A1 Garage Door Service is the nation’s largest garage door service company, with $200M in revenue. The company has 300 technicians and 100 installers, and they service 15,000–18,000 clients each month. Sales is a big part of A1, and leadership wanted technicians to improve their sales game.

The challenges

A1 has an eight-step sales process, and sales managers need to know technicians are hitting every point. Are they selling service agreements? Asking for reviews? The only way to know is to be there with sales reps in the field. 

Typically that involved ridelalongs, which have their own drawbacks.

“I don’t like doing ridealongs,” said  A1 Garage CEO and Founder Tommy Mello. “We’ve hired 50 technicians this month. I don’t have time to do ridealongs with every one.”

Technicians act differently when a supervisor is around. It’s also hard for technicians to learn from the best, emulating their approach and making a bigger paycheck. A new rep can’t ride along with the #1 seller if one is in Vegas and the other is in Milwaukee.

“It’s tough,” Tommy said. “You’re monitoring performance, but you have no actual data.”

Rilla ups the technician’s sales game

Rilla is the AI-powered tool that ends the need for ridealongs. Data from client conversations feeds directly to ServiceTitan, where sales managers get analytics about who said what and how they said it. “It’s going to make sure we followed our process,” Tommy said.

People were initially skeptical about being recorded, but Tommy underlined that Rilla is to help technicians learn. “It’s to let you make more money,” he said.

Listening to their own conversations helps technicians improve, and Rilla also provides them with tips and highlight reels from A1’s top sellers.

The results

“You could take your worst technician and turn them into a top player within a month of [using] Rilla,” Tommy said.

The smartest people pick up tricks from the top performers, who might be in another market.

Seth Munstock, Area Manager for Denver and Colorado Springs, confirmed Rilla’s success. His technicians doubled their ticket size by listening to their calls. “I’ve seen them double their profitability, double their income,” he said. Some now have a 90% close rate.

“They’re making instant, massive improvements with their conversion rate and average ticket,” Tommy said. Month after month, A1 continues to break its sales records.

When you do the math on time saved, increased sales, and improved service, Rilla pays for itself. “It’s tools like this that change the game for us,” Tommy said.

‍“The data coming out of this is our unfair advantage,” Tommy said. “If my competition doesn’t implement this in the next year, we’re going to eat their lunch.”