of those things that we hear all the time.
Speaker:Eighty percent of well, in this case, 80 percent of our sales are produced
Speaker:by 20 percent of the people.
Speaker:All right. And I will tell you that probably, you know,
Speaker:a large percentage of your business that comes in is done
Speaker:and created by 20 percent of what you do to help create that business.
Speaker:Now, when you understand that
Speaker:and you start understanding which parts are creating that business,
Speaker:what you really find out is that that 20 percent is a system,
Speaker:20 percent of that creates 80 percent of your work is a system.
Speaker:And what I created, of course, was what we call the Big Bang marketing system.
Speaker:The Big Bang marketing system creates over 80 percent of all the phone calls
Speaker:that we receive. And it's pretty cool thing.
Speaker:And when you set it up, you need a selling system of some sort.
Speaker:Now, inside the chapter,
Speaker:he goes into a wholesaling system about identification of,
Speaker:you know, a specific benchmarks, the literal scripting of words.
Speaker:You've got to make sure that you have that built in your system.
Speaker:The creation of the various materials to be used when you're doing certain
Speaker:scripts, the memorization of the scripts and the delivery
Speaker:of each script by your people.
Speaker:So we actually have right now out we have two people out there
Speaker:marketing for our business.
Speaker:We're trying to teach all of them different scripts, scripts
Speaker:that do different things.
Speaker:And some of those scripts are not just to get people to refer business to us,
Speaker:but to set it up so that we can come in and do presentations
Speaker:at their real estate office.
Speaker:And let me say this very carefully, quickly, but carefully.
Speaker:The number one way to build your business is by presentations.
Speaker:The number one way to build your business is by presentations.
Speaker:Here's the good news is you don't have to do this presentations,
Speaker:but those presentations need to be done by you
Speaker:and or some kind of a salesperson or marketing person.
Speaker:We're now actually calling our marketing people marketing coaches
Speaker:because they go in and try to teach people how to help market their business.
Speaker:So the power selling system is built up of a couple parts.
Speaker:One is the structure and then the substance.
Speaker:The structure is what you do.
Speaker:And then the substance is how you do it.
Speaker:And if you think about that, it's the same thing with your home inspection, OK?
Speaker:Your home inspection is what you do.
Speaker:But the substance is how you do it.
Speaker:And we've all heard, you know, it's not what you say, but how you say it.
Speaker:Same type of thing inside of the selling system.
Speaker:They help create here.
Speaker:And by the way, the reason they mention the selling system here is because it's
Speaker:one of the most powerful systems that you will need
Speaker:to move your company forward, whether you stay a single man operation
Speaker:or whether you become a multi inspector firm.
Speaker:If you do not have a powerful selling system
Speaker:or a system that helps people
Speaker:that want to refer you, then your business is going to be in serious trouble.
Speaker:And then he has three parts about the selling system that he talks about.
Speaker:Here is the appointment presentation,
Speaker:the needs analysis presentation, and then the solutions presentation.
Speaker:And so there's broken down into three parts.
Speaker:The appointment presentation is one of the important.
Speaker:So as our marketing people are going out there to the officers,
Speaker:their job besides just letting people know who we are and all that good stuff.
Speaker:Their main job is to schedule appointments, appointments
Speaker:for presentations.
Speaker:Now they can be one on one, but even more importantly are when we do
Speaker:group presentations and you want to try to make sure that you have that worked up.
Speaker:And he says here the appointments, the purpose of an appointment
Speaker:presentation is one thing and one thing only.
Speaker:I love it when we get that type, and that is to set up
Speaker:a presentation or set up an appointment, as they're talking about here.
Speaker:And then they go through some of the scripts
Speaker:that they're using to do all of that.
Speaker:But, you know, I also try to tell people the purpose of your brochure.
Speaker:The purpose of your business card has one purpose
Speaker:and one purpose only, and that's to make the phone ring.
Speaker:Your presentations really have one purpose and one purpose only, and
Speaker:that's for people to put us on the list to recommend to their clients.
Speaker:Your marketing, as you walk in and out of the real estate office,
Speaker:your big bang marketing has a lot of purposes,
Speaker:but its real essence, the real essence, the one and one thing
Speaker:only that I really want the Big Bang marketing to do is help us to be able
Speaker:to schedule, you know, presentations at the offices or help us set up
Speaker:appointments for one on one with agents either way. All right.
Speaker:But when you understand that, then that's pretty cool.
Speaker:And then they go in and talk about the need analysis presentation.
Speaker:And we're not going to go into that
Speaker:too much because it doesn't really apply to us in the home inspection world.
Speaker:But really, as you're going through the presentation, what you're trying to do
Speaker:is find out what their needs are and find out if you can meet their needs.
Speaker:Now, for instance, if I'm talking to a group of insurance agents
Speaker:instead of real estate agents, their needs are completely different.
Speaker:And we may not even be able to meet their needs here in Texas.
Speaker:And, you know, if you were in Florida.
Speaker:Might be a completely different thing,
Speaker:especially with the four point inspections and things like that.
Speaker:But you want to make sure that your presentation, your needs now
Speaker:presentation works so well,
Speaker:but not at what it does , but the impact it will have on the prospect.
Speaker:So when we do a presentation at the real estate
Speaker:offices, my number one objective is what kind of impact
Speaker:will it have on the people there that can refer business to the future?
Speaker:And he goes into the first, the second, the third, the fourth, fifth,
Speaker:all of these different steps. I'm not going to go into all of them.
Speaker:The big thing is, though, is
Speaker:that what you're trying to do is make sure upon the completion of that presentation
Speaker:is that they want to refer you to their clients.
Speaker:And everything in this particular instance is talking about something else.
Speaker:And then the solutions presentation, the solutions
Speaker:presentation is the easiest component. All right.
Speaker:Because if you've done part one right.
Speaker:And if you've done part two right.
Speaker:Which is if you've done the appointment presentation. Right.
Speaker:And if you've done the need analysis presentation. Right.
Speaker:The solutions presentation is like a no brainer.
Speaker:It's like a gimmick. OK.
Speaker:And so it's the easiest, because if you've done your job effectively at this point,
Speaker:they've already decided they're going to refer you in this particular situation.
Speaker:And they say they've already decided that they're going to buy from you,
Speaker:that the sale is already made in the home inspection business.
Speaker:It's a little bit different because of the way
Speaker:it sets up, because of the way they work with their clients and everything.
Speaker:But we want to make sure that they feel comfortable in simply referring us. OK.
Speaker:The last system is the information systems in an information system
Speaker:basically helps the heart systems and the source systems work together.
Speaker:And in the information system, he actually lists like 13 parts here of this.
Speaker:But really, their benchmarks are goals that you want to set.
Speaker:So, for instance, how many calls were made?
Speaker:How many offices did you visit?
Speaker:All right. I teach people that you need to be visiting 10 officers per week
Speaker:per inspector to help meet your numbers and growing the business.
Speaker:And if you're an hypergrowth or want to be an hypergrowth,
Speaker:a lot of my coaches would say, hey, you need to be visiting
Speaker:15 offices a week to make sure that you're getting business.
Speaker:And then how many prospects were reached and then how many
Speaker:appointments were scheduled
Speaker:and then how many appointments were confirmed? In my case,
Speaker:I would say not just appointments, but presentations. All right.
Speaker:And then how many presentations were held?
Speaker:And then did you do the need analysis presentation?
Speaker:Did you go through with them and find out,
Speaker:you know, what it is they need and can you provide it for them?
Speaker:Here's the good news is we know they need us.
Speaker:OK, and then how many were confirmed and then how many were completed on
Speaker:doing those need analysis or in this case, the presentations?
Speaker:OK, and then how many presentations were scheduled?
Speaker:How many presentations were confirmed on this second part
Speaker:and how many solutions presentations were completed?
Speaker:So keep in mind, again, they had three parts.
Speaker:They had the point that presentation, they had the need analysis presentation, and
Speaker:then they had the the sales presentation or the solutions presentation.
Speaker:Ours are slightly different.
Speaker:What we have is the the marketing to get us scheduled to speak
Speaker:at the real estate offices.
Speaker:Then we have the presentation
Speaker:we do at the office, which is different than what they talk about here as well.
Speaker:And I'll talk about that more when I start going into my book,
Speaker:which is what we're going to do after this book.
Speaker:So I'm going to go in and start getting into even more nitty gritty
Speaker:of what we're doing here.
Speaker:OK. And then, of course, how many solutions were sold?
Speaker:Well, how many inspections did you do?
Speaker:How many people were putting you on their list now?
Speaker:And what was the average dollar value of those solutions?
Speaker:I think that people missed that so often.
Speaker:I ask them what your average home inspection.
Speaker:And a lot of times they go somewhere
Speaker:between three hundred and five hundred dollars.
Speaker:That's not an average. That's a ballpark. OK.
Speaker:An average would be
Speaker:four hundred and thirty three dollars and eighty seven cents.
Speaker:That's an average.
Speaker:And honestly, you should know that. No.
Speaker:And if you think you don't need to know that. No.
Speaker:Well, you're kind of kidding yourself because you can't fix numbers
Speaker:or improved numbers that you don't really know.
Speaker:And so we measure that number specifically among a bunch of others,
Speaker:but that one specifically so that we know that we're improving on it.
Speaker:One of the things I love is when I'm working with coaching members
Speaker:a lot of times is that their average will literally go up
Speaker:because they didn't know that they needed to know that . No.
Speaker:But as soon as they did and as soon as they start putting into place
Speaker:some of the systems that we talk about, especially with the Big Bang marketing,
Speaker:then what happened was that particular part,
Speaker:that particular number would start growing for them.
Speaker:It's not uncommon for our guys to do a hundred dollars more on average
Speaker:than what they're currently doing.
Speaker:And I look forward to being able to help you with that
Speaker:or you figuring that out as you're going as well.
Speaker:So it's absolutely essential that you begin to think
Speaker:of your business as an integrated system.
Speaker:So we've been talking about systems throughout the book. Right.
Speaker:And so approach Airbnb.
Speaker:Part of your business, as though it were separate from all the rest
Speaker:would be lunacy, would be lunacy, would be crazy would be ludicrous.
Speaker:One of my favorite words, ludicrous.
Speaker:It would be ludicrous
Speaker:to think of each part of the business separately and that it is separate.
Speaker:No, it's all interactive, OK,
Speaker:because everything in your business affects everything else in your business.
Speaker:So when you think about the primary aim that we talked about,
Speaker:when you think about the strategic objective and your organizational strategy
Speaker:and your management strategy and your people strategy
Speaker:and your marketing strategy and your systems strategy,
Speaker:all of them are totally interdependent rather than independent. All right.
Speaker:And so it's important to understand that.
Speaker:And then the success of your business development program
Speaker:totally depends on your acceptance of that integration.
Speaker:And that integration is your prototype.
Speaker:OK, that's what you're using to take it into the whole next level.
Speaker:All right. Well, that's all today.
Speaker:We're going to come back and then we're going to finish up
Speaker:bringing the dream back to American business,
Speaker:and we're going to finish it up and go through this last little part.
Speaker:I'm excited to do that.
Speaker:And then what I'm going to do is start on my book that I put together
Speaker:probably, I don't know, 15 years ago.
Speaker:And it's got so much simple basics that you can put into place
Speaker:in your business as well.
Speaker:So this has been a lot of fun and it's so much fun
Speaker:helping you understand how important systems are.
Speaker:Please don't forget that my business almost imploded because I was running
Speaker:the businesses on a personality, not on a system.
Speaker:And I want to make sure that you're
Speaker:not running your business on just a personality.
Speaker:And by the way, a personality will help
Speaker:a personality will help you build the right systems
Speaker:and do a lot of those different parts of it.
Speaker:I am building new systems every single day,
Speaker:either in our home inspection business or some of the other businesses
Speaker:that we run here.
Speaker:And so I want to make sure you're doing the same thing.
Speaker:Well, as I always love to say, be successful and be around
Speaker:those that are successful.
Speaker:The more systems you put in place, the easier it is to be successful
Speaker:and the more successful people you're around, the better systems
Speaker:you're going to discover.
Speaker:And how easy it is to put some of those in your business as well.
Speaker:Have a great day and talk with you again soon. Bye bye.