5 Pillars of Growth for Remodelers

Kyle: Before we jump in, a quick shout-out to our friends at BuilderFunnel. If you're trying to grow your remodeling business but feel like you're figuring out marketing as you go, they're building something specifically for you. They're calling it the Remodeler Growth Lab. It's a program built for remodelers who want a clearer path to growth with weekly coaching, proven marketing plays, and a private group of other remodelers who are working through the same marketing challenges you are. If you want better ideas, better systems, and a group of people you can actually learn from, head to builderfunnel.com slash lab L A B to check out the Remodeler Growth Lab. Builderfunnel.com slash lab, check it out and join in on their next. Coaching call. Welcome to the Remodelers on the Rise show. I'm talking to two longtime friends, Spencer Powell, Danielle Russell. Hello, friends.

Spencer Powell: Hello.

Danielle Russell: Hey, Kyle.

Kyle: Hi. Folks, the internet connection is a little unstable. Hopefully it's gonna work just fine and dandy. And we have the beautiful world of editing if necessary. I was talking to them about how I'm feeling today, and Danielle said, use an S word. What'd you say?

Danielle Russell: Spicy.

Kyle: Spicy. You said, ooh, we got spicy Kyle. There is a little bit of a spicy Kyle here. but I took a deep breath. I was just on some animated coaching calls, just really trying to get people to make changes happen in this and that. So that's where I'm coming into it. I'm also a little hyper focused lately of when people are listening to the podcast and investing their precious time with us. We do not want to give them this generic. I've heard this before. stuff. We don't need to be spicy, but we do need to be let's give them some good stuff. So there might be a little rapid fire. We are going to talk about the five, not four, not three, not two, five pillars of growth. And we use this word framework. And we're going to talk about it from a standpoint of getting clients and working them through our process. And we also are going to pivot near the end of this conversation towards the talent and the operations and the culture side and how these five pillars work there. Spencer, you're going to kick us off by can you define a what a framework is? Five pillars of growth framework. What is a framework for the people listening and for myself? How would you def how would you define that?

Spencer Powell: That's a great question, Kyle. But first, I don't know if I might be the first person to call this out on the podcast. I love the logo placement in the window that you have right there on the podcast. That is just beautiful. Yeah.

Kyle: Hmm. look, bamp, bamp, bamp, bamp. Have you seen my

Spencer Powell: Always be branding.

Kyle: have you seen my new tattoo that I got too?

Spencer Powell: No Are we about to?

Kyle: Are you going to be a job tread connect?

Spencer Powell: Yes.

Danielle Russell: Yes.

Kyle: Good. at Job Tread Connect. You will not see it because I didn't get it. I'm just kidding around. I didn't get a Ramalers on the Rise logo.

Spencer Powell: Well, I guess you still got two months. So back to the framework.

Kyle: Yes. But yes, that is that is a lovely, that is a lovely little thank you for pointing that out. appreciate it. And

Spencer Powell: Yeah, you're welcome.

Kyle: then on the builder funnel side, you guys have your cute little t-shirts with a little bit of builder funnel going on there. but maybe yeah, you've been a little inspired. Try to get three or four, you know, views of it around you. Because people need to know about

Spencer Powell: We will take notes.

Kyle: builder funnel. Folks, look up builderfunnel dot com. Okay. frameworks are define it.

Spencer Powell: Frameworks, yes. The way I think about a framework is something that the structure of it is more evergreen and you might have tactics that kind of shift along the way, but the overall structure should hold up. And especially in digital marketing, which is the land that we live in over here at Builder

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Spencer Powell: Funnel, we've seen, you know, when I first started this business Instagram didn't exist. So I guess maybe I shouldn't say that, but that was a long time ago.

Kyle: There was.

Spencer Powell: you know, social media is always changing, Google's always changing, we had mobile websites, you know, then they we had responsive design. Like all these things change, but those are at kind of the tactical level, but the framework holds up, and that's what you can lean on and say, Okay, at the end of the day, first I need to attract people to my brand. Like that's not really gonna change ever. We always need to get more people to us. And then as we go through the framework, we can uncover those other pillars. But like you always need to do those things. And so that's how I think about the framework is more evergreen structure that you can lean on. And then, you know, if we want to draw an analogy to, you know, remodeling or building, like you're always going to need the foundation, you're always going to need the framing, but you might have different technology, different tile, different cabinets, like those things will all change. But You still need the structure.

Kyle: Good. I've already been, I'm already calmed down now. Just hearing Spencer's voice just kind of gave me some peace of mind and calm me down. Now, Danielle,

Danielle Russell: It's soothing.

Kyle: if you were to just give a let's let's unveil all five aspects of this five pillars framework. And if you could just kind of go through the five of them at a high level, I would appreciate that. And then if we can kind of we'll go back to the start of them, but if you want to take a stab at that. I have the notes in front of me if you don't have it memorized. I'm here for you if needed.

Danielle Russell: Kyle, you want me to go over the five pillars of marketing and sales growth, right?

Kyle: Yes.

Danielle Russell: Great. Pillar one is attract. Like Spencer said, attracting your brand to your website is really what we're going to be talking about today when we get a little bit tactical. Pillar two is convert. Once they're on your website, do they have a next step? Do they know where to go? Are they going to contact you? Are they filling out a form? And pillar number three, nurture. They've filled out this form. They're not ready to buy right now. They're still researching. You got to stay in front of them. So we're going to talk a little bit about some of those tactics that would help you show up and nurture, whether that's social media, retargeting ads, emails, we'll get into it. Pillar four is clothes. This is on you. You are selling. So making sure that you have a super strong sales funnel. And then pillar five, measure what's working. Where should you be investing more or maybe what do you need to be improving on? So those are the five pillars of marketing and sales. Thank you.

Kyle: And I think ever beautiful. And the three of us can show the way. And then everybody listening to this can do this as well. Just hearing that also just makes me want to take a deep breath. There we go. we all should do that more often. so listening, please do that. Please do that with us. Pause it if you didn't do that first. But also, the reason I take a deep breath there is, that is such a nice summary. That is a clear summary. That is not an There's so many overwhelming things when it comes to marketing and sales and tactics and strategy. What I like about it is, hey, this is this is the framework. Attract, convert, nurture, close, and measure. That's the core of it. And if we obviously there's all sorts of things we can do inside of that. But even as a business owner, depending on your business, depending on what you're trying to achieve, you don't necessarily need to be the one that just has all the skills when it comes to all of that, but. As a business owner, you need to see at a high level that you need to have a plan for attracting the right homeowner to notice you to convert those visitors into leads. So that's why I kind of take a deep breath of like, this is simplified. Now, Danielle, don't you think somebody should also, in addition to this podcast that's going to be great in the preceding and and the future minutes, don't you think somebody should write a book about these?

Danielle Russell: That would be so helpful if somebody wrote a book about these.

Kyle: And don't you think that somebody should purchase a hundred copies of it and then give them away for free?

Danielle Russell: If that person did that, you would know he really cared about you.

Kyle: Hmm. Well, we'll see if we can we'll see if we can find a book writer like that. We'll see if we can find almost a knight in shining armor to give away these books. We'll see if we find them by the end of this podcast. Folks, you can dealer's choice, you can do it, Spencer, Danielle can do it. Attract. Talk to me about, let's unpack the attract side. And again, this is related to getting the customer side of things. What are kind of our our main tactics and approach to that side of things that we need to be thinking about.

Spencer Powell: Yeah. When I think about attract, there is a piece that I think is really important to nail down before we get to the tactics, which is who do we want to attract? What are we trying to actually attract to our company? And so, Kyle, I know you talk a lot about this, but being intentional about what kind of projects you want to take on, what areas you want to serve, that will determine a lot of how you set up your operations and how you hit your Gross margin numbers that you want to be hitting. But once you've decided that, let's say you're going to serve a handful of zip codes and you say we really want to focus on kitchens and baths, these types of homes, these types of project ranges. Now okay, now I can actually do these tactics because I have some focus. Otherwise, you end up shotgunning a bunch of random stuff, and you end up getting a bunch of random stuff. And so

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Spencer Powell: I would say start with that layer first. We talk about a strategy, which is what are you deciding to say no to? And then ultimately what are you saying yes to? And so now that you've got that, the way we think about the tactics is we want to start with our website, which is the foundation of everything. Pretty much today, somebody's gonna do a Google search, they're gonna go on Chat GPT, they're gonna be on social media. They're gonna see a sign, they're gonna see a billboard, they're gonna see your logo on a truck, they're gonna get back to your website, wherever they find you. And so that becomes the foundation of everything. And then we start to work our way outward. We talk about owning as much traffic as we can, and that's gonna be things like SEO and now AI is getting, you know, wrapped into that as people are typing in prompts and searches. We want them to find you if they're the right people. And we do that through pause.

Kyle: Put, put, pause there. Pause there for a second. Don't forget where you're going next because I want you to unpack that a little bit more. But what you've heard so far, Remodelers, listening to this, do not be all things to all people. Put your flag in the ground. What are the types of projects? Who are your ideal clients? Where are you going to serve? And I know it's scary to do that, but the the sooner you do that and the with the more gusto that you do that, your marketing is going to attract more of those clients and projects and repel away projects that aren't ideal. And if you're a seasoned remodeler and you've got some years on your belt, we can start to narrow down and the net of which we're casting it out there. and then you mentioned websites, but in particular, if five years ago our focus was 98% SEO, 2%, this new AI thing, let's say that might be popping up, as we sit here at the end of 2026, how would we kind of def divide that effort of like, man, is it is it Is it like this percent SEO, this percent AI focus? What are you guys seeing out there in actual real world?

Spencer Powell: Yeah, that's a good question. If I were, I guess I would answer it differently because a lot of the things that worked in traditional SEO are also showing positive results in AI prompts, searches, visibility. That being said, I feel like there's just an extra layer that kind of got added onto that. So you take a blog post as an example. You would want to write quality content, have some keyword targeting, break out some sections, optimize your images, make sure the page loads really quick. All those things were tracking for SEO. Those things are still really valuable for showing up in AI, but now there's other little nuances like putting chapters into your blog post,

Kyle: Hm.

Spencer Powell: putting the actual like author. but maybe a little author bio at the bottom because now we're tying in you know a human person to that. and then tables and charts and FAQ sections would be another couple like tactical things that are really impacting showing up in AI because AI loves to just like comb through that big long blog post and then just like distill it down into something compact. And so if you've already kind of done that throughout, it finds it, Great, this is authoritative. It's easy for me to pull. so

Kyle: Hm.

Spencer Powell: I I don't know if I'd call it a percentage split as more just like if you were already investing in SEO and you know that that's a powerful channel for your business, you're gonna have an extra level of effort being added to the content that you're already creating, but you might as well, like you've already done 80% of it.

Kyle: Good, interesting. Very cool. Danielle's tricky to have two people that I'm kind of interviewing here, but watch how I do it. Wonderful, Spencer. Now, Danielle, your guy Spencer was just going website, owning as much traffic as can, SEO. If you were to add a few more tactics onto the attract side, what else should the remodelers be thinking about there?

Danielle Russell: After owning traffic, you have to rent some traffic, especially if you're not owning traffic yet, so that would be paying for that space. In remodeling, that's really mostly, we're seeing the most success on Meta and Google Ads. So that's where we see a lot of that rented traffic, that next ring of the bullseye that Spencer was talking about. And then after that is earned traffic. Another thing that AI loves while we're talking about AI is other people talking about you. We're really seeing this huge shift to validation. So SEO is all about visibility. It's showing up when someone searches for something, your website comes up because you're answering that question. But what AI is looking for is to validate that. So it's not just you talking about yourself. It's links. It is Nari saying you won an award. You're a great

Kyle: Hm.

Danielle Russell: remodeling company. it's someone else tagging you on social and saying you did a great job and leaving you a review. It's all of that kind of stuff. So that would close out the rings for traffic to your website.

Kyle: Very nice wording. I I I love I love the pillars again because it made me go, let's do that again. Hope people are watching the video 'cause it's kinda cute the fact that all three of us are doing it. but the other thing that it is nice.

Danielle Russell: you

Spencer Powell: It's really it's nice. I'm glad you've been you've

Danielle Russell: Thank

Spencer Powell: baked this into the podcast, you know.

Kyle: Yes, we are working on some just mental health and spiritual health as we go. but I what I like about the attract convert and those pillars is that the clarity of that. But I also like even the way you guys are describing of own, rent, earn. That is a very helpful thing for remodelers who look, th there's only a small percentage of their time devoted to the marketing side of things. For you to have that vernacular, I think it cuts through the clutter of things quite a bit. so I think we're gonna keep cr cruising through to the next pillar in the interest of moving through there. But remodelers listening to this. BuilderFunnel's really good at this. This is what they've been doing since Spencer had a full head of hair and before Instagram, even. Holy cow. What I love about

Spencer Powell: yeah.

Kyle: what I'm hearing also is that they're not resting on their laurels, they're staying on that cutting edge, that little that little cutting edge of things are things have always been changing. Hey, everybody's freaking out about II, dude. Things have always been changing with all of this online presence side of things. so definitely look up BuilderFunnel if you're needing some assistance with this. So the attract part is a big part of it. Danielle, go ahead and and kind of lead us through here's here's what we're here's what we're gonna do. Let me tell you what we got, what we're gonna do. We set out on this venture for this podcast of saying we're going to Do the five pillars for attracting clients and then we're gonna sneak in at the end how to apply these convert, nurture, et cetera, to hiring. We ain't gonna do that, Danielle.

Danielle Russell: I'm ready.

Kyle: You and I are going to do a separate podcast on that topic so that we can properly unveil it and dig into that stuff. Cause I think it's going to be super interesting to take these five pillars and apply it to employee retention and attraction and all of that. And we're gonna do diligence, which also just gives us a little bit more time to just focus on the other four of these. All in favor, say aye.

Spencer Powell: I

Danielle Russell: Aye, aye, Captain.

Kyle: Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion carried. I'm on a couple board of directors for for some nonprofits, so I know all that lingo. Danielle, now that we got that, thank you. Thank you. convert.

Spencer Powell: That was well executed.

Danielle Russell: Yeah, that's convincing.

Kyle: Tell us about the convert side. The attract one, super helpful, super clear. Got the remodelers thinking. Tell me about the convert side.

Danielle Russell: Convert, you have already attracted them. They're on your website. Keep in mind the average person who you are selling to probably only buys one to two remodeling projects in their entire life. They don't know how to buy from you. You have to tell them. So Convert is all about giving someone the next right step as they're researching you while they're on your website. We call this our two door conversion strategy that Spencer can jump into and talk a little bit more about, but it's really just making sure if you have two types of buyers, we're going to keep this as simple as possible. They're either researching you or they're ready to buy from you. And you have to have a conversion opportunity for both of those. So both of

Kyle: Hmm.

Danielle Russell: those target audiences who are on your website.

Kyle: Unpack that a little bit more, Spencer.

Spencer Powell: Yeah. In remodeling, there are especially I think a lot of the well, maybe I shouldn't assume. Kyle, most of your audience, the people you work with, would you say they are more in the design build bucket, striving for projects like seventy five hundred K and above, or more of the like quick countertop replacement, you know, swap out cabinets?

Kyle: The the former versus the latter, the design build side of things.

Spencer Powell: Perfect, yeah. And so in that space, the buying cycle is longer. People think about these projects for months, often years. They plan for them, they dream about them, they say, when our kids get to be this age, we're gonna do XYZ. And so it we just have to acknowledge that first. We just have to know that that is true and we're not gonna change that. And so if somebody lands on our website. We want to say, cool, if they are ready to talk, let's just give them a nice on-ramp to sales, right? A phone number, a form, a chat, but something that basically says, let's talk, let's figure out

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Spencer Powell: this project. That's about 4% of the market. They're active buyers. That means there's a whole bunch of people that are in that research mode. And they could be a month or two out, or they could be. Two, three, four years out from that project. But the thing is, they're on your website today. And so we want to be able to capture those people that are researching. And so we use lead magnets. You might recognize that as, a cost guide or a quiz or a calculator or a design guide. But we're basically saying, hey, you're here researching. We want to help you research by giving you more information that you're looking for. And we'll trade you for a name and an email. That way we can. Grab some lead info, some contact info and and maybe move to the next pillar.

Kyle: Who was wait, Danielle, was that him transitioning from convert to nurture?

Danielle Russell: super smooth, right?

Kyle: Well, it was smooth until I brought it up. Love the two-door thing. Folks, the lead magnet side is not dead and gone. marketing is getting someone who has a need to know, like, and trust you. And if we can convert more of those 96% of folks who are still kind of researching and thinking, there's nothing better in marketing than getting them on your email list, having them follow you on social media. They've been doing it month in, month out, even year in, year out, and all of a sudden they're finally ready. You have differentiated yourself. You have your head and shoulders above anybody else. There's trust built there, et cetera. Two-door conversion. I love it. Man, if there was only a book where this could be unpacked more. Nurture, nurture. either one of you, tell us about the third pillar, which is nurture.

Spencer Powell: So, Kyle, I feel like this is your your favorite pillar.

Kyle: I love this pillar.

Spencer Powell: You love this pillar. Why do you love this pillar?

Kyle: I I just I just feel like they're I don't know. I love running a I think we are kindred spirits here, Builder Funnel and Remodelers on the rise of this idea of I love serving people even if they the the approach to marketing and business where we are giving value and actually helping people where they haven't actually even paid us a dime. I think I just love that and I love even in my own business and the idea of I like to play the long game. I think I've I've grown my business a little bit more in tortoise mode than hair mode. And as I look back on my 19 years in business, I maybe kind of accidentally did that over the first number of years. But I think that nice slow, steady nurturing and no like and trust building is just smart. and I like I like that mode of business. Certainly if somebody's in that other door and they're ready to rock and and they're ready to go, let's do it. But there's a lot of potential and a lot of good stuff that can happen for our business and for a remodeling company that keeps leads warm until they're ready.

Spencer Powell: Yeah, and I think that's really what nurture is all about is the it's the education, the value additive approach. If you go to buy a $20 product on Amazon, you don't need a lot of nurture. Like you're there, you see it, you buy it. But if you're gonna spend $150,000 on a project in your home, you're gonna research, you wanna feel like you trust the company that you're going with. There are so many questions that you might have about how the process works, how long it's gonna take, all the the budgeting, the selections, the warranty. And so nurture is a way we can stay in touch with these leads that are researching. They're not ready to buy yet, and we can educate them on all of these things. And we can send them an email with a link to a blog post or a link to a video or a link to an amazing podcast that Kyle runs.

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Spencer Powell: But the But inside of that, right, the blog, the video, the podcast, it has something of value that's educating them, teaching them about the process. And the funny thing is, if you do that long enough, some of those people that were just researching three months from now, they're ready. And so they they go into that second bucket and they can take that second door and talk to sales. But we miss that 96% opportunity if we don't. Capture them and convert and then also nurture because you can't capture them and then just leave them there. They forget about you. I think we we were just talking pre recording how I already forgot about an amazing contraption that you have that I forgot about. So you had to remind me. You had to nurture.

Kyle: Mean really? You're gonna really you're gonna bring that up?

Spencer Powell: Well, I kept it vague just to see if you wanted to commit to it or not.

Kyle: Let me check the time. Now that I've made that adjustment, we're twenty four minutes in. We're aiming for forty minutes. We've got two more we got two more pillars because I feel like we've covered nurture well. And I am gonna go to it. I'll tell a little story. Danielle, should I tell the story? Actually you decide. Should I tell the story

Danielle Russell: Thank

Kyle: and use this precious minutes or not?

Danielle Russell: I think you are providing education and entertainment to the audience, which is incredible nurturing. You should definitely do it.

Kyle: Okay, but I'll give it the ninety second version. Spencer and I have known each other for a while, and one of the first things I noticed, because I haven't talked to him in a while, I you're cutting your hair a little shorter there, sir. Spencer is not quite never mind. he's about as bald as I am. And and like there's that's what I got going for

Spencer Powell: pretty bald, yeah.

Kyle: the video purposes. Now, what I've done over the years is gentlemen listening to this, hey, stop holding on to it. We're luckily we're in the era where being bald is beautiful, boys. And we don't have to work on that toupee and all that other crap. But it's an emotional roller coaster for a gentleman losing his hair. It's losing a little bit of identity. Now, yours truly have been coached by my wife that as the hair has been lost, I just cut it shorter and shorter, similar to how Spencer is doing. Now, I said, Spencer,

Spencer Powell: Good strategy, folks.

Kyle: yes, Spencer, how do you I'm gonna change the 90 seconds to three minutes? Spencer, how do you cut the line? In the back of your neck to make sure it's straight. And he goes, My lovely wife, she takes care of it for me and she does a little cleanup. And I go, Must be nice. My wife about five years ago said, I don't want to do that anymore. So then I tried to do it freehand and it is a mess. And I thought to myself, surely somebody has solved this problem for us bald beauties. And I went on Amazon and I found this thingy majig. It's got a strap. You look real sweet when you put it on. It's got a strap that goes around your forehead. And it's a little silicone thingy majig, and it goes around the back. I have a little mole back here, can't see it on the video. And you just put the little silicone thing right bel right below the mole, and then I'm just free to just trim it up, get that nice line going. and I just look great. I look great as a result of that. So if you go on Amazon, type in neckline silicone thingy majiggy, it'll pull right up. That's why Spencer brought that up because you have to remind people.

Spencer Powell: That's a keyword search right there.

Kyle: And then at the end of that he goes, yeah, you told me about that a few years ago. In other words, we gotta continue to nurture. If we're gonna get the sale for the silicone thingy majigger, we've gotta keep keep it in front of them. Yeah, I'm good. I'm glad we went down that road. I think that was

Spencer Powell: I am too. Yeah, it is your podcast, so you kinda get to do whatever you want.

Kyle: Yes, yes. But

Spencer Powell: Yes.

Kyle: here's here's the deal. So far what we're doing is we're we're delivering some good clarity to the remodelers Hey, Remodelers listening to this. You've got to keep thinking through on the marketing side. And I would argue this year has been wonky. 2026 has been wonky. There's been it's been tougher to get people to sign on the line that is dotted. there's more projects, even that ones that are going through design development to get them across the finish line has been harder this year. And the antidote to that is to continue to refine your sales process, which is the next one. But the other antidote to that is to invest in marketing. it is not a badge of honor to be spending 0.58 of 1% of your revenue on marketing. And if things are a little tougher sledding out there, it might be time to invest some dollars. You could reach out to builderfunnel.com as an example of that. but we've got to be marketing, we've got to be investing on the marketing side. Hey, quick question. When you're trying to figure out what's actually working in your remodeling business, who are you talking to? BuilderFunnel created the Remodeler Growth Lab to give remodelers a place to work through those questions with people who actually get it. You'll get access to BuilderFunnel experts, weekly coaching, and proven marketing plays you can put to work in your business. It's built to help you stop guessing with your marketing. and to figure out what's holding back your growth and learn from experts that have already done it. Head to builderfunnel dot com slash lab to learn more and join the next coaching call. Danielle, we move from attract to convert. To nurture and then we get to close. Tell us about the close side of things.

Danielle Russell: so glad you're putting me on the spot for the sales pillar, Kyle, because that's definitely the one I came most prepared to talk about. Close!

Kyle: I'm sorry. You can pat you can pat you can you can phone a friend if you you can phone a friend. You've passed you've passed every test so far.

Danielle Russell: I'm gonna do better than phone a friend. I'm gonna tee up a friend to talk about his incredible framework. It's a sub-framework, because it's a framework within a framework. But Spencer has put together some really helpful organized structured thoughts around how to help our clients close. We've been using that builder funnel for about 18 months or so now. And it's been super cool to see the big, we were just telling him about, we have this Slack channel at builder funnel. It's called the wins channel. And while we don't use EOS, we use the four disciplines of execution. And part of that structure for annual planning, I'm going to take us. Can I do a three minute bird walk since you just did one?

Kyle: Yes.

Danielle Russell: Part of that is our team. Everybody has one tactic that they have to do every single week that we think is it's our strategic bet that if everybody does that, they will hit a goal for their team, their department, their role, whatever that is. When all of our departments hit their goals by the end of the year, Builder Funnel hits our big, our wildly important goal, our annual goal. So one of our leads is... that everybody on the team shares a win every single week. And we have been seeing more and more and more of these ROI-based wins because we started fully implementing Close and helping our clients track every single dollar that they're spending with us on ads and the growth that they're seeing. So we have all kinds of benchmarks. We have some super helpful metrics that Spencer was able to turn into a framework within a framework for our Close pillar. So I'll Spencer take it from there though.

Spencer Powell: Yeah, I sales is one of those buckets that I don't know, Kyle, there's so many sales books out there. There's all these different methodologies. And for years it just felt like it was one of those things that you just kind of have to build this skill through doing it and reading some books and kind of trying a whole bunch of things. And it didn't feel very repeatable. And I have gone through the process here at BuilderFunnel of Running sales and then pulling myself out of what I would call day-to-day sales. So you have there's still sales management, but you have a sales team, you have other people selling your product or your service. And to do that, it required a lot of systematizing, documenting, like what actually happens during this? And so when people talk about, you just need you need a sales process, and I heard this for years, you need a sales process. Okay, what does that even mean? And so in the closed pillar, we talk about four S's, and the four S's are speed, which is all about hey, how how fast are we connecting with our leads? scripts, which is okay, each meeting needs a script. So that'd be your phone pre-call call needs a script, your in-person meeting needs a script, sequence, which is you know what order are we? Going through and following up with people and then sell. So we need an offer. We actually need something packaged up. And so after going through this, and I've worked with several companies individually, I found that the sell part is actually where I think the biggest gap is in the industry, which is, you know, well, I think it I still think it's the biggest. I think we have a speed delete. problem where people are getting to their leads two days later. I've talked to people that are getting to them a week later. It's really tough to

Kyle: Whoa.

Spencer Powell: Yeah.

Danielle Russell: you

Spencer Powell: Try to hold it together there, Kyle.

Kyle: Mm. Spicy Kyle's coming out again. I had a four

Spencer Powell: Yeah.

Kyle: yeah. Okay.

Spencer Powell: So it's tough to tough to connect with leads if you reach out a week later. But once you connect, you pre-qualify and you you go through that, and that's where you can sift out who who do you who are those ideal clients? Hopefully, marketing has sent a lot of good phone calls our way or good leads our way that we can get on the phone. Then we book an appointment, but it's really in that first appointment that I'm seeing things break down and there isn't a clear next step, and we haven't. engineered enough value and structure into what we're presenting and we haven't done enough to differentiate our remodeling business from the guy down the street or our competitor. And so those are the four S's and and we can go into whatever you want to get into, Kyle, because sales is definitely a large bucket.

Kyle: yeah, a couple things I'd like to get into. One is we got core values at remodelers on the rise. We we're clever. R-I-S-E. Results improve, serve, engage. I think it's it's interest.

Spencer Powell: And funny, I will say.

Kyle: Well, we actively dig into challenging situations, offering encouragement, motivation, accountability, and humor to navigate obstacles. I did sneak that one in there when we were creating them. I'm like, guys, so we're gonna

Danielle Russell: Thanks.

Kyle: have a little fun. It's not all dreary.

Spencer Powell: You might as well.

Kyle: But it's what's interesting about it is just looking at your guys' business and going, hmm. you are a digital marketing company. You're helping on the websites and the let me see if I just have it memorized. The owned and rented and earned traffic and that side of things. And it's interesting, I think it's a a good lesson for all of us that run companies is you're not a sales training company. But you're looking at all of the effort that comes into it and goes, you know what, maybe we ought to have a little bit more sales training. We've got some skills at it. We've got this. We're seeing that being the big hole in the boat once we get people through the other pillars. I kudos to looking at the client experience and keeping in mind the results. The results is what we're after at the end of the day. And I think I'm learning from just hearing you say that and reflecting on it. And then also I think for remodelers, guys, guys, gals, the the importance of what is the result that we're trying to give to our clients? Really think through that. Where are the gaps in it? What do we need to strengthen in that side of things? I think I would be interested in hearing the offer portion. If we can spend a little bit of time on that, I want you to unpack that. And then so we're going to, like I said, we're gonna have a s a second podcast related to these. And again, I'm just gonna tease it one more time. If only somebody wrote a book about this where we could unpack it more. Spencer, tell us about the sell part. Give me a give me a specific example of a remodeler and their offer. What do you what do you like?

Spencer Powell: Yeah. So we call them a remodeler's design offer. And so if you're not, following traditional design build where you sell a design agreement and that's your first paid step, this would be that. You would create something that is, hey, the first step to working with us is we need to plan this out. So whether it's pre-construction, design, whatever you want to call it, but you're gonna pay for this step, paid for planning. Then we're going to move into construction. So we want to nail this one because I will say, there's still a gap sometimes from design to construction, but I think in general, that is an easier gap to get across than the first

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Spencer Powell: dollar exchange. And so in talking to a lot of remodelers, the first meeting goes as such: we walk in, we're professional, we go to the space, we ask a lot of questions. We understand the project. We're like, yep, this is still what I thought it was on the phone. We're we're heading in the right direction. Here's what our process looks like. And then you verbally describe the process. Maybe there's an iPad and you're showing pictures and talking about stuff. And then it's do you wanna get started? Do you wanna do design? And then cool. Yes, we'll do that. Let me go work you up something, I'll send it to you, or let's book another meeting. and then from there we start to lose some traction, you know. Yeah,

Kyle: So momentum, yeah.

Spencer Powell: and you know, the first chance you have to get the signing is at the appointment. And the whole point of having a first paid step is that it's one price, you can charge that in the moment, you can Get a signature in the moment. You don't have to go back and say, well, it's going to be between here and here. Like that's what design is for. We're going to figure out what the exact budget will be. I can tell you it'll be between 125 and 170 right here, right now. And if you're comfortable with that range, I can help us navigate as close as possible to 140 where you really wanted to be through the selections process. We want to have something that we can present to them and say, hey, this is our next step. It's, you know, Piper design build, design offer. You know, here it is. It's, you know, we're going to map out the entire project in terms of timeline. We're going to walk you through all your selections. We're going to give you a few different layout options, A, B, C, all the things you're going to do anyway. We're just laying

Kyle: Yes.

Spencer Powell: it out in about, you know, five to ten bullets. maybe we can add a on-time guarantee, or we can add a price guarantee. Hey, if you go through design, you get a fixed price guaranteed. A lot of you are already doing that. You might as well call it out in the offer. And then you say, hey, for for a project between 100 and 250,000, design is 7,500, or design is 10 grand or five grand, whatever price you want to set that at. But now you've kind of tightened the window. You can go for the ask right there. If they say no, you can do some objection handling. And then if they still need time, you've at least worked through a whole bunch and then you can say, cool, well let's let's set another call. We can go over it on Zoom and you can take another, run at closing the deal then.

Kyle: Excellent. Excellent. the clothes pillar. Speed, scripts, sequence, sell. Hey, Romano, listening to this. How's your speed? On a scale of one to five, one being pitiful, five being amazing. Rank yourself. Well, sometimes it takes two days. Fix it. It's important. This is your first impression. Fix it. What would you want to be on the other side? It doesn't mean you have to like, there's still something interesting. It is interesting when somebody fills out one of my forms and I call I just have a gap in my schedule. I just call them. And that every time it's like, whoa. Hey, hi, I didn't expect that. Ain't nothing wrong with that being your first impression. But think about it for your side. by the end of the first day, yes. Scripts. So that doesn't mean you're gonna sound robotic, but it is gonna mean that this isn't your first rodeo. You have a process similar to the sequence. This is how we work. And then what you just described on the sell side, clarity in it, showing examples of it, yes, simplifying it where it's not. Well, sometimes it's one percent, sometimes it's two percent of the high end, of the low and no no no. It is important to have a really clear offer. And baby, if we can sell that design and project development agreement, it is a huge unlock downstream. It so much more planning happens before the project starts. production issues calm down, everything goes smoother. so that's the close section. Now, Danielle, what do you have another title,

Danielle Russell: .

Kyle: by the way?

Danielle Russell: Danny? What do you mean?

Kyle: Nope. No, we talked about it since since Spencer's spilling all the beans of what we talked about before we clicked the recording. what's one of your other titles that you have specifically today? First late thank you.

Danielle Russell: The First Lady of Ward 6 of Westchester, of course. Better known as, yeah.

Kyle: The First Lady of Ward Six. Her yes, her her husband is helping with the elections today. So she is the first lady of Ward Six precinct. I I tried the Danny thing, I just call you Danny.

Danielle Russell: We talked about that too, so I thought you were just doing a callback.

Kyle: Yep, I understand. I understand. You don't know where I'm going, people. so finishes off with the measure part. So we got attract, convert, nurture, close. Tell us about the measure part, and then we're going to stop teasing about the book.

Danielle Russell: Yeah, if you're not measuring, you are just spending and guessing. You're just throwing money into the air. So you want to make sure that your money is going to all the right places and that you are investing in your growth. So when you're measuring all of your marketing actions and how sales are going, how's that funnel, you can see very specific gaps. Like Spencer was talking about, where should we be spending more time fixing this so that we are growing? Not just a bigger company, but also a better company. So measure, we measure all kinds of things. We measure every little thing, whether it's a leading indicator, is traffic increasing or are we moving in the right direction all the way down your funnel to are you closing the types of projects you want? Are you growing at the gross margin that you agreed to at the beginning of the year? And what's that ROI? What's your return on investment with Builder Funnel with marketing? Are you hitting that revenue growth goal that you set at the start of the year?

Kyle: Good. What's what's one of your favorite measurements that you like with clients?

Danielle Russell: Truly, mine would be our net promoter score. So I love getting

Kyle: Yes. Banham.

Danielle Russell: tens because clients love us so much because they're seeing the return on their investment. They're getting amazing results and we're building strong relationships with our team and our clients. So that would be my personal favorite, but we measure so many helpful things for our clients that they've probably never even heard of before or didn't really know how to measure. So I'll T Spencer up again, but probably one of those really, really big ones is LTV, so lifetime value of their clients, and the cost to acquire a client and what that comparison, what that ratio means for them so they know how much they can invest in marketing to continue growing.

Kyle: So you thought you were gonna talk about all culture stuff today, because that was the original plan. So I'm just throw

Danielle Russell: I really did.

Kyle: I'm just throwing you off. I'm throwing you off and you're doing great. You're doing great. Net

Danielle Russell: Thank you.

Kyle: promoter score. How likely are you to recommend us to your friends and family? look up

Danielle Russell: Mm-hmm.

Kyle: look up net promoter score. It's a great little measurement. And then you just talked about yes.

Danielle Russell: I tell you our average Net Promoter score right now. It's, for anyone who isn't tracking this, it's not gonna sound, I don't know. It's a 91. That's insane. That is above Netflix. It's above Amazon. that is a world-class Net Promoter score. So we're really stoked about it. We've been working on it for years. I know. Yeah. Super cool.

Kyle: Yeah. And you hedged

Spencer Powell: We're spicy about it.

Kyle: it because you're like, yes, and you hedged it because you're like, well, ninety one percent were supposed to be at a hundred percent. Well, you haven't studied net promoters. Right. You haven't you haven't studied that that's naturally what people will think. So do a little study

Danielle Russell: Well, it's not a percentage. It's not a percentage.

Kyle: of that. Dude, just watch a quick clip of it. It's a it's a best practice that's been around for quite a while. And then Spencer hit us with what and you it might be the one that Danielle just queued up for us, or what's your favorite measurement?

Spencer Powell: Yeah, the ROI one, I I think over the years, you know, as an agency, we've really grown up at the beginning. You're trying to get more leads and you're focused on that. And that's a lot of times what clients are asking for. You know, remodelers are trying to grow their business, they need more leads. And, you know, I want my website to look different and pretty and all of these things. But when you kind of track all the tactics, you know, inside the framework that we just went through, really what people want is they want to grow their business. And they want to grow it profitably. And so the way that we can really impact that is looking at how much did you invest, whether it's with Builder Funnel or on your ad spend or whatever it is, and what did you get out of it? And it's not just revenue, it's gross margin because you're looking at, hey, I had to add marketing into overhead. And so I need to cover that overhead with gross margin dollars, not revenue dollars. And the bigger that spread, the bigger the multiplier. Typically business owners are pretty happy about that. if you put a dollar in and you get three back, you're like, this is cool. If you put a dollar in and you get ten cents back, you're like, I could have just dumped it in an index fund and that would have been a lot easier. So we we look at multiples of that investment as what you're trying to get back.

Kyle: Love it. Love it. If I'm a remodeler listening, hey Remodler, make sure you're tracking your lead sources. That doesn't mean every lead that comes in is always going to be a perfect little. They came directly from this. Track your lead sources. Remodeler listening to this. Start defining how however you want raw leads versus marketing qualified leads versus sales qualified leads. Just start tracking it. How many leads are you averaging raw, marketing, sales qualified? Start tracking that. There's really good data that you can come from there. And then start tracking your conversion rate. You can do it a lot of different ways, but a great one would be from a sales qualified lead to an actual sign design development agreement. Start tracking these things. And once you have some of that data, ooh, what gets measured gets improved is going to be an unlock in confidence to invest in dollars and all kinds of other things. Spencer wrote a book, folks. Spencer wrote a book. Spencer, tell them tell them about your book and then I will talk about that knight in shining armor who bought copies that won he wants to give away.

Spencer Powell: Yeah, yeah. wrote a book. The first one was several years ago, the Remodeler Marketing Blueprint. And this one was an attempt to simplify the language that especially in digital marketing, like you said, there's all the lingo and all of the tactics and everything's changing, but how can we simplify it so that it makes sense and we can still adapt with the times as things continue to evolve? It also was an effort to include the close, the sales piece, because revenue is a team sport. It's marketing and sales. They need to work together. And so we wanted to make sure that that piece was there. And that final pillar we talked about measure. that may be the longest like section in the book because the more data you have, the better decision making you can you can make. And we want people to be able to lean on their own company data. It's nice to have benchmarks and all these other things, but over time you actually build your own data set and it allows you as an individual to make the best decision for your own company. So the book does go through the five pillars in a lot more detail. And it will be arriving in January. But

Kyle: January.

Spencer Powell: there is a knight in shining armor that is.

Kyle: Yeah.

Spencer Powell: Allowing you to do something special.

Kyle: His name is Kyle. His name is Kyle Riance Hunt. Felt like I needed to put my middle name in there because it's kind of a regal sounding thing. It's actually the only origin I see is a King Riance back in the day was my grandfather's name. That's my middle name. So it kind of sounds knight in shiny armory. and here's here's how it went. Spencer reached out and said, Yo, and I said, Yo. And he goes, Hey, your buddy over here who's wor been working hard on this, I'd like you to purchase some of these books. And I said, You know what? You have been Ridiculously consistent with doing all of this. This is gonna be I've I love the five pillars. I think we did a podcast on it a year or two back, and I'm like, I love that. so I purchased a hundred copies. Yeah, you're just saying no, I purchased there's my

Spencer Powell: Keep on.

Kyle: hard-earned dollars out of Mermalers on the Rise to Builder Funnel, happily done. I have a hundred copies. We are going to open it up and we're gonna tell our peer group members and our VIP club members and our clients to do it, but I have a feeling. That even when this is coming, whenever this podcast comes out, which will actually be in a few weeks, there will be copies available. and I suppose even if I go over a hundred based on podcast listeners, others, I just have to buy more books. Can you sell me more books?

Spencer Powell: could manage that. Yeah. Yeah. We'll figure it out.

Kyle: We can we can we can we we could we could do something we can do a little

Danielle Russell: you

Kyle: something so go to builderfunnel.com slash Kyle K-Y-L-E builderfunnel.com slash Kyle and there's a form right on there. shipping is included and get yourself a copy of this. There's several people, a bunch of people, dozens of people who are like, well, that's kind of cool. This was good information. I learned about the haircut thing, and hundred percent no strings attached, book shipped to you in January. that was fun. Spencer had a great time. I had a great time. Danielle's like, I was thinking we were gonna get into this. I think she's still at good time. This is gonna be published. And folks, if you're listening to this at this time or in the future, click ahead to two or three episodes from now. And what it's gonna you're gonna see, Danielle's name on there and my name on there. And we're gonna take the same attract, convert, nurture, close, and measure, and we're gonna apply it to your operations and your talent side. How do we build a company the right people want to join? How do we turn people that are interested into a hiring and a hiring system? How do we do it? How do we develop and keep your people through 30, 60, 90s, through one-on-ones? We're going to dig into all of that and give it the proper amount of time. So click forward for that. Friends, thank you for sharing all of this. It was helpful to the people and the people listening to this, grab your free book, builderfunnel.com slash Kyle. But also before you move on to your next thing, let's do it again. Take a deep breath. Take a deep breath and say to yourselves, listeners, you're doing fine. You're doing great. Can you stop and smell the roses a little bit? Can you stop beating yourself up or getting all stressed out about the things you haven't done and consider the fact that you've built a company, that you employ people? Nothing's perfect. It ain't ever going to be perfect. But give yourself a little bit of pat on the back because you, as a business owner, need that. And then after you do that, figure out the next right thing to work on. And it might be to order a free book. And it might be also to grab one of these pillars and dig into it with some team members and work on it. So thank you, guys. First lady, good to see you. Spencer.

Spencer Powell: Yeah. Thanks for for buying the copies, Kyle. I appreciate it.

Kyle: You bet two-time author, Spencer. And then I don't have a title. And and to and from the night and shining alma, everybody have a wonderful, productive day.

Kyle Hunt: Thanks for tuning into the Remodelers on the Rise show. Whether you're listening or watching, I appreciate you being here. If this was helpful, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next one. We're putting out new episodes every single week focused on helping you build a better remodeling business with real stories, practical ideas, and things you can actually take and use. If you're on YouTube, hit that like button and turn on notifications so you know when new episodes drop. If you're listening on a podcast app, a five-star review goes a long way and helps more remodelers find the show. We've got great links below or in the show notes where you can connect with us, check out our remodelers community and learn more about our coaching and resources. Appreciate you very much. See you on the next episode.