In this episode, Andy has a discussion with Aaron Weiche, the CEO of Leadferno.com.

FREE Demo Here >>>> www.sprinklersupplystore.com/leadferno

Aaron:

What we found is text is so much easier for both the consumer and the business for a number of reasons. So that's really where things start, is you're on a website and you see that you can just ask a question, you know, gather more information, find out if they can help you by starting a text conversation.

And now you have that conversation in the app. You likely use the most on your phone and the way you communicate with a majority of your contacts in your.

INTRO:

If you are an irrigation professional, old or new who designs, installs or maintains high-end residential, commercial or municipal properties, and you want to use technology to improve your business, to get a leg up on your competition, even if you're an old school irrigator from the days of hydraulic systems, this show is for you.

Conversation:

Welcome back to another episode of the Sprinkler Nerd Show. I'm delighted to have our guest today, Aaron Waki, the c e O of Lead. Ferno Lead Ferno helps businesses to convert website traffic into leads with a web-to-text widget for two-way s m s messaging, Facebook messaging, and Google business messages all in one shared inbox.

Their goal is to help you close more leads faster. Aaron is an entrepreneur with 20 years of experience, funding and leading multiple software companies in digital marketing agencies. Prior to lead Ferno, he was the c e O of gather up scaling it to serve over 25,000 businesses. In appearing in the Inc 5,000 list, Aaron led gather up to its acquisition in 2019.

He speaks internationally on digital marketing, customer experience, conversions, and messaging. Before I officially welcome Aaron to the show, I want you to know that this chat with Aaron is not sponsored. Endorsed. It's not a sales pitch. It is like literally me just expressing my own curiosity to learn more about SMS technology, how it can help service contractors, as well as an opportunity to get inside the mind of a technology ceo.

So with that, Aaron, welcome to the Sprinkler Nerd Show. Andy, thanks so much for having me. And maybe by the time this is all over, you'll say, I endorse this, I promote this. It's wonderful. Right? That that's my goal today. Win you over . Perfect. Okay. I like the spin on that. Excellent. . So I think where I'd like to start, because.

it's not as if you and I have known each other for years and years and years. I'd like to start at the beginning and have you give us a little bit of a background on both lead Ferno and s m s messaging as a, as a technology. Yeah. Uh, let's see. To summarize my longer form history, I am just a curious, creative person and luckily in the world, this whole internet thing came along, uh, and across my peripheral in the late nineties.

And, uh, Building websites became something that I was very interested in. And if it wasn't for that, I don't know, maybe I'd be in, uh, woodworking or construction or something else where I could create and build. But instead, pixels and code, uh, became my way to build things. Um, so started a few different digital marketing agencies, building websites and SEO campaigns, and then social media.

And then got specifically into software, just seeing how much software can help businesses automate things, grow, simplify, be more efficient. And that really intrigued me. And Lead Ferno itself was kind of a culmination of this history in all of these things. Um, one, I, when I was building all kinds of websites, I really sought a solution to.

Transferring you from being a lurker on the website to a lead to that business as easy as possible. Um, we spend so much time, effort, money, all these things driving people to this website we have, but it's really not doing its job unless it turns them into someone that we know and can answer questions for and get into our sales process.

Uh, so that was one big part of it. Then my previous company gather up was focused on customer feedback and online. And I just saw in mass from millions of pieces of customer feedback and reviews how important communication was for people in having a great or a poor experience. Uh, and then lastly, it was just kind of seeing as a, I've been in this for so long, just seeing the wave of how people were moving.

From texting, being only a personal channel to being a do everything channel because it is easy. It's how we like to communicate, it's where all our personal communication is shifted towards. So this natural migration of, well, I want my interactions with businesses to be easier and convenient and have more control as well.

So the culmination of all those things led to, uh, lead Ferno with the, you know, the simple precipice of. , are you easy to work with? And how do you be an easy business to work with? And that's what we've tried to build our solution around. Yeah, that's awesome. I'm excited because I actually, on my personal cell phone voicemail message, I don't know exact, can't remember exactly what I say, but I say something like, for a faster response, please text me your number or your message to this same cell phone number.

And I would say that probably half the people.  that I don't know right, that are calling me the first time will text me. And it's just much easier to do that. And then I also just don't really all the time listen to messages on my phone because we're, we're communicating in a text world. So, um, yeah, I'm excited to learn about text messaging and how it can help service contractors.

So let me ask you this. Does the, where does this start? What does a user do? How do they roll it? You know, deploy it. Yeah. So our primary focus is conversion, right? The, that same thing I talked about, turning a lurker into a lead. So in, in being that it, it's kind of funny, a lot of people would describe our solution as a bus business text messaging app, and they wouldn't be wrong.

But primarily we're a conversion app, and what we found is, Text messaging is one of the easiest way to convert by starting these conversations because it's the lowest barrier to entry. So the tool we put forth for a business is. Buttons on their website that basically advertise that, Hey, if you have a question, you can text us.

It's just that simple. So for most of us, we're used to seeing these types of icons or buttons regarding live chat located in the bottom, bottom right corner of a website. But what we found is text is so much easier for both the consumer and the business for a number of reasons. So that's really where things start, is you're on a website and you see that you can just ask a question.

Um, you know, gather more information, find out if they can help you by starting a text conversation. And now you have that conversation in the app you likely use the most on your phone and the way you communicate with a majority of your contacts in your life. Yeah, so that's, that's where our main focus, um, Is on there.

And that's how the majority of conversations get started. We're inbound, we're not s m s marketing. We're not a blast tool that's sending out hundreds of messages to people and hoping just a, a few want to take us up on our offer deal sale. So very, very different, uh, one to many versus a one-to-one, which is what we are.

Yeah, it's so true what you said about the live chat. I'm just thinking through my own lens. I don't typically use live chat anymore because what happens is the experience you either get, you know, a bot that just points you to a support page when you really wanted a a person, or you get into a queue and you're like, I don't, I don't really want to sit here in front of my computer waiting for the chat to come.

It would be much better. Like you said, if it just came on my phone so I could shut my computer down, walk away, knowing that I'll just get the response on my phone through the app that I use every day. It's so interesting when. You talk to business owners and they want a real-time solution, right? They understand the need to move customers faster into a communication cycle and touch base with them.

And because live chat has been around longer, and we're also subject to it in our personal lives as consumers all the time. . That's where a lot of business owners gravitate to. Like, oh, here's a easy solution, or we should offer this chat, or whatever else. What they fail to forget is how they probably feel about every chat situation and experience that they have, which you just described.

Some of them, you open it in a browser and they say, Hey, you're in queue. You're gonna, you know, Be this long, and so you jump to another tab and start doing things. 20 minutes later you remembered, you started a chat, you go back, the chat agent came. Yeah, they came, they left. You didn't actually get any help.

The chat bots, which you know,  people are just so promised and we think, oh, great work being done for me. That sounds fantastic. What, what ends up happening is, you know, it is just kind of glorified website navigation and it's just pointing you to content that exists somewhere that you may or may not have found on your own or are having trouble finding, and maybe it does answer.

Um, but at the end of the day, most people are using these kind of tools because what they really want is help from a human. . So when you compare that to web, to text, um, you get a number of different things that happen. One, it's completely portable. So if I start a conversation with a business as a consumer, I can now go to a meeting.

I can go to lunch, I can pick my kids up. I am not held hostage to that tab. I'm gonna get a push notification from my texting app when they respond to me. So, , I have complete mobility. Number two, I'm not figuring out how to learn a different piece of software or where their send button is or everything else.

I'm communicating again through the app that I know the best, uh, that I'm talking to my friends, family, coworkers, and hobbies and interests with, um, in a text messaging, uh, app that's there. And for the business. One of the big things that I found really interesting, we actually did a survey on. What consumers have for expected reply times and with live.

That literally gonna be my next question is what is, yeah. What does the business have to do in order to meet the expectation of the customer? Yeah, so with live chat, it's steep. Over 50% of our survey of 2000 consumers said within minutes is the expectation of a reply. So now you just have seconds right to reply and meet that customer's expectation with texting a business.

over 50% set a same day reply. That was the number one time range. So you're granting your staff, which as a small business, no one's like, oh, we got so many people sitting around. What are we gonna have them do? Oh, let's all have them answer live chats. Like that's, that's not happening. So now you've just granted yourself so much more time.

Uh, for that user to be pleased or even delighted because then if you do get back to 'em within minutes cuz the timing worked out for you, um, then that's, that's even better for them and they're delighted with how prompt you are with your communication. And then lastly, as a business, and, and I've experienced myself in using live chat tools for, uh, agency and software companies that I've ran.

Live chat becomes something that you maybe train one or two people on your team on how to use, right? There's a little bit of intimidation with it. You're turning yourself live to be available. You have to remember to shut it off. If you go to lunch, go away from your desk, go to a meeting. Anything else like that?

But with texting, everyone that you employ already knows how to use it. So you can deploy this across so many more people and your availability just expands massively with it, and you're not training them on how to use it and what functions work. Like our app works just like a regular text app on your phone, except for you have these awesome business features that help with.

auto replies in a library of saved messages you can use over again, and you can transfer full conversations to to other people. So both the consumer win and the business win, and that's a great thing when you get that win-win. Yeah, totally. So, uh, outside of the first kind of acquisition, uh, experience through texting, are there other ways that the business will continue to use the service with their customers, you know, on a, on an ongoing basis?

Yeah, there's so many utility type features once you get into it and the beauty, the customer starts the conversation. They're giving you permission that they want texting as a channel. Um, so it's great because you definitely wanna be aware, uh, of those things and the consumers.  in control of that. But as you move along in the process, not only can it help you in pre-sales and answer prospect questions, but we all understand from other things like dentist appointments and medical appointments, things like that, you can send reminders on when you're gonna be there for service.

you can reach out at different timing intervals if they're due for an inspection or should have something looked at or something news coming on the market. Or the timing just means, Hey, we should, you know, take a look at the system a as a whole. Anything else like that, you can ask for reviews after you've completed the service.

Can you write us a Google review or write us a review on Facebook? Things like that. So there's all kinds of process, um, and places where texts can be just a great utility. When you think about it, there's so many things in business that if you were calling your customer about every little thing, right?

Say in, in the irrigation industry, you're doing an install and it might be 2, 3, 4 days for that project. Calling that customer maybe once or twice on each of those days might feel a bit much to them, uh, a little bit information overload. They're not free to take your call, but if you're simply sending them a text each day like, Hey, great, here's what we got done today.

Here's a couple photos of what took place in the project, and we'll be back tomorrow at 8:00 AM like. . Now the customer feels like, wow, these guys are great at customer service. I understood everything that happened when I got home from the office at 6:00 PM and they were already gone. Um, and you're building rapport and trust with them.

So it's such a great connection tool because at the end of the day, it still is a personal channel even though you're using it in a business capacity. Yeah, and it's sort of. Displays to the customer that that's a modern business. This is a modern business using modern technology to make things more efficient for both parties.

As it relates to that utility use of text messaging, messaging, is that something that you recommend they use Inside Lead Ferno, or does Lead Ferno integrate with other software suites? How? How does somebody.  what to use Lead Ferno four and what to use something else for, or how to put two different pieces of software together.

Yeah, so all the things I just touched on, we do and offer. Um, I think some of the things you'd want to consider in probably the high level one, and it's how most people understand, like text marketing, we're focused on one-to-one conversations. As I mentioned before, we're not a one to many. We're not, you know, similar to like a, an email newsletter.

We're not doing text blast and there's a few reasons for that. Um,  one. I've really found that in this being this personal channel and you having this one-to-one access to that customer, the last thing you wanna do is burn that by sending out a monthly or a seasonal sales deal or a service offer or things like that.

Like if you have this one-to-one connection, don't go burn it because you're greedy to like, , try to drum up some business. And at the end of the day, when you're sending messages that are only focused on your business, like, help us sell more, buy from us, , you know, refer us to someone else, those kind of things.

Like the customer's not excited to get that and they don't feel great about your brand. So for most businesses, That text blast. S m s marketing really doesn't work. There's ones that, it definitely does, especially in the e-commerce space, uh, that can definitely be a, a good idea and be very helpful. But for home service businesses, I definitely wouldn't recommend it.

So I'd say look for a solution that focuses on one-to-one contact has things like auto replies, right? When a new lead comes in, we automatically send an instant text message welcoming that lead. Setting an expectation on, uh, reply so they know when they're gonna hear from you. We're asking them to add you to contact.

So now you're a known contact for texting and calling and even referring you by sending that contact file to the neighbor or coworker down the line in the future. Scheduled messages. So if you're in front of the computer that night, you can set up all of your, uh, text messages you need to send out the next day.

That might be service reminders or following up, or letting 'em know when their project's gonna start, or asking them if they had a chance to look at the bid. So you can do all that in the half hour, hour you have at your desk that night before you get back out and you're on site all day long and you don't have time to send those messages.

Um, so those are the kind of things you definitely, you know, wanna be looking for in a platform. , how can I have things that help make my work more efficient and capitalize so when I do have time, I can crank out a lot of work and then the system will do things for me. Mm-hmm. . And then I, I think the bi, the biggest thing that most small businesses should look at.

Regarding, you know, connecting to other pieces of software, um, is do they have a Zapier app? Most people are usually familiar with Zapier, which is another software tool, and its goal is to connect two pieces of software. So it's an easy way to do it. , um, well, I shouldn't say easy. That term is definitely subjective, but you, you can do it.

So you don't need a developer involved. Or you can find someone that understands Zapier. And this allows you to do things like when a new lead is created in Lead Ferno, it automatically creates them as a lead in QuickBooks or a lead in my c r m. Um, so you're making those softwares talk to each other no matter where your customer comes in from.

you still should have one piece of software that's your, you know, ultimate record of customers and, and engagement. Um, or you automatically move people into MailChimp for your email marketing. Mm-hmm. . So I, I would say, look at that. That's usually the best case cuz software that has, um, easy tools like Zapier that have an app and Zapier, so you connect them.

Those are also ones that have APIs that if you need to do something more custom and and bring in a developer to do it, they're gonna be able to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Let's say that a homeowner. Saves the contractor's, you know, text message number in their phone from the initial engagement and they, six months later, can they send a text message that says, Hey, I have a broken sprinkler on my driveway.

Can you send someone over? Absolutely. Yep. It's two-way text messaging. So once, once that number's there and the, the, the conversation is started, at any point in time, the customer can reach back out to them and then the business owner can reach back out to that customer at any point in time too. And, and that's again, why to me, it's so important to use this as a one-to-one channel because you can.

A year, two years, five years down the road, reach out to that customer just to see how they're doing. Is everything working fine for them? Is there anything they, you know, would be interested in in talking about or anything else like that? And using that as one-to-one marketing opportunities and service opportunities instead of.

you know, just that mass blast. I, I hope a couple reply to, to make me see me out of it. Ask the question like, how was your, if it's November, how was your water bill this past season? Were you happy with it? Or was it too high? How could we help you? You know? Yep. Potentially lower your water bill or something.

Yep, absolutely. Or, or just doing things like, I mean, there's just so many things when you're in the, on the service side, right. Uh, if you're smart and you take pictures of the day in install and all those kind of things, and then say, you know, uh, a year later you're in that same neighborhood and you drive by their place and you take a photo of it and you reach back and you're like, Hey, we're doing another system not far from you guys.

Here's what your place looked like a year ago. Here's what it looks like now. That's really awesome. It was fun to work on your project. Let us know if you have any needs, right? Like. , that would take you 60 seconds to do. But it would stick so hard with that customer, like, wow, this service company just thought of me.

I've never had that before. Yes. And those are the kinds of differentiators that you need, right? And especially when someone's gonna ask for a referral or whatever else, and now you just so stick out in their mind. And as you pointed out, You're a save contact in their phone. So when somebody asks me and I say like, yeah, I'll, I'll just send you over their contact information from who I bought from, or, you know, who services me.

That's just such an easy exchange, uh, for people nowadays. Yeah. So for the business, let's, for the contractor, I wanna make sure that they know, if you're listening to this, that.  that it's not as if your Messenger app on your phone is going to be full of 2000, you know, texts coming in. Can you tell us about what it looks like from the business user when they're on their phone?

You know, cuz a lot of business, a lot of contractors are, you know, either 1, 2, 3, they're very small companies. A lot of times the guy re servicing the system is also the guy selling the system is also the guy answering the phone, et cetera. . Yep. So there's a couple of different benefits to using a business texting app.

Um, so one, you should definitely seek out one that is both mobile and desktop. Um, I, I love using our desktop version cuz now I have a full keyboard to write out text messages and to send them and things like that. But also I'm on the go a lot and being able to like, Customers or respond to leads and whatever else when I'm on the go is, is important.

And when you have that, when you have like a, an app like Lead Ferno on your phone, I'm getting a notification on my phone that there's a new lead in Lead Ferno, so I understand specifically what it is. I'm not just seeing, oh, I have 16 text messages piled up and some are personal, some are business and I might miss one or not, which know which one to go through.

Like I specifically know this is business related because now. I'm treeing off my business and my personal text messages. If you have more than one person and you're having them help now instead of your customer's information sitting on their own personal phone, especially if they're in a sales or service role and they go to work for someone else, like you don't want all of your customer data leaking out.

So now you have it a app where you can.  shut off. Having that employee have access to the app, and if you hire someone new, you can turn them on and add that. So you're centralizing and securing all of that, uh, customer information. Probably making your, I have a lot of people that are like, man, my life is so much easier now that texting goes through this app instead of my personal one, and I can three people over to it and I have saved messages to send and auto replies and, and things like that.

Making my, my life a lot easier with it. So. , those are the things that I would just consider. And you know, somewhat to, to your question too is our system isn't gonna make leads come out of thin air, right? You need some web traffic to do it. So if you're not ranking well in Google local searches with your Google business profile, um, you know it, we're not gonna do as much help for you on the new lead.

Where we will help you. If you're not asking for reviews or texting your customers after, um, a project and asking them to leave you a review, that's where we'll help you, and those more reviews will definitely improve your ranking. So you still can use us while traffic to your website is light. But if you're doing marketing, if you're doing some SEO and digital marketing and you're driving people to your website through social media and all these channels, you wanna be squeezed in every ounce of.

Out of those, visiting your website and using a tool like this is, that's what it's designed to do, is starting as many conversations as possible from your web traffic. Yeah. Yeah. So before I ask you a couple questions, um, that aren't, that are related to the tech and how it works, can you talk to us about what the, like investment for somebody is, what it costs, what they could expect, those sorts of.

Yeah. So, um, I, I would say you're gonna be anywhere from like $75 on up a month, uh, in a solution. Like our entry level starts at $150 a month. Mm-hmm. , um, there's no setup fee. Uh, I would always try to find someone, make sure they're doing month to month so that you can start, um, and stop it if it's not a, a great fit for you instead of an annual contract.

Yeah. We do offer a discount if you pay annually, and typically what we see is. Invest in a piece of software where you can pay monthly three to six months in. You might know like, yep, my business runs way smoother and I can get a 10 or a 12 or a 15% discount paying annually. Now I have the trust and confidence, so now I'm willing to commit, uh, to a longer time on that.

And then just make sure you understand how easy it is to set up. Right. Most of our customers are up and running in 10 to 15 minutes max. Um, so it's something you just don't wanna feel like you have to invest a ton of work, uh, to get up and running for you. So, , that investment should be under a few hundred dollars a month, uh, for most businesses or, or right around there.

Um, and yeah, the efficiency that you'll gain from it will definitely, um, pay for itself. And as you can see, it doesn't take much converting leads to get an ROI on it. When, when people ask like, oh, is this something I should have looked into my, my question back to them as always, do you sell something where answering a few questions could make you hundreds or thousands of dollars?

If you answer yes to that, you definitely wanna do. A test of this, um, and I would say be smart about your test, right? Most software has a two week free trial, but if you think magic will happen in two weeks, That's really not the, the ideal standpoint, right? The two weeks is to, it's easy to set up, get in, learn your way around it, but you wanna at least run it for, you know, 2, 3, 4 months.

Especially during a normal time where you start getting inquiries based on seasonality and cycles, um, and things like that to properly evaluate it. Yeah. And it's a good reminder that you get out of something, what you put into something. So if you simply sign up with Lead Ferno and you do nothing, Magic isn't gonna happen.

You have to. Yeah. You get out of it what you put into it. So put some work into it. Yep. Set it up. Make sure it's gonna work correctly. Um, I wanted to ask you about, uh, well first, let me remind the listeners that you know, if $150 is entry, that is one service, call one, either one. Saved service call, one new service call, or a more efficient way for someone who needs service to reach you that.

In my opinion, it shouldn't be looked at. As I'm adding more overhead to my business, I'm add adding more expenses. It's actually an ad in order to either grow  or reduce actual costs. So by adding $150 or wherever it happens to lay out, this to me seems like a clear, it's a clear saver, not an added. Yep.

That, that's a whole goal, right? Is to grow, uh, what's happening. So spend yeah, and spend this, spend this in seed and grow this in, in what it delivers, right? And potentially be able to operate a business. With that does more revenue with less people than ever before. Right? So how can a, how can a small business that 10 years ago, I'm just making this up guys, as a, as a number that did a million dollars and it had, you know, five employees, how could someone do 2.5 million and still have five employees?

It's by deploying this type of technology that either helps grow sales and makes the business more. . Yep. So let me, I I would like to ask you, uh, this is the ha getting inside the c e o of a tech company, kind of at the beginning level, you know, before Lead Ferno became a thing and it was just a idea in your head and a blank piece of paper.

What was the hardest part, you know, starting from that blank piece of paper and the idea to where you are now? Oh boy. . I mean, it's, it's definitely building the product, how you see it working. Um, there, there's such a misnomer in tech because we use so much tech across the board, right? And things that are actually like, not monumental, but take, uh, quite a bit of effort to make happen are things we just take for granted in our daily life, right?

People look at. . You know, I do a search on Google and I can find all these things, and Gmail has all these features and my calendar has all these features, right? They've just become Staples, but they're built by companies that hun have hundreds, thousands of developers, decades of iteration now at this point, and things like that.

So you get in and you start to build something from scratch. Yes, some of the pieces already exist, right? We're like tying in an s m s provider and what they already bring to the table. But we're building out all of our own interfaces and building out all our storage of information. And so there's just things that when you get into that, you, you have a plan in blueprints, but you're definitely gonna get thrown for some loops.

You're gonna have some change orders, um, you know,  probably in the irrigation business. It's digging down a foot and finding some type of, uh, a large rock that you're like, this is a day of work to move this and this is exactly where we wanna run. Um, I thought this was a 30 minute fix and now I'm looking and it's a three day fix.

Yes, absolutely. So I would say that that's definitely the most challenging part, is just kind of feeling your way, um, through that stuff. And you make a lot of decisions on the fly that you don't. , you, you do your best to understand what the, the short-term and long-term pros and cons might be. But you definitely don't always have very black and white or concrete information on that, so mm-hmm.

that, that to me is, is definitely the hardest part. I've, I've always been lucky, whether it comes to me naturally or I've just honed it like. The vision side and seeing what it can be, um, and storytelling and evangelizing, all those things like come very easily to me and I'm easily inspired and love doing that stuff.

Um, so that side sometimes can be really hard for other people. Where for me, like I can see all of it now, can we build against that vision that I have and, and make that come true? That's, that's definitely the hard part. Yeah. Let me, let me, uh, add on to that. So when you have that vision and you clearly see it, How ha was your estimate on time?

In other words, you said, okay, I have this vision and in one year we're gonna have X product. How accurate was your timing on how long it was gonna take to build it? Let, let's see. By which way I answer this. So I was, let's say I was half right, but the truth is, My half right meant it took twice as long.

Okay. So I, I, I was pretty much hoping to have our full V1 to market, um, within six months timeframe. And it, it took a full year. Uh, so we, we were able to release a beta version about eight months in, um, which was fine, but it wasn't a real, you know, allowed us to test with some early users, get feedback, stuff like that.

But it wasn't a ready for market product until another four months after that. And, , that's really hard when you're building that stuff and you can't generate revenue for that year long, uh, time that, that definitely weighs on you. It's a challenge. Yeah. And as you're building it, you can't see what you can't see until you can finally see it.

So I, I can understand how that can take a, a long, a long time, and it's something that I'm. Personal leads starting to learn more about is this patience, you know, just cuz you can see it now, it is clear in your mind. Yep. Having patience to play a little bit longer game than you thought you needed to play is probably, uh, a realistic expectation of bringing something to market.

Yeah. Oh. And as you know, a, as a business owner and entrepreneur, like time is the ultimate commodity, right? So you're trying to do as much as you can, as fast as you can, but usually in the, the right way. So balancing those things.  and patients can be really hard because usually business owners, you have a certain drive level.

Like that's what's pushing you to do it on your own and to accomplish things and to grow and everything else. And when you have to temper that with patience on what's realistic or what the team can handle in that timeframe, like it's definitely a personal dilemma that you have to do a lot of self-talk to work through at times.

So I'd like to ask you, do you have a process or how do you decide what new features to include in the software? And do you have a process for that? A formalized process? No. Uh, but it comes from a, a few different areas. Um, one, number one is customers. Um, we have quite a bit of communication. We have very open lines, right?

Our customers can text us, they can email us. Um, we're sending out communication on what we're up to and things we're doing every month. So we have a very, Uh, two-way communication with them and we track what they're asking for. So when we start to see things being asked repeatedly, 3, 4, 5, 6 times, um, and we're always, when they ask for it, we're also gonna ask use case.

Tell us about why you're thinking that. , you know, what, what, what are you trying to accomplish with it? We wanna understand those things as well because as we all know, customers sometimes ask for something specific because that's only the way they see it. Yeah. So you have to ask some why and dig a little bit deeper to really understand, well, what problem are they trying to solve?

Is there a better way to do it? Um, or, or in my book, I love finding solutions that not only solve their problem, but like six other problems. Right, right. Like the, the, the Swiss Army Knife Solution. It's maybe not as, as elegant or refined as what they wanted, but it solves their problem. And six other use cases can use it to solve their problem.

Yeah. Or a hundred or yes. Hey, we can go from this industry and use the same fe, uh, feature in this industry. In this industry. In this industry. Yes. . Yep. Those are super valuable. So that's definitely a, a big piece of it. Another part would be, you know, just staying in tune with the industry. Um, you know, paying attention and seeing what goes on in the industry.

Competitors, somewhat similar companies, you know, things like that. Like you just have to, especially in tech, you have to have your. You know, hand on the pulse of what things are. And I'm really big into pulling from all kinds of experiences. I use so many apps just to feel the experience and see what they're doing.

Like we can benefit from things that the Airbnb app is doing. We can benefit from what Delta Airlines is offering in their app. Like, there's just so many opportunities to, again, peel away what they're selling or what the process is or anything else. And like how could this apply, uh, to businesses and consumer?

you know, using, using our technology. . And then the last is, is just personal, like as I take it in and how do I see those things and how do I see the evolution with the background I've had and the conversations I have with business owners and whatever else. Like, uh, I find it fun to have my own take and angle on some of those things with like, why are things great?

Why do they matter? What, what's coming next? Um, and being able to apply those. So those three things usually, you know, work, work together really well to surface. Either give it votes of confidence or really allow you to think deeply on how it can be used and how best to build and deploy. Yeah. Awesome.

Well, let's see. I want, before I forget, I wanna mention to everyone listening that I'm going to go through the process myself of setting this up on, uh, my e-commerce website. So I'm saying this now so that I have to live by it and actually go do it cuz it's not there right now as we're recording this.

But if you go to sprinkler supply store.com/lead fur.  on that page, I'm gonna put a one of Erin's lead boxes. And so if you wanna try it out, go to sprinklr supply store.com/lead ferno and send me, this will come to me personally. Send me, uh, an inquiry and we can experiment together with this text messaging app, how it works.

And you'll get to see it from the consumer side, right? Because I'll be using it as the business and you listening will be using it from the consumer. So with that, Aaron, I want to give you kind of like just, uh, the last minute here to, you know, say anything that you haven't mentioned and let people know the best way to either contact you, your team, or, uh, sign up with lead feno.

Yeah. Uh, if you go to lead ferno uh.com and up in the top, click to go to our blog. We publish a ton of articles, so if you wanna learn more, um, I'm definitely an education-based seller. Uh, I want people to understand, get their questions answered, get familiar so they can understand h how to, how to use this best.

Um, so there's a lot of information there where you can see how our features work. You can understand why texting is so popular. Some of the surveys we've done. Things. Um, and on our site you can just try it as well. The same way, uh, that you can go and, and take Andy's test on there. You can just click on ours and, um, click to be able to, uh, talk and answer questions.

You can book a demo, um, right from it as well, so you can schedule a half hour call where I'll walk you through one-to-one and answer any questions that you have or another member o of the team will, so. . Really easy to do those things and like I said, thi this, you know, most likely is something that you want to test.

You're gonna be better off knowing yes or no will this work. Um, for me, if you feel good about the web traffic that you're generating and what your search rankings look like and, and stuff you're putting out on social media to, to drive traffic, I said we just wanna help you squeeze more juice from that and, and start more conversations.

Welcome any and all, um, questions, conversations, and anything else like that. If you happen to be on Twitter, I'm very active there until Elon shuts it down or melts it away or whatever else is going on with that lately. Uh, so you can always connect with me on Twitter. Awesome. How do they find you on Twitter?

What's your handle? Yeah, at Aaron Whitey, so my full name, Aaron, w e i c h e, on. . Yep. And I'll have your name in the title or the show notes, so if you don't remember what he just said, it'll be right there in the title. So, Karen, I, I'm lucky. I, I think I'm the only Aaron Waki on the planet Earth, so if you Google Aaron Waki, you're just gonna get, you'll get my Twitter handle, all kinds of things.

So I, I'm easy to, I'm easily stackable online. Very good. Well, thank you so much. I learned a bunch, and just as a final. Sort of thought I had for, um, for those of you listening, I think that if you use a tool like this and your customers are at all, even the littlest bit wowed by the experience, they're likely to tell someone because they've had a good experience.

And so if you want to be the talk of the town, um, you should start using technology like. So that you can gain more customers through word of mouth and through building those better relationships through the one-on-one messaging opportunity. So thank you so much, Aaron. Appreciate having you. It was awesome, Mandy.

Thank you.