Relationships Play a Key Role in Sustainability and Revenue Growth

RCS Influencer Rudy Gutierrez says that they started planning early and leveraged relationship to work together with clients, who are also facing challenges.  

Shell Roofing Solutions was positioned to have a great year in 2020, because of the performance of the market and our backlog. Then COVID-19 came and changed it all. In March, we noticed a 60% call reduction. Although we had a strong backlog, we knew that at some time this would affect our revenues.   

We began planning for end of year and 2021 earlier than previous years. For the Shell Roofing team, it was important that we continue to apply the basic sales principals, relationships, customer experience and doing the extra things that keep us in front of clients. 

In September we met with our Shell Roofing team and developed a strategy for our current business environment and looking ahead to 2021. The key points of our strategy meeting were answering the questions: 

• How sustainable is our target demographic?  

• How strong are the relationships with our client base? 

Based on these key points we implemented a strategy to target our key market segments and our valued client base. As we went out and began working our strategy, we found that our clients that we have worked with closely over the years have implemented strategies to meet their short-term and long-term client needs. We created revenue opportunities by meeting our clients’ temporary needs and positioning ourselves for economic rebound.  We are ending the year with positive business growth. We are positioned to achieve positive revenue growth in 2021. 

Our strategy for 2021: work with our clients to meet their short-term needs and develop the strategies for their long-term needs. This is hard work, in fact, this economic environment is tougher than the 2008 recession. However, we are in the roofing business. Roofs still need to be maintained, repaired and replaced. New buildings have to be built and roofed. The roofing business is sustainable and 2021 will prove to be a great year for the roofing industry. 

Rudy Gutierrez is president and CEO of Shell Roofing Solutions. See his full bio here.