Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify
James Hatfield fell off enough ladders running his own painting and power washing company that he fell into technology instead. His last company exited for six billion dollars. His current one, Live Switch, has become one of the fastest growing platforms in the trades, built on a simple idea: the faster a homeowner sees your face, the faster they trust you enough to buy.
He calls it race to the face, and it’s the answer to something every contractor has lived through: you call back exactly when you said you would, and the homeowner already found somebody else. Speed to lead got you to the phone. It never got you the job.
In this episode, Sam and James break down how Amazon Prime trained every customer to expect instant everything, how a twenty thousand dollar mold job got closed without anyone driving out, and how AI is already writing job reports, translating language barriers on site, and coaching reps in real time, without taking the human part of the sale out of the equation.
In this episode:
- Why speed to lead isn’t enough anymore, and what race to the face actually means
- How Amazon Prime reset what customers expect from every service call
- Why letting a homeowner see your face before you drive out builds trust fast
- Real jobs closed in the five and six figures without ever setting foot on the property
- How AI can auto-write job reports, translate language barriers on site, and coach reps in real time
- The QR code trick that lets customers request service while you’re still at the dinner table
- How to know which AI features are worth your time at your company’s current size
- James’s hire, fire, promote framework for scaling a service business
- The one-page MBA: the single thing that matters most as you grow
Connect with James Hatfield:
LinkedIn: search “James Hatfield” Live Switch
Company: Live Switch, www.liveswitch.com
Connect with Sam Wakefield:
Website: https://www.closeitnow.net
Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @therealcloseitnow
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/samuel.l.wakefield
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/closeitnow/
Join the Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/closeitnow
Bring This Training to Your Team:
Sam travels nationwide to deliver on-site training for home services companies serious about raising their close rate and average ticket. Half day classroom, half day ride-alongs. Your team, your market, your systems.
Book a call with Sam: calendar.app.google/KZH1j2Q1MAXTKbT38
Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Google. Every review gets read, and if yours gets read on air you earn a no-charge one-on-one coaching session with Sam directly.