That's a wrap for Pantheon 2024! Check out all our coverage from an amazing conference!
» Opening Keynote: Greater profitability for ServiceTitan customers tied tightly to automation. Complete recap here
"We're just getting started" — Vahe Kuzoyan Previews Commercial Roadmap in Pantheon Keynote
The first Pantheon wasn’t even called Pantheon, Vahe Kuzoyan said during his keynote speech. It was called Dispatch.
“It was hosted in my backyard,” said Kuzoyan, the co-founder of ServiceTitan. “That name lasted all of one year … until we got a cease and desist letter from dispatch.com.”
In those early days, when Kuzoyan and Ara Mahdessian stopped by major tech conferences, they told people that ServiceTitan was a dispatch software for plumbers.
“I would always get this look, this face. This face that just said, ‘That is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.’ But we didn’t care. We got all the affirmation we needed from our customers, who really loved us,” Kuzoyan said.
“Because even though the footprint was small compared to what it is today, it was still way more than anything else that was available at that time.”
Kuzoyan spent his keynote session at Pantheon on Wednesday previewing the new and exciting features that will impact the commercial, construction and residential landscape for shops of all sizes in the coming year.
“Whether you’re doing $1 million or $1 billion, my promise to you is that you will never outgrow ServiceTitan, and ServiceTitan will never outgrow you,” Kuzoyan said.
For shops looking to scale, Kuzoyan highlighted a handful of new features to look out for in the coming year:
Single sign on (SSO)
Use management audit trails
Purchasing approval workflow
Inter-tenant inventory transfers
Contact Center Pro
Sales Pro
Kuzoyan then previewed the latest commercial features—but first he paused to note just how far ServiceTitan has come in the commercial space.
“A few years ago, we formally launched commercial. I was very excited. I was riding high on our residential glory, only to be met with that old familiar face: ‘That is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,’” Kuzoyan said.
“I was not expecting that. It was very humbling. Turns out, we would have to earn the right to call ourselves the leaders in the commercial space, and not just rest on our residential laurels. So we went to work. And over the course of the last few years, we earned our way to becoming the leader in commercial. We are by far the largest player in the commercial space today.”
Kuzoyan highlighted upcoming commercial features like:
Convex
Gross margin optimized segmentation
Hyper targeted prospects list
ServiceTitan CRM
Integrated purchasing
Weekly dispatch board (which received a round of applause from the audience)
There were also new tech-specialized features like barcode scanning, rebuilding the mobile app (which received the loudest applause), job assist, customer portal, equipment replacement opportunity report and more.
And for construction, Kuzoyan noted new features like takeoff and estimating integrations, universal estimate, project general ledger, crew management, project profit predictor, and many more.
“Hopefully you can feel how serious we are about commercial and construction,” Kuzoyan said. “Ultimately, our mission is to build the operating system that powers all of the trades, and do it in a thoughtful way that ultimately benefits everybody.”
Before 4,000 attendees — an impossible number to imagine back when he hosted the first-ever Pantheon (ahem, Dispatch) in his backyard — Kuzoyan reflected on a recent moment he had over dinner with his parents.
He was telling them about all of the engineers and new products ServiceTitan was building, when his father looked at him and asked:
“Aren’t you done yet?”
“And Dad, I am here to answer that question for you today,” Kuzoyan said to the crowd. “On behalf of all our Titans, all of the contractors we service and all the contractors we will service, we’re just getting started.”
-Brendan Meyer
Prometheus Awards: Gulfshore Air Conditioning, Sila Services honored for charitable work
Our 2024 Prometheus Award winners: Gulfshore Air Conditioning & Heating Inc and Sila Heating, Air Conditioning, Plumbing & Electrical.
ServiceTitan on Wednesday announced the inaugural Prometheus Award winners at Pantheon, recognizing two companies who drive progress and inspire positive change in their communities.
Gulfshore Air Conditioning in Niceville, Fla., won the Prometheus Flamekeepers award, which recognizes smaller-scale organizations for giving back.
Gulfshore’s Cozy for Christmas campaign provides free HVAC installations to those in need, including installing a system for a single mother and her family in 2022 and donating units to a women’s housing project and an animal shelter in 2023.
To involve the Gulfshore team, the company shares nomination stories, inspiring technicians to volunteer their time.
Sila Services, a multi-trade organization encompassing multiple brands and based in King of Prussia, Pa., won the Prometheus Torchbearers award, recognizing the contributions of larger-scale companies, went to Sila Services, a fast-growing company that includes a growing number of brands in the Northeast.
Sila Services, with more than 30 locations across the U.S., makes an impact in its communities through the Feel the Love campaign, which provides free HVAC systems to families in need, and through long-term partnerships with organizations such as Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation.
“For every $50 that we’re able to give to Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, that funds one hour of research for pediatric cancer,” said Carney Daley, Regional Vice President for the Mid-Atlantic for Sila Services. “That’s incredible. We don’t look at it from the standpoint of just looking to raise money, we’re looking raise hours of research.”
Sila fosters a culture of giving back in everyday operations, enhancing both community well-being and employee fulfillment.
“Winning the Prometheus Torchbearers Award at Sila is super impactful for all of us,” Daley said. “Each one of us has this deep dedication to our community, whether it’s the trades community or the communities we serve. It’s one of our core values. Winning this award shows that we’re able to give back.”
The finalists, all of whom were chosen for their community work, included:
Flamekeepers: Anchor Heating & Air (Charleston, SC); Beck Cohen (Charlottesville, Va.) and Gulfshore.
Torchbearers: Air Comfort Solutions (Tulsa, Okla.); Express Plumbing Heating & Air (Nampa, Idaho); John Henry’s Plumbing, Heating, Air and Electrical (Lincoln, Neb.); ProLift Garage Doors (Amarillo, Texas), Vines Restoration, Plumbing and HVAC (Conway, SC) and Sila Services.
-Mike Persinger
People, Process, Product: The Three Ps Leading To Maximum Profit & Prosperity
Marcus Lemonis didn’t spend a single minute on-stage at his keynote session at Pantheon on Wednesday. Instead, he roamed the crowd.
The entrepreneur, advocate and philanthropist who is best known for his role as the star of the TV show “The Profit” started his closing speech by shedding light on an important topic.
“I firmly believe that the trade organizations of the world have lost their spotlight on them,” Lemonis said as he weaved between the rows and made eye contact with the crowd.
“It’s hard to find new workers," he said. "Hard to train them. Hard to get customers to appreciate the value that we bring. Hard to get people to understand that the prices that we’re offering are not exorbitant. Hard to find new business. Hard to close business. Hard to keep business. It’s become very difficult.
“One of the things that matters to me more than anything is to continue to support small businesses that focus on providing services to homeowners that they don’t think about until they absolutely need them.”
Lemonis explained that the trades need to find a way to build their businesses in a way so that they’re not only called when they’re in need. He said that owners have to think about:
Proactive ways to drive revenue
Drive the average ticket
Drive conversion
Drive margins
Keep costs down
Take care of their people
Streamline the parts that are needed to actually do the repairs
And most importantly, make more money
Lemonis spent his hour taking real-life examples from the crowd, and finding solutions for them. One topic he tackled was asking attendees to calculate their effective labor rate, and why that number is crucial to the business.
He even gave them a homework assignment.
“Understand every part of the numbers of where you’re actually at,” Lemonis said, and heads nodded. “Your job and your obligation is to make your technicians more money. The only way they make more money is you give them more jobs.
“We need to get better at this, because this country needs your services. Homeowners have to have your services. We can’t function without it.”
-Brendan Meyer
Peak Solutions: Exploring ServiceTitan’s Roofing & Exteriors Roadmap
In Ara Mahdessian’s keynote speech at Pantheon on Tuesday, he included a shout out to the latest industry ServiceTitan is serving.
“Roofing, we’ve got your back,” Mahdessian said.
And that point was stressed even further in a breakout session that explored ServiceTitan’s roofing and exteriors roadmap.
“Everything in this session is specific to the needs of the roofing and exterior workflows,” said Abigail Rethore, a principal product manager at ServiceTitan. “The features that could help you today ... and the features that are coming soon (and that we’re) focused on for next year.”
Features available today:
Spec-based estimate templates: For residential retail roofers, this feature simplifies estimates for roof replacements through automated calculations. Salespeople enter specifications, such as measurements, into a custom form. The system then automatically generates a list of required materials and prices, enabling quick and accurate quote generation.
Hover: Gives ServiceTitan contractors an additional way to measure, to scope projects, and to sell in ServiceTitan. Roofing sales people and office staff can leverage the measurement and estimating capabilities of Hover and the end-to-end power of ServiceTitan to present and sell jobs.
Contract builder: Roofing contractors can clearly outline the scope of work, materials to be used, timelines, costs, and other essential details, ensuring that both the customer knows exactly what to expect and that the business can prevent misunderstandings by setting clear expectations.
The session also highlighted new features on the product roadmap:
Supplier purchasing integration: Users will be able to check real-time item pricing and availability at supplier branches, and submit orders electronically directly to the supplier’s ERP.
Internal and external communication: Easily control and manage roofing projects by keeping internal teams on the same page. Send messages to other office users and between office and field users. Consolidate internal back-and-forth on jobs and projects in one place.
“When I think of hard working people with physically demanding jobs, long hours, that traditionally have been underserved by technology, it’s roofing,” said Sue Drummond, a technical writer at ServiceTitan.
“I’m so happy that we’re taking what we’ve already been doing for other trades, and delivering it to this community and industry.”
-Brendan Meyer
Scenes from Pantheon
More than 3,000 ServiceTitan customers attended Pantheon 2024 in Orlando.
The Pantheon Pins were back in Orlando!
ServiceTitan podcast hosts Jackie Aubel and Josh Lu were recording interviews with customers throughout the 3 days of Pantheon
From Fundamentals to Future: A Deep Dive with Fleet Pro
“We aimed to create something unique for contractors to manage fleet while reducing risks and improving performance,” said Tyler Forcum, Principal Product Manager at ServiceTitan, as he launched into the capabilities and future enhancements of ServiceTitan Fleet Pro.
Among the key functionalities showcased were:
Telematics: A fleet-centric map allowing real-time visibility of all vehicles, with GPS tracking to identify unauthorized use and geofencing to monitor off-hours activity.
Asset Tracking: Real-time insights into the location of physical assets while on the move.
AI Camera: A tool designed to protect fleets by detecting unsafe driving behaviors with precision.
Samuel Petrie, General Manager of Red Barn Service LLC, shared their success story, showcasing a 2.8x revenue growth over three years with ServiceTitan.
“Setting up geofencing at the start allowed us to track technician time in real-time, and audible alerts have been crucial for monitoring activities,” Petrie said.
Petrie showcased a video from May 2024 that documented how they tracked a car accident with Fleet Pro, providing clear evidence that proved the other party was at fault. “It’s important to protect your assets and your company,” Petrie emphasized.
Hov Arabyan, Principal Product Manager at ServiceTitan, addressed the GPS Timekeeping Integration, noting that 70% of companies manually compare timesheets with GPS data, wasting up to four hours each week.
With GPS-Enabled Timesheets in ServiceTitan, users benefit from discrepancy detection and smart recommendations, presented in a convenient map view.
Forcum wrapped up the session by previewing exciting future developments for Fleet Pro, including Maintenance Service Entries, Dispatch Data Integration, and a timeline of upcoming feature updates.
-Cecilia Li
Unlock Next-Level Efficiency and Profitability with Dispatch Pro
“Dispatchers are the face of your company, but they’re burning out.”
Anya Singer, Group Product Manager at ServiceTitan, kicked off the session by presenting eye-opening statistics:
On average, there’s one dispatcher for every 10 to 15 technicians.
Hiring a dispatcher takes 4 to 6 months, followed by another 4 to 6 months of training.
Half of the dispatchers reported stress levels of 7 or higher on a 10-point scale. Over two-thirds believe their shop is understaffed.
Given these challenges, A1 Garage Door Service is pioneering a data-driven approach to dispatching. With ServiceTitan Dispatch Pro, dispatchers can automatically assign the best technician based on job details — enhancing their daily workflow without replacing the human element.
“There’s often resistance to change, but at A1 Garage Door Service, our core value is to drive continuous improvement,” said Luke Martin, Chief Operating Officer. While change can feel daunting, it opens the door to valuable growth opportunities.
The company underwent a significant mindset shift. Instead of forcing ServiceTitan to fit their needs, they reworked their job types and workflows to align with the platform, placing greater trust in the data.
After a year, Martin reported three key areas of improvement:
The company added 200 technicians without hiring any additional dispatchers. “We don’t need to train a new dispatcher for every 10 techs we add, and I LOVE that,” Martin exclaimed.
A 2.5% increase in lead conversion rates has directly translated into revenue growth.
A 5% increase in weekly capacity utilization means that “being more efficient saves your company money.”
Martin’s crucial takeaway? Don’t rush changes. “There are many settings to understand, so if you make a tweak, measure it for at least six weeks. Otherwise, you won’t know what’s truly changed,” he advised.
-Cecilia Li
ServiceTitan CTO Anmol Bhasin and Michelle Billodeau, Director of Business Development, speak at Pantheon 2024.
Integrations Marketplace brings entire ecosystem to customers
ServiceTitan Chief Technology Officer Anmol Bhasin announced at Pantheon on Wednesday the launch in Winter 2024 of the Integrations Marketplace, a hub of dozens of partners and integrations with ServiceTitan that can be launched by contractors, often in minutes.
The Integrations Marketplace is the first of a number of integrations and partnerships improvements on the roadmap, including Webhooks, or subscribable APIs that enable notifications through ServiceTitan, in Spring 2025, improvements to developer support in Summer 2025, API analytics in Fall 2025, and exposure to more APIs throughout the next year.
The integrations available through the Integrations Marketplace are intended give ServiceTitan customers access to best-in-class APIs and partnerships in the trades, even when those integrations involve products that compete with ServiceTitan functionality, such as Mail Shark.
“We have an amazing R&D team (at ServiceTitan), but at any given point in time, we can only built so much,” Bhasin said. “But you don’t have to be bound by that capacity. All our work on APIs, partner engagement and the Marketplace is done so that you, our customers, have access to an entire ecosystem of technology and services.”
The Integrations Marketplace is the next step in simplifying and enabling that access.
-Mike Persinger
The Art of Deal-Making
Tom Howard’s career journey started with him sweeping floors and cleaning tools in an air conditioning shop and today the largest company he owns will make about $100 million in revenue.
Ken Goodrich started by holding a flashlight for his father and at 16 he was running service calls by himself. He’s gone on to buy and sell dozens of businesses and make millions.
These two self-made giants shared strategies and techniques to negotiate and close deals and increase the chance of success in every transaction.
Each of these men have utilized what Goodrich calls “bolt-on acquisitions” to grow.
“It’s anywhere from phone numbers and data bases and operating companies from guys retiring, guys, passed away, guys getting a divorce, guys just sick of it, guys that have got financial trouble,” Goodrich said, “and I found any which way that I could to get these deals, and it became part of our company DNA.”
It's been a core part of his marketing plan since the 1980’s. “I look at bolt-on acquisitions as a marketing tool. It’s lead generation. It’s a customer acquisition tool and that’s how I think you should look at it,” said Goodrich, Founder & Chairman of Goettl Air Conditioning & Plumbing. “It’s a means to grow your customer base rapidly, grow your revenue and profitability rapidly and stay out of the bar fight of pay-per-click.”
Howard, VP of Customer Experience at ServiceTitan, said he’s learned a lot of what he knows about finding deals from Goodrich and one of those lessons is, “It’s about farming not hunting. You’re constantly building up this relationship with people, you’re constantly getting to know them,” Howard said.
“90% of the time you’re helping them whatever else nothing ever comes of it, but the truth is some of the time it’s going to turn into a deal or a friendship or whatever else. What I really want to impress upon people, it’s about farming not hunting, not just constantly looking for that next deal,” he said. “In some cases, you’re just helping people, and it may never come to an acquisition but who cares. Worst comes to worst you were just a nice person and helped someone out.”
Goodrich said that should extend to the community as well. “I always say it’s about being in the game, fully committed to the game. I make sure I’m in the best-practice groups. I make sure I come to these conventions. I make sure that I make lots of contacts,” Goodrich said. “In the local cities where I was doing business, I made sure I was in the local associations and getting to know people and offering my hand here and there and once you get a reputation of making some good deals with them the people who retire come to you first. The people who want out come to you first.”
Some challenges in acquisitions they warned about:
Fast and loose can burn you.
Don’t fail to follow your own playbook.
Be clear with seller about the relationship (if any) going forward.
Don’t miss the base hits because you are swinging for home runs.
Check out this video to hear more from Tom Howard and Ken Goodrich about their professional journey.
-Deborah Goldman
How Technology Is Changing the Way We Do Business
Lance Bachman, CEO of LB Capital, began with an unexpected request: “Everyone please stand up, and hand your phone to the person to your right for the next 45 minutes.”
“Did you feel the anxiety?” Bachman probed. “That’s how you’re gonna feel about the importance of technology by the end of this presentation.”
“I never touched a thermostat, I never sat on a sales call. I built every company using technology,” he explained.
Drawing from his experience building and selling more than 10 successful home service companies, Bachman explained how technology fuels his business success, from leads to revenue:
Marketing Campaigns: “We utilize every feature of ServiceTitan Marketing Pro,” he said. “It makes my marketing manager’s life — and my life — so much easier.”
Online Booking: Bachman posed a question: “Who booked plane tickets through their phone?” As hands shot up, he emphasized that customers crave the same convenience in home services.
AI-Powered Dispatching: ServiceTitan Dispatch Pro takes bias off the table to assign the most fit technician for the job. “The amount we closed with Dispatch Pro already paid for a year of ServiceTitan,” he noted.
Automated Accounting: Bachman detailed how Accounting in ServiceTitan enables his sales team to know gross profit in real-time, allowing them to gauge their performance accurately.
Looking to the future, Bachman said, “AI is your friend,” but added, “It only works with the right input.” He emphasized the value of data-driven decisions: “Trusting data over gut feelings can make you a lot more money.”
Bachman ended with a personal reflection on his growth. “I went from $2 million to $18 million in 15 months, and I wasn’t even using ServiceTitan correctly at first. ServiceTitan was open to helping me, and you can’t get that support anywhere else.”
-Cecilia Li
Titans of the Trades: Operating Principles for Growth
Titans of industry shared insights into the unique operating principles that shape the way they run businesses and think about the future of the trades in this packed afternoon breakout session.
Trevor Flannigan of Flint Group, Scott Boose of ARS, and Kurt Bratton of Turnpoint Services lead businesses that have more than 300 unique locations and well over three billion dollars in revenue combined. They answered questions posed by Ross Biestman, Chief Revenue Officer of ServiceTitan and audience members on a wide range of topics.
Flannigan addressed the importance of responding to customers’ changing behaviors.
“This makes me think about the amount of customers that would rather go through chats or do anything rather than pick up the phone. I think we have 30% plus of our leads coming through non-phone calls and it’s just a tremendous hole in the business for leads to get lost and for us not to respond quickly,” Flannigan said.
“Speed to lead is everything in this business and if we’re not responding immediately to the customer then we’re competing with a whole group of people.”
Bratton added, “From a customer standpoint, customers expect a highly personalized experience and that’s going to accelerate — and the only way for us to achieve that is the use of data to meet them where they’re at, whether that’s digitally in whatever format they choose and take them on a customer journey that really is impactful to them.”
But Boose warned that data can have pitfalls too.
“Data’s a great thing — but sometimes there’s so much of it, you can get lost in it. What are those core KPIs? You know the ones that drive the most value and how do you leverage the dashboards to bring those to life?” Boose asked.
“Your managers in particular, let them know what’s important, what are those two, three, four KPIs you really want them to focus on? Where do they go to get that information? Otherwise they could spend all day in their office looking at the data as opposed to training their teams, encouraging their teams, finding those areas in the customer journey that are broken. So, data can be a great thing, but it can also disable you if you get too lost in it,” he said.
Biestman asked the panel how they see Titan Intelligence and AI impacting their businesses and the industry at large.
Boose said business owners need to be thinking, “Where could this really have an impact? A technician, improving their ability to give great service? How do you inform them through some of these things? The use cases are many,” Boose emphasized. “I think it will be interesting to see how ServiceTitan evolves but also how the industry evolves and adopts and adapts."
Bratton said AI can be a leveling factor between larger platforms and family-owned businesses.
“It levels the playing field,” he said, “and I think that gives everybody a fair shot to win ... so what will differentiate you? The same things that did when you started your business — take great care of your team, take great care of your customers and you’ll win. The rest of it is going to be leveled by everybody having access to these amazing tools. I’m ready for that. Let’s go win in the street by executing better.”
-Deborah Goldman
Project Tracking: Powering Your Construction Business
Jade Vasun, Senior Project Manager at ServiceTitan, kicked off the session with a strong mission statement: "We're no longer an afterthought. We're here to give our Construction customers the tools needed to efficiently run their short and long-term projects."
To showcase the future of Construction Project Tracking, Jade invited James Perry Beyer, President of Beyer Plumbing Co., and Adam Cronenberg, COO & Partner of Beyer Plumbing Co., to present a firsthand view into the future of Project Tracking:
Project Groups: A new parent structure will enable users to create larger projects with sub-projects for specific tasks, providing a clear overview of project status and finances for easier management.
Project Templates: They help users standardize projects and tasks. This streamlines creation and cuts manual work.
Cost Codes and Project Plans: This feature keeps projects on schedule and budget by assigning timelines and tracking costs.
“The great thing is, as an owner, you can see the status of the project without sifting through 20 different entries. Everything is consolidated in the parent project, including rolled-up financials for different project phases,” said Beyer.
“It’s so much better than dumping everything into Excel and manipulating it,” Cronenberg added.
The session concluded with Jade unveiling an exciting project timeline for these new features.
-Cecilia Li
Transform Sales Performance with Sales Pro
ServiceTitan allows shop owners to track pretty much every aspect of their business—from marketing to dispatching to fleet to accounting.
But there’s one crucial spot that’s nearly impossible to monitor: At the job site, when your techs are making the sale.
And that’s a problem.
Shop owners hire technicians based on trade skill set—not on their saleability. Most shops don’t have a playbook to coach techs on how to sell, and technician ridealongs are timely. That means there’s a blindspot for the owner once the technician is on-site, trying to make a sale.
Not anymore. At Pantheon, ServiceTitan unveiled its newest AI-powered sales coaching tool: Sales Pro.
“You guys are going to get the first look at this product,” said Henry Cheng, director of pro product strategy at ServiceTitan, to a packed conference room.
Sales Pro records conversations in the field through a mobile app, then transcribes and analyzes those conversations to find improvement opportunities for your technicians. It allows owners to track one of the most important touchpoints of their business, and allows them to share model sales tactic examples and coach sales behavior.
And it leads to revenue growth.
Fifteen early-access customers tried Sales Pro. One of those customers, Brandon Blanton, VP of Blanton and Sons, was on Tuesday’s panel.
“(With Sales Pro), we have a 20.8% revenue increase—with three less technicians,” Blanton said. “We have a 9.1% increase on close rates, and an 8.2% increase on ticket sizes.”
Joseph Jordan, the co-founder and co-CEO at Siro, explained that Sales Pro is not meant for micro-managing or punishing mistakes. It’s the opposite.
“Managers and techs want the same things: to get better and make more money,” he said. “But if techs can’t participate in that learning, it feels to them like they’re just waiting for their manager to find their mistake.
“When techs do participate, it feels like they’re all trying to find opportunities to improve together.”
Sales Pro’s posted section allows everyone to participate in that learning, Jordan said. It creates an environment where techs are competing to create training content for everyone else.
“And it becomes about sharing the good, not punishing the bad.”
Sales Pro is a virtual ride along, Jordan added. The keyword in that sentence? Virtual.
“Gone are the days of having to choose between spending hours in the field to know what’s going on in the home.”
-Brendan Meyer
Resource Roundup
When it comes to finding resources to help your business utilize ServiceTitan, it can be hard to know where to start. For customers who attended the ServiceTitan Resource Roundup session, it’s easier than ever to identify the right resources — and where to find them.
Speakers Tim Sjobeck and Sena Sadeghi, both from the Customer Programs team at ServiceTitan, highlighted resources that can benefit any customer — whether they’re advanced users or just beginning their ServiceTitan journey.
ServiceTitan users can access a wealth of useful information and resources simply by logging into the ServiceTitan platform. A few spaces that were highlighted are the Marketplace, the Academy, and the Knowledge Base. When searching the Knowledge Base, you can access hundreds of articles to answer questions or get step-by-step instructions.
Additionally, fans of the Ideas section of Community were glad to hear that it will live on, with access now residing in the Knowledge Base.
Sjobeck also made a point to hover over the Next and Practice environments found when users click their profile icon in the top right corner. “It’s a hover-to-discover,” he said, “so if you’re not sure what the difference between Next and Practice is, the hover will tell you. These are sandbox environments you can practice in without affecting your account.”
Of course, one of the most impactful tools within the ServiceTitan platform is TitanAdvisor.
"TitanAdvisor is not just a game. It’s an evaluation of your company. It’s an evaluation of your business's success,” Sjobeck said. “Everybody stand up. Now if you don’t know your TitanAdvisor score, sit down.”
More than half the room of attendees sat down. Sjobeck encouraged the crowd to use Pantheon as an opportunity to network with ServiceTitan experts in attendance and learn strategies to understand and improve that score.
In addition to resources found in the platform, Sjobeck and Sadeghi highlighted useful spaces and links on the ServiceTitan website, specifically those hosted in the Toolbox. Within Toolbox, you can find links to webinars, podcasts, recent blogs, tools, and more.
The biggest news out of this session was the reveal of the new Customer Resource Hub.
“This will be your one-stop-shop for ServiceTitan resources,” Sjobeck said. Users who access the page will find featured articles, upcoming events, and useful videos. Access to Ember and Spark sessions, which are free, educational user groups, can also be found in the Resource Hub.
Everything a customer might need to level up their knowledge of ServiceTitan, sign up for events, get recent news, network with other like-minded customers and more can all be easily found in this newly created hub.
» Access the Customer Resource Hub today!
-Natalie Koch
Contact Center Pro Unveiled
The list of the many challenges facing today’s call centers is … long.
CSRs need to manage call volume, booking rates and abandoned calls. Even more dire, technology has fundamentally changed the way we interact with customers, which means an increasing demand in response time.
“But we’ve got a solution,” said Angie Snow, a ServiceTitan principal industry advisor and call center expert.
On Tuesday, ServiceTitan unveiled its newest pro product at Pantheon, Contact Center Pro.
Contact Center Pro allows you to capture every dollar of revenue, in every interaction. This trades-specific, multichannel, smart platform powers all customer communications with advanced Titan Intelligence-powered features and virtual agents.
It offers full access and visibility into customer and business data for a centralized call center that is organically ServiceTitan. By improving both contact center efficiency and customer experience, Contact Center Pro helps contractors lower costs and increase revenue.
“We want you to never miss communication with your customer,” said David Hoffman, senior director of product management at ServiceTitan.
Hoffman and Areni Mahdessian, director product management at ServiceTitan, detailed Contact Center Pro’s roadmap, which includes features like universal inbox, agent assist, virtual agents and manager assist.
“Call center managers, we are here for you,” Mahdessian said. “How many of you actually listen to your agents' calls to see if they’re dispositioned correctly? What percent of calls do you actually listen to that aren’t booked? Who listens to more than 5% of your calls?”
Only 20 of the 500 crowd members raised their hands.
“How long does that take you?” Mahdessian asked.
The crowd groaned, with many yelling “Forever!”
“We are about to solve that problem,” Mahdessian said. “My goal is that you never have to QA a call, ever.”
And with that, the whole crowd cheered.
-Brendan Meyer
Beyond HVAC: Building an Industry-Leading Roofing Brand
Roofing is the next frontier in the service industry and some HVAC, plumbing, and electrical businesses are throwing their hats in the ring.
Chris Hoffmann, CEO of HB Solutions Group shared his experience expanding into roofing after building his family’s HVAC business to $120 million and offered advice on how to achieve industry-leading growth, build high-performing teams, and solidify a position as a premium home services provider.
Hoffman told attendees the decision in 2016 to have his second-generation family business join the Nexstar Network was huge.
“We joined Nexstar, and it was really transformative because we got to learn from the hundreds of years of accumulated experience of our peers,” Hoffman said. “We just started implementing their playbook — aggressively. That took us organically in our core business within eight years from $9 million to over $100 million organically in HVAC, plumbing, and electrical just focusing on those basics.”
Hoffman told the crowd that if their base business is solid, they can start thinking about what he calls strategic initiatives — going to new markets with existing service lines or adding service lines in the existing market.
"In 2023, we said let’s start thinking about partnership because we can accelerate growth, and we had the balance sheet to be able to do it,” Hoffman said. “We were debt free at the time and there were a lot of folks reaching out to us. Particularly because of our commitment to independence, we had a lot of folks saying, would you entertain a partnership? That’s how the partnership with Ferguson Roofing emerged.”
Hoffman explained that Ferguson Roofing is a third-generation, 85-year-old roofing business, and the owners were specifically looking to partner with someone whose values aligned with theirs.
Hoffman had some specific advice about how to move into a new vertical, like an HVAC and plumbing company branching out into roofing.
“Be really thoughtful around which functions (you) choose to centralize, standardize and leverage to support those new businesses. For example, you don’t need to create redundancy in all of these different functions,” Hoffman said. “If you have a great, high-functioning call center, don’t create a second when you launch roofing.”
In fact, he said it can be a great efficiency gain because peak demand for HVAC and plumbing fall at a different time of the calendar year than roofing.
Finally, he gave his reasoning for why getting into roofing now — specifically replacement, not new construction — is a good opportunity. He said roofing is attractive because it’s a huge market that’s really fragmented and a lot of people want a piece of the pie.
“If I were to use a baseball analogy, I would say HVAC, plumbing and electrical feels like it’s in the seventh inning of consolidation. It’s further along. There are fewer high-quality platforms at scale left for folks to buy. Most have been acquired,” Hoffman said.
“Roofing is in the third inning, maybe even the second inning. It’s very early in that journey, but there’s a very similar push and a similar level of activity. A lot of the same folks who have created platforms in the HVAC, plumbing and electrical arena, have now created platforms pursuing consolidation in the roofing space. You’re going to see a lot of the same type of outcomes that we’ve seen occurring inside of the HVAC space.”
-Deborah Goldman
Profitable Patterns: Incentives and More
What Makes Great Team Incentives? C.A.T.S.
Not real cats. Dallin and Spencer Tippetts, VPs at Rainforest Plumbing & Air, say C.A.T.S. is an acronym. They use it to incentivize their employees.
Why put resources into team incentives? "It builds a culture that makes profit for the business," Spencer said as he defined the guidelines they follow. They ensure each incentive program is:
Clear: Objective. Did it happen or not?
Attainable: Repeatable with low friction to achieve.
Trackable: Using ServiceTitan's reporting features.
Scalable: Receive rewards without limits or caps.
What’s an example? Spencer shared how they incentivize earning 5-star customer reviews. Tracked with ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro, every review request links to that specific job in ServiceTitan.
“It’s critical to have Reputation Management turned on within Marketing Pro to make our 5-star customer reviews incentives run smoothly,” said Dallin. This way, the company easily tracks the team members’ performance.
Rainforest tripled the number of reviews for their commercial shop. And costing them on average $18 per review in rewards to team members. They did not stop at field technicians. They also reward their office staff to ask for reviews during customer calls and emails.
Continued employee training is another way they offer rewards to team members.
Dallin reviewed two keys that cemented the success of their incentive program.
First, they found through trial and error that a rewards system employees redeem for gift cards or items is important. It should be separate from commissions or cash bonuses. Using a third-party platform "gamified" the incentives. It also sets them apart from taxed payments that can "disappear" in their paychecks.
It is also crucial to automate any incentive program.
And the results show. They regularly receive positive feedback from customers. And are on pace to hit $30M in revenue this year, growing 150% since joining ServiceTitan.
-Andrew Nicoletta
Championing Women in the Trades
“The future is female — and here we are!”
That’s how Khadija Head, CEO of Heads Plumbing, started her introduction, and the packed auditorium certainly responded to that energy as Pantheon 2024 began in style — with a roundtable discussion about Championing Women in the Trades.
ServiceTitan’s Chief Legal Officer Olive Huang hosted the discussion, featuring:
Emily Chin, EVP of Business Growth Strategy at Wells Fargo
Khadija J. Head, CEO of Heads Plumbing
Kristin Gallup, VP of Women in HVACR and Director of Product Management at Carrier Enterprise
Vanessa Gonzales, co-founder of Albuquerque Plumbing, Heating and Cooling
The session focused on the various journeys for each of the women on stage, the importance of mentorship and so much more.
“I wouldn’t be where I am today without mentorship,” Gallup said. “It’s about paying it forward and leading by example. I have 5 mentees right now, and all I ask of them is that they pay it forward. Because everyone needs a mentor.”
“Mentoring is what you make of it. It’s a two-way activity,” Head said. “I have a personal board of directors — they know Khadija the person. But I think it’s also important to provide value to my mentor as well. I want to make sure their cup isn’t empty.”
Chin seconded that notion. “It’s hard to ask people for help, or mentorship,” Chin said, “You have to create a connection that works two ways. You have to build a safe space, where you can ask the tough questions. But it starts with … what can I do to help you?
“Mentoring relationships sometimes rely on just taking the first step — what do I want to have a conversation with this person about? And how do I bring value to them?”
“All my mentors, all of whom happen to be male — they made me feel comfortable being myself,” Chin said. “You need to be a safe person and create a safe space — to talk about things like the challenges and pressures of balancing family and work life. To the male allies, it’s OK to open that door.”
Gallup gave the background of Women in HVACR. “We’re a 22-year old non-profit organization. We started out talking about bringing more women into the trades — and here we are, 22 years later, and we’re still talking about it.
"It comes down to three core pillars — networking, education and mentorship,” Gallup said, ”We’ve seen a 37% growth in women receiving promotions or who have grown into other roles, based on their participation in our program.
“Look at all the women organizations we have in this room,” Gallup said. “We’re stronger together.”
“This is my first Pantheon, so I created this narrative in my mind,” Head said. “I challenge everyone in this room to be confident and cocky. There’s a reason this session is kicking off Pantheon … we are the spark that’s going to ignite another amazing year.”
“Be mentors for each other. I’ve gone out of my way to be a mentor for women,” Chin said. “Provide the courage for someone who is struggling to find their own. Create a safe space to lift them up — and push them to where they can be!”
“Show up for each other,” Head said, “We are all the CEOs of our personal lives. When you see someone doing a good job — tell them!”
“Be vulnerable too,” Gallup added. “Sometimes we are afraid to ask for help. But that’s how we grow, and how we get better.”
Gonzales delivered a full-circle moment to wrap up the session. “Tom Howard was up on stage in 2017 at Dispatch (the predecessor to Pantheon). I said to myself, ‘I want to be on that stage, and make an impact on others.’
“It can happen. But be careful about what you tell yourself. Be careful about what you put out there. If you see someone who looks phenomenal — tell them. There’s not enough positivity and positive feelings out there in the world — let’s do that for one another.”
-Scott Goldman
Leading the Future of Commercial
"How many in the audience use ServiceTitan for their commercial business?" That's how Stillman Jordan III, President of Encon Heating & Air started the session. All but one person raised their hand.
The audience was eager to learn the four ways Encon Heating & Air uses ServiceTitan Commercial to run its 300+ person business:
Work Order Management: Using the open API, a custom work receipt is generated after each commercial job.
Service Agreements: They manage 3,300 active agreements with bulk workflows. These include uploading purchase orders and tracking equipment for many customers at once.
Estimating & Tracking Project Bids: Create a project for each estimate. They use the bid status button to track the sales funnel. Auto-populates for import. They use their old sales spreadsheet process and upload it to the project bid.
Project Workflow: Supporting use tax by creating a customer field labeled "tax type." Report on work in progress for construction jobs. Review the earned revenue for jobs that have only been partially completed.
Stillman wanted a single source of truth for their data. They aimed to use ServiceTitan Commercial to improve efficiency. Their 15% growth and 7% drop in payroll prove they were successful.
-Andrew Nicoletta
Leads to Loyalty: Marketing Funnel Strategies
Every contractor is constantly seeking leads and strives to turn each lead into a loyal customer. Marketing plays a key role in that process.
In this morning breakout session, Suzanne Wilson, Chief Marketing Officer for the SEER Group, shared strategies for cultivating demand and how to be effective at each stage of the marketing funnel from brand awareness to purchase and Jacob Levine, Senior Product Manager at ServiceTitan, shared how Marketing Pro can help.
Wilson acknowledged the difficult landscape facing contractors right now. People are more likely to spend money to take their family on vacation or buy a new car, Wilson said. “But are they actually going to replace their (HVAC) system? Not if they can help it. We’re seeing people hold onto their cash — and therefore we’re seeing our number of leads are also down.”
She said that can tempt business owners to pull back, and cut marketing budgets.
“It’s not the right decision. It’s hard when marketing needs to cost more for you, but that’s when you stay in front of it,” Wilson said. “Marketing is not a short game. It’s actually quite a long game. You really need to be thinking a little bigger and longer.”
Wilson explained awareness is the top of the funnel through things such as radio, TV spots, billboards—creating an impression of your brand in the mind of a potential consumer.
“This is a sales opportunity, and a sales opportunity is now yours to lose,” Wilson said. “Every stage of this funnel presents an opportunity to build trust.”
Wilson also highlighted that communication is key — engaging with customers, following up— because human beings are not as logical as we like to think we are. “We are not logical people. We are emotional people, we are reactive,” Wison said. “How we feel has a huge impact on what we choose to do, so that is your opportunity to nurture that lead and take good care of it.”
If you’ve got good brand awareness, you may be struggling in the middle of the marketing funnel. Wilson explained how using Marketing Pro can make a big difference.
“Within ServiceTitan, you can segment your contacts. You’re out there collecting contacts in various ways. That’s super valuable. Get those people in your system. Now you can segment them,” Wilson said. ”Maybe it’s people that have a system that’s 12 years or older. Maybe it’s people that you’ve never transacted with. However you want to segment it, it’s super easy and it’s something you can do in-house.”
Finally, Wilson emphasized the importance of reviews. “Please don’t take for granted how important this is in today’s world where people are hyper-critical, and they do a ton of research ahead of time,” Wilson said. “Make sure you’ve got someone assigned to manage this. Maybe it’s you as the business owner. That’s okay if it makes sense but make sure somebody is managing this and make sure techs have a way to ask for that review.
“I think using the ServiceTitan software is a great way to take control of your destiny, because of the way it’s built. You can create things straight from your shop. As long as you’ve got someone that’s capable of doing marketing, the Marketing Pro software can actually up-level their skillset.”
Levine followed with a product update highlighting the brand-new Autopilot feature, which makes Marketing Pro more seamless for customers.
“If you’re a small or medium-sized business, you just don’t have time to or don’t know what the best practices are, so you need help launching a marketing campaign,” Levine said. “We are going to automatically pre-populate campaigns for you.”
He explained that ServiceTitan has been analyzing the most successful marketing campaigns for years to understand what really works for contractors in your specific trade, in your specific segment meaning residential or commercial construction and then in your specific part of the country.
“So effectively what we’ve done now is ServiceTitan is analyzing this data, we’re then looking at your specific ServiceTitan account, your situation, and then we are producing these campaigns for you,” Levine said.
There are six campaigns available today exclusively for Marketing Pro customers at Pantheon for anyone looking to sign up and 30 total coming in the next month.
-Deborah Goldman
Unlocking Commercial Sales
“Prospecting is easy, right?” asked Neha Budhraja, Director of Pro Product Strategies at ServiceTitan at Wednesday’s session on Unlocking Commercial Sales: An Easier Way to Prospect.
No one in the room agreed ... which is exactly what Budhraja expected.
Prospecting is hard, convoluted, and often a multi-step process that requires gathering resources and research from multiple sources.
“It’s important to have the right process, the right people, and the right software to get the job done,” said Blake Meulmester, VP of Product at ServiceTitan and co-founder of Convex, a software designed to power commercial businesses’ sales with property-based intelligence. Attendees at this session were treated to an engaging demo of Convex where they were able to see the powerful data available about commercial properties across the United States.
Budhraja also spent time going over useful tactics sales teams can employ to treat prospecting like a team sport. She suggests having “cold call sprints” where the team has regular discussions about their prospecting successes, failures, tactics, and struggles. “Prospecting should be talking about more as a team, and shared as a practice,” she said. “You’ll shift the mindset, and soon you’ll see results as part of this process.”
-Natalie Koch
ServiceTitan's Ellen Rohr (left) speaks with CFOs Lincoln Walpole and Naresh Idnani at Pantheon 2024.
Bottom Line Breakdown: Insights from Top Tier CFOs
“Who else loves the simplicity of what’s being discussed here?” Ellen Rohr preached to the cheers of the Pantheon crowd Tuesday.
Simplicity isn’t something you expect to hear in a panel of top tier CFOs, but Lincoln Walpole of Any Hour and Naresh Indani of Champion Group Holdings cut to the chase in their rapid-fire session, moderated by Ellen Rohr, now of ServiceTitan.
“Everyone in this room knows how to build a business,” said Walpole, who started at Any Hour in 2013. “But a lot of companies fail because they don’t focus on the basics. Our focus is on retention — we actually have a KPI on how we’re doing with employee retention.”
“To me, cash is king,” Idnani said. “I can tell what my EBiDTA is going to be when I see my cash report.”
Walpole cut to the chase when, after asking his vendors to cover their ears, he said, “Pay your vendors as late as you can, and collect your money as soon as you can. Don’t buy materials and then invoice your customer — their money should be buying the materials first.”
“Do everything you can to hold onto your cash.”
When asked about overhead, Walpole said, “No. 1 thing? Have a budget. You have to have a budget in place. The government could use a budget right now. You have to be able to justify an additional resource.”
Idnani added, “Think about your return on investment. If you’re going to invest $100,000 and you can recover that in 6-9 months, great. But if you’re going to invest $100,000 and you’re not going to recover that for 24-36 months, you might want to rethink that.”
When asked for their “parting wisdom” by Rohr, the CFOs delivered:
“We expect techs to get a 5-star rating every day,” Idnani said. ”Make sure you and your team are earning 5-star ratings for your customers, your business, every day as well.”
Walpole put the exclamation point on the session with this passionate conclusion:
“I think we all understand what a dollar is. Numbers are a byproduct of how well we take care of our customers,” he said. “But people want to do something bigger than themselves. Inspire your people. If they are inspired, they’ll be more productive. Be that source of optimism, and motivation, and productivity … and set the example for your team.”
-Scott Goldman
Effective Strategies to Organic Growth
Enhance service quality, build strong client relationships, optimize operations, and grow tactics beyond Mergers & Acquisitions — those were the topics that Bryan Benak, CEO of Southern Home Services, and Frank DiMarco, CEO of Champions Group, dove into with Pantheon attendees.
Tyson Freeman, Head of Residential Customer Success at ServiceTitan, asked each of these industry experts to share best practices and hypothesize about the future.
Both said investing in your people is number one. “I can have all the best ideas in the world,” Benak said, “but if you don’t take care of your people or they don’t think you care, you just have a bunch of good ideas.”
“We do spend a lot of time on training. It’s a people business,” Benak continued. “People, processes, technology and execution. And people are both the customers — and everybody on your team.”
When asked if service quality and customer satisfaction are connected to growth, DiMarco didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely. It’s tougher today. The consumer’s more educated. We’re all trying to elevate how we operate collectively but if you aren’t excellent at customer service, you’re going to really struggle at doing what we do,” he said.
“There’s always somebody lower priced. Two things I’ve learned, I’ve never seen a market leader being the lowest priced person — never. Two, if you aren’t ferocious at customer service you will lose share. You cannot have one thing out of place, especially charging premiums,” DiMarco said. “They’ll take you apart on the internet. You have to build value. That customer satisfaction is paramount.”
Benak agreed. “We always talk a lot about sales. Your first part of sales is service because if you don’t deliver a great service then ultimately that’s going to diminish your reputation in the market,” he said. “To grow organically you have to get challenged by your team to think about the customer because that’s where your growth is going to come is meeting customers’ needs.”
As for the future, DiMarco said, “Over time what you will see, I believe, is consolidation within the industry. That shouldn’t panic anybody because if you’re running a great business, you still have one,” he said.
“I think there’s consolidation of the consolidators coming up. You’re going to have to execute as well as you’ve ever executed — and if you think you are already doing as much as you can do, get in a peer group. Talk to somebody who’s bigger and doing more. That is how these great businesses (evolve) … everybody shares ideas. That’s how we get better.”
-Deborah Goldman
Championing Veterans of the Trades
On its surface, the aviation skill that it takes to be a TOPGUN pilot isn’t transferable to being an HVAC technician.
And that’s where you’re wrong, Art delaCruz said.
DelaCruz, the CEO of Team Rubicon and a former TOPGUN pilot himself, was part of a panel that championed veterans of the trades at Pantheon on Tuesday—a panel that repeatedly stressed the same, important point:
There is a built-in, intangible skill set that comes with hiring veterans.
His organization at Team Rubicon, a veteran-led humanitarian organization built to serve global communities before, during and after disasters and crises, relies on the elite decision-making, responsibility, work ethic and leadership skills that comes from a career in the military.
Those attributes, among many others, are all a perfect fit for the trades. -Brendan Meyer
M&A Insights
To say the least, there was a ton of interest in the session “M&A Trends and Insights” at Pantheon. In a bursting-at-the-seams conference room, ServiceTitan’s Chris Hunter facilitated a discussion with four experts:
Richard Lewis, Founder & CEO, Redwood
Dietrich McCall, NearU Services
Eli Greenspan, Intuit
Daniel Youman, CEO, Flow Service Partners
The biggest question the group tackled was the most obvious one: When is the right time?
“This is the biggest question people struggle with,” Lewis said. “Have conversations with people like me. Tell me about your structure, tell me the pros and cons.
“You can continue to run it, but de-risk your lives. Most of the people in this room have 95% of their net worth invested in their business. That can be scary.”
“One advantage of joining any of these groups is that we have the resources to implement ServiceTitan the right way,” Lewis said. “All this technology takes people, and expertise.”
“Don’t neglect your business,” McCall said. “Don’t cut investments in your business to make things look more profitable. It’s not a numbers game. This is a people game. We cannot succeed in the trades without the right people out in the field.”
-Scott Goldman
» Make sure you save the dates for Pantheon 2025 – Sept. 17-19, 2025, at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif.!
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