[Honeybee Texas]

I've gotten mixed reviews about Service Magic, and I'm wanting more reviews from all of you. I signed up, paid my dues, and am suddenly second-guessing whether it will be worth the quoted $400/month for all the leads.

Have you had high, moderate, or low success with Service Magic?
Do they send you crappy leads?
Is their customer no-service effective?
Are they effective salespeople on the client-end of things? IOW, will they grow?
Are the bids real, or are they just feeding me fake bid requests? (An example that sounds fishy to me is that I've been talking to the sales guy at Service Magic for three weeks, and he keeps mentioning this retaining wall job. My question is: Why, three weeks later, is this job still open? Will I, as the bidder, have to wait a month to get an accepted bid, IF accepted?)

I appreciate your input.

[Stonehenge]

I'm wondering why a Service Magic rep is in direct contact about a lead anyway. That's not how the system is supposed to work, as far as I know. It's all automated.

As for the leads, I'm confused by the demographics we seem to be getting - either very old people with budgets in the hundreds of dollars, or very young people either kicking tires for fun or looking for a service we don't provide (which tells me the service magic system is flawed).

I've heard a few people saw good things about the service, but I put a hold/stop on it last spring after the combined budgets of the first 3 leads was less than $500. This year we've received about 5 leads, and only one will end up actually having any work awarded, and the project will likely be $4k. I wouldn't call that a success, but it's not the worst marketing dollars I've ever spent (but it's close).

I get most frustrated when I call the lead and find out in 30 seconds that they're a dead wood lead and that I just spent $20-50 for that lead.

Oh - and don't worry about the monthly max - you can change it anytime, and you aren't going to get so swamped in one day that you'll get crushed with fees. I believe I gave them a monthly ceiling of $1,000, and so far this year I'm at a tenth of that.

But if I get 1 or 2 more junk leads, I'm giving them the boot for good.

[natural12]

I tried it for a short time a while back and hated it. I signed up for x amount of leads a week and I would get all my leads on the same day. They encourage that you call the leads immediately. Probably because they provide the leads to 1 or 2 other landscape companies. I found this difficult to do because I seemed to be in the middle of doing something when the lead call came in.

The bottom line is the leads suck. Some people I called back where not even looking for landscaping. Service magic receives a submission from someone filling out a free form on the internet and calls it a lead and sends it your way.

I found the whole process annoying. Did not work for me. May work for other people who have the time to interview a lot of potential customers. May work well for the maintenance companies.

Mike

[sandim]

Here's my take on it....
We signed up over the winter. Got all the spring cleanups we bid on, then started to try landscape quotes. Started with our usual design fee and trying to pre-qualify people over the phone. We feel like we wasted a tremendous amount of time and energy. Went skipping here and there to go see people who honestly don't have a single clue about landscaping. I personally think it depends on the type of person you are. If you are the kind of person who can go on potential job after potential job and not care that you don't get it, it may potentially be worth it for that one big job you do get. For us it didn't work. I practically went insane trying to figure out where I went wrong. I think the people who look at service magic are either price shopping and that's their bottom line, or they're looking to pick your brain, see what you can tell them so they can do it themselves.
You can try it, but we spent almost $800 and it wasn't worth it. I mean, we made the money technically through all the cleanups, but the running around and wasted time...so not worth it. To each their own, you're welcome to try it and see if it works for you but I've read through the posts before. Almost no one likes it. If you go into it with this knowledge, it may not be as bad. I cancelled our account. Good luck!

[obryanmaint]

we did recieve many leads ,but many were tire kickers....in the right environment it could be good....or the correct service

we used it for fertilizing and plowing and did not really work for us over all

[EDEN]

I know this reply is a little late from the original post date, but I've been using them for over a year now, and right now is the only source of advertising I do. I'm a small company so over the past year I've been tweeking the way I use the service. I use the lowest amount allowed $100 per month, when I get my leads I will schedule vacation time through the service so I don't get any more leads until I can handle what I do get. If I book the jobs I turn my leads back on and if I want raise the monthly spending to get a few more leads and then put it back to $100 for the next month. Overall they have helped my business grow. Sure there are definetly some tire kickers out there, but you get them anyway if you have an ad in the paper, phone book etc. I've also noticed there are a lot more tire kickers in the summer months than the spring and late winter. I get leads in Jan and Feb, who are serious people who want to get scheduled before the busy season starts. I Feb. alone I had my schedule booked into April with all new customers.