How I Doubled My Close Rates with Design Proposals

Aaron Horner
Growing your business does not always mean hiring more employees. AJ Ballantine did this with his business when he grew it from 2 million to 10 million over the past five years. And not because he hired five times more people, but because he was able to shorten his sales cycle and also increase his closing rates by changing his.

Design process and his design proposals .This is actually part of the podcast series we did with AJ at the very beginning of this year. But as we’re going through and talking about improving your design process, we thought it would be fitting for more people to come back and hear this conversation we had with AJ So check this episode out and ask yourself, “do I need to be hiring more people, or do I need to be improving my processes?”

Logan Shinholser
AJ let’s go ahead and start off, man. Can you give us a bit of your background and then how cornerstone came to be?

AJ Ballantine
Yeah, absolutely. My background is both from a design and a build standpoint. So finding myself in the design build space, pretty natural. You know, how I grew up, my dad’s side of the family was all contractors. My mom’s side of the family was all artists. So when I began my journey, you know, young kid, I was always in my grandfather’s workshop working with tools. Then, of course, when I went to college, I went for architecture. I loved the design side and ultimately found myself hating being locked in a design studio for 40 hours a week. And so then I left and I went and looked for a job in a design build company here. Pretty local. They’re no longer in business. They actually retired several years back. But that’s where I really found my passion for design build.

AJ Ballantine
I love the ability to design a product, something that doesn’t exist yet and be able to see it clearly and catch the vision for that to my clients and walk them through that whole process. And of course, I loved the build side as well. I wanted to see that vision, that design come to life. And so the design build space has been, you know, just a. A soul satisfying endeavor for me. So ultimately, the entrepreneur side wanted to step into. What we saw was a common pain point in our industry was homeowners need a lot more assistance through the buying journey. You know, with remodeling, there were a lot of pains that we saw unanswered. With the last remodeling company I was a part of that. We felt like we would better suited to answer. So we launched a design build company.

AJ Ballantine
When I say we, I had a business partner at the time, just a colleague, and he and I wanted to start our own company. So back in 2011, we did just that cornerstone, remodeling. We became pretty well known pretty quickly through really good, just marketing tactics and so on, being the millennials that we are. And quickly got a foothold. We started winning awards from the best remodeler in Howard county, local place, to best in Baltimore. It’s more regional and of course winning some national awards too, along the way. But, yeah, so that’s my. That’s my journey. And I always said I feel like I’ve had a company since 2011, but a business since 2020, because I really never treated my company as a business. It was always a passion. There’s famous. I call him famous. He’s famous in my world.

AJ Ballantine
Doug Howard, he’s a good consultant in the space, has a consulting firm that focuses on the passion behind the business. Right. Or the business behind the passion. And that’s ultimately what I’ve been driving in my organization over the past four years, has really been how do we perfect the business that operates and continue to really knock the passion component of our business out of the park. And it’s been a dance, I’ll say, over the last couple years, really perfect a business model while you still keep that really high touch white glove experience for the clients and preserve that intact. Because I’ll tell you what, the design build space is not meant to scale a sales process very well just because of how lengthy and arduous it is.

AJ Ballantine
But, you know, we feel like we’re making a lot of strides in that department, which is, I guess, why I’m here today.

Logan Shinholser
So back to the beginning of this stuff. Like with Render, are you got. And just everybody knows this is software that AJ has created to help solve this problem. So it’s. It’s very cool that it’s not just a tech person coming in and creating something. It’s somebody that’s actually in the industry. I mean, this is how job Tread was created as well, which is very cool. But with Render, are you having clients scan their home and upload it, or is this in that first, though, when you do the in home consult, whoever’s going out to do the consultation, they’re the ones walking through and scanning everything.

AJ Ballantine
It’s an either or. So there have been some cases, you know, Render has the one and only invite to capture feature in the market. So if you wanted to get some extra intel back from a homeowner, you know, you can actually invite them to scan. So if they’ve got the right device Again, it’s all about device compatibility. But they have the right device. You can actually send them an invite and it’s. It walks them through. It’s so simple. They click a link in an email. So we’ll. We’ll just say, hey, you know, do you mind scanning your space so that we can see it? You’re going to get an email, and as soon as they get that, they click the button. An email, they just walk through. They scan their space with their phone.

AJ Ballantine
As soon as they put it down, I get an email back, says, hey, so and so, just completed the scan of their space and I have all of the data that I need. I have a floor plan. I’ve got elevations of all the walls, door placement, window placement. I can see furniture, sinks, windows, toilets, I mean, you name it, everything inside of the space. And then I also have the 3D model that comes back with it, which is pretty cool, right? So I can drop that right into the chief architect. So, Logan, you’re in North Carolina, right?

Logan Shinholser
Charlotte.

AJ Ballantine
Charlotte. So if you said, hey, on this call, can you show me how it works? What I would do is I would just send you a link and you would get it and you could literally, we could have this conversation and you could literally just touch button and you could just sit there and just scan your room. And then I could pull it up on this call in 10 seconds and show you what the floor plan of that space looks like. We could talk about options for renovating the space, you know, all on the call without having to terminate the call. So it’s. It’s pretty cool. So in some cases, we are doing that.

AJ Ballantine
It’s saved us, you know, round trips, you know, in the D.C. area can be, you know, gosh, you can go 15 miles and it takes you an hour and a half to get there. So in a lot of cases, if it’s further away or if we really want to do some more digging before we really spend the time to go out there, we’ll send them an invite and have them scan it so we can get a good chance to see it. But a lot of times what we’re doing is we’re just using our own. We outfitted our office with iPads, and they go and they scan it with the iPad, whether it’s the designer or the project developer, and they’ll pull up the floor plan in front of the client. The clients think it’s the coolest thing in the world.

AJ Ballantine
By the way, we’re very tech forward with Cornerstone. It’s one of Our differentiators, you know, we kind of want to change the industry that way. And so we’re on the forefront of being the, you know, we’re the only ones that walk in there with an iPad, you know, and when they see a scanning space, they’re always like, what are you doing? Like, hey, we’re measuring. They’ve never seen it before. So, of course, the perceived value of Cornerstone just went up. They’re like, whoa, these guys are cutting edge. They’re. They’re different. You know, it’s. It’s been really cool to see, you know, how Renderist kind of proved that perception of our business early on. And in ways that, you know, were nervous about it at first. Like the invite to capture feature.

AJ Ballantine
We were thinking, gosh, are they going to think that we’re just kind of stiff arming them, like culture? No, you’re not worth us coming out. It’s quite the opposite. They think it is the coolest thing ever that were able to access measurements from their space without having to come out to their home. I think it’s the neatest thing ever.

Logan Shinholser
Now with this, like, the wow factor is there. But I think one of the things that I’d like to talk a little bit about is like, the finesse associated with talking about these things, because it’s the same way that, you know, you go to Sandler or you learn some other sales process of, you know, how do you actually just understand, like a client’s budget, There’s a right way to do it. Then there’s the way of like, okay, aj, what’s your budget for this project? And a lot of times if you’re newer at sales, you know, if somebody teaches you how to bracket pricing, they’ll go, oh, I’m already doing that. I already asked for the budget. But the way that you ask is super important. So instead of what you’re talking about, the stiff arm side of going, hey, A.J.

Logan Shinholser
I’M going to send you over this link. I want you to go ahead and scan your room, send it back to me. Like, that could feel very transactional and more of a. I’m just, I’m kind of trying to disqualify you out because I don’t want to go out to the space. So how do you guys approach that conversation with prospects to make them feel the love, but also make sure that they understand that you’re just really trying to make sure you’re efficient with both parties.

AJ Ballantine
Times we talk about as if it’s just Part of the process of how you work cornerstone. You know, we kind of pride ourselves on being tech forward. So we’ll say, hey, you know, as a next step, what we’d like to do is we’re going to send you an invite, we’re going to ask you to scan the space. That way we get some extra intel prior to us coming out. You know, they don’t know it’s anything different. You know, we use it as a tactic, you know, to perhaps price qualify them or pre qualify them out the door if we get a sense that they’re not really our client. But to them it’s just business as usual, you know, hey, part of our process is this and that’s how we present it. And of course, we love the experience that they have.

AJ Ballantine
You know, in scanning can kind of change the, you know, the tide as well. You know, if they get this and they see that, whoa, they’re really tech forward, then we, you know, when we’re talking about the conversation, I’ll leave, I’ll give you an example here where while I’m sharing this. So we had one client that we kind of didn’t really know if they were going to go with us or not. We, she wanted a master bathroom done and we kind of like said her budget was 75,000. We’re like, okay, we still don’t know if she’s really the right customer for us, so we’re going to send her an invite.

AJ Ballantine
So we said, hey, look, as a part of this process, what we’re going to ask you to do is scan your space and that way we can take a look at it and kind of confirm these details. Prior was coming out. She just thought that’s how we operate. Well, the coolest thing was she actually scanned her space. The space came back and the master bathroom was like 400 square feet. It was, it was ridiculously large. Oh, crap. You know, we just told her $75,000 was a good budget, but now it’s not. So we were able to have another conversation with her about that budget and say, hey, look, based on the scan that we got back, your master bathroom is enormous. You would need probably twice that in your budget.

AJ Ballantine
And she said, you know, I’ve heard that, but I didn’t want to believe it. But, you know, since you guys have seen the space, you know, I’m starting to assume that’s what I’m going to spend ended up doing the bathroom for her. You know, it’s having a conversation About a budget is only, it only goes as far as how much the client’s willing to trust you. Right. So if they think that you’re pulling numbers out of thin air just to kind of sniff them out, they’re going to go to the next guy. But what were able to do is hook her with this invite to capture. Right. She actually scanned her space and now she knows that we have the floor plan. We’re not just pulling numbers out of thin air.

AJ Ballantine
We’re like literally looking at this and saying, hey, your bathroom’s probably going to cost you $150,000. She ended up going with us because were the first ones to get her that information with a, with knowing what the actual space looked like. And we didn’t even have to go out there to do it. So there’s a lot of the, the scary piece that I think the contractors have as far as if we start doing things more remote or we start doing things faster, we’re going to start losing the things that I know work well for my business, which are high touch, you know, relationship building in person, arduous processes. But I’m here to tell you, we’ve challenged all of them, or maybe not all, but we’re challenging them one by one and finding out that the opposite can be true.

AJ Ballantine
As long as you do it right.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, I know. When we first started at our house, were originally trying to get our basement redone and I filled a contact form for somebody and I got an email back and they, you know, let off with the subject line, had my last name in it, but they misspelled the last name. Which, you know, to me, I fill out the contact form like that should be just copy and paste. But the response back just said, hey, we can give you a quick budget, take some photos of the space, email it back with what you’re looking for, and we’ll snap over a quick budget. And I was just like, no. Like, this is like, I don’t know these people. I don’t know who this other person on the other end of the. Email is.

Logan Shinholser
If I’m going to take photos of my personal home, like, I don’t know where this is going. And maybe that’s a little bit, I don’t know, too conspiracy theorist esque. But I just didn’t know who they were. And the fact that they were saying, send some photos, tell me what you’re looking for. Like, and I can give you a ballpark. Like, to me, I’m like in the very least, this is a 20 minute phone call from you guys that like, we could just FaceTime if you want me to do that. Like, that’s at least I’m talking to somebody. But it just felt so transactional that I just said, hey, thanks, but we’re gonna go a different direction. Never heard back from them. And that was it.

Logan Shinholser
So it just felt very rushed because nobody, if they said, hey, look, I’m gonna call you, we’re gonna chat for a little bit. You know what next steps would be really helpful for us is send over some photos. I, I have a little bit about what you’re looking for and I can give you some ballpark pricing based off of what you’re saying here. That’s a very different scenario than just a cold email that comes right back saying, hey, send some photos what you want and we can tell you just to see if we’re in the same playing field.

Logan Shinholser
And I was just like, for this type of project, like, I want somebody that’s going, it’s not afraid to pick up the phone and call me and just say, hey, let’s talk about this stuff versus trying to just weed me out is really what it felt like.

AJ Ballantine
One of the things that we picked up in Sandler tropes, we did get our staff trained. You know, I think that’s one thing that I would suggest anybody who’s, who’s got a sales staff or even if you’re just an owner operator and you’re not, you’ve never been formally trained with sales. There are a lot of benefits to getting some formal sales strength. So we actually did this with Sandler and one of the things that we picked up were pattern interrupters. You know, it’s something that, it’s just a simple phone call. You know, phone calls are not pattern interrupters. Before, were never calling because everybody was calling, right? And everybody hated it. Everybody hated getting those telemarketers calling their home right around dinner time. Now everybody’s going to text and chat.

AJ Ballantine
And despite the fact that we do those things, we have messenger, you know, capabilities through our construction management software. We realized the phone call was really important. You know, when we were trying to deliver a first pass proposal, we have a couple of questions. We pick up the phone and call them. Nine times out of 10, they pick up because nobody’s really used to picking up the phone anymore. So when they see a local phone number calling them, they’re apt to pick it up because, okay, well, this is Different. I should probably answer this. What if my doctor, what if my kid’s school calling, and they end up picking up the phone? It’s easy to get answer and they actually appreciate it, you know, so the phone call is not. It’s not a dead art, you know, it’s. It’s actually alive.

AJ Ballantine
And it’s the pattern interrupter that I think is the key to a lot of people’s success. And they’re just, pick up the phone. Our designers were always like, I’ll send them an email. It’s like, pick up the phone. Like, oh, have they looked at the proposal yet? Now I’ll send them an email. Like, call them, make sure. Come on, touch base. I think the phone call is really important for that.

Logan Shinholser
And one of the things that you guys do at the end is you. You talked about setting out, like, just that first pass proposal in Canva in your first pass proposal. Or is this, I’m guessing you’re not cornering yourself into this is your final price, because then you have a whole second part of your design Ph. Is this just like a range that you’re giving them based off of your findings?

AJ Ballantine
No, it’s. It’s a proposal. It’s. It’s pretty fleshed out. There are. Obviously, there’s some wiggle room in there, right? Because there are things that we’re not doing. We’re not selecting cabinets. And cabinets are a huge piece of a kitchen proposal. So we have allowances built in based on that MoSCoW report, Right? So if we know that they’d like to have inset cabinets, we’ll give them allowance for inset cabinets. And one of the notes that we’ll put in is like, hey, look, this allowance is $55,000 for your cabinets. If you went with regular overlay, you know, full overlay cabinets, your Allowance would be 35. Let them do the math. Right? But they know, within reason, plus or minus 10% with that first pass proposal, if they stuck within those allowances, that’s exactly what they’re going to spend on that project. Right.

AJ Ballantine
There are some things that we note that we have not yet discovered. Right. We’ll note things, you know, like, we need to confirm what’s in this wall. We need to confirm, you know, price on installing gas for these appliances or, you know, whether or not you’re gonna need a meter upgrade. And we’ll leave notes in there like that. But for the most part, we do tell clients that you’re going to be within, you know, plus or minus 10%, because we are hella good at pricing projects. And now that we’re, you know, pretty refined on what the scope of the project is going to be, we know the risks, you know, like, hey, we’re going to have to look at this wall to confirm this. But if this is true, you’re going to spend this much.

AJ Ballantine
You know, part of that second phase is diving deeper into that. You know, we’ll do the scopes and we’ll, you know, cut holes and so on. But our clients know that it’s a lot about expectations up front. If this pans out, this is how much you’re going to spend. And for them, that initial estimate is what they cling to. So our goal is to make sure that initial estimate goes out and it is almost all the time beat when they start making selections, their allowances are coming in under that amount. Because we found out that if customers are happy with how they’re doing on the budget, they’re willing to spend more.

AJ Ballantine
Not only up to that initial budget, but they’re, you know, they save $5,000 on cabinets, they’re willing to spend $10,000 on a fireplace, you know, so we go in pretty strong on that initial proposal and we tell them like, hey, you know, we show them. We, we haven’t talked about it much, but we have a journey book that we show our clients. And that comfort zone usually, you know, has a range of like, lower and higher end. And we show clients in that journey book all the customers that have come before you have also given us comfort zone budgets. And we’ve had a target range here. And this is where they ended up coming in. And you see throughout that journey book, that arrow, it’s almost like a compass or like a speedometer. It depends.

AJ Ballantine
Like, some customers ended up spending more, some ended up spending less. But generally speaking, most of our clients ended up spending exactly what they said that they wanted to spend. And it’s because were able to deliver a really good option for them, you know, with a really good, healthy expectation on the budget range, too.

Logan Shinholser
So when you’re sending over this first pass proposal, are you putting in essentially like the high end, every, like high end potential materials, finishes, stuff like that, and then saying, but, okay, so I guess, are you just doing it based off of their, based on the MoSCoW.

AJ Ballantine
Okay, yeah. What things are really important to you? You know, and we’re asking, you know, we’re not really getting into the, you know, the nitty gritty on, you know, what kind of faucets do you want in these places? But we do find out what’s important to them. You know, do you want to have, you know, are you really like keen on like spending, you know, you can spend a hundred thousand dollars on fixtures in the bathroom. Right. But all right, and most of our customers are out front and they’ll say, hey, look, we’re not willing, you know, we’re not going to build a grade here, but we also don’t really need the high end luxury things. So. Okay, great, we know exactly where we’re going to put you then. We’re going to probably outfit you with all Kohler Delta fixtures.

AJ Ballantine
And you know, at that point they’re allowances, but they’re all, you know, it’s. So you got fifteen hundred dollars for shower, your shower fixtures, you know, whether it’s the three way and the handheld and so on. We’re not putting eight grand in. Right. So we know within reason about what they’re going to spend in all these different selections. The hardest ones to nail down are the, unfortunately the bigger ones, the cabinets, countertops, you know, a tile for a bathroom, you know, you want to go all high end, you know, natural marble. Are you looking to keep it a little bit more? But the MoSCoW Report really does tell us what they’re interested in doing. You know, if real marble ends up on that MoSCoW Report as a muster should have, that’s what gets priced.

AJ Ballantine
But if it’s not, then we price it with regular stuff based on their budget. If real marble tile is low end on their priority and they have $150,000 to spend on their master bathroom, and we’re coming at like 110, guess what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna throw that marble tile up there. You know, we’re gonna say, hey look, were able to get some of your could haves, like that marble tile that you said that you might like. This proposal includes those things too. So the MoSCoW Report really does come in handy for picking and choosing how we put that proposal together.

Logan Shinholser
And then on this, like when you’re sending this proposal over, I mean the natural thing I would think would be, well, this is just a first pass. I’m just gonna send over just a PDF with some numbers. You slap our logo at the top and that’s what they’re gonna, you know, accept or have questions around. But the fact that you are, I mean you’re using Canva, which is a design software you’re making this thing, I presume the reason that you’re using Canva, aesthetically, very pleasing. Why? I mean, like, walk me through that side of things for. Because it’s very easy in my mind to say, well, the marketing has to look great, but once we get to the nitty gritty of the contracts, like, that’s more legal stuff, so we don’t need to focus on the aesthetics of it.

Logan Shinholser
Why are you guys putting the emphasis on the aesthetics for these contracts?

AJ Ballantine
Well, it all comes back to empathy mapping exercise. You know, we have clients that, you know, they didn’t want to feel left out and they want to be in the dark. They wanted to create these interpersonal relationships with the people that they want to work with. They want to know what steps are next there. And of course, with us, it was about the perceived value, right? So again, if they’re spending $2,000 to get an estimate from us, we don’t want them to think that they spent $2,000 and all they got was a spreadsheet and a pretty, you know, JPEG of a kitchen that’s not theirs, right? No, no. We wanted to make sure, like, we needed almost like a statement that, hey, you paid for this, and basically set down this big, you know, deliverable in front of them.

AJ Ballantine
So for us to compile this, you know, we used to send emails with attachments, you know, or have them by the office and then show them all these things individually. It was. It wasn’t cohesive. Right. So for us to deliver the amount of value that we promised them early on, if you pay us 1%, you’re going to get something that’s going to knock your socks off. And for us to deliver that, this is why it was really important for us to make it aesthetically pleasing. I could show you this too. So that you’re not watching my screen of me trying to figure out where this is. I’m going to go ahead and pull this up so you can see it. That was the first one. That was the first one that I pulled up here. We. Goodness gracious, hold one second. And.

Logan Shinholser
And one thing is, he’s trying to pull it up. Guys that I want to, like, call out is the fact that he talked about the perceived value versus value.

AJ Ballantine
The.

Logan Shinholser
I think a lot of this is, you know, you guys go out, you do your measurements, you figure out what stuff costs. You take all this time behind the scenes to put together this PDF doc. But I don’t, as the consumer, as the homeowner, I don’t see all that stuff. All I see is, oh, man, they charged me $2,000 just to price my job out. And it’s. Yeah, it just.

AJ Ballantine
It.

Logan Shinholser
It feels slimy. Like they just wanted to somehow weave $2,000 back into it versus, like, well, actually, if you’re going to put all this work into it, you might as well get credit for putting all that work into it.

AJ Ballantine
Yeah. So it takes, you know, it takes you $2,000 worth of effort to put together an estimate. I’ll tell you that every contractor listening to this, the estimates are probably the most, I think, the most excruciating piece of this puzzle. Like, all the details that need to go into an estimate to protect me. Right. I’m trying to make sure I’m not underselling my stuff. It takes a lot of time, and it takes a lot of experience. You know, I can get faster at it the more I’ve been in the business. But, gosh, that’s worth a lot of money. But clients see it. They’re getting a spreadsheet or this estimate from whatever, and it’s not worth it. So we, like you said, we go out and make it look like a million bucks. So we developed these first pass proposals in Canva.

AJ Ballantine
We just took a template and kind of changed it and morphed it into something that we felt like we wanted to deliver. All of these pieces are. You kind of. See, they’re all placeholders. So one of the things that we took from empathy mapping was that, again, we wanted to make sure that the clients felt like this was an interpersonal journey. So each designer has their own template with their own avatar. And instead of writing in the email, hey, this is what we did. We focused on, you know, we got you that big island, and we. We really wanted to make sure that the kitchen looked like this. So here’s what. Here. Here’s a couple things that we focused on.

AJ Ballantine
Well, now that ends up in the proposal as a quote from the designer that they met on that initial discovery call, and then, of course, in person as well. So now that designer’s familiar face, I could see it in this proposal. And now it’s personal. It’s personalized. This image back here, these are literally like, we can take. You know, we could take any image. Forgive me, I don’t have any. Like, let’s see, we can just drop an image. You kind of see that it changes the background based on. Let me get rid of this. Changes the background based on the image. So we’ll. We’ll throw in a. We’ll Throw in an image of a kitchen or maybe the 3D design, but it changes it automatically. We drop in the floor plan, we give them a 3D overview. You know, these are.

AJ Ballantine
We’ve stripped these back. They’re not showing tile layouts anymore, but. And then we include the estimate in here. We export a PDF from jobtread, which is the software that we use. We drop it right in. And one of the last pages in here is this guy. So back to the empathy mapping. Clients didn’t want to feel like they were left in the dark and they wanted to know what was going to be next. So we’re kind of leading them in this journey, right? So we put a timeline in here that basically shows them where they are in the process. With our firm, they already did a discovery call and now they’ve got this first pass, like, what’s next? Design and selections. So this did two things for us. One was it helped them remember where they were in the process with us.

AJ Ballantine
And two, it helps drive home again this whole feeling that they are much further with us than they are with anyone else. Right? So they’re already halfway through the process with us. You know, we know how long this design and selection phase is going to take. 4 to 6 weeks or whatever, 812 weeks in some cases with additions. Doesn’t matter. They’re already more than halfway through this process with us. Look how easy this is. You know, I’m already three steps in. Why not continue with Cornerstone? So that was huge. Again, every impression we leave the client is, you’re already done with so much. Why not just continue? And two, perceived value. They’re getting this first pass proposal in seven days from our firm with this timeline. They are already halfway through the process with us.

AJ Ballantine
So in seven days, they met us, they signed a design agreement, and we’re delivering this. So we have all these touch points. They’re getting all of this value in seven days. Well, what about. What about the competitors? What about the other guys? They’re doing the same things as us. You know, they’re visiting their home, they’re going to put together some designs, they’re going to put together an estimate. It’s going to take them four weeks to do it. And also. We’Re, you know, if we’re doing it in seven, like, what does that tell the client about our capabilities for a project like this? You know, in seven days were able to deliver them what it’s taken four weeks or five weeks or six weeks from somebody else.

AJ Ballantine
Now we’re planting the seeds of Doubt in their minds that another contractor that’s coming alongside giving them another bid, they’re starting to doubt their ability to pull this project off just because were able to deliver everything so much faster. So. Well, all of this.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, I mean, like, in nine days. I mean, I would imagine by the time you guys are getting all this stuff sent over, that’s when the estimator for the other company is, like, probably finally getting out there because they’re not as dialed in on their process. So they’ve already got money spent with you, a ballpark range understanding of what this could all look like in their hands. And they’re still just trying to, like, get that other estimator or remodeling company owner out there just to give them, like, that first pass. I mean, like, this is. That’s got to be hard to compete with you guys at this point if you’re already in.

AJ Ballantine
Hey, it is.

Logan Shinholser
You’re close. I mean, that’s crazy.

AJ Ballantine
If you think about the standard design build process, it follows this. You sign a design agreement, then you go out and measure, you know, and that again, like I was telling you, it took about a week and a half. So there’s your nine days. So in nine days, instead of getting, you know, somebody out to measure the house, we’re actually delivering this guy. Whoops. We’re delivering this first pass proposal. So we’re again, so much further on. Why not just. And we have had clients that end up signing up with our firm out of. Not. It’s not the only reason why they signed with us, but what we hear is, like, I’m done waiting. Like, I’ve been waiting for this other company to give me an estimate. And, like, I’m not gonna wait anymore. I’d rather just proceed with your firm.

AJ Ballantine
You know, they might have come in $20,000 cheaper than us. And some of these competitors, we know them, they do good work. You know, they’ve got solid production processes, and. And they pull off really big projects, and they have a great reputation in the area. But we’re getting the project because they took too long in the sales process. So not only am I increasing my closing percentage, but I’m also shortening my sales cycle, and we can dive into the metrics on that afterwards. But again, you know, when we talk about. We talk about boutique design builds, all this, the details that go into it, and one of the things that clients always wanted to feel is that we.

AJ Ballantine
We heard them, were listening to them, and they felt like their needs were being met right so as we’re prioritizing their stuff in a MoSCoW report, and then we’re delivering, you know, based on their comfort zone budget, a reasonably priced project that is, you know, knocking out more of the core things. We also wanted to let them know that we’re also listening on the design side. So we built this, you know, mood board, right. It’s just three images. These are also placeholders. And what the designer does in that initial call is they try to ask a couple questions about, like, their style. You know, we just want to know a little bit more about you and how you live your life. And we always hear what colors they’re interested in. Modern versus traditional. I don’t want anything, you know, too crazy.

AJ Ballantine
I love blue cabinets. I love, you know, wood islands. Well, what we’ll do is we’ll take some photos from that and we’ll just drop in some, you know, inspiration. Usually they’re from previous projects that we photographed, so they’re all of our projects. So we drop them in. It’s just like kind of an inspiration panel. Well, these paint colors here pull from colors that exist in these images. So again, you talk about what looks like a carefully crafted and curated inspiration board. Mood board. This is drag and drop, three images. Change these paint colors, send it away. Takes five minutes, bless them. Maybe three minutes just to pull the photos in. Again, it looks like, you know, if you got this, Logan, how takes a minute to load here.

AJ Ballantine
If you got this, wouldn’t you assume that we spent the better part of that week that you were waiting for only working on your project?

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, I mean, to me, this is such.

AJ Ballantine
Or.

Logan Shinholser
And even if I didn’t go, well, they probably spent all week I would go. This company has their stuff together to the point that they know what I’m looking for. This looks good. I mean, like, there’s a lot of just, I don’t know, like, feeling stuff of like, wow, like this is professional and like, this is what I’m looking for. And it goes completely against the grain of what the typical quote unquote contractor is, which is more of like the rough and rugged. You know, we’re going to pop out of our beat up truck and flick the cigarette butt out. And that’s who you’re getting to come in. I mean, like, I know when we got our bathroom done, like we.

Logan Shinholser
This was like the knowing the style piece was super important for my wife because she had all of her Pinterest boards already done. We had already had in other rooms in the house, like, you know, wallpaper put up and, like, you know, if you walked into our living room, looked like the West Elm. Floor. Like it was. Yeah. I mean, like, that’s how that’s. That’s what my wife’s style is. So to then come in, like, our designer who ended up, you know, we ended up moving forward with the project, like, she also looked like she was a designer and she truly understood fashion and trends and stuff like that. So, like, elements like this where it just shows. We hear you.

Logan Shinholser
Like, I think of all the stuff that you showed of this proposal, I think my favorite part is the quote from the actual designer with the photo. Like, that takes it from. This is a template and a stock thing we sent out to everybody, and all we did was swap out page five. You know, from job tread to we actually customize this thing for you. Like, that is so well thought out, and it’s so simple that it’s really just whatever quote you want with a photo of the designer. But it. All the trust and rapport I imagine, that they built up with that designer now immediately gets transferred into this document because the first thing they see is the person that they built that trust and rapport with. So I think this is, like, genius.

AJ Ballantine
Yeah. And. And really what it shows, like, part of the empathy mapping again, was, you know, if we’re saying that we are going to hand hold them through and they get dedicated support, dedicated team members like we are, we’re going to be your friends. We’re going to walk this entire journey with you. We’re here every step of the way. This did make it seem as if we put one person, this Anna Marie, one of our designers, it looks like we put her on, and she was working on this and only this and for you. So what I did here, as I did all of these things, I built this beautiful thing. I spent so much time putting all of this together for you. Right. That. That infusion is clutch for us.

AJ Ballantine
We’ve seen, like I said, we’ve seen our closing percentage go up because they feel like, okay, well, Cornerstone is not only delivering things faster and more efficiently, but they’re also listening to us and they’re crafting a plan that really works well for us. And look how much they listen, look at what they’ve done. Look at how much they’re doing for us. Perceived value. You know, for 2,000 bucks, this is worth 2,000 bucks. Yet if we go back and look at my, you know, my sales process here, we have six to 10 hours to get to that first pass proposal.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, I Mean, that’s, I remember we did this with my dad’s old company, Premier Ponds, where essentially the, in the pond world, especially in the D.C. area where I’m from, I mean, it’s so many people moving in and out because with every, you know, new the government there, like they change every two years, essentially, people funneling and out. And the number one reason why somebody really reaches out to get started with a pond company is they move it into a house, they have a pond that’s existing and they have no idea what to do with it. And they would call him and he would go, look, you know, you got to get it cleaned.

Logan Shinholser
But we also do a whole pond inspection where what we’re going to do is we’re going to drain it, we’re going to inspect everything, then we’re going to clean it, fill it back up and then we’re going to educate you around the whole health of the pond, what you need to do to keep it going. Because essentially this is a leaving, living, breathing ecosystem. And instead of just a walkthrough, we created like a whole checklist for them to at least walk through this with them. Of like the same thing that you get when you get your oil change of like that multi point inspection of, I know you got your oil change, but we also tested everything on the car and instead of just telling you what’s wrong, they actually show you.

Logan Shinholser
We went through all these things and it’s all the same stuff that they were already doing, but now that it was like written down in a nice doc that they hand over and go, these are the things, essentially what they were doing is they were really just creating a new scope of work for themselves anyway. So the physical nature of having something in somebody’s hands like takes it from just, you know, potential. Like, okay, you’re just selling me something over to like, oh, you actually did a full inspection on my pond. This looks great. And now they have something to go back and show their spouse of. Hey, we’re at a 4 out of 10. These are the things that we can do to get it to a 7.

Logan Shinholser
And if we really want to get it to a 10, these are the other things. But I mean, it was very helpful. But it also made the crew who was out there doing it feel less like they’re just out there to sell something and more like, hey, your job is to go out there, do your normal stuff, check all the boxes and just hand it to them and answer questions based on what they got. So it’s not A sales thing. But naturally it’s going to bridge, build that gap from a sales perspective. And more people are going to go, well, tell me more about this filter system that you’re talking about. That’s going to take me from a four to a six and then that’s when the conversations would start.

Logan Shinholser
So it made it that perceived value went way up because they actually got something tangible in their hands, which was very cool.

AJ Ballantine
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
So, so we get through the initial stage, they sign off, they go, AJ, this is great. We see you guys put a lot of time and effort into it. What happens after that? So they’re leading. I see you have it in the doc that says next steps are this. What are next steps from there.

AJ Ballantine
So after that first pass proposal gets delivered, they pay the full retainer. So like I said, It’s 5% of the target price of the project. You know, that’s our second gatekeeping mechanism. Right. So at that point, if they are willing to pay this, they’re 100% sold. We know we’ve never lost a job. Well, we’ve lost two after this, but they were extenuating several percent. One had a death in the family or. No, sorry, one was the death of family 1. One of our customers ended up passing away and then another one was a divorce. So those are the only two that we lost. So we don’t really count those. We end up with 100% closing rate after this. So now we know we can get everybody else involved because these are sold projects at this point. We go through real fast.

Logan Shinholser
What is your conversion percentage from doing this initial. First pass to the full design agreement?

AJ Ballantine
44% is our closing percentage on design agreements. Used to be 33. Now we’re at 44% and then 76% and climbing. 76% is a couple months old. And we actually had a huge sales month in. We were actually setting records. September was a huge sales month. We sold a million dollars. October was another sales month that crushed September. And it looks like November is going to put October to shame. So we’re seeing the closing percentages go up and all the way back to the early. If you’re still with us after listening to this whole podcast, if you remember, my desire for growth was limited by the ability of my sales teams output. Right. So to grow, I was, you know, was afraid that I was going to have to like double my sales team.

AJ Ballantine
We still have the same sales team that was selling 3 million and they are now selling at a pace of $10 million a year. So it just goes to show you what optimizing your processes can look like. But at the time that I pulled the numbers, which was after the end of the third quarter, so early October, looking back, we had a 76% closing rate at this particular juncture. So if you think about it, we have six to ten hours of time invested in projects to get them from a 44% to a 100% rate. Right. So just that little bit, we’re only spending. We’re only spending the six to ten hours on, you say, half of the jobs that end up getting past this point. Right.

AJ Ballantine
And then out of all of Those, we’re spending six to 10 hours to get them to a hundred percent. So the limited amount of time that we’re spending with these clients has preserved my sales team’s ability again, to. Up the output. Right. So of. Of the solo jobs that we’re able to do, but at the same rate, we’re shrinking our sales cycle down so that not only can they do more, but they’re doing more faster. So instead of selling, you know, five jobs over 10 weeks, I’m now selling 10 jobs in five weeks. Those aren’t real numbers. I’m just saying, like, we’re selling twice the amount of work twice as fast. So, oh, my gosh, it’s. It’s been incredible to watch.

Logan Shinholser
So with that, the 24% of people that do not move forward after that first pass. Is it a budget thing is typically why they say no, or are there other reasons?

AJ Ballantine
I think most of it is a budget thing. It’s either, you know, they came for an estimate, right? And they ended up paying the money to get the estimate, but ultimately they end up comparing the estimate with some other ones. So I think a lot of these people are more driven by the actual numbers because I feel like we’ve delivered so much value, and if they’re not willing to move forward from there, then they were never going to move forward ever. You know, they’re. They were looking for a cheaper estimate. And, you know, fortunately for us, they were willing to pay $2,000 to get ours. Where usually the ones that they’re going with, they got for free. So we’re still winning. But I would say most of them are going to be based on the numbers.

Logan Shinholser
Okay.

AJ Ballantine
And not because. Not because we gave them an estimate that was too high. It was just that our estimate was higher than the other ones that they received. Cool.

Logan Shinholser
Okay, perfect. So moving on, we get into that next phase. What happens Then somebody, you know, at this point, you kind of know they’re gonna end up moving forward the project. So I’d imagine this is because up until this point, especially if you’re not doing your process this way, I’m sure the whole time that you’re going through a design, you’re thinking in the back of your mind, gosh, I hope they move forward because I put so much energy and effort into this thing that I’m going to be frustrated that even a ten thousand dollar design they said yes to. I’m breaking even on this thing because it’s taking me that long. So at this point they say yes, they paid the other 4%. You kind of know that you got them moving forward into construction.

Logan Shinholser
Although it’s not a guarantee, it sounds like, what are you guys doing in the next phase to get everything kind of dialed in.

AJ Ballantine
So again we’re running about 100 closing rate at this juncture. So we’re treating this as if it’s a project that’s just in pre construction. You know, that’s one of our phases of our cycle. So we end up getting more people involved. You know, we do this design revision stage here. We really want to solidify the scope and the design that we’re actually going for. Part of this means that we will do a secondary home visit and this is where we take more formal measurements. We’ll cut holes, you know, make sure like, hey, we said were going to take this wall out, we’re going to go make sure that there’s nothing surprising us in here. Our team knew enough well early on to say, look, there shouldn’t be anything in this wall.

AJ Ballantine
But you know as well as I do that the previous homeowner probably put something in that wall that is backwards. So we’ll do that secondary visit. This is another thing about using render. Early on in the process, we always thought our initial concepts, we needed to measure that eighth of an inch because we needed to be so spot on. But when we started to do the low fidelity designs up front, it gave. There was some forgiveness in what were delivering. You know, weren’t saying that they were going to get a trash can on the left or the right of the sink, right? We need to make sure that the sink placement is going to be exact because a half an inch, a quarter of an inch can make or break that decision. Right?

AJ Ballantine
So because weren’t doing that earlier on, we had some more forgiveness. And if you think about it, if you’re pricing Up a kitchen and giving them an ALLOWANCE, you know, $35,000 for, you know, for a kitchen cabinet, for kitchen cabinets, and you’re off in that kitchen design by 3 inches. That’s a filler. It’s not gonna, it’s not gonna send that into some downward spiral of now you have to go all custom and spend 60,000 it could if you promised them a layout that now you can’t do unless you went full custom. Right. So what we got away from that. Now what we do is we do a formal measure. After they end up paying this full retainer. We know they’re moving forward now. It’s worth sending our architectural designer out there. But guess what he’s now not doing. He’s not measuring the entire house.

AJ Ballantine
I mean, in some cases he might, but in most cases we’ve whittled the scope of work down to a very fine tuned area. So we can say, hey, you now no longer have to measure the basement in the center second floor. Just stick to the first floor. And we’re not even touching that front office space. Don’t even, you don’t even have to go in there. Now his time when he goes back out is spent with a full layout and chief architect just confirming placements of walls and doors and things, locking things in so that our designers know as the next step is you picking kitchen cabinets out. Now I know my measurements are set. That’s when they’re doing the kitchen design with the client.

AJ Ballantine
That’s one where they’re saying trash can go on the left or the right of the sink based on how much space we have here. So we’re doing this design revisions piece here, more to confirm scope and confirm measurements. And of course the designer has their own track that they stick to. Up here it’s primary selections, the big ones, and then we have the cosmetic selections. And then down here we do structural development. And this is where our field team is getting a little bit more involved. Production manager is involved at this point. Project managers start being introduced to the jobs. Once they reach this phase, we get ahead of planning, you know, getting things to the county, getting subcontractor bid requests in, and really, you know, getting that estimate that the client’s going to get for this contract down to.

AJ Ballantine
There are, well, it’s what we call a no surprises contract pricing. We’re actually giving them something that’s coined no surprises because any surprises that could come up are in the general provisions as normal. Like, look, there may be some things that aren’t Supposed to be there that are there, like mold, you know, if it’s behind the walls, you know, there’s no way for us to know that this, at this point. But everything else, we’re not going to hit you with a, oh, hey, we didn’t know this wall was load bearing or, hey, we didn’t realize the plumbing was going to be so expensive because, you know, you have, you know, outdated plumbing that we need to get rid of or, you know, not the tube wiring. We know all those things at this point.

AJ Ballantine
So we’re telling the client, you can have confidence that this is what you’re going to spend unless you decide to either one, increase your scope, or two, your house is haunted, you know, whatever it is. So that’s. That’s the whole process at this point.

Logan Shinholser
So are you taking them for, like, the selections to a showroom and walking everything? Are you bringing things to them in their home? So you’re reducing the amount of, you know, options they have? I guess. What does that look like in your world?

AJ Ballantine
Yeah, for the primary selections that come to our showroom, so we have one at Cornerstone. It’s. It’s a smaller showroom, but we have all of our cabinets and countertops there. We’ll even do some collections on some tile sometime, but we’ll borrow some showrooms from partners in the space. So we do have a tile showroom, another small business that we work very closely with. And we also have a flooring showroom as well. But for the most part, that initial selection phase is done in our office. And because we know a little bit more about what they’re after, what they’re looking for, we’ll do some shopping for them, right? We’ll go to the flooring showroom, pick up a couple samples, and have them at the office. Because, again, the option overload in that empathy mapping comes back to bite you.

AJ Ballantine
And you take a customer to a showroom, a flow, the flooring showroom, it’s like one selection they have to make, but they have 6,000 options. It’s daunting, right? So our designers know what they’re looking for and can say, hey, look, I went shopping for you. Here are three samples, and I got this one extra one just in case you’re interested. I know you don’t want, you know, cherry, but look at the color that it brings out on this countertop, whatever. And at that point, the customer knows that we’re, again, we’re here for them. We’re helping take to de. Stress the entire operation. You know, the. When it comes to, like, all the other miscellaneous selection. We’re talking, like, hardware, cabinet hardware fixtures, plumbing fixtures, and light fixtures. What our designers are doing is compiling mood boards.

AJ Ballantine
So now that we know the cabins, the tile, and the countertop, we can start, you know, kind of dotting the eyes on some of these things. You know, we know that they want brass fixtures, so we’ll start and we’ll know their style too. They mid century modern. So our designers will actually curate a mood board and say, hey, look, I picked these out. What do you think of these? Are there anything. Is there anything on this board that you would want to swap out or see other options for? And inevitably, most of the board is, like, accepted right away. Oh, my gosh, this looks beautiful. Could we look at more pendant options for the kitchen island? Sure. Guess what my designers are doing? They’re shopping for one selection for them, giving them three more options on the pendants.

AJ Ballantine
And so instead of, all right, now let’s spend three hours looking at kitchen hardware. Now let’s take three hours looking at kitchen faucets. No, the whole option overload thing that we discovered in the sympathy mapping is kind of dictating how we’re presenting these particular options to clients. We’ll lead with them. Right. So if you want to see all new options for every single one of these things, that’s exactly what we’ll do with you. Right? You want to see every option available for plumbing, you know, fixtures and hardware. But for the most. For the most part, most homeowners or they’re working individuals, they don’t have time for that. They’re just like, I want something beautiful, and I want to know my designer has my back. So that’s exactly what we do.

Logan Shinholser
And that was a big thing for us. Like when I brought up earlier about, like, our. The designer came in, she looks stylish, trendy. We never went to a showroom, I mean, at all. We. She brought everything to us, showed us options. You know, we would just image. She’d be like, hey, I’m coming back out Saturday to present the final drawings, but here’s, like, a sneak preview. And we would go, hey, this looks great, but, like, could we see that in Shiplap instead? And then within, like, 48 hours, she was sent over. So by the time that she, like, showed up to our house on, like, a Saturday, she actually had, like, the. The tray with, like, the actual materials. We essentially just approved everything right there on the spot. But she was the one driving everything. And it was really.

Logan Shinholser
It first started with you know, her, just how she presented herself, where, you know, if I rolled up trying to sell, because my wife was the one picking everything. If I try to do that. I mean, I would not say I’m a super fashionable guy, but I’d also say I’m not an unfashionable person. Like, I care about my appearance. I would not have been able to, like, convince my wife, if she was a prospect, that, hey, I know this design stuff. But Miranda did. So that was huge. And then, as a result, essentially, whatever she brought up, I mean, my wife was, like. It was such a collaboration. I was, like, watching it from afar because I was, from a business perspective, super interested into seeing how it all was going down without me, like, jumping in and, like, involving myself in it.

Logan Shinholser
But it was cool to see, like, Miranda, like, saw the home, understood Audrey’s vibe, what she was going for. Okay, West Elm showroom. But this room’s got a lot of wallpaper, so you want things that maybe stand out, but not stand out too much. So, like, our. Our, you know, bathroom addition upstairs, we have wallpaper, but we also. It looks like West Elm came in and, like, threw up all over the actual bathroom itself.

AJ Ballantine
So, you know, we had a designer that listened and. And met you guys where you were and. And said, hey, look, this is your. Obviously your style, so let’s. Let’s grow that, you know, and that’s what.

Logan Shinholser
Oh, it was so much nicer versus. Because if they said. Because my. My wife is very much like, where do you want to go eat? I’m like, well, let’s go to this restaurant. She’s like, well, let me look online and get, like, a top 12 list. And I’m like, just at that point, we’ll go back to Chipotle, because I don’t want to deal with all these selections. Yeah, we would have been stuck in selection purgatory if she had not brought everything in. So that was super big for us of just reducing the amount. But we didn’t have to go through cabinets or anything, which I know that’s a big component of what gets people stuck, especially in kitchens. It was just a. A more simple bathroom.

Logan Shinholser
But, I mean, that was huge for us as far as we didn’t want to make the wrong decision and say, oh, these colors go well when in reality, they clash. And we’re going to figure that out once it’s all installed. But also, we just don’t. If you said, hey, I need you to meet me at this showroom. And by the way, I Don’t work weekends. I work nine to five during the week. This project would have never happened.

AJ Ballantine
Yeah, yeah, it sucks.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, yeah.

AJ Ballantine
So I think, you know, optimizing your sales process. So I’ll kind of just show you this. This is actually something I worked on with my team. I’ll go back one. So our primary objective was scaling Cornerstone’s boutique White Glove experience. How do we do that? And so we start to look at our pain points, which are all here. And I kind of addressed most of these on this call. You know, customers want to explore too many options up front. Extracting a real budget can be tricky. Speeding up the sales process risks quality and creativity that sets us apart. How do we charge enough upfront and balance that with providing enough value to sell it? Maintaining emotional engagement in the speeding environment has challenges. We talked about that. Increasing efficiency can present. Oh, gosh, Employee disengagement.

AJ Ballantine
Our employees, as much as our customers, didn’t want to feel like they were a cog in a machine, neither did our employees. And of course, increasing the sales pipeline without incurring additional overhead costs. All of these things we set out to go solve for ourselves. And we feel like we’re knocking every single one of these out of the park, you know, with. I think, I don’t know if I built anything more, I guess here. So we did empathy mapping. So this is a good stepping. So, like, how to get started? We did empathy mapping to understand where our customers were coming from and keep their perspective at the forefront of every decision we made. We value engineered our sales process. We identified friction. Like I said, the sales consultation allowing them to schedule on calendly alone was big. You know, we.

AJ Ballantine
Getting the budget up front was difficult. So we have the journey book. We did the comfort zone budget pricing, and then of course the Sandler training to kind of get a lot of those things done. We mapped it all out. If you’re anything like me, I love flowcharts. Obviously I showed you my digital flowchart, but I’ll do this on a whiteboard with anybody every day of the week. I just love it. Get real comfortable with mapping these things out, because if you can visualize it on a whiteboard in a flowchart and you can present that visual to your team and it makes sense, they will keep that visual in their head. They will know exactly what the process is. And if you are.

AJ Ballantine
If you are leading a team, you know as well as I do it is excruciating to change a process and expect your team to follow it without A mind numbing accountability process. So if they can clearly see what the process is, if you can map it out on a flowchart and it makes sense, your sales team or your production team, whoever it is, they will have so much more confidence executing that process if they know exactly what it looks like and it makes sense. So we identified our bottlenecks again. We, you know, I kind of showed you the processes. The bottlenecks were kind of in time, scheduling and so on. We kind of like got rid of all those things and then we streamlined with tools, calendly render canva, DocuSign.

AJ Ballantine
We used DocuSign to send our proposals instead of job tread because we noticed that were getting there was more familiarity with DocuSign. And then we could just send that out and actually attach a payment invoice to that proposal. So when were sending out the design agreements as well as first pass proposal, we’re actually attaching invoices to them too. So as soon as they sign invoice, DocuSign says, okay, you signed. Now put your credit card information to pay for this. Oh my gosh. It’s. It’s been, it’s been great. But the one thing that I really did want to show you, Logan, maybe we could pick this apart is kind of down here. I spoke about this at the fast Remodeler back in. Was it June or May somewhere? I think it was in Austin, Texas.

AJ Ballantine
I talked about how we apply applied a lot of at the time. I was just talking about what we learned about Millennials and what we learned about sales process and started applying these things throughout each part of our organization in ways. So if you notice some of the things that, you know, we talked about from the empathy mapping stuff that we tried to set out and answer. Right. You know, fast, convenient, you know, craving remote engagement. That’s a millennial thing. Interpersonal journeys. And of course we wanted to change, challenge the status quo. A lot of the things that we found out about the, you know, from the empathy mapping exercises that the status quo of remodelers is unfortunately true in a lot of cases. And that’s really what spooks a lot of homeowners in this process.

AJ Ballantine
You know, they don’t want to deal with the car salesman, they don’t want to deal with the stinky guy that hops out of the back of his truck flicking a cigarette butt in their front lawn. Right. So challenging the status quo, letting people know very early on that were completely, completely different type of company. Right. So you kind of See here that we outline marketing, communication, sales and operations. And what could we do in each of these areas to improve processes throughout the organization that matched with empathy mapping and also matched with Millennial buyers. There’s a huge thing that we could talk about with Millennials. So when we talk about fast and convenient, how do we make fast and convenient on the marketing side? Well, short websites, short blogs, speedy website loads, concise web presence, like straight to the point.

AJ Ballantine
We’re not, we’re not putting out 3,000 word web pages like clean, easy to read visuals, communications, immediate scheduling of appointments through calendly. We talked about that. Sales, how do we get fast and convenient sales? A one week turnaround on proposals and then of course, operations on the production side. Everything is digitally managed. Everything. They want answer, they’ve got one. They can reach our team at any time. Remote engagement. So we talked about that. With Render, I can actually send an invite to a homeowner to actually collect these as builts remotely. We do Zoom interviews up front. Clients love it. You said you’d prefer to have that initial call. Zoom. Let me figure out who these guys are. We use Loom to do a lot of our presentations.

AJ Ballantine
So when we can’t get them back in our office and we want to actually present them, with this first pass proposal, we’ll actually record a Loom. So again, we’re making sure that our faces are on screen. They’re not just getting a PDF and an email. We’re actually pulling it up, hitting record on Loom. They can see our face in the corner, they’re looking at our screen and we’re walking them through that entire document as if we’re doing it in person. So look at a Loom video that way. And of course, this is not something that we’re doing yet, but we have aspirations to do a virtual showroom. You know, you can kind of read the rest of this on screen or if I can provide this to you for anybody who wants a follow up.

AJ Ballantine
But ultimately, this interpersonal journey here is this Canva presentation with the avatars was huge for us. We customize floor plans, so if we learn their kids names, we’ll put their kids names on the bedrooms that they know. You know, if they’re doing a second floor rental, I’ll say this is Zach’s room, this is Emma’s room. Little touches like that go a long way, of course, challenging the status quo. I love that. I love poking other remodelers in the industry with things that they know to be absolutely dead nuts. Right. Like really, you know, it was taboo to put pricing on your website. You know, there are, I can’t just paint a broad brushstroke on that comment. But there are a lot of reasons why you should get really transparent really quickly about pricing.

AJ Ballantine
You’re not going to scare anybody worth shaking a stick at away with a pricing conversation. So we make sure that they have all the tools that they need to, you know, when we say transparent window shopping, we make sure they know everything that, you know, is adding to the cost of a project. They, they’re very well aware of it, you know, and of course, digital. Everything we measure digitally, we’re presenting these proposals digitally. We’re sending them loom videos. Gosh. We’re sending invoices digitally. We manage the projects digitally. Everything about it is digital. We, they seldom see a piece of paper around our company. The only paper that they see are the printed plans that we have to provide for permits. Right. We have QR codes on the job site.

AJ Ballantine
You know, just all of that stuff is just to exemplify our image as like a leader in the industry. And when the status quo and home improvement is very much not technology, well, we’re challenging that. So anyway, that’s a lot of what we’ve done.

Logan Shinholser
How do you guys present the final, like that final, like 4% design to them? Are you bringing them into the showroom, pulling it up on the TV and walking through it? Like, what does that look like?

AJ Ballantine
Ultimately, it’s usually a living design. So I mean, we’re taking what they got in that first pass proposal and adding to it, tweaking it. So at every point that we make any changes to it. Right. So we’re solidifying the design or we’re selecting cabinets. We change the pendants over the island. Instead of doing four minis, we’re doing two large pendants at each stage. We’re presenting what that looks like to the client. Now, all those are just usually shared images. If they’re done in person, we’ll show them on the screen. If it’s done, like, hey, I selected mood board, but can we do two pendants instead of four? Say, great, here’s what it looks like. And screen. So those are usually shared via email.

AJ Ballantine
But the client at no place in that process is left in the dark about what, how things are shaping up to look like. Right. There’s no, like, surprise unveiling at the end. Same with pricing. They’re getting these, you know, updates on their allowances, how much they’ve gone over or spent under. And they’re tracking that inside of our construction management software. So they know at all times where they are, where the price is coming in. So that last, you know, hey, here’s your final design, and here’s your final, no surprises estimate. It’s not, it doesn’t come as a surprise to them what that final number is. It’s been building that entire time. And at the point, we’re just kind of like, locking it in. And a lot of times that is done preemptively via a loom presentation.

AJ Ballantine
We’re sending the final, you know, what we’ll call the final estimate design over to them via email. We’re doing it with a loom presentation. A lot of times we’re signing those build contracts digitally. They’ll say, hey, yeah, we’re ready to move forward. We’ll send a contract. They sign it digitally. They pay their deposit. You know, some, in some cases, they like to come to the office and, you know, we still, they don’t sign paper. They’ll sign it with an iPad pencil, and, you know, an Apple pencil and sign it digitally that way. But we’re trying to make it as easy as possible for the homeowner just throughout that entire engagement.

Logan Shinholser
And how did you get your staff bought in on this? Because I, I, I mean, did you sit down with the designers and go, all right, everybody, we got to find a better way to do this?

AJ Ballantine
Short answer. Yeah, you know, long answer is you have to inspire your team to instill, you know, to at least pull off a lot of the changes that we’ve done over the last couple years. They have to know that they’re doing it for a reason, you know, and understanding your staff. From every perspective is really important. You know, as a leader in an organization. Knowing your staff. Needs to come outside of the business realm. Right? So, and sorry, I’m trying to phrase this in a way that makes sense. You can know your staff and their limitations and just kind of assume things about them, right? But to truly know your staff and what drives them, you have to dig a little deeper, right? There’s demographics of your staff. You know, what do they prioritize?

AJ Ballantine
Generationally speaking, where are they at in their individual walk of life? Right? Are they, look, are they ambitious? Are they looking to climb? What’s their disc profile? Right? All of those things paint a picture of how you interact with them as a leader, whether you’re instilling processes or not. But I think it’s incredibly important to know this we took about two years to build this new process into our company. In two years, honestly, I think most companies probably would have taken five or six to do everything that we did. We actually changed construction management softwares at the same time. We went from construct to job tread in the middle of all this. To be able to pull off that amount of change. What I had to understand about my office staff is I work with a bunch.

AJ Ballantine
If you were big into like disc assessments, know what those are? I have a bunch of S’s in my office. Well, S’s are very much. You’re shaking your head, like nodding your head. Yeah, they don’t like change. You know, they like business as usual. They like stability, they like support. This is like pulling the rug out from underneath them. So I had to make sure that I got their buy in. So this included, you know, having them sit in on things that I already knew that we had to change and had to make better. And I already had an idea of the way to do it. But I brought them in. Oh, gosh, I hope they’re not going to. Look, listen to this. I had to bring them in and make them feel like they had a say in how the process was developed.

AJ Ballantine
And in some cases that was actually true. I can’t say that I never listened to them because they have informed this process. Like I said, I was adamant about not going out to the homes before we got the design agreement and they have changed my opinion on that. So. And that’s back in the process. But nevertheless, I knew that we had to accelerate our sales cycle and I knew a way to do it, but it caused them to have to do what they do differently. And I had to give them sales training. And of course the first thing in their mind is like, well, why do I need sales training? I’m already successful. Look at my closing percentages. Well, your closing percentages can’t better. Well, why do they need to better? So just understanding a little bit more about what drives them.

AJ Ballantine
You know, we gamified a lot with our sales team. It was, you know, how high can we go or how much can we save? You know, our office has a bunch of young kids. We don’t want you working nights and weekends, but we want you to be able to make more money because they have kids that are growing up. They want to put money in their 529s. They want to, you know, have more money at the end of the day after paying the preschool bill. So we made sure that they understood, like, hey, look, we’re going to try to make you more successful. We don’t want you working more hours. So here’s how we’re going to do it. What do you think? So getting stuff like that across, you know, little side agendas, but it’s not easy.

AJ Ballantine
I will say I am blessed and highly favored when it comes to my team and the people that I’ve surrounded myself with at Cornerstone. And it has made it easier to pull off everything that we’ve pulled off.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, we are, we’re going through EOS right now and we hired an implementer to come in and help us out with all that stuff. And when were like doing the self implementation side of things, you know, you had to come into the meeting and everybody has to, you know, on the leadership team write out essentially like who’s our target audience? We’ll say. And everybody had a little bit of different answers. And the answer that I put up, we then spent essentially the three hours you’re supposed to debating who the ideal client was and stuff like that. And I remember it all. It came back to the one that I put down originally was who we ended up going with.

Logan Shinholser
And somebody else in the leadership team said, look, I recognize that we ended up just going with Logan’s thing anyway, but it’s nice that we all like came to this conclusion together versus, you know, because my natural thing is just like, look guys, like we already like, as you can see, I put this out there. Unless you have a better way of doing it, like let’s just go with this. And we did a full circle to come back to the same thing. But they all now felt heard, they got, they were bought into it. So same end result. But the process to get there completely changed the goal. And the issue that we’ve had for the past couple years has always been these are Logan’s goals.

Logan Shinholser
We don’t really understand them necessarily, but we’re just going to see what we can do to get there versus sitting down and getting everybody bought into the same thing. Because I’m on the disc, I’m a di the s side of things. It pains me because I’m also a naturally impatient person. So it takes a lot for me to be like, okay, we’ll slow it down, we’ll talk through this stuff. I know you guys don’t like change. I’m obsessed with change. So we have to somewhere, you know, meet in the middle here. But the whole buy in piece of getting them all there, I mean with you guys changing processes but also softwares. Like, we’ve tried that before where we changed processes and project management softwares, and it was, it was a bad idea.

AJ Ballantine
Excruciating.

Logan Shinholser
So, so now we’re like, look.

AJ Ballantine
We’Re gonna keep track of.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. So we had, so we dialed everything back and said, don’t worry about the softwares yet. Let’s just go back to the process piece. Let’s get that totally dialed in. Then we can use technology and shift our software to help us out. But like changing how we behave and the software is associated with it at the same time. It hurt. It was not good. Yeah.

AJ Ballantine
Yeah. If you’ve ever read Four Disciplines of Execution, it was actually recommended to me by a great business leader in space, Mark from Mosby Building arts out in St. Louis. Huge remodeling company. They have quite a machine down there. I was invited down there to speak to their sales team on somewhat of this topic and addressing the whole millennial infusion. And Mark suggested a book called Four Disciplines of Execution. So 40X. And in that book, you know, it’s different operating system like eos is one, 40x is another. And one of the things I love about the 40x model is driving a culture of accountability. When you’re driving these changes throughout your organization, or even just operational excellence in general, having a system of accountability, someone needs to answer to someone all the time.

AJ Ballantine
And making sure that is felt within the, you know, the core of the culture of your business, it’s incredibly important. So when you’re driving change, you cannot allow employees to not follow the change that you’re doing. When you grow a company, and if there’s anybody listening to this that has aspirations to grow out of that 2 million dollar, 3 million dollar glass ceiling wants to go to that 6, 7, 8, 10, you will outgrow some of your employees. We did. And you have to understand that the business sometimes will outgrow some of its workforce. Customer or employees that are, you know, not willing to get with the program, get with the new program. And it’s hard to let those people go. But if you keep them around, what they’re doing is they’re, you know, they’re poisoning the well.

AJ Ballantine
You know, it’s a toxic force where it’s like, okay, well, I’m saying that all of my project managers have to do job logs, have to do these receipts, have to get budgets from their subcontractors. They have to do these things because we need to make sure. When we’re delivering that, no surprises, contract pricing, we know exactly what we’re doing and there’s a purpose of why we’re doing it this way. Well, then you have project managers that can’t get ahead of the curve because they’re still swinging a hammer or they’re, you know, they’re logging things with a piece of pen and paper or they’re not getting head on budget conversations with subcontractors. You have subcon, sorry, you have PMs that are willing to do this for you, but they’re only going to do it for you as long as everybody’s doing it.

AJ Ballantine
If you’re allowing one or two people to not follow the new processes, what is that telling the people that do like, wait a minute, I have to work twice as hard and he doesn’t like, what’s up with that? So we’ve had to let people go in our organization that, you know, it sucks. Like, it’s just, you’re not doing anything necessarily wrong. You’re actually doing a great job at being a project manager, but you’re not being a great project manager. In the new model of what Cornerstone represents, you are the old cornerstone, but not the new cornerstone. And you know, you have to basically face the facts that you will end up having to do that with some of your stack. Now fortunately for me, it was only two or three people in my organization.

AJ Ballantine
I imagine with some it might be, you know, might be more and something that you definitely have to keep in the back of your mind. Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
Last thing in all this. Is there, is there anything that we’re missing? I know we spent a lot of time going through your design process. Is there anything that I should have asked about? I figured just put a bow on this thing and move on. But is there anything about the pro, the design process that I should be asking about that you have not gone through that is pertinent to everybody out there?

AJ Ballantine
I mean, probably in just a more generic sense. Why are you doing it? Why are like, what are you out to fix? What are you trying to fix? You know, it doesn’t necessarily have to be anything wrong. Right. So like I said, our sales process was great. We didn’t have anything wrong. We had a great closing percentage. We were selling a lot. Ultimately though, you have to start, you have to begin with why. For me, it was all about growth in the organization. It was about stability, it was about helping my employees flourish, executing our mission at Cornerstone. All of those things contributed to me actually spending the Time to do this. And then, of course, committing myself to seeing it through. If you don’t have a good. Why.

AJ Ballantine
And it’s just about like, oh, well, someone else is doing it better, so I got to do it better, too. It will not work. It will not work. So the one question that I think you probably led with it a little bit is like, you know, kind of what kind of kicked this whole thing off. And it was my desire to grow and, you know, to not do it without, you know, losing my bottom line with the growth. But there was more to it than just that. It really was to make sure that we could provide a place that had opportunities for all of my employees to thrive. You know, whether it’s climbing the ladder and.

AJ Ballantine
And making more money and moving up and getting promoted, there’s always space at Cornerstone, because every time that we have employees that kind of reach that top of their, you know, designated arena, like, something else opens up. And now all of a sudden, I have project managers that, oh, well, they can go into project development or they can do production management, or perhaps they get into estimating, because now we need three more people in those areas. All of it was kind of building into this whole thing and kind of seeing, you know, you got to start with the end in mind. I think that’s a. What’s that from? That’s. That’s from 7 Habits of Highly Effective in People. Start with the end in mind.

AJ Ballantine
Really get a good picture of what your organization needs to look like with where you want to be, and kind of just build towards that and. And outline it. A lot of what we decided to do was can we be more successful on the sales front without losing ourselves? And that’s why went out and did all the fun things that we did.

Logan Shinholser
Awesome. Well, AJ I appreciate you coming in here and sharing all this. I know this was probably two and a half hours of this stuff, but it’s really two years in the making trying to whittle essentially all the. The trials and tribulations you went through to get this thing. As doubt in as it can be. I’d imagine you’re probably not done at this point. I mean, your, you know, effort to get it down to that true seven day mark is like, I. I’m guessing the next step for you guys here, but I know that. I mean, I remember more or less. Yeah, Well, I remember, like, when I listened to it the first time on Kyle’s podcast, I was like, man, they. He has put a considerable amount of time into this thing.

Logan Shinholser
Like this Is not just like, let’s throw this up on the wall and see what sticks. And hopefully it goes well. Like, this is. He’s probably really thought a lot through this for a very long time. So I appreciate you coming on here and sharing all this. And if anybody is interested, Render, I mean, we see you at a lot of the shows. The fact that your stuff integrates with everything is awesome. But it’s, you know, we’ll put the link in the show notes, but it’s R E N D R. If they want to learn more about it is the best way to get a hold of you on the website.

AJ Ballantine
The website is great. You can, they can schedule a demo. You can also find me pretty easily on LinkedIn and message me there, email me. I’m pretty easy to get ahold of. Don’t feel like you’re imposing, you know, my hours at Cornerstone, probably one of the things I would kind of say is that my hours at Cornerstone, you know, now that we’ve grown so much, I might have two or three hours a week that I spend in my remodeling business. I’m working for Render full time now. So I was able to actually pull off all this change at Cornerstone with kind of being on the sidelines and expecting my general manager to do this.

AJ Ballantine
But it’s put Cornerstone in a great position to be able to afford an owner that has very limited interaction with day to day work that goes on in the business. So with that being said, I’m pretty available, give or take via email. So find me through the website through LinkedIn. I’m pretty easy to get a hold of these days.

Logan Shinholser
Awesome. Well, cool, aj, I appreciate it. Everybody check out Render. It’s. I’ve seen it in action. It’s really super nice, especially with what we’re talking about here as far as like fast and convenience. I mean like in and out in a half an hour is awesome. So thank you all for checking this out. Apply this stuff because this is awesome stuff. This would be one of those things. I know we. Half of why we create podcasts or YouTube videos for us at CGN is, oh, this is something that we have clients that are struggling with. Let’s create content around it. And it’s typically marketing stuff. But we’ve been hearing more and more about the design process and how to like get that thing dialed in.

Logan Shinholser
So, you know, this being as in depth as it is and you showing off those examples is super helpful. So aj, thank you very much. This is awesome.

AJ Ballantine
Thanks man. I’m glad to be here. Cool.

Logan Shinholser
All right, everybody, we’ll see you later.