Let’s first get into the very basics of what a lead pipeline is.
A lead pipeline is going to be where you’re actually going to have the stages of your lead flow.
I’m Jake Sheldon, co-founder and co-owner of Pest Control Millionaires. I also own a portfolio of service based businesses including cleaning, pest control, movers, and more. And I can tell you, this is simply enough going to be your new lead, the lead responded, you followed up the lead, how many times you followed up.
This could be follow up once, follow up twice, follow up three times. And then maybe after this step you have sold or serviced.
This is going to be where the pipeline is, just essentially where the lead is at in that nurturing process and the stages. That’s what the pipeline is for.
The Essential Pipeline Stages
Can you break down those stages a little bit more? What are the stages?
It’s been different for every company. I had an advertising agency for years and years and it seemed that every company wanted to set their pipeline different because everyone runs their company different.
So I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of different variations. And that’s the thing. I don’t think there’s a wrong or right way to set up your pipeline. But there are some elements that you do definitely want.
You definitely want a new lead stage pipeline where there are new leads coming in. What’s fresh? Because the new leads are going to be very, very important to get ahold of instantly. You don’t want to waste any time. We’ve talked about this in previous posts.
Those are going to be the fresh leads.
The next pipeline is of course the people who responded, who are what we call a hot lead. They’re even probably more important than these newer leads. Because these are people who have responded. They’re interested and they want to get on your service.
And then from there you have what you could call a cool lead, not even a cold lead, but someone who hasn’t quite responded to you yet and you’ve done a few follow ups.
So this will differentiate depending on how you like to run your business, how you like to do your follow up. But you could have just a straight follow up stage or you could have did one follow up, did two follow ups. So it could just be follow two, follow three, follow four, and so on and so forth.
So you could have those as your stages in the pipeline.
And then of course you definitely want a stage where you have a sold section. That’s of course the most important for most people here. And then a serviced section.
And that’s why I said before in a previous post, this software, a Go High Level software, is not going to replace a Gorilla Desk or a FieldRoutes or a Jobber, whatever it may be.
We use that for, that’s for your scheduling and your routing. Those software were made for that. Go High Level wasn’t made for that aspect of business.
So as soon as we move them to serviced, then we put them into our CRM and go from there.
But that’s what the pipeline stages are essentially going to look like. I’ve seen some pretty complex pipelines. You don’t need to make them complex all the time. Again, every business is going to be different. But those are the essential ones that you’re probably going to want.
Don't Forget the Lost Pipeline
And then of course, I definitely forgot to mention the lost pipeline.
You are going to have ones in there that are lost or abandoned that just chose not to do your service or went with someone else. You definitely want to track those as well.
A lot of people don’t track their lost pipeline. And why I think that’s important is, say easy math purposes, you go look at it, you have 1,000 leads that came through in the year. And let’s say you only closed 400 of those 1,000.
Well, now you have 600 that are in the lost. You need to start evaluating why you lost those.
And so I’ve seen a lot of companies that will do this. They’ll even have different sections for the lost pipeline. They’ll have “went with another company,” they have “we were too pricey,” whatever it may be.
What’s interesting about that is if you have different sections of the pipeline, now you can see why they were lost.
If you have 40% of your leads that just said you were too expensive, well, maybe you should increase prices. Or vice versa, if you’re closing 100% of your leads, you might want to raise prices.
So I like doing that. We use a thing called a tagging system for our lost section. So everyone’s all in the same lost section and we just tag them as different things.
But I have seen people use their pipeline in Go High Level as those different lost sections or won sections, whatever that may be.
Set This Up in GoHighLevel, Not Your CRM
So to be clear, most pest control companies should set this up in their CRM, like FieldRoutes? Or is this a Go High Level thing?
No, this is a Go High Level thing where you’re setting up the pipelines for your lead nurturing systems.
So all those different elements, you want to have that in Go High Level. And as far as your scheduling and routing, that is going to be through your FieldRoutes or your Gorilla Desk, things of that nature.
Check Your Pipeline Every Single Day
How do you make sure things don’t break in this pipeline? Meaning maybe you have some kind of automation that isn’t working and that’s why people aren’t getting carried to the next phase. Should you be checking this every week or so?
We actually check ours every single day, all day, every day. I have a dedicated virtual assistant that is managing our leads pipeline and they’re making sure that people are going to the right stage.
However, if you need a snapshot, we have all these snapshots which it just uploads into your business. We’ve been doing this for years. We’ve been using Go High Level for years.
So just to make it easy on people reading this, if you want our snapshot, we’ll just give you what we use for our pipeline settings that we’ve seen work effective for us.
If not, there is some really, really great videos on YouTube that Go High Level has that you can watch. It’ll just take you some time to kind of go through those and build those out the way you want them.
But yes, you definitely want to be checking to see if things are working and not breaking on you because technology is still technology. At the end of the day, it can break.
And I’ll give you a perfect example of this. Say I talk to someone and they’re interested, but they need to talk to their spouse. Well, if I tag them as “needs to talk to spouse,” it will go into my follow up section automatically. It will just move them.
Now, there are times where that integration or automation fails and it doesn’t move them. And then our virtual assistant will call them again and be like, “Hey, so…”
They’re like, “We already talked to you. I said I had to talk to my spouse.”
Well, as you can see, that could be an issue when technology fails. So that’s why you want to be on top of this.
Take Notes and Use Call Recordings
Another thing I wanted to mention is make sure you make notes in the Go High Level system about the conversation you had.
Another thing I want to mention is, what’s great about Go High Level, it actually records your conversations. So this is great for me as a business owner. I can listen to my virtual assistants’ calls. I can do quality control and I can go back.
And we actually use that for training purposes too, which is great for a lot of the owners reading this. You can actually hear, “Hey, why did we lose this sale here? What happened in this sales process?”
You can go back. We listen to sales recordings every single day for 30 minutes to an hour and we go through those sales with our team. And we listen to a few recordings per day just to help them sharpen their skills.
I know that might sound like a lot, but even if, let’s say 10 leads come in for that day and we’re only closing 50%, well, if your people that are taking these phone calls can even increase by two more sales, that is a huge increase of sales throughout the year.
That’s why it’s so important to do continual training. And that’s why it’s so important to turn on recordings on Go High Level and why this is such a fantastic software to use.
It records the text messages. You have all in one spot. It records even all the conversations that you’ve ever had with that lead up until the time they become a customer.
Most Companies Under $1M Don't Have a Pipeline
You’ve said before, you’ve talked and worked with thousands of pest control companies. You’ve basically seen it all. What are they doing with their lead pipeline? Do they even have one set up?
Most businesses under a million dollars don’t even have a pipeline set up.
And that’s why we’re even doing this class, so you guys can get these things set up into place. It’s going to make your business so much more effective. You’re going to close way more sales. You’re going to be way more organized.
I find the largest companies that I’ve talked to, the most sophisticated companies, they know all their numbers. They know everything. They’re tracking everything to the tee.
I could ask the owner, “Hey, what’s your closing rate on Facebook?” Boom, they know.
“Hey, do you know how many leads you got on your website in the last year?” Boom, they know.
They know all their numbers.
And so if you guys can even, say you just started your pest control company, start now. Get sophisticated now because your company will grow faster because of it. You’ll know your numbers better because of it and you’ll know where to spend your money because of it.
If you know all your numbers, you know where you’re getting your best cost per acquisition and you’ll know where to spend your advertising dollars.
Separate Your Campaigns or You're Blind
How does this carry through to automation? I’m guessing you should have an automation for every single step in the pipeline.
Yes. I love this question because this is something I messed up a long time ago where I was running a mosquito campaign, I was running an aeration campaign, I was running a general pest campaign, and I had them all in the same pipeline and I had them all the same automation as well.
Now the problem with that is I didn’t know which one was actually converting the best because they weren’t separated.
And this is the common mistake I see with automation and pipelines. They’re not separating the pipelines either by tag or by just the pipeline in general. They have them all lumped into one spot.
And so when you’re creating these campaigns, like we talked about in the Facebook ad side of things, they’re lumping everything together. You want to see individually what’s working.
So for example, if you guys are doing mosquito control and general pest control, don’t lump those together in the same pipeline because now we can see the different cost per acquisition on each.
So if general pest is producing a $50 cost per acquisition and mosquito control is $200, well, we obviously want to put our money towards the general pest that’s $50 in acquisition cost. We’re just going to dump money into that rather than focusing our attention on the mosquito control.
So that’s why it’s so important to track your pipeline separately. So you know your numbers, you know where to put your advertising dollars, and you know how to get the most juice out of your squeeze.
Get Detailed or Stay Small
So it seems like the biggest problem here then is that people aren’t separating and getting detailed and organized enough with their pipelines.
Yep. And the more detailed you are, the better it’s going to be long term too. And the more you can spend on your advertising dollars on the proper places.
Start Building Your Pipeline Today
The bottom line is this: if you’re under a million dollars in revenue, you probably don’t have a lead pipeline set up. And that’s holding you back.
Set up stages: new lead, responded, follow up 1, follow up 2, follow up 3, sold, serviced, and lost. Track why you lost deals. Tag them as “too expensive” or “went with competitor.”
Use Go High Level for your pipeline, not your CRM. Keep FieldRoutes or Gorilla Desk for scheduling and routing.
Check your pipeline every single day. Have a VA managing it. Use our snapshots to skip the learning curve.
Turn on call recordings. Listen to sales calls 30 minutes to an hour every day. Train your team. Two more sales per day is massive over a year.
And separate your campaigns. Don’t lump mosquito control and general pest together. You need to know your cost per acquisition for each service.
The sophisticated companies know all their numbers. Start now and you’ll grow faster.
Keep Learning and Growing
Want to connect with over 2,000 pest control business owners who have sophisticated lead pipelines set up? Join our free Facebook group, Pest Control Millionaires. We share Go High Level snapshots, pipeline templates, and tracking systems every day.
And if you want our exact pipeline setup that we’ve been refining for years, check out Zip Code Kings. We give you the snapshots. Just upload them and start tracking everything.
Now go build that pipeline and start knowing your numbers.
