About Wilson

Wilson Plumbing, Heating, and Electrical has been serving Akron, Ohio for over 60 years. CEO John Wilson is on a mission to scale to $100M by 2030, and he’s sharing his learnings along the way through his podcast and newsletter Owned and Operated.

Catch more about John’s experience with Hatch in this webinar on scaling the contact center.

The challenge

After years of steady growth, Wilson faced a challenge when their primary source of business, Google LSA, began to underperform. “Leads dried up, costs went way up, and we were struggling to continue to grow,” says John.

In order to continue growing, John’s plan was to add on lead aggregators as well as start outbounding the contacts already in his database – leads that never booked, estimates that never closed, and existing customers. This, he knew, would require the help of a communication automation tool.

John initially signed on with a platform that was cumbersome to operate and required weeks of developer work to set up even simple integrations. Not being able to quickly launch and easily manage campaigns hindered their ability to deliver timely messages, costing them both time and revenue.

“When you have a three-day call board, every day matters and we needed a tool that would allow us to be able to execute now,” says John. “Not tomorrow at 8am or in four weeks.”

The solution

Hatch’s out-of-the-box capabilities and user-friendly platform allowed Wilson Plumbing to quickly implement and scale campaigns. They currently have automated workflows for:

• Instant lead outreach
• Estimate follow-up
• Aged leads and open estimates
• Appointment confirmations and updates
• Post-service reviews
• Membership renewals
• Invoicing
• Marketing campaigns

“If we have an idea for a campaign, we can have it up and running in like 20 minutes, versus four weeks. And we just keep coming up with new ways to use it.”

The results

By centralizing and automating communications with Hatch, Wilson Plumbing has been able to experience tangible results, including:

• 10x higher sales output: “Hatch gave our inside sales team a lot more leverage,” says John. Prior to Hatch, the team would have to make 50-75 calls a day each and connect with an average of five prospects. With Hatch automating and multiplying that outreach, not only are they getting more responses, but the team now only has to engage with those responses.
  
  “Hatch has been a force multiplier for us. So instead of dialing all day and getting five conversations, they’re now having 50 conversations a day each.” That’s a 10x increase in conversations while decreasing the time and effort required.
  
  
• 2x increase in rehash revenue: Because of this leverage, the inside sales team went from contributing $200k a month per rep to $400k a month per rep—a 100% increase. “We basically just sell more,” says John. “Because we’re now following up on every single estimate.”
  
  
• 4x increase in set rate: “Prior to Hatch, we didn’t use lead aggregators because our process was so clunky that we didn’t get any appointments from them,” says John. Since implementing Hatch, John has added on seven lead sources and his set rate has quadrupled – from 10% to 40%.
  
  
• Ability to maintain a 3-day job board. John particularly likes how easy it is to set up campaigns in Hatch. “Whenever we’re short on appointments, we can quickly launch an outbound campaign to our database over email, call, and text to help fill the board,” he says. “Being able to quickly make an impact like this is huge, and it was just not possible with the other platforms we tried.”

“Hatch has been a force multiplier for us. So instead of dialing all day and getting five conversations, they’re now having 50 conversations a day each.”

See John's post here.

Mastering seasonality and scaling

For John, the overall value-add of Hatch is the ability to float through seasonality and to scale. “Before Hatch, we had never meaningfully built an outbound strategy,” says John. “And what that allows us to do is control our leads.”

“When we have gaps, we can ramp up marketing spend because we have speed-to-lead campaigns ready to reach out to those leads. And we can also ramp up outbound messaging to the existing leads in our database that we’ve already purchased.”

John notes that this makes recruiting easier as well. “If I want to hire two more people, all I have to do is call more people or send more messages through Hatch and then I can bring on whoever I need while I ramp up my spend for marketing.”

Continued growth for Wilson

Hatch is a user-friendly tool that has enabled John’s team to better leverage lead aggregators and their existing database to continue growing. With it, they’ve opened up new revenue streams, saved on operational costs, achieved greater control over seasonal fluctuations, and set themselves up to scale.

“Automated communication with Hatch is like a superpower,” said John. “We're now in contact with hundreds of additional customers. We're selling a ton of unsold estimates, and it's easier than ever to book follow-up appointments. Hatch has been a really big win for us.”

“Automated communication with Hatch is like a superpower...Hatch has been a really big win for us."