Meeting Title: Brainforge x ABC: Discovery Proposal Review Date: 2025-11-20 Meeting participants: read.ai meeting notes, Uttam Kumaran, MattBurns, Steven, Amber Lin
WEBVTT
1 00:00:54.590 ⇒ 00:00:55.580 MattBurns: Hi, Utah.
2 00:00:55.580 ⇒ 00:00:57.459 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, Matt. How are ya?
3 00:00:57.460 ⇒ 00:00:58.819 MattBurns: I’m good, how you doing?
4 00:00:59.610 ⇒ 00:01:05.490 Uttam Kumaran: Good. Weird weather this week, right? It’s back to, like, back to… Back to hot.
5 00:01:05.660 ⇒ 00:01:13.119 MattBurns: I’m not sure we’re gonna have a winter, it seems like. Yeah, it’s already November 20th, and it’s, like, 80 degrees.
6 00:01:13.250 ⇒ 00:01:14.700 Uttam Kumaran: It’s just funny.
7 00:01:14.700 ⇒ 00:01:19.869 MattBurns: Yep, yep, crazy. Well, good, thanks for,
8 00:01:20.370 ⇒ 00:01:25.510 MattBurns: send in the proposal first off, and then Steven and I chatted about it
9 00:01:26.760 ⇒ 00:01:28.800 MattBurns: Two days ago, maybe? .
10 00:01:28.800 ⇒ 00:01:29.360 Steven: Yep.
11 00:01:29.950 ⇒ 00:01:33.819 MattBurns: And had a few… questions, please.
12 00:01:35.140 ⇒ 00:01:45.200 MattBurns: I know we… I’m pulling it up now just to kind of refresh, the… .
13 00:01:47.440 ⇒ 00:01:49.830 Steven: I like the, again, the first.
14 00:01:49.910 ⇒ 00:01:51.300 MattBurns: I think it was the first…
15 00:01:51.940 ⇒ 00:01:57.060 MattBurns: Really been about the business analysis, or business context, and the challenges, and…
16 00:01:57.420 ⇒ 00:02:00.259 MattBurns: All that looks good. I think it’s…
17 00:02:00.680 ⇒ 00:02:03.379 MattBurns: What we had talked about when you were over here.
18 00:02:03.530 ⇒ 00:02:05.990 MattBurns: And that was a good summary.
19 00:02:06.100 ⇒ 00:02:12.929 MattBurns: I think, and I’m kind of looking at it again now.
20 00:02:13.180 ⇒ 00:02:20.090 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and to give you guys maybe just a little bit of, like, you know, I talked a little bit about it, but one is, like, we only know
21 00:02:20.140 ⇒ 00:02:34.239 Uttam Kumaran: as much as, you know, we know from those conversations, of course, working with the company. So for us, it’s important for me, when we talk about discoveries, to time box, to say, okay, we have a month, and then for us, it’s strategically, like.
22 00:02:34.310 ⇒ 00:02:39.389 Uttam Kumaran: Dig into a couple of areas, and then come back out for air to get feedback.
23 00:02:39.450 ⇒ 00:02:55.470 Uttam Kumaran: You know, anything less than a month is maybe too hard to kind of get in the weeds, especially, you know, if this is going to kick off sooner and given holidays. Anything longer than 2 months, like, we can do if we end up finding a couple of new paths.
24 00:02:55.590 ⇒ 00:03:02.410 Uttam Kumaran: You know, but this sort of one-month, two-month discovery is something that we do for…
25 00:03:02.630 ⇒ 00:03:08.229 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, we did actually, as part of this project, and we do for all of our clients, because we often don’t know…
26 00:03:08.470 ⇒ 00:03:12.959 Uttam Kumaran: All the details, and we’re coming in to discover that, you know, alongside you, so…
27 00:03:13.420 ⇒ 00:03:17.390 MattBurns: Sure. No, that makes sense. And I think I was…
28 00:03:17.780 ⇒ 00:03:22.640 MattBurns: with everything on here, and then I’m looking at slide number 10.
29 00:03:23.270 ⇒ 00:03:29.120 MattBurns: Which kind of lines out the 4 weeks, which is good. I… I do think the…
30 00:03:30.000 ⇒ 00:03:32.420 MattBurns: The knowledge transfer with less.
31 00:03:33.180 ⇒ 00:03:35.860 MattBurns: It’s gonna be… Helpful.
32 00:03:36.710 ⇒ 00:03:42.849 MattBurns: gets you up to speed on, kind of, what… what he’s been doing, and, you know.
33 00:03:43.090 ⇒ 00:03:47.430 MattBurns: Just to give you context as to…
34 00:03:48.100 ⇒ 00:03:50.799 MattBurns: How we get customers to even
35 00:03:51.070 ⇒ 00:03:56.019 MattBurns: Find us or see us, and then, obviously, the other piece is once they’re
36 00:03:56.350 ⇒ 00:04:03.800 MattBurns: in our arena, so to speak, how can we convert them into a customer? So I think all that’s helpful.
37 00:04:04.200 ⇒ 00:04:09.700 MattBurns: Where,
38 00:04:13.580 ⇒ 00:04:20.779 MattBurns: I got a little lost, because through slide 12, I think we’re fine, and that’s… That’s kind of the…
39 00:04:21.269 ⇒ 00:04:28.720 Uttam Kumaran: the project we discussed, and tell me what… tell me what your thoughts are on slide 13, Ford. Are you… you’re kind of pulling it…
40 00:04:28.720 ⇒ 00:04:31.300 MattBurns: All together with what you’re already doing, or what?
41 00:04:31.300 ⇒ 00:04:47.299 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so actually, the slide 13, slide… slide, 12 beyond is actually just our old deck, so we just… we just left it in there, just in case we needed to discuss it, but the net of the project is really slide…
42 00:04:47.790 ⇒ 00:04:49.369 Uttam Kumaran: Slides 7 and 8.
43 00:04:49.410 ⇒ 00:04:51.180 Steven: Basically. Gotcha.
44 00:04:51.180 ⇒ 00:04:56.699 Uttam Kumaran: So slide 7 is sort of like, okay, the end of the month, one is, like.
45 00:04:57.070 ⇒ 00:05:12.299 Uttam Kumaran: our requirement is that we give… when… we would have another meeting like the one we had the other week, and we would have answers. You know, we’d come to the table with a lot of answers, come to the table with potentially more questions, and then at least, at that point, be able to make
46 00:05:12.760 ⇒ 00:05:20.139 Uttam Kumaran: okay, do we have confidence that going into an area, there is opportunity? And so, that’s the second bullet, which is, like, what are the top
47 00:05:20.430 ⇒ 00:05:27.619 Uttam Kumaran: levers, you know, for us to pull. Again, but we’re… we have, like, sort of this, like, more of a test mindset, so what are some…
48 00:05:27.850 ⇒ 00:05:42.069 Uttam Kumaran: impactful tests that we can run, and impactful may mean something that is possible today, or maybe something that is not possible. And so, for us, we’ll sort of propose a mix of things that, hey, this is a completely low-hanging fruit.
49 00:05:42.100 ⇒ 00:05:50.829 Uttam Kumaran: But it takes a while, there’s stuff that we can do today, but maybe the impact is unknown, and so we will have a sort of a menu of things that we propose to test.
50 00:05:51.160 ⇒ 00:06:05.219 Uttam Kumaran: In addition, given… I think 3 and 4 was really what was sort of… for the most part, for all of our new clients, we do 1 and 2. But given, like, the unique situation here, so one is, like, I think we can totally solve the…
51 00:06:05.360 ⇒ 00:06:09.610 Uttam Kumaran: like, what does Les know, and, like, kind of put together a lot of…
52 00:06:09.770 ⇒ 00:06:16.480 Uttam Kumaran: our time with him into… into a memo and a document. And then certainly we can also talk about
53 00:06:16.540 ⇒ 00:06:35.060 Uttam Kumaran: what is the state of, like, data and the data infrastructure, like, different CRMs and how things talk to each other. That is something that we often produce, sort of, like, an architecture diagram of, like, what are all the systems. But one and two are really the things we would leave with. If we… at that point.
54 00:06:35.110 ⇒ 00:06:41.609 Uttam Kumaran: If we find that there is an opportunity for us to take on one, like, we would basically put together scope
55 00:06:41.900 ⇒ 00:06:47.019 Uttam Kumaran: around one of the… one or many of the experiments to run.
56 00:06:47.570 ⇒ 00:06:51.039 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, I feel like for a lot of our clients.
57 00:06:51.290 ⇒ 00:07:04.569 Uttam Kumaran: when we come in, this is often helpful, because a lot of other partners will come in and say, like, we just want to… let’s run… we… we always do these kind of tests, and, like, let’s go ahead and do that. We may find that Les has already done a lot of these things, or the company
58 00:07:04.970 ⇒ 00:07:20.060 Uttam Kumaran: done certain things, and so it’s not… I don’t feel… we don’t feel confident, you know, until we know what’s been done. Certainly, though, we know what works across all of our clients, in online sales and digital.
59 00:07:20.240 ⇒ 00:07:21.350 Uttam Kumaran: And so, part of.
60 00:07:21.350 ⇒ 00:07:22.409 Steven: Basically, the…
61 00:07:22.620 ⇒ 00:07:23.160 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
62 00:07:23.160 ⇒ 00:07:29.080 Steven: Basically, yeah, that first phase is that y’all kind of dig, you know, because… and I think that’s one thing we like, is that less…
63 00:07:29.570 ⇒ 00:07:41.650 Steven: how do we get less of this knowledge from him to the organization and whoever’s gonna take over? First phase, just kind of finding out where are we now, what have we done, what’s working, what’s not working, and then y’all will propose, okay, maybe, maybe we find out, yeah, it’s…
64 00:07:41.810 ⇒ 00:07:44.419 Steven: Now we know a lot more info, but what we’re doing works.
65 00:07:44.420 ⇒ 00:07:59.220 Uttam Kumaran: And he may even have things he’s wanted to do that he couldn’t do, that he knows are low-hanging fruit, and so the nice thing is we are, like, fresh eyes completely, and so we ask really dumb questions, and sort of, like, build the… figure out what the story is.
66 00:07:59.350 ⇒ 00:08:14.350 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yeah, we would present on, like, okay, here’s exactly what we see that we’d recommend. Some of those things may not be things that we can do, some of those things may be things that the people internally at ABC should handle as part of their roadmap, and then some items may be things that we can own.
67 00:08:14.790 ⇒ 00:08:15.600 MattBurns: Gotcha.
68 00:08:16.570 ⇒ 00:08:17.310 MattBurns: Okay.
69 00:08:17.310 ⇒ 00:08:18.170 Steven: Makes sense.
70 00:08:18.170 ⇒ 00:08:18.730 MattBurns: Yep.
71 00:08:19.250 ⇒ 00:08:26.850 Uttam Kumaran: Was there… was there one particular part of, like, the workstream that… Seemed, like, more…
72 00:08:27.190 ⇒ 00:08:31.410 Uttam Kumaran: important than… than… than the other, so this… I’m looking at, like, slide…
73 00:08:31.620 ⇒ 00:08:35.930 Uttam Kumaran: slide 6 now. I mean, we talked a lot in our original meeting about
74 00:08:36.179 ⇒ 00:08:38.259 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, are we getting the word out?
75 00:08:38.440 ⇒ 00:08:41.919 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, that’s one thing. Second thing is… is…
76 00:08:42.049 ⇒ 00:08:58.199 Uttam Kumaran: conversion rate optimization, commonly, it’s called CRO. It’s like, okay, are we converting? And then, where I, you know, I… for me, I’ve done a lot of work in retention, and so I know that my… my vote is that because you already
77 00:08:58.290 ⇒ 00:09:10.589 Uttam Kumaran: so-and-so-paid for those customers, or they’ve worked with you, they’ve already spoken to someone, there’s definitely, I’m sure, some lifecycle marketing is typically what they call it, around bringing those folks back.
78 00:09:10.840 ⇒ 00:09:25.819 Uttam Kumaran: We’ve mentioned the reward program, so questions for us to less, would be, have we done any win-back campaigns? Have we looked at the reason why people cancel? Can… and some of these also aren’t things that we come in and like, cool, we can send one email campaign and then
79 00:09:26.110 ⇒ 00:09:37.039 Uttam Kumaran: that’s, like, it. It’s like, what we would say, here’s how you can build a system that sends an email 6 months after every cancellation to say… to say, hey, I know you canceled with us.
80 00:09:37.040 ⇒ 00:09:50.010 Uttam Kumaran: You know, so those are the things that I want to ask, like, have those been done before? Have we sent… do we have an… like, how does the automated email systems work right now? Are we able to trigger on these sort of dimensions?
81 00:09:50.130 ⇒ 00:10:02.980 Uttam Kumaran: And then, the other thing is, like, yes, maybe we can do all those things, but we want to make sure that you can see the lift. And so where are we… can we look at the total number of cancels? Can we then start to see the total number of people that come back?
82 00:10:03.090 ⇒ 00:10:09.129 Uttam Kumaran: And then can we start to report on that? Very similar to how we’re reporting on Andy usage on a weekly basis, we’re…
83 00:10:09.380 ⇒ 00:10:16.199 Uttam Kumaran: we would… we would make sure that your team can report on that data. The only other thing that I would mention here
84 00:10:16.460 ⇒ 00:10:22.360 Uttam Kumaran: is… I know both of y’all are very busy, so for this in particular, we would need to find
85 00:10:22.990 ⇒ 00:10:32.100 Uttam Kumaran: one person in the organization that maybe we can execute alongside. Whether… maybe it’s in one of these three areas or… or not, but I… I think…
86 00:10:32.160 ⇒ 00:10:47.899 Uttam Kumaran: that’s for us sometimes where… for us to move quickly in the month is just to have someone that we can run alongside and say, did we test this? Can we test something? Who should we ask? So those are… that’s probably the… an open question that I had as well.
87 00:10:49.520 ⇒ 00:10:52.940 MattBurns: Yeah, thoughts there, Steven? Is that something…
88 00:10:52.940 ⇒ 00:10:53.519 Steven: me is that…
89 00:10:53.520 ⇒ 00:10:54.429 MattBurns: Bo could take…
90 00:10:54.430 ⇒ 00:10:56.289 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe you, Steven, too. I guess I…
91 00:10:56.290 ⇒ 00:11:03.959 Steven: Yeah, I mean, I would love to be involved. I was thinking, Bo, is that not something less? You’re talking not less, like someone else to help?
92 00:11:04.080 ⇒ 00:11:05.200 Steven: facilitate.
93 00:11:05.770 ⇒ 00:11:18.709 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I would see… I guess Les would be one… one of those people. I think for us, we’re just gonna have a lot of questions about things that… if… I just want to know whether to go down certain paths, and.
94 00:11:18.710 ⇒ 00:11:19.180 Steven: I don’t think.
95 00:11:19.180 ⇒ 00:11:24.169 Uttam Kumaran: Marketing is just, like, would maybe just be one part of this, like, I guess I don’t know yet.
96 00:11:24.170 ⇒ 00:11:24.490 MattBurns: Fantastic.
97 00:11:24.490 ⇒ 00:11:26.770 Uttam Kumaran: entirety of Les’ purview, right? So…
98 00:11:27.170 ⇒ 00:11:34.680 Steven: I would think this, myself, and Bo probably would be a good three contacts. Obviously, we’ll include… keep Matt and Bobby in the loop, too, but…
99 00:11:34.800 ⇒ 00:11:37.959 MattBurns: I would think we could all three kind of help facilitate things.
100 00:11:38.790 ⇒ 00:11:39.570 MattBurns: Yeah.
101 00:11:40.550 ⇒ 00:11:47.140 MattBurns: I think so. I mean… Again, just to speak to
102 00:11:48.550 ⇒ 00:11:54.849 MattBurns: like the retention piece. We’ve tried certain things over the years, Utom, to…
103 00:11:55.460 ⇒ 00:11:59.110 MattBurns: To win back customers, not probably…
104 00:12:00.080 ⇒ 00:12:08.499 MattBurns: consistently, and not anything, related to AI to help with that, obviously.
105 00:12:09.800 ⇒ 00:12:17.580 MattBurns: You know, one of the thoughts on Retention has always been, well, Can we identify that customer?
106 00:12:17.840 ⇒ 00:12:28.409 MattBurns: early. In other words, if it’s a pest customer and they’re having reservices, is that an indicator? Or, things of that nature to try and head it off before it happens?
107 00:12:28.410 ⇒ 00:12:29.920 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, churn risk, basically.
108 00:12:29.920 ⇒ 00:12:31.380 MattBurns: Yeah, because sometimes.
109 00:12:31.380 ⇒ 00:12:32.150 Steven: Yo!
110 00:12:33.750 ⇒ 00:12:34.360 MattBurns: Go ahead.
111 00:12:34.850 ⇒ 00:12:40.199 Steven: I was gonna say, do y’all… you know, something I was looking at today, I was looking at our VRM, our scheduling, but I was like, man.
112 00:12:40.300 ⇒ 00:12:59.030 Steven: I’m sure there’s something y’all could easily do and help with, or y’all have probably already done it before, is kind of heat mapping. You know, is it a… you know, if… is it one crew, a long crew, all of a sudden, we’ve had five cancellations in the Burney area, hey, we should look at that crew, or termite season, just… and same with marketing. Hey, where’s our… I love a map of where are our holiday, like.
113 00:12:59.030 ⇒ 00:13:05.560 Uttam Kumaran: calls coming from? Is it the outskirts of San Antonio? Is it downtown San Antonio? Did that email blast work? I don’t know, but… Yes.
114 00:13:05.560 ⇒ 00:13:12.680 Steven: mapping stuff, I think, is really good that we… at least I’ve never been aware that we’ve done very well to see where these termite calls coming from. Man, termites are really blowing.
115 00:13:12.680 ⇒ 00:13:26.500 Uttam Kumaran: That’s exactly right, like, it’s exactly in that meeting where it’s like, okay, we have a cancellation problem, that’s just… we have to start segmenting that, right? So, are they… is it concentrated, in one geo?
116 00:13:26.500 ⇒ 00:13:38.550 Uttam Kumaran: to one team, to one service, like, at a certain time frame, like, those are all the cuts that we make. It’s something that Amber actually does for a few of our clients, this type of analysis.
117 00:13:38.550 ⇒ 00:13:39.839 Steven: We all can do that on the…
118 00:13:39.980 ⇒ 00:13:50.619 Steven: on the incoming side as well, like, hey, yeah, it seems like our radio ad or whatever ad seemed to work, because I would love to try… we’ve always talked about really getting in the weeds
119 00:13:50.620 ⇒ 00:14:01.010 Steven: with really going deeper into a neighborhood. I mean, I was running some stuff today, and, you know, my own neighborhood, we have, like, 7 pest control customers in my whole neighborhood, and I’m like, man, could we run…
120 00:14:01.010 ⇒ 00:14:15.419 Steven: Google ads, you know, whatever really targeted ad to that neighborhood, and then in two months, see, like, how many calls did we end up getting from that neighborhood? Is it more or less than that? I don’t know, I think that would be interesting as we really try to target specific areas and neighborhoods, kind of heat mapping.
121 00:14:15.770 ⇒ 00:14:18.020 Steven: Where these things come from, and what’s working.
122 00:14:18.410 ⇒ 00:14:18.920 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
123 00:14:18.920 ⇒ 00:14:26.020 MattBurns: I think that’s part of the issue. Sometimes, Utam, we don’t know what’s working, you know? Yeah. We’re doing a lot of…
124 00:14:26.020 ⇒ 00:14:32.720 Uttam Kumaran: but I want to get a baseline of things. And even, Matt, for you, you know, I know we talked about a couple things, which is, one.
125 00:14:32.900 ⇒ 00:14:40.890 Uttam Kumaran: it would be even helpful, and this is where, like, as a North Star, for us to say what we talked about in the meeting, which is, like.
126 00:14:40.950 ⇒ 00:14:42.909 Uttam Kumaran: We’re in a growing industry.
127 00:14:42.940 ⇒ 00:15:02.469 Uttam Kumaran: leads, like, maybe sales is saying we’re getting less leads, so is that true or not? And… and then it’s clear that, like, revenue is flat or going down. Where is that coming from? And then that is, like, the three pieces for us to constantly remind ourselves. I think my… the only risk in this project
128 00:15:02.560 ⇒ 00:15:05.150 Uttam Kumaran: In that, there is a lot to discover.
129 00:15:05.290 ⇒ 00:15:12.180 Uttam Kumaran: And so, my job, and… and it’ll be our job, sort of, Steven, is to…
130 00:15:12.500 ⇒ 00:15:15.140 Uttam Kumaran: Is to pick the areas
131 00:15:15.400 ⇒ 00:15:22.840 Uttam Kumaran: That not only are the most unknown, but also, like, have the most benefit if we could find an answer to.
132 00:15:24.110 ⇒ 00:15:42.149 Uttam Kumaran: And we can, of course, like, I think as part of any, like, we’ll interrogate as much data as possible, but commonly the risk is that, let’s take the, like, any sort of data, we have to, one, go find out where it lives, ingest it somewhere, then get it prepared for analysis.
133 00:15:42.930 ⇒ 00:15:58.899 Uttam Kumaran: it just… we can get blocked at any step of the way with access, there’s no API, or all this, so this is where, like, we will… as part of the first week, we will basically map out, okay, what systems, and then we’ll… we’ll go as fast as we can to see what data we can get, and we worked
134 00:15:59.030 ⇒ 00:16:03.900 Uttam Kumaran: we’ll work with CSVs, we’ll work with whatever we can get to prove… to show some…
135 00:16:04.250 ⇒ 00:16:15.089 Uttam Kumaran: value of the story, but that’s where, Steven, having you sort of bought in allows us to kind of get through some of those hoops, if there’s people internally that have those systems or have the knowledge.
136 00:16:16.560 ⇒ 00:16:33.510 Uttam Kumaran: But that sort of would be our process, and exactly right, like, we would look at what… we would basically look at SEO, we would look at local SEO, and a bunch of things on the awareness side. We would totally do a canvassing of, like, what less is done on, like, the paid advertisement side.
137 00:16:33.690 ⇒ 00:16:41.410 Uttam Kumaran: On the conversion rate, Convergen side, basically, we would just need access to the page-level analytics.
138 00:16:41.590 ⇒ 00:16:48.090 Uttam Kumaran: So we would look at the traffic on each page, and then we would start to look at the conversions coming from each page and different buttons.
139 00:16:48.550 ⇒ 00:16:53.069 Uttam Kumaran: You know, some of the recommendations could be as easy as, okay, we need to…
140 00:16:53.200 ⇒ 00:17:00.869 Uttam Kumaran: Add more buttons, or we need to drive traffic to certain landing pages that are converting better, or we need to propose a couple of landing page experiments.
141 00:17:01.050 ⇒ 00:17:04.600 Uttam Kumaran: that’s, like, it could be that easy. It could also be, like.
142 00:17:04.740 ⇒ 00:17:19.340 Uttam Kumaran: hey, like, we’re pretty optimized, instead we need to look at the booking flow, and so that’s where, like, we’ll start to build, like, what the waterfall is. We just hopped on… hopped off with another client, where basically we’re looking at the waterfall of people that are coming to the page.
143 00:17:19.510 ⇒ 00:17:32.840 Uttam Kumaran: people that are clicking on the Buy Now button, or check out new services, and then how many are actually completing the form, and then even after that, how many get booked, and then, like, get the service done. So I want to see that.
144 00:17:33.070 ⇒ 00:17:38.290 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Like, and I want to know… and then I not only want to see that in total, I want to start to segment that
145 00:17:38.450 ⇒ 00:17:43.510 Uttam Kumaran: By where they’re coming from, the services they’re buying,
146 00:17:43.780 ⇒ 00:17:49.559 Uttam Kumaran: So that is the, like, vision we have of, like, how we’re looking at this funnel analysis.
147 00:17:49.770 ⇒ 00:17:56.930 Uttam Kumaran: But… It can… it will take time, you know, to wrangle all that data, and so…
148 00:17:57.230 ⇒ 00:18:01.289 Uttam Kumaran: That’s my only caution, is like, we want to run as quickly as we can.
149 00:18:01.410 ⇒ 00:18:07.779 Uttam Kumaran: But we… we want to also try to end the month with something, and if we need to do another month of discovery, we can continue, but…
150 00:18:08.150 ⇒ 00:18:14.499 Uttam Kumaran: I think that’s something, Steven, maybe me and you can work with, and we can pivot quickly and find… find…
151 00:18:14.940 ⇒ 00:18:15.640 Uttam Kumaran: There you go.
152 00:18:15.640 ⇒ 00:18:26.999 Steven: Yeah, like you said, yeah, the concern is ABC’s such a beast, like, we gotta be targeted with it, you know, so I assume you would… you would look at this as a whole across all of our markets, across all of our services, right?
153 00:18:27.330 ⇒ 00:18:31.989 Uttam Kumaran: But thank you, this is where, like, I… you can tell me, okay, it’s not worth the squeeze there.
154 00:18:32.130 ⇒ 00:18:45.389 Uttam Kumaran: Or, okay, actually, this used to be a big area, and it’s going lower, or hey, this… the people we have there are very data-driven, and so they would be great partners. So that’s, like, that’s the…
155 00:18:45.570 ⇒ 00:18:55.799 Uttam Kumaran: tribal knowledge that, like, I don’t have that would help speed up. So you can be like, oh, that’s a complete dead end, or, like, we don’t have any tools there, it’s gonna take, like, months.
156 00:18:55.800 ⇒ 00:18:58.699 Steven: Don’t get with the mechanical team, yeah, we don’t get.
157 00:18:58.700 ⇒ 00:19:00.769 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, that’s the…
158 00:19:00.770 ⇒ 00:19:01.299 MattBurns: No, that’s.
159 00:19:01.300 ⇒ 00:19:05.080 Uttam Kumaran: like, I’ll… we’ll need from you, so…
160 00:19:05.500 ⇒ 00:19:13.180 MattBurns: And that’s where… And Steven, correct me if you think differently, but I… again, I think…
161 00:19:14.540 ⇒ 00:19:19.869 MattBurns: Trying to condense it a little bit, because there’s so much to look at and so much here.
162 00:19:20.100 ⇒ 00:19:29.429 MattBurns: And where’s the best bang for our buck? I mean, I… I don’t know, truthfully, Utam, and maybe you can look at it further, I don’t know that retention is
163 00:19:29.920 ⇒ 00:19:37.250 MattBurns: the best way to go on this. Maybe it is, but it seems like we’ve tried to do a lot of it. We even had a special retention team
164 00:19:37.440 ⇒ 00:19:41.560 MattBurns: Okay. That any cancellation went to the retention team, and…
165 00:19:42.180 ⇒ 00:20:00.420 MattBurns: they didn’t do much with it, so therefore we kind of gave it back to Yvette’s group, but a couple of conversations with Yvette, even Utam, since her team now handles those, might say, yeah, maybe retention’s not a focus, maybe it’s better to concentrate on conversion or awareness.
166 00:20:00.530 ⇒ 00:20:04.479 MattBurns: you know, but that’s just my thought. I may be wrong.
167 00:20:04.480 ⇒ 00:20:09.360 Steven: I think, ultimately, I agree, I think retention would be at the bottom of the list. Obviously, the knowledge transfer from last is huge.
168 00:20:09.360 ⇒ 00:20:09.840 MattBurns: Interestingly.
169 00:20:09.840 ⇒ 00:20:24.600 Steven: leaving, getting some of that, and then, yeah, the awareness and the conversion, I think. Obviously, retention, and we may… we may be totally wrong. I think I’d want to dive a little into retention, just to make sure you don’t see something glaring that’s popping out, but that wouldn’t be the primary focus, I agree, that would be the first one.
170 00:20:24.600 ⇒ 00:20:28.579 MattBurns: So, the other suggestion I have here is I would…
171 00:20:28.870 ⇒ 00:20:33.820 MattBurns: when we present this to… to Bobby, Bo, and Yvette, I think that was the other…
172 00:20:33.940 ⇒ 00:20:35.520 MattBurns: People in the grass, even? Yes.
173 00:20:35.710 ⇒ 00:20:38.439 MattBurns: I would probably…
174 00:20:40.350 ⇒ 00:20:42.540 MattBurns: Stop with slide 12.
175 00:20:43.110 ⇒ 00:20:43.760 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
176 00:20:43.760 ⇒ 00:20:47.670 MattBurns: And I wouldn’t put the others on here, because I think it’s just confusing.
177 00:20:47.950 ⇒ 00:20:48.330 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
178 00:20:48.330 ⇒ 00:20:55.609 MattBurns: And because what I… and Yvette and I discussed this a little bit yesterday, on the call source piece.
179 00:20:58.290 ⇒ 00:21:05.790 MattBurns: you know, I think we can set that aside a little bit. Now, just so you guys know, we’re paying CallSource $6,000 a month.
180 00:21:06.170 ⇒ 00:21:07.779 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. So…
181 00:21:08.370 ⇒ 00:21:11.820 MattBurns: That can be looked at separately, because to me.
182 00:21:11.930 ⇒ 00:21:17.310 MattBurns: If you guys were to look at that a little bit, separate from this proposal, and say, okay, look.
183 00:21:17.950 ⇒ 00:21:22.390 MattBurns: I, I think… Either… Either we can’t…
184 00:21:22.390 ⇒ 00:21:33.030 Uttam Kumaran: help you out for that amount of money, or wow, that’s something we could take on in a heartbeat, and $6,000 a month, if you’re paying that, we can do a lot more with it. But we can set that aside for now, is what I think we should do.
185 00:21:33.460 ⇒ 00:21:37.289 MattBurns: And maybe even the UI conversion for now, just to say.
186 00:21:37.560 ⇒ 00:21:44.190 MattBurns: okay, because what I don’t want to do is confuse Bobby and Bo and say, well, wait a minute, what’s all this other… what’s all this other stuff?
187 00:21:44.660 ⇒ 00:21:45.140 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
188 00:21:45.140 ⇒ 00:21:47.920 MattBurns: But if we were to stop with the executive summary.
189 00:21:48.900 ⇒ 00:21:54.499 MattBurns: And then you can do just what you did to us, kind of really re-present your.
190 00:21:54.500 ⇒ 00:21:54.930 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
191 00:21:54.930 ⇒ 00:22:06.620 MattBurns: or 12 slides in front of them. And then if we, on the proposal slide 8, obviously we’ve got hours here, but what does that mean in terms of dollars?
192 00:22:06.620 ⇒ 00:22:08.170 Uttam Kumaran: Yes. And…
193 00:22:08.170 ⇒ 00:22:15.290 MattBurns: That way, we’ll have a dollar amount to look at, and… We can make the decision
194 00:22:16.340 ⇒ 00:22:22.439 MattBurns: You know, in… in… not… You know, just based on the proposal through slide 12.
195 00:22:22.520 ⇒ 00:22:23.280 Uttam Kumaran: Perfect.
196 00:22:23.460 ⇒ 00:22:25.869 MattBurns: What do you think, Steven? You agree?
197 00:22:26.400 ⇒ 00:22:29.669 Steven: Yeah, I agree. The other things, you know, that’s…
198 00:22:30.010 ⇒ 00:22:47.679 Steven: Not that those aren’t priorities. I think the marketing is a priority, just because of the time frame we have with less, obviously, so that’s going to be a priority, and that’s gonna be Bobby’s focus. He doesn’t need to get in the weeds with other stuff, it’ll just confuse him. You know, Yvette’s working on that stuff. I think there’s still some more discussions we need to have over there, obviously, but that’s kind of on Yvette’s side. This is a little bit separate.
199 00:22:47.900 ⇒ 00:22:48.380 MattBurns: Right.
200 00:22:48.380 ⇒ 00:22:48.950 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
201 00:22:49.590 ⇒ 00:22:51.389 MattBurns: Yeah, that’s what I think we should do.
202 00:22:52.890 ⇒ 00:22:57.750 Uttam Kumaran: Great. So I can… I can sort of take some of these notes and put it together, and I’ll also talk about
203 00:22:57.810 ⇒ 00:23:02.849 Uttam Kumaran: sort of, like, what… we’ll clean up slide 10, and I can mention a little bit about
204 00:23:02.870 ⇒ 00:23:20.409 Uttam Kumaran: Steven, how, like, we’ll be… we’ll work kind of closely together, and yeah, I think this would be a great discussion. I mean, the other piece is, right now, we’re… we’re sort of past our contract on Andy as well, so I think we can also… I’ll put together a scope for that, and we can discuss that.
205 00:23:20.530 ⇒ 00:23:24.590 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s… in that same call, that… that’s… that’s totally fine.
206 00:23:24.590 ⇒ 00:23:28.980 MattBurns: I mean, after… I was just saying, the other reason for probably
207 00:23:29.370 ⇒ 00:23:35.969 MattBurns: just going through slide 12, and then, Steven, I do agree, let’s pull Bo into this, because of the fact that
208 00:23:36.560 ⇒ 00:23:38.249 MattBurns: He’s gonna need to start
209 00:23:39.040 ⇒ 00:23:43.319 MattBurns: you know, learned a lot more about… that’s his focus, too, is going to be…
210 00:23:43.640 ⇒ 00:23:51.120 MattBurns: He’s the overall company sales manager, Utam, so what… what… Bo answers more leads.
211 00:23:51.580 ⇒ 00:23:52.080 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
212 00:23:52.080 ⇒ 00:24:01.769 MattBurns: I mean, at the end of the day, and better conversion. So if we have more leads and better conversion, that’s what Bo’s gonna focus on, so he can
213 00:24:02.820 ⇒ 00:24:09.689 MattBurns: you know, and between he and Steven, I think they can really… and then, obviously, the transition with Les.
214 00:24:10.040 ⇒ 00:24:16.000 MattBurns: I think that’s a good group to work on this proposal, Steven, don’t you?
215 00:24:16.620 ⇒ 00:24:17.310 Steven: Yep.
216 00:24:17.310 ⇒ 00:24:23.730 MattBurns: Yeah, unless… I think is going to be motivated to help, because he knows Okay, let’s…
217 00:24:23.870 ⇒ 00:24:28.350 MattBurns: I’ve got to get this information to someone, And if it’s U3,
218 00:24:28.710 ⇒ 00:24:34.930 MattBurns: Then I think that’s gonna help with the marketing transition overall anyway, so…
219 00:24:35.540 ⇒ 00:24:36.090 Steven: Nope.
220 00:24:36.510 ⇒ 00:24:38.080 MattBurns: Yeah. Okay.
221 00:24:38.080 ⇒ 00:24:48.860 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and you can also let me know, like, you know, cadence of meeting. I mean, I think we’re meeting weekly, but Steven, I think even for this exercise, like, I’ll… I’ll come in, or I can come meet you.
222 00:24:49.080 ⇒ 00:24:53.090 Uttam Kumaran: At least for the first week, we should spend some time .
223 00:24:53.090 ⇒ 00:24:53.670 Steven: Yeah.
224 00:24:53.840 ⇒ 00:24:59.859 Uttam Kumaran: together mapping things out. Then there’s a couple folks, you know, I sort of highlighted a little bit about, like, who
225 00:24:59.950 ⇒ 00:25:14.889 Uttam Kumaran: on our team, we can leverage here, but we have a couple folks that, if I can give them the direction to run, then they will just, like, they’ll run and go get insights for us. But that’s what, kind of, I want to make sure to set… set them up with.
226 00:25:14.890 ⇒ 00:25:25.699 Steven: So when… I will be in Austin Monday, I don’t know, Matt, if you saw it, we’re doing that fuel vendor meeting, I was gonna come up there so we can chat about that, so I’ll be in Austin Monday, so I don’t know if we would have time to skip
227 00:25:25.880 ⇒ 00:25:35.850 Steven: you know, pull out 30 minutes to discuss this, because I guess, soon, when you’re talking month in, year-end, you’re talking, you want to get going… if we approve a December… beginning of December in…
228 00:25:35.990 ⇒ 00:25:37.830 Steven: Is that what you’re referring to, Utom?
229 00:25:37.830 ⇒ 00:25:43.520 Uttam Kumaran: I would do that. I mean, it’s tough, because the last… Two weeks can be tough.
230 00:25:43.520 ⇒ 00:25:44.759 Steven: Yeah, no.
231 00:25:45.200 ⇒ 00:25:50.560 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, it’s sort of up… it’s up to you guys. We can also just…
232 00:25:50.800 ⇒ 00:25:52.090 Uttam Kumaran: we can do…
233 00:25:52.410 ⇒ 00:25:58.930 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, we could do it 6 weeks, too, and just kind of go into mid-Jan, but I would like to start in December.
234 00:25:59.230 ⇒ 00:26:01.830 Uttam Kumaran: December 1st, and then…
235 00:26:02.090 ⇒ 00:26:08.369 Uttam Kumaran: we… if we start December 1st, basically, we’ll just hustle to try to get as much data in a place that we can analyze it.
236 00:26:08.470 ⇒ 00:26:13.719 Uttam Kumaran: And, our team will be off also, like, here in the end of the month, but…
237 00:26:14.120 ⇒ 00:26:17.559 Uttam Kumaran: Really, the first two weeks is just a lot of getting stuff together.
238 00:26:17.730 ⇒ 00:26:20.370 MattBurns: Okay, that probably makes sense, so maybe…
239 00:26:20.640 ⇒ 00:26:27.850 MattBurns: maybe Monday, Steven, we can… If… if…
240 00:26:27.980 ⇒ 00:26:33.070 MattBurns: Utam, do you have time Monday to maybe come over, and we could maybe get Bobby and Bo to…
241 00:26:33.990 ⇒ 00:26:39.720 MattBurns: And try and present it in person, is that what we’re talking about, Steven, you think?
242 00:26:40.010 ⇒ 00:26:50.139 Steven: Yeah, I was gonna say, I’ll be there, so we do it either… we can… if you’re not around new time, we could all meet virtually, then we have a chance to talk in person, or if you’re around, yeah, it’d be great to come on by, since you’re…
243 00:26:50.470 ⇒ 00:26:51.150 MattBurns: Yeah.
244 00:26:51.810 ⇒ 00:26:57.570 Uttam Kumaran: I can come by. I will be out of, like, meetings by… 11.
245 00:26:57.680 ⇒ 00:26:59.220 Uttam Kumaran: So, if there’s time.
246 00:26:59.660 ⇒ 00:27:02.509 MattBurns: Bobby’s actually pretty open Monday.
247 00:27:03.100 ⇒ 00:27:05.620 MattBurns: We, Mike, could do it at 1 o’clock.
248 00:27:06.230 ⇒ 00:27:08.469 MattBurns: Monday, if that would work for you.
249 00:27:08.470 ⇒ 00:27:13.490 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, if I can do 1 o’clock, and I’ll come a bit early and get my laptop set up and things, so…
250 00:27:13.830 ⇒ 00:27:15.500 MattBurns: Let me see if Bo is on…
251 00:27:15.500 ⇒ 00:27:25.179 Steven: We have a residential sales meeting, but we can… both… Mark Johnson can run that, or skip it if it’s a short week, so either that probably isn’t a big deal.
252 00:27:25.820 ⇒ 00:27:29.980 MattBurns: He’s got something that says Robbie 12 to 4, I don’t know what that means.
253 00:27:31.770 ⇒ 00:27:34.000 MattBurns: Maybe he can bring Robbie to the meeting, I don’t know.
254 00:27:34.740 ⇒ 00:27:42.120 MattBurns: Let’s set it at 1 o’clock, and then if Bo can’t be there, Bobby will be there, but, hopefully Bo can make some arrangements.
255 00:27:42.560 ⇒ 00:27:50.100 Steven: And then what is UTUM? So, I saw these hours, is this going to be billed on an hourly rate? Will there be an overall proposal? What… how will the kind of dollar.
256 00:27:50.100 ⇒ 00:27:55.069 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so we… we will… usually we do a fixed amount, so,
257 00:27:55.200 ⇒ 00:28:07.719 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I will go back to the team and get… get a dollar number. Again, part of this is, like, it does take raw hours to sort of go and find all these things, and then I can… I can also bring to the table
258 00:28:07.900 ⇒ 00:28:14.509 Uttam Kumaran: Like, okay, if we were to go after, like, a win-back campaign, like, how would we price that?
259 00:28:14.710 ⇒ 00:28:22.790 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, for me, again, like, if we come… if we end up at the end of the month, and we’re like, okay, there’s a couple small things we can do, but it’s not worth it, then it’s not worth it.
260 00:28:22.910 ⇒ 00:28:28.469 Uttam Kumaran: But I wanted to be like, okay, it’s, like, such a no-brainer that we’re sitting on
261 00:28:28.630 ⇒ 00:28:37.720 Uttam Kumaran: opportunity here by not doing these things, and so, that’s what… that’s what I want to leave the month with, is opportunities for found revenue.
262 00:28:37.950 ⇒ 00:28:44.019 Uttam Kumaran: So, we’ll come with a proposal on Monday,
263 00:28:44.260 ⇒ 00:28:56.240 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yeah, and again, like, we’re open to many different things, but usually for us, it’s just, if I can guarantee a fixed amount, then I can budget internally for folks. And we have a mix of
264 00:28:56.530 ⇒ 00:29:06.859 Uttam Kumaran: expertise on the team, so we have some people that are really good at funnel, we have some people that are more good about sales, like, Amber does a lot of sales and channel-based sales analysis, so…
265 00:29:06.970 ⇒ 00:29:11.319 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll kind of loop people in, depending on the types of problems that we find.
266 00:29:11.450 ⇒ 00:29:18.850 Uttam Kumaran: And then our priority is mainly just get as many burns at the wheel of, like, asking a question and answering it as possible.
267 00:29:18.970 ⇒ 00:29:22.410 Uttam Kumaran: So, I think for the month of December.
268 00:29:22.620 ⇒ 00:29:31.120 Uttam Kumaran: ideally, Steven, if we can even… if you’re end up in Austin every week, and we can… I can come down and even present, or we can chat, I can do that.
269 00:29:31.120 ⇒ 00:29:43.769 Steven: Yeah, December’s normally really one of the slower months for us, honestly, overall. I mean, it’s… like I said, we’re wrapping up holiday lights, going to the end of the year, so typically December’s… I don’t… I can’t think of any big things we have going on in December, so…
270 00:29:44.330 ⇒ 00:29:52.680 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, even just the first 2-3 weeks, if you end up in Austin, or if you want me to drive down, I’m happy to, and that way it’ll just help us speed up, so…
271 00:29:54.380 ⇒ 00:29:54.970 Steven: Yep.
272 00:29:55.310 ⇒ 00:29:57.869 MattBurns: Good, let’s go that route.
273 00:29:58.520 ⇒ 00:30:05.199 MattBurns: Steven, will you send out an invite, I guess? Might be since, or… From 1 o’clock Monday.
274 00:30:05.440 ⇒ 00:30:06.060 Steven: Yeah.
275 00:30:06.200 ⇒ 00:30:09.630 MattBurns: Is 70 minutes guru time, or an hour, you need an hour, what do you want?
276 00:30:09.630 ⇒ 00:30:11.800 Uttam Kumaran: I would do an hour, if we can.
277 00:30:12.000 ⇒ 00:30:14.490 MattBurns: Let’s do an hour on Monday at 1 o’clock. Okay.
278 00:30:14.920 ⇒ 00:30:20.760 Uttam Kumaran: And then… and then I was talking to Amber, I don’t know if… I know, we have our next meeting, but I don’t know if… if…
279 00:30:20.870 ⇒ 00:30:24.130 Uttam Kumaran: Both of y’all will be able to make it, or if we should skip this week.
280 00:30:25.740 ⇒ 00:30:27.699 MattBurns: I’ll log on, and we can…
281 00:30:28.000 ⇒ 00:30:28.430 Steven: Yeah.
282 00:30:28.430 ⇒ 00:30:33.989 MattBurns: See who’s ever… if it goes quick, that’s fine. Amber’s usually spot-on to keeping it to 30 minutes, so I’m good.
283 00:30:34.160 ⇒ 00:30:35.090 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.
284 00:30:35.090 ⇒ 00:30:35.550 MattBurns: Bye.
285 00:30:35.750 ⇒ 00:30:36.330 MattBurns: Thanks, Glad.
286 00:30:36.850 ⇒ 00:30:37.460 Amber Lin: Okay.
287 00:30:37.460 ⇒ 00:30:38.579 Steven: Thank you. Bye-bye.