New Products Can Differentiate Your Company

RCS Influencer Mike Pickel says do your homework when thinking about using a new product.

I have heard many people say a roof is a roof is a roof. I have also heard and said myself in the early days, we are different than other roofing companies in our area. Clearly the client wasn’t getting the message we were telling them.

After our first year in business we decided we had to do something, or it was always going to be about price. We attended our first Roofing Contractors Association of Texas Convention and Expo and couldn’t believe the variety of products available. Four months later I was blown away when we went to the International Roofing Expo. Our local supply houses offer a variety of products, but I had no idea the vast options available to me as a roofing contractor. We decided then we had to take advantage of this opportunity to be different.

Now clearly you don’t want to just start picking this and picking that like you would at the grocery store.  You must educate yourself on what products can be used with which manufacturer you are associated with to make sure you don’t void manufacturer warranties. You also want to make sure a product that you want to use doesn’t blow the budget and you can’t sell the value in it to the client. So, take the time and go to school on every item you investigate to make sure it is the right component for your system and pricing.

Every year our team picks three to four things we want to find at the expos to see if we can integrate them into our systems or business.  Questions we ask ourselves are:

• Will it make our warranties stronger?

• Will it let our roof look slightly different?

• Will it provide a safer surface during install for our crews?

• Will it give better energy efficiency long term?

• Will it leave the jobsite cleaner?

• How will this set us apart?

If we find it and decide to move forward with it, we then inform our sales team so they can talk to the client about our system/process and how we are truly different. 

Always be looking for a way to provide the client with a little something to make your system different than the other two roofing companies that just left the client’s front door.

Mike Pickel is co-founder of Texas Traditions Roofing. See his full bio here.