Welcome to...
Water Treatment Spotlight, a recurring interview article series in ServiceTitan Community, where I sit down with a Water Treatment organization to shed light on their business and ServiceTitan journey.
In this article, CGC Water Treatment takes the stage and provides insights into their expansive Water Treatment empire, the value of education in their sales presentations, their evolution in ServiceTitan, the importance of preparation, and more...
We're joined by...
Matt Stokes - General Manager
Brian "ITB" Doudna - IT Manager & ServiceTitan Certified Administrator
Where's your organization located?
Brian:
Our headquarters is in Hartland, MI. We also have other storefronts in Brighton, MI, and Ann Arbor, MI. We also have other warehouses in both Florida and North Carolina.
How long has CGC been in business and how did you get started?
Matt:
We started in 1946, and this year, because of the whole pandemic, we’ve actually been celebrating our 75th year.
It started as a Culligan Dealership — one of our competitors — in Akron, OH, through our owner Dan [Abel] and his family … they’re Ohio born and bred.
Has your organization seen any growth since adopting ServiceTitan?
Brian:
In 2017, our sales were about $6.5M, and when I got here in 2018, our sales were about $8.5M to $9M. Today, we’re close to $17M.
When we first adopted ServiceTitan, we were just kind of hovering around $10M. Our goal was a $1M a month … We are consistently doing $1.2M, $1.3M … this year’s actually been really good. I think five months this year we’ve broken records … we were on pace a couple of months ago to hit $17M.
So, yeah, we’ve seen a little bit of improvement!
Matt:
Just to add to that, when you think about in 2020, the pandemic hits, and every company had to go through, “Okay, are we going to survive? Are we not?” And in ’19 was when we brought on ServiceTitan and the whole ‘paperless idea’. So we talked about it, "What if we didn’t have that?"
I don’t know. I’m sure we would have figured out something, but we had a business system — WaterSoftWare — that generated lots of paper. We filled out stuff [on paper]. That literally was 2018, we were doing that.
Brian:
Early 2019. We switched over in May of 2019.
Matt:
Yeah, and you think about it, 2020 hits — it’s March 2020 — it’s like, “Oh. Okay, what do we do?” Even to the point where people didn’t want to touch certain things, right? That was going on. I don’t know. Not to say that we would have closed up, but I think without a tool like ServiceTitan, I think things would have been massively challenging. We wouldn’t be nearly as well off.
What are some unique attributes of the Water Treatment Industry?
Brian:
Counter Sales. That’s probably the biggest difference.
I am a firm believer that home services is home services is home services, but certain aspects that we have the others don’t is Counter Sales, Rentals.
Matt:
Yeah, I would agree. The only other one I would add — the idea that maybe the other industries don’t sell in the way that we sell.
Brian:
One of the tricks for water treatment is we’re a commodity.
Everybody knows they need a water heater. The water heater’s broken? Get a new water heater. Everybody knows that they want air conditioning. If they don’t have it, they want it. If they already have it, they’re not going to live without it. And so, when it comes up, “Hey, here’s a four thousand dollar bill. Well, I gotta pay it because I need air.” For water treatment, it’s like, “Do I really want to spend this four thousand, five thousand dollars right now?”
A lot of what we do is education and showing you don’t really know your water, so I want to help you know your water. But we are still considered to be more of a commodity type thing. So it kind of changes how we do that presentation, and how we have to be able to sell that value because we have to prove to them that it’s valuable and that it’s worth it and that they should, but the reason they should is not that I want money, but because it’s better for you and your family.
Our goal, when we walk into a house is to say, “Hey, I’m not here to tell you something. I’m here to provide you with a healthier future.” And so it’s a little bit different than the majority of home services, where you can call them because something’s broken.
CGC was an early adopter of ServiceTitan — how has the system and your operations evolved since your adoption?
Brian:
I think as we’ve grown, we’ve learned that, “You know what? Even if you can do it, maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe you should try to stick with how ServiceTitan wants [it].” Actually, that’s still a struggle for us now, of trying to go back and re-do a bunch of different things to try to fit it into the ‘ServiceTitan Model’. So instead of fighting ServiceTitan, to kind of going with it.
Because ServiceTitan does adapt so quickly, because they are continually forward-focused, forward-thinking, they are always making changes and always trying to improve, and always listening to the people that are using the software. Even if you can’t do it exactly the way you want to, you can do it in a way, and then eventually it’ll get better and better and better.
Are there any features in ServiceTitan that have become essential for successful Water Treatment operations?
Brian:
I would say ServiceTitan is pretty much essential to our day-to-day operations. But the thing is, just how it simplified things.
We used to be paper. All of our techs and TMs [Territory Managers] had to show up early in the day to finish up all the paperwork and make sure it was getting done. Our financing took 24 hours to actually go through it. If you ever wanted to know a number, you really had to wait a month. If you wanted to know how you were doing, we don’t know. It [ServiceTitan] influences everything, across everything.
Day one of ServiceTitan, my oldest TM [Territory Manager] sold all four of the jobs he went to. I don’t think he’d ever sold everything in a day.
That’s what ServiceTitan does.
It allows us to be more efficient.
It allows us to have information at our fingertips.
It allows us to be able to serve our customers immediately.
It allows us to get them on the schedule, now.
From a system standpoint, it literally revolutionized the way we do things, and it improved every instance.
Have you experienced any notable challenges within ServiceTitan, and if so, how did you overcome them?
Matt:
No challenges at all. (Laughs)
Brian:
Your nose is growing. (Laughs)
Matt:
I guess one of the challenges for us was — I think we touched on it a little bit — was culture.
We’ve struggled with the idea that we’re not a ‘mom and pop’ shop-sized company. And we haven’t been for a while. We’re not gigantic, either. But we still do have that mindset of that, and I think there’s a couple ways that’s interacting with ServiceTitan.
There’s some folks here that are like — [regardless of] all these positive things we’ve talked about — “Yes, that’s great; however…” — they think that we can say, “Hey, add this button. Okay, get back to me in a couple of hours. Yep, that’s good, right?”
Well, that’s not how ServiceTitan works. That’s not bad, right? ServiceTitan’s a big company. That doesn’t mean ServiceTitan isn’t doing that in the future.
Brian:
They were not good at Support for quite awhile. There are times when I am trying to call and get help, and I end up telling them how to do things — but they have gotten a lot better at that.
We had a lot of trouble with accounting. The accounting process was probably the most painful that we had, because it just seemed like no nobody really understood. Nobody could explain it into words what we needed to do, even though we were trying to explain what we needed or what we wanted, and maybe we weren’t explaining it really well. Accounting was probably our biggest departmental struggle.
[However] ServiceTitan has always come around. They’re always willing to listen. They’re always looking for that ‘next thing’. So even though I’m sitting here complaining about them because they [enhancements] may not be there, I still have hope they will, which is fun.
How important is communication with your ServiceTitan Customer Success Manager (CSM) and what does that partnership entail?
Brian:
You get out what you put in.
I’m what they call a 'D' personality [Dominant, Direct, Decisive]. I go for what I need to do and I get it done. I don’t take or make a lot of excuses.
“Hey, I need this, and I need it now. How are we going to do it?”
You don’t need to have the solution now, but I need to know you’re moving on it, and I need to know there’s something going on, so communication is extremely important.
I find the CSM relationship invaluable.
CGC's TitanAdvisor score has recently jumped 50 points in the last few months and is quickly approaching the TitanAdvisor Weekly Leaderboard — how important is TitanAdvisor to your team?
Brian:
My value is that it gives me credibility.
Just because I’ve been doing systems forever, and I understand the system, if I’m not using ServiceTitan [the way that it’s designed], then ServiceTitan is not going to pay attention to me. Kinetico is not going to pay attention to me.
I have a lot of ideas, but if I have nobody to talk to, or nobody that’ll listen, then it doesn’t matter. So for me, the TitanAdvisor Score is about getting influence and getting attention.
I think that some of the stuff that we’ve done has been very valuable. I think there is some things that we’re growing into that have been good.
If you had to pick your top three favorite features in ServiceTitan, what would you say they are and why?
Matt:
The ability to have data reporting. I think [Brian] helped us navigate a lot of those things. There are some things where there’s multiple data sets, so we need to incorporate a spreadsheet, but we didn’t have that before.
The amount of information that is literally at our fingertips is mind-blowing to me, and I don’t even have to know a lot about IT [Information Technology] to access it.
Brian:
The Pricebook. I really enjoy the Pricebook. Not because it’s fun to work with, but when I update something, it’s updated everything. I know that before ServiceTitan, our Pricebook was literally a stack of paper. Every TM [Territory Manager] had their own stack of paper. And you never knew if you were looking at the latest version or not. If we had to go through price changes we had to go through this last year and try to maintain everybody’s copy of the Pricebook in their hand, it would have been insane.
It’s something as simple as a sixty second return on financing. That’s huge because in all reality, like I said before, we’re not selling a product that people think they need. So, if I can convince you that you need it and get you approved and get you scheduled before I walk out the door, that’s the best. Now there’s less chance of you talking yourself out of it. If you’ve got to wait to find out if you get approved and wait to get you on the schedule, you could easily talk yourself out of that.
Reflecting on your ServiceTitan journey, what sorts of recommendations would you give users who are just getting started in ServiceTitan?
Brian:
Prepare, prepare, prepare, prepare, prepare.
I would say don’t be pressured to be fast. Be prepared. If that takes an extra month, so be it. Don’t care. There’s just so much that can go wrong.
If you’re starting up with ServiceTitan, I’m going to say, “Prepare.” I’m gonna say, “You’re gonna look back in a year, and you’re gonna say it’s worth it.”
So don’t be in [onboarding] freaking out going, “Oh my gosh! This sucks! What do we do? What?!”
Stop! Stop. It’s worth it. It’s worth it. I understand that it’s difficult. I understand that it’s long. I understand that there’s a lot of stuff. I get it.
Don’t try to do everything at first. I refused to do inventory at the beginning, on purpose. You don’t need to do every feature right away.
Do your necessities. Get your necessities. Perfect your necessities. Add. Perfect. Add. Perfect. Add. Perfect.
You’ll love it!
Matt:
I think when we came out of the bootcamp, they [ServiceTitan] encouraged and asked us to really document what we do. So, pre-ServiceTitan, document what we do. The idea is then to make sure — not that we need to make bend ServiceTitan to do all these things — but to make sure that we’ve accounted for these different [steps].
Our company, in general, I don't really think took that all that seriously. We talked about the accounting world. I think that was one of our challenges because we really didn’t make sure that each one of these things was accounted for. And then as we got into it it’s, “Oh, what about this? Hey, what about this? What about this?” So that preparation part. Yeah, there was some challenges we had with our initial onboarding guy, but half of the issue was us and our culture not really taking that part [seriously].
What are your company goals for the future? What's next?
Brian:
We would love to have places all the way from Michigan straight down into Florida … Our goal and our vision is sixty stores. We want to have sixty stores in our empire.
Matt:
Yeah, and right now, as you can count up there, we have five. We had four for a long time, and we just added one. So, operationally speaking, it’s like, “Oh, God, how does that take place?” But ServiceTitan is one of those pieces — without that, it’s like, “Okay, that’s not even a thought. How do you expand?”
We’re actively putting together a team to research what it looks like to add another storefront in the Jacksonville area. We’ve added plumbing divisions in Michigan and Jacksonville … we need to figure out how to make that more successful.
Company goal-wise, we’re working on dollar targets, and ITB [Brian] has been instrumental in helping us.
Ultimately, we would like to be able to [say], “Here’s our end target install, we’re on the ground numbers-wise, what does that mean to me as a customer service person answering the phone? What does that mean to me being a salesperson?”
I think we’re trying to get some of those philosophies in place.
"We Do All Things Water"
-CGC Water Treatment
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