Sam Opus

Run Opus Leads • Helping home improvement businesses grow

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

@HVACSEO @AnkitKambojTO Great. So it’s not a case of sourcing a location that’s virtual-but-GBP-passable? But instead actually building out a new base in a carefully chosen area?

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

@HVACSEO @AnkitKambojTO How do you get over that hurdle if they only have the one physical base?

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

It’s hard because people can put this kind of work off, so you can win work based on speed, how easy you make the whole process for them, and quality of your follow-up (you’ll be surprised how many of your competitors aren’t concentrated on this stuff)

Call or reply within minutes with two time slots, give a price range up front so tyre-kickers drop out (this is easily automated)

I appreciate giving exact pricing is difficult, but a price range will put you ahead of any competitor who doesn’t give one, and filter out leads who were never going to buy anyway

+ check back a week later on quotes you didn't win

Most of those jobs aren't lost, they’re just delayed because it doesn’t feel urgent to your prospects

Check in with dead leads a few months later: you’ve got nothing to lose and there’s it’s likely they just put it off for 1 of 1000 different reasons (often it just wasn’t a priority)

And ask what else has been bugging them while on site. There’s often things they “might as well” fix too while you’re there (a broken ceiling fan, outdoor lights, that kind of thing) which can add to your revenue

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

The great thing about this kind of ad is it filters people out

The only people watching more than a few seconds are people who need the info BECAUSE they need the service

Trades can do this too with videos of actual jobs + explainers on how jobs are done

Showing proof + a CTA works better than most offer-only ads, because the results are less abstract

The results back this up for most of our clients

[Evan Seech | Ads & Funnels @evanseech]

I’ve spent 8+ figures on Meta.

My favorite ad right now (by far)

Me standing next to a vibe board.

For 2 straight minutes I hand out the real sauce on getting better leads:

- the exact messaging
- the pixel conditioning

No pitch anywhere in it.

Because if there’s 1 trait I’ve noticed in a lot of my top performing ads...

It’s that they don't even look like ads.

People stop for something that TEACHES them.

Something that feels like literal content someone would choose to watch organically.

THEN I point them to my page at the very end.

Want to build one?

> Take the thing your audience complains about most (for me it's low lead quality)
> Give sauce for 2 straight minutes.
> One line of pitch at the close.

This RIPS.

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

That’s not to say these platforms don’t have their place

They *can* bring you consistent, high-intent leads. If the price is right and you can profit from them, go ahead

But they should compliment your strategy rather than being the strategy itself

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

If you’re relying on platform like checkatrade or mybuilder, your business isn’t *actually* YOUR business

The lead platforms own and control your success (or failure), can charge you whatever they like, and turn you off in an instant

In that case, you’ve built nothing

Run your own ads (get an agency who knows what they’re doing to do it for you), control your own pipeline, own your own leads

[Alex McMillan | Marketing & Ai Expert @AlexFMcMillan]

A trade owner I prospected got burned by Checkatrade (Angi in the US).

He started at £300/mo and got 2 jobs. Then the price kept rising until he was paying £1,500/mo for the exact same return.

A vicious circle where you pay 5x more just to maintain the same leads.

If you're stuck in that cycle, drop me a DM.

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

Most home improvement businesses would easily 2X their revenue just by answering calls and contacting all leads within 5 mins

[Andy Walker - SMB Marketing @andywalkerhq]

Run the math on one missed call:

Average HVAC job: $8,000.

You miss 5 calls a week.

Two of them would've booked.

That's $16,000 a week walking over to the competitor who picked up.

$800k a year, lost to a phone nobody answered.

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

@bodefreelance It depends what you’re following up on and what contact you’ve had previously

6 over 10 days is usually enough if they intend to proceed, anymore and you’re likely wasting your time

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

10 days, 6 touches, spread over text, call (leave voicemail), and email

[Olabode @bodefreelance]

What’s the right amount of time to follow up on a lead before giving up?

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

Agree

If you’re losing jobs on price the issue is rarely the price itself

Could be that the prospect isn’t confident you’ll complete the work at the standard they’re looking for, without issue, or fast enough (or all 3)

Could be that you’re buying shares leans from lead platforms: great for filling your calendar, not so great for actually making sales

Could be that the offers in your sales funnel are all price-based, so will naturally bring in price shoppers

I those cases, change where the leads come from or how they’re generated

[BlueCollarInvestor @BlueCollarInvr]

Don’t ever get on social media complaining that a potential customer went with someone cheaper.

It makes you look desperate for work and you just come off as whiney.

People really need to start handling rejection better.

You aren’t meant to get every single job you quote.

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

@irentdumpsters What do you mean when you say “buy every lead”?

If clients are buying (often shared) leads, they’re not building anything they can rely on

Am I misunderstanding your post?

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

Not common at all

Most home services companies don’t have even have ‘existing customers’

Some have ‘returning customers’, which ARE good: they’re easy to sell to (unless you gave them a bad experience, but in that case they probably wouldn’t have come through)

[Mark Zhuk | Local Meta Ads | Akoola @markfzhuk]

A $25M home service company told me yesterday 84% of their LSA leads were existing customers

Is that common?

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

A crazy percentage of businesses happily throw away 5 or 6 figures of lead cost every year (even more when you account for missed revenue)

And the solution is as easy as answering the phone and actually contacting inbound leads

[Rich Jordan | Strongpoint @StrongpointRich]

$6m revenue HVAC business we recently acquired was missing 55-60% of inbound phone calls on any given day. ~1,500 missed calls per month.

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

Organic’s great, but it’s not much help to help a roofer who needs jobs asap

Try telling a solar company to build a social following when they’re only getting 10 appointments (or less) a week and the reaction won’t be good lol

Paid’s the only channel you can turn on and get results fast

[eric @defyneric]

Head of Content is the most valuable hire for VC-backed tech companies right now.

I’m getting 10+ DMs a day from startups asking me to lead their growth.

Having one employee generate millions of organic views > spending millions on paid ads.

Distribution is everything.

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

AI removed the slowest part of sending out these kinds of emails (actually writing them) so that kind of outreach doesn’t work effectively anymore

Stuff that’s very clear not ai, very clearly not faked, will stand out - in a good way - even if it would’ve been seen as poor quality before

That’s why people are responding well to basic, hand written posters (in a world of AI posters)

This kind of change is happening across every sector

Meaning, the stuff that will still work will just be the stuff that’s more difficult (or expensive) to do

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

@CiprianiRanieri Give it 500 emails before you change anything

See what kind of people replied, and whether they’re the type of replies you want

Look for patterns of specific parts of your email they respond to. Keep that stuff in your emails, then tweak and test further

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

@ColumbiadCannon @LewisJ815PARKS The background is but the text isn’t

You can tell because it uses consistent, real typefaces

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

It’ll never catch on

[Tibo @thsottiaux]

Today, we are announcing ChatGPT.

It is here: https://t.co/Pgk3THSyOJ

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

@BryanTGrime_ 100%

And these days it’s on us to get right

Most clients can’t/won’t fix these issues themselves, but the results of that falls back on agency owners because anything pre-appointment gets labels as “bad leads”

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

For a lot of businesses, leads get all the attention because they're the easiest thing to count. But the phone can be ringing all day and you can still feel like your business isn't going anywhere.

When a client tells me their leads aren't working, the first thing I want to know is what happens after someone enquires. How quickly do they get a call back? How many of them end up with someone round to look at the job?

Say you're getting 250 enquiries a month and booking 120 surveys. Get that up to 160 and you've got 40 more quotes going out without spending another penny on marketing. If your average job value is £4K, that's an extra £160,000 in your pipeline every month. Almost £2M a year!

A lot of the time the gap is caused by missed calls, slow callbacks, and a lack of automated follow-up rather than bad leads.

Your prices matter too, if hardly anyone ever says no, you're probably way too cheap. Don't be afraid to raise your prices (Try it out with one rep and see what happens).

And if you're cramming surveys in back to back, homeowners can tell your reps are in a rush, which doesn't help you win the job (3-4 appointments a day is usually the sweet spot).

Then there's judging lead sources on cost per lead alone. A source can look terrible on paper and still be the best money you spend.

If you're paying £100 a lead for roof replacements and win 1/8, you're spending £800 to land a job worth several grand. A cheaper source sending you lots of small repair jobs might feel better, but make you less.

A lead that costs 3x but sells, is better than 5 leads that cost 1x but don't (and waste your time too).

So before touching anyone's budget, I'll always go through those numbers with them. Sometimes more leads really is the answer. Other times it's working out how how to ensure more leads are actually contacted fast, someone's there answering the phone, and booked appointments actually get sat (reminders, etc).

[Sam Opus @SamOpus]

Printers need to start refusing to print this shit

[e.j. 💫 @missejlee]

I found their IG and it somehow gets worse?