App Consultants and Field Service Management - A New Approach with ServiceM8

The new realm of 'app consultants' can vary drastically depending on the firm. Some niche firms are specializing in multiple apps for one vertical, whereas others may be focusing on workflow or a specific need within many niches (keep your eye out for blog on this specific topic coming soon). Today I want to discuss how a specific Field Service Management (FSM) app is taking a different (and my favorite) approach to working with accounting professionals - ServiceM8.

I heard of this app a couple of months ago when I had the pleasure of constructing an FSM webinar for Apps.com and Intuit Academy. The course covered a description of FSM, who needs FSM and compared 3 FSM apps (Jobber, ServiceM8 and Intuit Field Service Management). (Watch a recorded version of the webinar here if you are interested, but wait until you finish reading this!)

So what is so special about this app? Why am I in love with it? 

The recorded course will tell you about the features and the best use case, so I am not going to spend much time laying that out here. What I really want to focus on is their pricing structure, because it is an insane opportunity for app consultants.

End-user pricing for the platform is FIFTY CENTS per job (from quote to payment - basically 50 cents per job number), with your first 20 jobs free EVERY MONTH. The job count restarts each month as well, which is where 2 way scale comes in for growing companies.  ServiceM8 has REAL TIME text notifications for field techs to provide clients with ETA’s. Text messages are EIGHT CENTS per transaction. There are NO USER FEES.

Let’s look at this in a real scenario. I have a small plumbing contractor with three techs who did 30 jobs last month. Their bill was $5.

Their bill was $5.

THEIR BILL WAS FIVE DOLLARS!!!

Enjoy that thought for a moment… now join me as I change the subject:

ServiceM8 also has partner platform (duh, Kaydee. EVERY app has a partner platform now days). I’m not going in to all the revenue share and referral crap because my firm doesn’t participate in those programs with our app partners. The most awesomely unique part of this program is that ServiceM8 only provides email support to their end users, but they provide email AND PHONE support to their Partners. They REFER end user sign ups TO PARTNERS. This is something we all love right?

WE LOVE APPS THAT ARE OUR RESOURCE, NOT OUR COMPETITION.

Some of you are going straight to website to join and see the $99 annual program fee as both a marketing and education expense – you are my people. A portion of you just shut your brains off because you feel like apps exist to be your free resource and can't imagine having to pay them to support (which, in turn, you will bill your client for the time anyway and make it back 10 fold...)

A question I have been asking myself is ‘why do I give a sh*t if other people join? The less partners there are, the more referrals I can get!’

Let me answer that for you… I do what I do because I AM PASSIONATE ABOUT SMALL BUSINESS SUCCESS. I love this product because it allows the ‘man and a van’ clients to have a top tier solution for next to nothing that can they fully scale with their business. The only way that we can keep these end-user prices low is if we enable them as partners, and why not do that now when they are starting a name in the US? They charge us a minimal fee to be our direct resource, we reap the benefits of charging our clients for implementation/training/support, and our clients grow exponentially because of the cost savings compared to other solutions.

Not only is the growth of our clients businesses supported by this app, but the ability to grow your FSM client base will get a HUGE jumpstart. Let’s look at this from a social standpoint… If you ask your carpet cleaner if he knows an HVAC, plumber, electrician, handyman, etc., they will probably have a handful of friends that are tradespeople. You only need to know ONE tradesperson, they will do the rest of the marketing for you by word of mouth (we already have 2 more implementations slated from our first being so happy). BOOM.

BUT WHY DO YOU CARE KAYDEE?

That’s what you’re thinking right? Some of you may already know my story about being raised with my sisters by a single dad who is a contractor. I am ridiculously passionate about being able to provide outstanding services to small business and give them the upper hand. If he had this app back in the day, our lives would have been very different! I’ll save the life story for conference dinners with The Sleeter Group, but you probably get the point.

Many of you know me from QuickBooks Online certification training, the Intuit Virtual Conferences, Intuit Academy Webinars, or other training events. It is obvious that I love to teach, but the reason I love to teach is to enable our community of professionals to provide the best service to their clients.

Here at PBS we are designing a standard package for ServiceM8 integration/ implementation/ training for our clients, as well as the back-end workflow process for QuickBooks Online and Xero integration. I have so much faith in this apps ability to be a game changer for small FSM’s that I am willing to share this for free with any US Partners who join the partner program by the end of July, just request to be put on the list when signing up with ServiceM8*. Take the next step in enabling your community's FSM's to jump-start their businesses! You won't regret it.

If you have any questions/comments/etc please feel free to comment back to this post or reach out on other media.

*Implementation docs available July 1st 2015.