How Your Great Performance is Hurting You – Part 2

To differentiate yourself in the marketplace so you can earn a higher margin with lower hassle projects you need to do more.

By Greg Hayne

(To read Part 1 of this series, click here.)

In Part 1 we outlined some of the behaviors present in the culture of many roofing companies. These behaviors are some of the key ingredients in the success you have.  In Part 2 we will point out how these behaviors are holding you back.

One way of talking about this culture is that you have to do these things to take care of yourself in order to survive as a business.  (And you do).  But to differentiate yourself in the marketplace so you can earn a higher margin with lower hassle projects you need to do more.  You need to take care of your customer and his needs, first.

This means you return phone calls and reply to emails, not when it is convenient for you, but when it is convenient for your customer.  (Convenient for your customer in this situation means you do it now, not if you can get to it today).

It means if you get a call at 11:30 a.m. before a bid is due at noon, you take the call.  You are able to do this because you turned the bid in two days ago.  You were able to do that because you told your supplier you needed the prices on Monday, not Wednesday, or whenever he might normally do it.  You, fundamentally, change all your work patterns so you can be more responsive to your customer’s needs.  And you make your suppliers do the same, so they meet your new needs.

To differentiate yourself means you find and hire employees that have true customer service skills.  What are customer service skills? These skills include the ability to receive phone calls or emails from unhappy customers and quickly resolve the difficulty to the customer’s satisfaction and not view the customer(or treat them) as an interruption or necessarily evil that has to be tolerated.   It also means taking the time to notice what kinds of complaints come in and figure out what needs to be done or who needs training, so these repeated complaints are minimized in the future.

These skills include handling service requests for leak repairs promptly and invoicing promptly, with the kind of documentation a knowledgeable owner should want, which you send to all your customers, not just those that insist on it.  You do this because it is in their best interest to have the best information, even though it might not be the easiest for you.

When you are doing projects based on hard-dollar bids, you furnish what is asked for and no more.  When you are trying to get out of that game and into higher margin work, you better do more than the bare minimum.  You give your best effort to everyone.

The Hayne Coaching Group has an innovative and proven training, implementation and support program called “Creating Great Service” where we teach the best practices of the best service contractors in the country and then help our client roofers implement those best practices into their organization.  Click here for more on Creating Great Service.

We also offer facilitated peer groups for non-competing roofing contractors, including one with a focus on developing and growing commercial service departments.  Click here for more on our facilitated peer groups.