Commercial Roofer Thriving Thru COVID-19 with Wayne Miller

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Roofing That Pays

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In this interview I’m visiting with Wayne Miller, the owner of WM Commercial Roofing in Ohio. Wayne started his commercial roofing and roof coatings company in 2012 when he was just 24 years old, after getting fed up with working at a factory. Owen:I have with me here today, a good friend. I’m honored, Wayne, that you're taking time out of your day to share with contractors on this series, what they can do to get through challenging times and how they can set up their business to run more virtually. Wayne:Thanks for having me on here and looking forward to our discussion here. Just helping other contractors during this time, that we can all grow with each other. I think it's very encouraging as contractors are helping each other, so looking forward to it.  Owen:You run a good-sized company in Ohio doing Commercial Roofing, mostly using Conklin products. Full disclosure, you and I both are Conklin independent distributors. That point aside, let's jump right into; what do contractors need to have during this time when it comes to mindset? To get through a challenging time, not only like we're having right now, but even in the future, you know, whether it's financial, whether it's health, whatever it is, what kind of mindset should contractors have?   Wayne:I think for number one, Owen, I'll share a real quick story. And I think it kind of ties in with mindset. We have a client that they own multiple different plants. And even though we're in with this company, and we've done work for a lot of their different plants, it's like to try to get into a new plant is almost like trying to get into a separate business just because most of the people don't know each other. They have different plant managers. But I got a call from one of the plant managers here about a week ago. And his first question was, he said, “Hey, are you guys still in business? Are you doing work during this time?” And I'm like, “absolutely”. You know, we're open for business. We're here to help you and take care of you. And he said, “well, you're the fourth contractor that I'm calling”. And he said, “the other three, didn't even as much as pick up their phone or return my message”. Because they're not doing business right now. That just completely blew me away. I mean, in their mind they're taking this, and they're like, Hey, we're shutting down, we can't do anything, etc., etc.  And that's not the mindset us contractors need to have. I mean, we're here, the community needs us, the essential businesses that are still open, they need us. I connected with a client of ours that they have a lot of commercial properties. And I connected with him about two weeks ago. And he said, unfortunately, a lot of their buildings are retail buildings. So, they're shut down right now. But he said, I know that as soon as we open back up, I'm going to be walking into a lot of our buildings, and I'm going to have surprises. I'm going to have waterlines that bust, you know. All kinds of things. And he said, just know that, when that happens, you're the first one I'm going to be calling to take care of my roofing issues. So now more than ever, we have to be connecting with our clients, with prospects, because even though you know, during this time COVID-19 people are working remotely. They're not in their corporate offices as much. But like, people want to talk to other people right now. They want to interact. And so, I think it's very crucial that we keep that mindset that, hey, it's not a time to pull back and retract. We have to push harder than we've ever pushed before because those of us that do that now, at the end of this, we're going to be way further ahead than those guys that decided they're going to shut down temporarily, because they gotta get their ball to start moving again. It's going to take a lot more momentum for them to keep going to start up again. Then for those of us that just kept pushing hard. Owen:Let's talk about some things you're doing as a company to let your customers know, and prospects know what you're doing during this time. What, if anything, are you doing; like social media posts or guidelines for your people going on projects? What are you telling customers when they're saying, hey, come take a look at my roof? Wayne:Obviously, roofing is a little bit different. It's not a product that we just package and ship out, that we're selling online. It's a service related industry. So, that kind of brings it’s own challenges on, how do we separate and do the social distancing and everything. But a few things that we're doing is number one, we're providing inspections and reports that can be done where we don't actually have to meet anybody on site as long as they give us permission to, you know, set up a ladder and to get up on the roof, we don't need to meet somebody there to get us on. So, we're doing the entire inspection where we're doing that physically, like actually doing an on the roof in person inspection. And we also provide drone inspections, which I think drone inspections are great. But sometimes you want to get a little bit more detail where you actually have to do that in person. But then the other thing we're doing, we're sending out reports after the inspection. And we're going over those reports through a Zoom meeting. The nice thing about that is, we're still face to face. We see each other's faces, just works a lot better than just over the phone. And the other thing we're doing maybe if we back up before we actually go and do the inspection. I think this is partially it just helps build trust. But before we ever go out and do that inspection, we'll set up a Zoom meeting with the prospect. And we'll just have a brief introduction, you know, it might be 5-10 minutes, but just connecting with that customer face to face where they see our face, we see their face, that it helps build trust, where they can then feel better to let us up on their roof and not actually meet us on site. So those are a couple of the things that we're doing. The zoom meetings, we're also using those for the actual presentation as far as our proposals. So, once we do the inspection, we show the report to them, we go over everything in detail. We can put a proposal together. We can either email that to them, or we can just simply do that on a screen share through a zoom meeting. And we'll just go line item by line item and cover the entire proposal to them and we don't need to actually go into their office and meet them. I still like the actual face to face interaction. But during this time, this is some of the things that we've started doing. And it's worked really well.  Owen:Awesome. What about contracts when it comes to signing contracts, which a lot of companies, they have the computers, the software to sign them and email them back. Wayne:We had already started doing a lot of the DocuSign. And they just sign them and email them back, and then we'll invoice them. You know, a lot of that was already done through email and software previously, where we didn't change a lot on that in.    Owen:Let's go back a little bit; when someone visits your website, fills out a form or calls. Do you have a CRM? How does that work? Wayne:We have a CRM where it automatically books the appointment to one of the sales guys. But then he's responsible to actually connect via phone with that prospect, and then set up the Zoom meeting, etc., etc. Because we still handle it on a case by case situation, just because I'm a very strong believer in still getting face to face if we can. And we don't want to take that away and force them into doing a Zoom meeting, things like that, if they're not comfortable with that. So, we kind of take case by case whatever they prefer is what we'll do through our cloud-based system that we use to store our photos. Like literally any project that we're on. Anybody that takes any pictures, takes the picture through this app. And a quick shout out to CompanyCam. I mean, that's who we use. We really love them. But the nice thing about that app is you can go into the project and you can select a few photos and you can share them either via email or text message. We've been doing that even before the whole social distancing started taking place, but it's just a really good way, if you're working on a project, you might not be able to connect with the maintenance guy or the project supervisor before you leave, he might not come up on the roof, but it's just a good way to shoot him a couple pictures and say, Hey, you know, this is what we got accomplished today. Helps stay in contact with him. Yeah, we really love that.  Owen:What would you say made a difference in working with the Conklin organization and their network of contractors as far as getting started and working through hard times. Do you think that made any difference? Wayne:Well, I think one thing that Conklin definitely has an advantage is, you know, even during this time, when some building owners might not have the financing or the capital available to do like complete tear off systems, or whatever it might be. Conklin has all these different roofing systems where a few of them are actually more in the restoration process where they can provide a really good warranty. And you can help save the business owner a lot of money. And I think those systems are going to be huge during this time because roofs still need to be done. You still need to put some kind of waterproofing system out there. I looked at one this week. And it's an old EPDM roof, rubber is in great shape, nothing wrong with the rubber. They just have some small leaks here and there.  And every other contractor that came in there to offer an option, they're giving them an option of doing a complete tear off down to the decking and a brand-new system. And I told him, we can if you want to, but it's going to cost you more money. This is what I can do. We offer them the fabric reinforced roofing system, which we can install over the existing EPDM rubber. It's a system that is manufactured specifically for these single plies. And it's going to save them a ton of money. And they were excited about that option. So, I think options like that are going to be huge during this time. And then also just with the network of contractors that are involved in Conklin, it's like a big network you work with, and it's just the overall positivity that comes out of that. There's opportunity in difficult times like this, but it all comes back to the individual leader and his mindset, you know, what is he going to do during this time? Is he going to freak out? Is he going to believe it? Everything that the newspaper says and the media says, or is he going to decide, you know what, I'm going to make the best out of this. And I'm going to continue to grow my roofing business and push for everything I've got. So, I mean that that would be kind of my input on it. Owen:If you could go back and give yourself advice, when it comes to business or life, and you could give yourself or a young person that's just starting in their career some advice, what would that advice be? Wayne:Figure out what exactly it is that you want. I don't care is that roofing related, is that personal, family; doesn't matter. But get a clear vision of what is it that you want, and then surround yourself with the people that have that. Don't spend your time with people that don't have what you want. That might sound rude. But, you know, I think number one is, you have to get a clear vision, personally, what you want. I just read an article from a friend of mine this morning, where he had a little post on Facebook and had a little video that he included in there. And it was what it was these two couples that were comparing their lifestyle based on the pictures that they posted on Instagram. And his comment was, he said, that's the number one reason why I don't spend a lot of time online on social media platforms is because everybody is comparing everybody else to each other. And, you know, it doesn't matter what the public wants or what the other person wants, like you have to individually personally for yourself, figure out what is it that I want and then surround yourself with the people that have what you want. And then I'd say the second thing is, don't procrastinate as much and don't hold back; like just go all in, you know one way or the other way it's going to work out, just jump in and you'll get there a lot quicker.