Stop Buying Hours

I recently spoke with a business owner (let’s call him John) who runs a successful service company. He’s been in the game for decades. He knows his numbers. He knows his craft.

But recently, he hit a wall that every veteran service business owner eventually runs into. For 15 years, John had the same two lead guys. They were loyal, reliable, and happy with an hourly paycheck and a handshake. But then, they retired.

And when John went to hire their replacements, he realized the game had changed.

"The different generation likes different pay," he told me.

He found himself "winging it" with ad-hoc bonuses trying to keep his new, younger crew motivated. But he was still facing turnover and bleeding profits due to callbacks because the new hires weren't as efficient as the old guard.

John isn't alone. The workforce has shifted. The "show up and get paid" model is dying. Today’s technicians want transparency, they want control over their income, and they want to see exactly how their effort translates into dollars today, not at the end of the year.

If you are struggling to bridge this gap, here is how to modernize your compensation strategy to fix retention, seasonality, and efficiency:

John admitted that his current bonus structure was "kinda weak" because it was based loosely on tenure and net profit, but without a clear system. He was throwing money at the wall — referral bonuses, tool allowances, review spiffs — hoping something would stick.

The problem with "winging it" is that it doesn't create behavioral change. If a tech doesn't know exactly what they need to do to earn that extra $500 this month, they won't change how they work.

You need a structured, transparent plan.

Your employees need to know the math. They need to see a scorecard that says:

This is what we built ShareWillow to help with. Instead of tracking five different incentives on a whiteboard in the office, ShareWillow centralizes every incentive into a single dashboard.

With the ShareWillow mobile app your techs can check their phone and see, "I'm $50 away from my next tier." That clarity drives performance in a way that a vague "end of year bonus" never will.

John mentioned a painful reality of the trades: "I'm pretty much gonna have to hire five to get two more."

Churn is expensive. It kills momentum, especially in a seasonal business where you have a short window to make your revenue.

The modern workforce treats employment like a transaction. If they don't feel valued or see a path to higher earnings, they leave.

The fix? Show them the money before they are hired.

Don't just list an hourly rate in your job post. List the Total Compensation potential. Show them the bonus structure examples during the interview.

When a candidate sees a clear system where high performers consistently earn more than their base pay, you attract A-Players who bet on themselves. 

This is a key part of a strong employee retention strategy. By giving them a clear financial future, you reduce the churn significantly. Plus, when your techs are performing, your business will be growing. 

Here’s an interview with a 19-year old tech on how performance pay motivates him and the rest of the Clogbusters team:

John shared that he lost a bunch of profits to callbacks last year and for a small seasonal team, every callback is pure profit vanishing.

Inefficiency usually stems from a lack of alignment. If a tech is paid hourly, they are incentivized to take their time. If they are paid purely on revenue, they might rush and make mistakes (leading to callbacks).

You need a balanced scorecard.

We recommend structuring a performance-based pay plan that includes deductions or gates for quality issues.

This forces the tech to slow down just enough to get it right, because they know a callback hurts their wallet, not just the owner's.

One of the most insightful things John said was about his peers: "They just don't take care of their finances well enough... they don't even pay themselves a lot of times."

He nailed it. You can’t build a profit-sharing plan if you don't track your numbers accurately (and don’t have any profit to share).

Before you launch an incentive plan, get your house in order. Know your gross margins. Know your labor burden. Calculate your total compensation costs.

If you try to layer incentives on top of a broken financial model, you will just accelerate your losses. But if your books are clean, incentives become the fuel that scales your profit margins.

The strategies that worked for the guys you hired 15 years ago won't work for the guys you hire tomorrow. The current generation wants to know the score and they want to win.

If you build a system that rewards the behaviors you actually want (efficiency, quality, sales), you won't just keep your new hires, you'll turn them into your most profitable assets.

Our product team has been flying this month. He are two updates I wanted to share:

We just rolled out new Datasets and our Metrics Hub in the ShareWillow product. These features let you take your data from ServiceTitan (and other job software… more on those below) to create unique Metrics you can use in your incentive plans.

Here’s a short overview of the feature:

ShareWillow now integrates directly with Housecall Pro and Jobber so you can pull all of your data from those platforms into ShareWillow at the click of a button, this enables you to turn your job data into actionable performance pay plans for your techs.

Want to learn more about these features? Book a call today: 👇