How to Automate Your Trade Business for Success
Show summary
In this episode, Charles Craggett shares insights on automating lead generation for trades businesses, emphasizing understanding customer journeys, leveraging technology, and local market strategies to scale effectively.
Key takeaways
- Before automating anything, map your customer journey: how leads arrive, where they come from, what they respond to, and how long follow-up takes.
- Speed to lead matters most in the trades—responding within five minutes versus two business days can be the difference between winning and losing a job, even against identical competitors.
- Many trade business owners pay for CRM software but never learn to use it fully, wasting the investment; the fix is proper training or outsourcing setup to someone who can build and document it.
- Use tools like Loom to record every automation and process you build so you create standard operating procedures your team can follow, turning a one-person operation into a scalable business.
- Trade businesses can unintentionally hit $1 million in annual revenue on word-of-mouth alone with no systems in place—automating smaller processes frees owners to focus on scaling instead of day-to-day management.
- Be wary of agencies pitching AI as a do-everything solution; a lot of it is ChatGPT with a 'fancy wrapper.' Focus AI on practical wins like passing data between software systems and saving office staff time.
- Localized, trigger-based marketing works well for trades: one example is an AI system that monitors weather data and automatically emails/texts a roofing client's past-customer list when a storm hits their area.
In this episode
- 02:02Introducing Charles Craggett and Become the Authority
- 02:54First steps to automating your lead process: map the customer journey
- 03:47Why trades businesses are well suited for automation
- 06:40Bottlenecks moving from manual follow-up to automated systems
- 08:32Training a team using Loom and documented SOPs
- 10:40Why trades businesses lag behind in adopting new technology
- 12:58Where automation agencies over-promise with AI
- 15:02Localized, storm-triggered AI marketing for roofers
- 17:40Where to find Charles and his tools
About Charles Craggett
Charles Craggett is the founder of Become the Authority, a marketing automation agency based in Cleveland, Ohio. He has a background in sales and marketing, including experience in the door-to-door space, and now focuses on helping local service and trade businesses build automated lead generation and follow-up systems. His agency also runs growwithtradeos.com, a marketing automation build-out service for trade businesses.
Listen to the audio
“We see a lot of people that are selling folks on the idea that AI can basically do everything and while AI is actively improving, it still tends to hallucinate, it still tends to make mistakes.”
Charles Craggett
“If I respond within five minutes and somebody responds in two business days, I'm so far ahead of them in the process.”
Charles Craggett
“They wind up with a really well-paid job versus a business because they have to spend their entire time managing software and then getting up on roofs and putting roofs up.”
Charles Craggett
Questions answered in this episode
What's the first step to automating lead generation for a trades business?
Charles Craggett says you first need to understand your customer journey before you can automate anything: how leads come in, where they come from, what they respond to, how long it takes to communicate with them, and what the process is for moving them to the next step of the pipeline. Trying to automate without mapping this out first leads to a mess, especially for owners who have run their business off a cell phone and hustle.
Why is response speed so important for trades businesses like roofers or wholesalers?
Craggett says most people searching for a service on Google call everyone in the area, and the business that responds first and sets the appointment usually wins the job, regardless of whether competitors offer the same service. He notes that responding within five minutes versus two business days makes you look far more professional and dramatically increases your close rate.
What are the main bottlenecks trades business owners face when adopting a CRM and automation?
The first bottleneck is not knowing how to actually use the CRM, which means paying for software without getting its full value. The second is that even when an owner understands the system, they often don't know how to train someone else on it, so they end up with a well-paid job for themselves instead of a scalable business, stuck managing software while also doing the physical work.
How should a trades business document and hand off its systems to new hires?
Craggett's agency uses Loom to screen-record every process they build for a client, turning each recording into a standard operating procedure the team can reference later. He recommends either working with someone who can set up and document the system for you, or outsourcing the whole process to a team of experts so you can focus on growing the business instead of managing software.
Where do automation and AI agencies tend to over-promise to trades business owners?
Craggett says many agencies sell the idea that AI can do everything, when in reality AI still hallucinates and makes mistakes, and without industry knowledge a business owner won't catch those errors. He adds that a lot of these offerings are just ChatGPT with a 'fancy wrapper,' and business owners are growing wary of that; his team instead focuses AI on practical tasks like passing data between software systems and saving office staff time.
Can you give an example of a localized, automated marketing campaign for a trade business?
Craggett describes an AI system his agency built that monitors a weather website for storms in a roofing client's service area. When a storm hits, it automatically generates and sends an email and text to the client's past-customer reactivation list checking in on their roof, similar to how door-to-door roofing crews used to target storm-hit neighborhoods.
Resources and links
- Charles Craggett on Instagram
- Charles Craggett on Facebook
- Charles Craggett’s Website
- Charles Craggett on LinkedIn
- Grow with Tradeos’ Website
Full transcript
Charles Craggett (00:00)
We see a lot of people that are selling folks on the idea that AI can basically do everything and while AI is actively improving ⁓ It still tends to hallucinate it still tends to make mistakes and if you don’t have an understanding of the job or the service or things of that nature, right you’re not
gonna be able to even recognize the mistake that it’s making.
Dylan Silver (02:02)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Charles Craggett is the founder of Become the Authority, a marketing automation agency based in Cleveland, Ohio. He has a background in sales and marketing and focuses on helping local service businesses, especially trade businesses and owners generate consistent leads and revenue. He takes a systems based approach to marketing, helping contractors and service providers avoid wasted ad spend and replaces guesswork with a process that actually converts. Charles, thanks for taking the time today.
Charles Craggett (02:03)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Charles Craggott, is the founder of the Columbia Board.
Dylan thanks for having me how are you ma’am?
Dylan Silver (02:35)
I’m doing fantastic and we were talking in the green room about the importance right now of automation and how everyone is trying to DIY it. But for folks who are on a base level making those first steps, what would you say those first steps would be if you’re trying to automate your leads process?
Charles Craggett (02:54)
I think the biggest issue that we see with a lot of people trying to DIY it is that they don’t actually understand their customer journey in the first place. know, so if you don’t understand the customer journey from the beginning, automating it is going to be crazy. A lot of people, they’ve never really thought what happens when a customer comes through the door because they’ve been running their business on a cell phone and hustle their entire life. So.
You got to get organized. So the first thing that I would do if I was thinking to myself, I want to start building some automations is I would understand my customer journey. How do my leads come in? Where do they come from? What are they responding to? How long does it take for us to communicate with them? And what is the process for getting them into the next step of the pipeline?
Dylan Silver (03:47)
Now what makes a trades business specifically different from other types of businesses and why are these businesses maybe most suitable for automations and this type of market?
Charles Craggett (04:00)
I think that when it comes to the trades, it’s very easy for people to just hop on Google and call everybody in their area that does that particular service. And you want to be the person who responds first because regardless of the fact that everyone does that, the bulk of the time they do business with the person who responded first and set the appointment.
Right. So we’re in an age where there’s a lot of people who are doing similar things, whether you’re a roofer ⁓ or you’re a wholesaler trying to get houses. Right. A lot of people are doing the same stuff and that five, 10 minutes of trying to get somebody. Right. Like if I respond within five minutes and somebody responds in two business days,
I’m so far ahead of them in the process. I look that much more professional and I have a much better shot of closing that person. Right. So it’s just a, it’s just a matter of you moving faster than your opposition.
Dylan Silver (06:01)
Now, one of the things that comes to mind about trades businesses, I’m aware of the demographic, the avatar of the average person in the trades is getting older and older. want to say it’s, it could be late forties, fifties, maybe. And so when you think about that demographic, automatically, you’re not saying, okay, AI automations, you know, you might be saying, okay, they’ve got a book of business. They work their sphere really well. You know, a lot of this could even be, you know,
a hand-kept notebook of leads and folks that they can follow up with. So when folks are going from that into this, it’s a big jump. What are some of the bottlenecks that you see people facing when going from really, you know, a manual way to follow up and capture leads versus now automated?
Charles Craggett (06:40)
Yes, it’s a big…
really a manual way to follow up and actually versus the
bottleneck.
you don’t know how to use the CRM. So ⁓ by not knowing how to use the CRM, you’re also, putting money out for the software. You’re not utilizing the software in its entirety and you’re not able to actually maximize or get the value that you invested in the software to get. So that’s bottleneck number one. ⁓ Bottleneck number two is somebody understands that system.
but they don’t know how to train somebody else on it so they can never hand it off to someone else. So they wind up with a really well-paid job versus a business because they have to spend their entire time managing software and then getting up on roofs and putting roofs up, right? So, good.
Dylan Silver (07:50)
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s great.
You know, that’s a great point. A lot of people will overlook the importance of being able to scale out of the business effectively and manage it rather than be in it in a job capacity like you mentioned day to day. I’d like to get a little bit granular there. You know, when you are trying to scale, when you are bringing people on, educating them on your tools and systems, what’s an effective way to do that?
Charles Craggett (08:32)
So one of the things that we like to do when we’re working with a business on a done with you kind of basis, because we typically will either build a system with you or we’ll do it for you and manage it. It’s up to you, right? So if we’re in the done with you capacity, ⁓ we will film ⁓ everything that we’re setting up for them so that they understand it. We love this software called Loom.
⁓ It records everything and then you can press a button that creates a standard operating procedure very cool piece of screen recording software And it’s great for creating documentation of the things that you’re doing and the different processes associated with it so I would just say the documentation is how we Start the process of training them and that’s like hey look
You can refer to this video if you need a walkthrough on this. You can refer to this video if you need a walkthrough on that. But that would be the main thing is get with someone who can genuinely set it up for you and have them document the processes so that you can follow them in the future. Or just if you’ve got the bandwidth for it, bring a team in, outsource the entire thing. They’re experts. They know what to do. And you can focus on other areas of growing your business.
Dylan Silver (09:53)
How important is it for business owners in the trades to be around other folks who are growing a similar way, where they’re using automations, using these types of marketing tools?
Charles Craggett (10:40)
It’s important to understand what else is out there, right? Like, unfortunately, when it comes to the trades, the trades have been kind of separated from a lot of this new technology, right? So there’s things that maybe you could use AI and automation for, but nobody is really building systems and tools that are focused specifically on people in the trades and their unique needs.
Dylan Silver (10:51)
Right.
Charles Craggett (11:08)
And that’s where our business decided to focus because we’re like, Hey, look, there’s a lot of great software that these different trades businesses use. lot of these guys, they can stumble into a million dollars on accident, a million dollars in revenue per year on accident, just because the cost of replacing a roof is so high. Right. So if it starts to snowball, they’ve now stumbled into a pretty good amount of change and their systems are still jacked up and they’re still running on word of mouth.
Yeah. So if a person is able to stumble into a million dollars with none of their systems set up and none of the standard operating procedures, none of the automation, imagine what could happen if you guys were able to follow a structure. And that’s often what we point out to people. It’s like, Hey, look, let’s automate these smaller processes so that you guys can focus on the big picture, which is scaling up and growing your business.
Dylan Silver (12:09)
Going from quote unquote Chuck in a truck into now an automated trades business where you’re managing your team, but you’re also managing the automations. That is a really terrific and awesome jump to be able to assist folks in making. I do want to pivot here though Charles and ask you, know, when folks are in the trade space and they may be doing a preliminary Google search, right? Or chatGPT search and trying to figure out where do they go for
assistance with automations. Where do you see your competitors, other folks in the automation space, maybe over promising to business owners and giving them maybe a false sense of how quickly things can turn around? Where do you see some of these over promises happening?
Charles Craggett (12:58)
We see a lot of people that are selling folks on the idea that AI can basically do everything and while AI is actively improving ⁓ It still tends to hallucinate it still tends to make mistakes and if you don’t have an understanding of the job or the service or things of that nature, right you’re not
gonna be able to even recognize the mistake that it’s making.
⁓ I think that there’s a lot of people out there who are building things that are just chatGPT and a fancy rapper and then trying to sell it to business owners and business owners are starting to become wary of that and they’re starting to get like kind of irritated by that because they’re like, okay.
Dylan Silver (13:30)
Yeah.
Charles Craggett (13:52)
I know that AI conceptually could be used in my business, but how do I actually use it? What do I use it for? And that’s where our team comes in because we’re going to say, hey, look, let’s not worry about using AI just to create cool pictures. Let’s use AI to make sure that your data passes to each of your softwares without you having to do, without you having to log in multiple places on a day-to-day basis.
Let’s save your office staff some time so that they can focus on bigger picture stuff. Right. Like let’s focus on the cost savings.
Dylan Silver (14:30)
Yeah, that’s huge. And I think you mentioned several important factors here, one of which is, you know, it’s not just one one size fits all solution set. We’re going to use AI. It’s going to do everything for you. It’s set it and forget it on a granular level. Working with the trades businesses, I imagine that you’ve picked up certain ways where even individual trades can benefit from certain types of approaches. For instance, electricians or you mentioned roofers, right?
Some of these are going to be even more dependent on external factors. Is there a storm? Right. You know, is this an area where there are lots of older homes versus newer homes? And you might see trends in that regard as well. When you are dealing with very market specific and even, you know, environmental specific marketing, how does that impact the way that you approach a marketing campaign specifically?
Charles Craggett (15:02)
Yes. Yes.
When you are dealing with growing markets, you
does that impact the way that…
So we do like to focus our campaigns on localized, right? We want it to be as, as dialed into them as humanly possible, right? And one of the ways that we did that, and it’s cool that you brought this up is we set up an AI that basically just has a connection to a weather website and it monitors for storms.
And once a storm happens, it auto generates an email and a text message that pushes out to our roofing client, to our past reactivation list that one of our roofing client has. So yeah. So it’s like, okay, we know that there was a storm in this area. We know that we have a list full of homeowners in this area. Hey, is your roof jacked up right now? You know.
Dylan Silver (16:49)
Wow.
Charles Craggett (17:02)
And, and of course the message doesn’t say that, but it really is just that simple, right? Like if you knew there was a storm in your area and when I was working in, ⁓ the door to door space, of course, if there was a storm, they would send people to the area where the storm happened to knock on doors. So why wouldn’t we do the same thing when it comes to the text messages and the emails and just checking in with people who.
already know us, already like us, already might have worked with us, and we know they have a roof, and we know that a storm just happened. Need some help?
Dylan Silver (17:40)
Call us. We are coming up on time here, Charles. Any new projects that you’re working on and then as well, what’s the best way for folks to reach out to you or your team?
Charles Craggett (17:41)
Yeah.
the best way to get in contact with me, you can follow me on Instagram. It’s charles.nwm if you’re interested in getting your systems built out tools, automated things of that nature, you can go to growwithtradeos.com that’s our automation system, marketing automation system build out.
and custom marketing proposals. So if you’re interested, you can go there. ⁓ Or you can look me up on Facebook, my first and last name. You’ll see me sitting next to a tiger.
