Paul Benton: If you’re a plumber or a friend in the trades, today you are in the right place. Our guest today is Moroni Montuy. He is a founder of TradeWeave, which is one of the premier ServiceTitan consulting firms. Moroni has had a long career in ServiceTitan and ServiceTitan Consulting. He also is an expert in Housecall Pro.

Paul Benton: Previously, he founded Titan Pro Technologies, which is one of the two titanium-level platinum or titanium-level partners in the ServiceTitan partnership program And I’m looking forward to asking him many questions about how to get more value out of ServiceTitan today and get his insights. And so Marone, I…

Paul Benton: Welcome to the table. Thank you for doing this.

Moroni Montuy: Thank you, Paul. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Paul Benton: And Marone, I, uh, particularly appreciate, uh, talking with you because we are working together on some, uh, client engagements, and I particularly value you because increasingly as I’m a marketer and we br- do lead gen for clients, and inevitably clients are asking us, “Can you do this, that, and the other in ServiceTitan?”

Paul Benton: And that causes a level of trepidation because ServiceTitan is a large system, and if you pull on the string, you can be there for hours. And so I’m very happy that I have you to refer questions like that to and bring you in on the team for those client questions, uh, makes a big difference. I thought, Marone, that we would start with…

Paul Benton: I’ve got a handful of questions here. Can we just jump in? And I’ll ask you the first one. Sound good?

Moroni Montuy: Yes, absolutely.

Paul Benton: So Marone, if a plumbing company is already using ServiceTitan today, what are the three highest ROI adjustments that you see they could make in the next 30 days that would actually increase their revenue without spending more on marketing?

Paul Benton: Just fix what, what’s going on.

Moroni Montuy: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a good question, Paul. So in my experience, the fastest wins in 30 days are usually price book margin, memberships and their specific motion and, and, and outreach there, and in tightening how unsold estimates get followed up on. No need… There’s no need for, uh, spending additional dollars to do those three main points.

Paul Benton: I reha- recently had an experience where I had a plumber come over to my, my home. We needed to, uh, improve some toilets in the house, not an emergency. And the gentleman was really a, uh, trapped within his price book on, in his iPad, and I asked him if he was using ServiceTitan. He said he was not, but wish he were.

Paul Benton: It took him 45 minutes to get me his quotes. Um, it took a week for him to come out to the house to give me those quotes. That’s another question altogether. What is it that ServiceTitan can do that would make that experience better?

Moroni Montuy: Yeah. So when it comes to the ServiceTitan and its price book catalog system, it really empowers the technician and the customer experience from end to end.

Moroni Montuy: Technicians have the ability to, from their tablet or their phone, from their mobile application that ServiceTitan provides, to really have a organized, robust price book with features all the way up to estimate or proposal templates. And what that gives the customer experience and the technician’s flow of work is the ability to provide three options at a click of a button.

Moroni Montuy: So in your particular case, a plumber could easily select from their, call it their book of, of proposals, as it pertains specific to the job type that you’re working on, to provide you an estimate automatically within, within 30, 30 seconds to, to a minute. Additionally, behind that catalog and that price book and that setup is the ability for the organization to have set up pre-pricing and calculations that protects their margin and provides a consistent flow of accurate pricing to present to you at any given time.

Moroni Montuy: So the notion of waiting a week or having 45 minutes to, to build some sort of estimate for you, you’re getting that within the first five minutes easily And so that’s one of the biggest robust portions that ServiceTitan and its features has to offer when it comes to technicians out in the field and the customer experience.

Moroni Montuy: It

Paul Benton: might not be best practice, but do you know that if a, if an operator could, if he wanted to, build into the price book a time hour estimate? So one of the things in my weekend experience that was frustrating, I asked this 20-year plumber who must have fixed 1,000 toilets or more in his career, “How long will it take you to fix this toilet?”

Paul Benton: Which was just a simple rebuild. And I had already looked that up in GPT, and I did my own math, and it should’ve taken him, by my calculation, anywhere from 15 to 25 minutes. And I asked him, and he said, “I can’t tell you that. I can only give you the price book figure.” So my question is, what if a customer wants to know how long will it take?

Paul Benton: Can an operator build hours that c- can be quoted in a price book?

Moroni Montuy: They can. So one of the nice things about ServiceTitan in, in its glory is, from my experience looking at the price book side in how you present those estimate proposal templates that we were just talking about. The pricing side, there’s a number of ways to go about that.

Moroni Montuy: You have what’s called dynamic pricing, which is a flat rate price that’s given to a customer. And in there somewhere you could mention the estimated time to completion of that particular project or task. However, on the back end of that, there is a preset of what we call billable hours that coincides with those tasks so that we understand what is the estimated time to completion.

Moroni Montuy: Now, that’s not necessarily always client-facing, but that is something that is available and that can be shared with the customer if, if the operation so desired to do so. Secondly to that, there is something called time and material, where you’re billing from a time and material standpoint and you’re estimating the amount of labor in time of what that would, would take to do, and any materials that would coincide with that work.

Moroni Montuy: And those are the two main features that, that provide that opportunity.

Paul Benton: ServiceTitan, I love ServiceTitan because I get, uh, regularly announcements. They are constantly inventing new things. It’s hard to keep up with. So if you were to answer this question, what’s its superpower? That most plumbing companies don’t really appreciate.

Paul Benton: That is really where the, the value is. What, what would you say the superpower is that ServiceTitan delivers?

Moroni Montuy: Yeah, uh, Paul, the superpower most shops underuse is the data layer, the reporting that turns everyday job data into decisions. It’s there, but, uh, most just don’t have it or haven’t seen it or have tapped into that yet.

Moroni Montuy: In my experience, clients suffer from a lack of knowing how, and so they’re constantly looking to learn how to do it and lean on that data.

Paul Benton: One of the challenges that we’ve experienced with our clients is that ServiceTitan really depends on folks like you to help do the implementation and ongoing support.

Paul Benton: ServiceTitan itself, um, at, at least in my experience with our clients, uh, isn’t as ideal in their support, and that’s where you come in, uh, at TradeWeave. Can you, um, can you explain how that works? You are– What is TradeWeave’s relationship as a certain ServiceTitan certified provider? What is that? And how do you fill that gap for clients?

Moroni Montuy: Yeah. So here at TradeWeave, as a ServiceTitan certified provider, we are trained, experienced in the home service industry on the best practices and recommendations on how to utilize and tap into the features of ServiceTitan. So we do anything from coaching, training, implementation, onboarding, and optimization of that system so that your– the teams that are working in that system can get the most out of their ROI.

Moroni Montuy: So we do anything from workflows all the way to the actual technology side of it.

Paul Benton: So you actually can be brought in to do a complete setup and then graduate by being the phone-a-friend, um, when people don’t understand what’s going on in ServiceTitan.

Moroni Montuy: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Paul Benton: And speaking personally, one of the reasons why you’ve added tremendous value to the work that we’re doing together on clients is that often clients, when they work in ServiceTitan, they do configurations that have unintended consequences, and suddenly your– the ServiceTitan can turn into a ball of yarn.

Paul Benton: That makes it very hard for marketers and all at the table to really get any clear attribution. And so part of what you do is teasing out and keeping the systems working as they’re supposed to. Is that right?

Moroni Montuy: That is correct, Paul, yes. You know, oftentimes it’s, it’s an interesting story because clients don’t know what they don’t know.

Moroni Montuy: But once you teach them and they acclimate to that new system and they understand the cause and effects of their actions between one point to the next, that data becomes cleaner, that process becomes clearer, and now there’s confidence behind the data that’s being reported on.

Paul Benton: And that’s incri-incredibly important.

Paul Benton: Let me go into something very, uh, specific that we’ve discovered in the marketplace recently. So if you picture your GBP, your Google Business Profile, there is a button there that you can attached, atte- uh, you can activate the text button. And in LSA you’ve got a text button feature as well. Some systems out there now have full conversational AI, meaning you can text back and forth to, uh, with a customer without deploying a calendar link.

Paul Benton: Can you clarify, does ServiceTitan have that full conversational element, or does ServiceTitan still deploy, as in the, uh, Scheduling Pro, a calendar link to book in? Do you, do you know the answer to that question? That’s really, like, micro

Moroni Montuy: Yeah. That, that’s a good question, Paul. And, and the only thing I can speak of is to what, what’s available to, to us publicly in the docs, right?

Moroni Montuy: So we know that ServiceTitan has a chat system inside their account. Is it hooked up to an AI to a customer facing at this point? I haven’t seen it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, right? Talking to a human, absolutely.

Paul Benton: Okay. So the, so ServiceTitan has, has voice AI that can book without involving the deployment of a text, uh, texting a calendar.

Paul Benton: That, that, is that the case?

Moroni Montuy: That is the case, yes. Uh, and, and you, you mentioned too, Scheduling Pro, for example, a customer can book without ever having to talk to a human at that point as well. That is a, that is a functionality and a feature that currently exists.

Paul Benton: Okay So this is something that’s worth looking at.

Paul Benton: Eventually, maybe ServiceTitan will develop this, and maybe this is a feature that only a few really see value in, but it is whether, uh, you can text back and forth conversationally to get a booking, or you actually need to go through a booking link. Perhaps it’s a, it’s a difference that doesn’t matter, but, um, it’s one of the things that I’ve encountered, and I, uh, appreciate your answer, um, to it.

Moroni Montuy: Yeah. I mean, you know, from a, from a basic foundation in the fact that ServiceTitan has the chat system inside the bookings pages, you know, you’re talking with somebody back and forth, you can easily schedule them and put them on the board. So I think there’s, there’s always room for improvements, and I can only speculate on what that roadmap looks like.

Moroni Montuy: But at a basic level, that’s what we have.

Paul Benton: Awesome. So Maron, I, I, uh, recently in- uh, encountered what seems to me to be earth-moving, an earth-moving difference about texting, and it seems to be only a few weeks old, but the concept of being able to forward a text. That is to say, I text, um, I text a CallRail number, and CallRail can forward that text to a customer, and that customer can text back to me in pho- in CallRail.

Paul Benton: That is a revolutionary change that you can now have CallRail and other systems forward a text. Is that true? Ca- is– Can that be done today? What have you found out about it?

Moroni Montuy: So this is something that’s new that’s come up, but, uh, what I have found is that it is true. You, you can in fact forward texts, and I think it’s interesting now too, because if you look at data and privacy in the tech world as it stands, there’s a lot of different ways where we already see today where numbers are forwarded in, in verses of conversation, direct voice to voice.

Moroni Montuy: When we’re talking about moving from an ecosystem where marketing’s made a big change to SMS type of marketing, you know, the trends and the statistics are showing that SMS is actually the more foundational piece that’s being successful right now as opposed to email marketing, for example. And so the forwarding side, CallRail side- That’s, that’s gonna be a big benefit to people today to get tracking for those kind of communications that we’re looking at.

Paul Benton: It’s especially exciting for, for the marketing side because you can now put a CallRail number into the GBP and forward that into ServiceTitan, so you get both the ability to communicate via text and the attribution. And it used to be you’d have to sacrifice one of those things, and so that’s been the technological change that’s a breakthrough.

Paul Benton: Um, I’m looking forward to seeing how that, um, uh, h- how that unfolds. Um, let me ask you, let’s say a five minute– million-dollar plumbing company came through, uh, and said, “What’s the very first thing we should do? What’s the highest ROI change you would recommend in day one for that big operator?”

Moroni Montuy: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a good question.

Moroni Montuy: So when it comes to a $5 million shop, not every shop is gonna be working at the level that we’re looking for. So, you know, the way we look at it is $5 million company shop is, is, uh, is borderline for us at TradeWeave to take on because we don’t just work with, with anybody. We go through a qualifying interview before we even work with someone because what we have found is, you know, $5 million in revenue versus what like, let’s say, their net profit are very two different things.

Moroni Montuy: And so the cash flow to make change that directly affects your profitability, one of those things that I would say the first place to look if, if they can afford our services, for example, is to look at the price book. Is your price book giving the technician the ability to be confident in what they’re presenting to their customers?

Moroni Montuy: And what they’re presenting to their customers in terms of pricing, is it consistent, and is there an actual gross profit number behind that, that they can track? Once you have your price book set up into the, into a, an efficient means by way it’s being consistent in the pricing that’s being presented for every task that’s in there, uh, not shooting from the hip, they have a greater ability to then invest more into the rest of the software because it is the backbone of their operations.

Paul Benton: So price book, uh, is the first place to lock down is what you would suggest?

Moroni Montuy: Oh, the first place. Yep. I could give you a secondary to that, that, uh, directly ties into, you know, your, your, your side of the field. You know, we always say marketing comes in and we’re spending money on marketing. That’s great, but are we closing those leads that are coming in?

Moroni Montuy: So when we’re talking about revenue levers, and we’re talking about how can we, uh, you know, make change that’s gonna be exponential for them, we look at the fact of how many leads are coming in, how many of those leads are being booked, and then ultimately, how many of those leads that were booked did we actually close a deal on?

Moroni Montuy: And then you can, of course, look at the attribution of the average ticket behind that. And so those are the, those are the two places that right off the bat, you need a good price book to close the deals, but you need those leads coming in, and you need to be able to book those leads and then of course convert them.

Paul Benton: When you’ve worked on larger companies, what big success story have you seen about additional revenue that a plumbing company can realistically unlock simply by optimizing the price book workflows and, and getting technicians to use it? What has been, without spending an extra marketing dollar, what have you seen in the, um, uh, in the, uh, sold job revenue column as just as a result of the optimization?

Moroni Montuy: Are we talking about numbers in terms of the profitability changes, in terms of, uh, revenue increases from this percentage to that percentage?

Paul Benton: Correct. So in other words, if I’m, if I’m a, a shop that is not on ServiceTitan today, and you just put in ServiceTitan, and you do it the way Moroni says that you should do it, what have you seen without spending more money on guys like, uh, like me, are they unlocking just by doing ServiceTitan the right way?

Moroni Montuy: Yeah. So my experience as it pertains directly to the price book side is, let’s say client X is doing $500,000 in revenue. Once they switch over to ServiceTitan, they’re able to lock in this estimate or proposal templates that we were talking about The efficiency of the technician goes up, but the average t- ticket also goes up.

Moroni Montuy: There’s a general statistic out there for the industry where as long as you’re doing three estimates to a customer, giving them those options, you can see that revenue increase 50% right off the bat. Larger companies, let’s say they were doing $15 million and they moved over to this system, I’ve seen them double their revenue in their first year.

Paul Benton: And in the first example, are you saying that you get much higher revenue by giving multiple estimates rather than just one? Is that where– Is that the unlock?

Moroni Montuy: 100%. And the reason behind that is because when you give a customer one option, you’re basically giving them the option to say yes or no. When you give them three options, they can finally look at, “Well, what makes sense for me?”

Moroni Montuy: And then they can make that decision for themselves. It’s placing the question to the customer and giving them a wider range of options rather than just saying yes or no. Yes and no is a 50% chance. Providing three option gives them a way more chance to close on a deal than to say yes or no.

Paul Benton: So you do a lot of ServiceTitan audits.

Paul Benton: You’ve been a l- in a lot of accounts. Um, what have you seen is the biggest mistake that, uh, operators are making that, that it would be h- good to warn others not to do in losing money, uh, where i- i- in, in, uh, in, in losing money at, at their business because it’s, uh, uh, by not getting ServiceTitan right?

Moroni Montuy: Yeah, I’d say commonly those that are suffering the most are those that are not taking action, taking responsibility for their investment. You know, it’s one thing not to know something, it’s another not to seek education or knowledge on it. And so the cl- the best results that we’ve seen are those who are seeking understanding, learning what they don’t know, and educating themselves so that they can make a better decision for their investment and their operations.

Moroni Montuy: That would be one of the biggest things that we see in the industry when it comes to those that are on ServiceTitan. ServiceTitan is great. ServiceTitan has all these benefits for your, your company. But ultimately, it’s the user who wields that tool, who takes responsibility and actionable course to make that investment worthwhile for them.

Moroni Montuy: And so oftentimes people will blame ServiceTitan, you know, we hear it all the time, but they’re not really the ones to blame I believe in extreme ownership. Taking, taking control of your, of your environment and saying, “Okay, this is something that I can take head-on. I can learn this. I can put the right people in play, and we can make this work.”

Paul Benton: Buying an ax doesn’t cut down the tree. You have to wield and swing the ax. Okay. Let’s shift gears for a minute, if we can, and talk about AI. Off the bat, what is new in AI in ServiceTitan? I- And they made some announcements. What’s… What are you seeing in ServiceTitan’s AI that’s most exciting?

Moroni Montuy: That’s a very good question, Paul.

Moroni Montuy: So, you know, it’s, it’s funny how this conversation has gone towards the price book side and the technicians. You know, their new field mobile app has this conversational AI for technicians to ask it questions, to do these different things that ultimately is really providing a better experience for the technician, as well as the option to update summaries of these, of these invoices and, and giving better notes.

Moroni Montuy: I mean- We all know that in the home service industry, the person who’s doing the wrench, for example, fixing the toilet, whatever that looks like, they’re not technology-prone most of the time. And so having that AI piece that helps them with their descriptions of work, with their summaries of these invoices, we’ve seen a complete night and day difference between, uh, what we would maybe call scribble to something very professional, critiqued, and very presentable and understood by the customer point of view.

Moroni Montuy: And so, you know, ServiceTitan’s is constantly making efforts to provide the empowerment to these technicians to, to perform well out in the field. It’s amazing to see that technology grow, especially as the focus of AI continues to build in, in our everyday lives.

Paul Benton: Mm-hmm. Can you hook it up to Claude or ChatGPT yet?

Paul Benton: I’m doing that in several apps, and it saves me a lot of time. What about ServiceTitan?

Moroni Montuy: Yeah, that’s, that’s, uh, that’s a good question. So the right way to, to tap into AI is really through ServiceTitan’s own AI features and its official API. Now, that’s where the AI can safely touch your data. A- and what you should not do is, uh, wire a third-party AI agent into your login to click around the account.

Moroni Montuy: ServiceTitan’s docs, if I remember right, just recently I reviewed them, you know, it talks about taking ownership of what AI does to your data, and it’s still the onus of the end client and the end user to review what the AI outputs for you. And so as a, as a safety net, you know, that’s the right way to do it, is really to do it through ServiceTitan’s own AI features and its official API.

Paul Benton: Okay. So don’t go hooking it up to Claude yet. Um, who knows what Claude would, will, would be doing?

Moroni Montuy: Yeah. And, and, and, and, and, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s something to add to that too, you know? It’s not… It’s no, it’s no fault of AI, right? We have seen in the, in the AI space where AI has accidentally deleted entire databases of companies And is that the fault of the user?

Moroni Montuy: Is that the fault of AI? I don’t know that it really matters whose fault it is. It’s just that we need to be conscious of how that technology is utilized and that the human mind, we take a lot of things for granted, and we assume a lot of different things. And so when we communicate with AI, it’s not doing the same thing.

Moroni Montuy: It’s taking everything literally what we say and do.

Paul Benton: I am making a practice, uh, just because I see a future possible world of Skynet, to say please and I’ve, I’ve stopped saying thank you, but I say please and I don’t, I don’t rent my LLM account and I don’t let my children access my account because I don’t want my LLM to judge me or behave differently because of that.

Paul Benton: And I don’t know if that’s just insane, but that’s my feeling. And I’m being polite to a machine and I can’t explain why I’m doing that, but-

Moroni Montuy: Well, uh, I don’t know, I don’t know what I would say about Skynet specifically, but what I would tell you is that AI can in fact learn to, um To be passive or even lie to you.

Moroni Montuy: And so, you know, we, we joke a lot at Trade We because, uh, there’s a, there’s some documentation out there. I don’t know the exact numbers right now, but to say please and thank you costs a lot of money to do that to the AI, but it’s, it feels right. You’re, you’re, you’re absolutely, you’re hitting that on the mark there that it does feel right.

Moroni Montuy: And, you know, I’ve, I’ve had to find myself telling ChatGPT, “Don’t try to appease me. Give me facts.” And it will come back, and you should e- experience this yourself if you haven’t to see what it re- what it responds with.

Paul Benton: I agree with that, and I also know that ChatGPT has a tendency to gaslight you and compliment you, and I wish it would, um…

Paul Benton: Funny thing is I’m telling it not to because the compliment is enjoyable. What can I say? So we, as we, uh, are coming to a close here, let me ask two questions. Uh, the first is, uh, sort of a big picture one. What would you say advising somebody who’s thinking about ServiceTitan? What is the one ServiceTitan feature that is really dramatically underrated that people just aren’t getting as giddy about as they really should?

Moroni Montuy: I’ve heard this a lot in my experience of working with people who move over from different CRMs to, or field service management softwares to ServiceTitan. You know, the most underrated is gonna be the reporting and data tools. Over-invested, I’d say shops sometimes pour attention into all the other features without understanding the data and the reporting.

Moroni Montuy: The data and the reporting is the biggest piece that a lot of my clients tell me that that’s why they moved to ServiceTitan. And if you don’t understand how the reporting works, everything else in ServiceTitan is a challenge for you because it all ties back to that So prioritization over, um, you know, knocking any particular feature is what I would say when it comes to the data and the reporting

Paul Benton: In God we trust, everyone else bui- bring data.

Paul Benton: That’s, uh, one of my favorite sayings. Here’s the last question. Moroni, one of the things that I really appreciate about getting to know you, and when, uh, we’re at the table with clients, is that you are not simply a software guy, but you are an entrepreneur and an operator in your own right. And I wonder if you would care to tell a little bit about yourself, that when you sit at the table with a client, you are, uh, an operator and understand the operator’s perspective.

Paul Benton: So maybe you can tell a little bit about yourself and your background and the companies you’ve built to give you that connection to a, uh, to a, to a customer as he or she is really building up their $10 million company.

Moroni Montuy: Yeah. So, you know, it’s, it’s interesting. In my experience working with other business owners and entrepreneurs is that a lot of us start with this mentality that we have this imposter syndrome.

Moroni Montuy: You know, when I first started in the industry a- and I started my company, uh, the first company I started was, uh, just to see if there was something I could do, was, was something called Pricebook Pros Consulting. I knew there was a need for Pricebook. I specialized that, in that, uh, in my career in the home service industry.

Moroni Montuy: My first three months I did really well. I did 30,000. That’s a number I can share. It’s something that, uh, you know, at the time I was very proud of. Most money I made in the, in the shortest amount of time I’ve had. Uh, and then I started a company called Titan Pro Technologies, and that’s where my, kinda my journey started with, uh, my partnership with Service Titan, becoming a certified, uh, provider, becoming a certified coach a little in, in that space.

Moroni Montuy: You know, we built that company pretty large before I exited it and- Any business owner out there that I work with, it’s, it’s just a treat. It really is a joy to do because I understand the, the growth mentality and the strategic efforts that are, that are behind it. The late nights, the long weekends, putting everything you have into that business.

Moroni Montuy: You know, a lot of us when we start a business, it’s because we wanna find free time and get buy back our time is what we kinda call it. A great book too, by the way, Buy Back Your Time. So my passion really comes from the fact that I can, I can level with these business owners. I understand that grind.

Moroni Montuy: It’s not easy. Having the right people, process, systems, and product is what drives that ability to get to that point A to point B that we’re looking for. And so in my experience with building companies, I like to say that I’ve owned a number of companies. This is true. I’ve built, I’ve sold certain things.

Moroni Montuy: I, I’ve exited. But some of my biggest stories and success happen to do with building other people’s companies. As an operator and as a partner, you know, I’ve seen what it takes to grow a business. I’ve helped a, a number of clients, uh, sell to private equity. I’ve seen that journey. It’s not easy.

Moroni Montuy: Definitely a, a challenge, but it’s a rewarding one for many. And so, you know, at TradeWeave, we really focus on the people, the product, and the process because those three main things is really what’s gonna drive that growth of the company. And being a partner and an operator in that, it’s I want them to win, and I want me to win.

Moroni Montuy: And if they’re winning, I’m winning. There’s always two questions we ask ourselves. Is it good for the client? If the answer is yes, that’s great. Let’s move to the second question. Is it good for the company? If it’s a yes, then we continue. If either of those questions ends in a no, there needs to be a change in focus, a change in direction to course correct.

Moroni Montuy: Because at the end of the day, if I’m winning, my client better be winning. And you’ve seen me as we work with other clients. I tell them every day, “If you see something that doesn’t seem right in our transparency, that’s when you need to start asking questions.”

Paul Benton: It’s a great philosophy, Mar- Maroun I, and I think this is a good, uh, note to end on.

Paul Benton: And we’ll see everybody in the next episode of the Plumber Marketing Success Podcast.