How to Start (or Grow) A True Service Division

Don’t expect your service manager to grow the service division.

By Greg Hayne.

When commercial roofing companies attempt to start or grow a service department we see one key reason those fledgling departments struggle. Your lack of involvement! You, the “boss,” the owner of the company have to be involved and engaged in the process. When the boss is engaged, results come. When the boss isn’t, results don’t. This isn’t so much an opinion as it is science.

It’s Monday morning, you are starting a nice project just down the street, the foreman calls in and says that he is short two guys on the tear-off crew. This is no problem. You just run to the accounting department and tell the accountant and their assistant to grab their hard hats and get down to the jobsite to help with the tear off.

What? It doesn’t work that way?

Well, what about when your chief accountant and her assistant are both out. One is on maternity leave and the other is in the hospital because of an auto accident. Do you call a jobsite and grab two guys from the tear-off crew and have them work your books for the next 6 weeks? No? Why not?

But that is exactly what you are doing when you expect your service manager to grow a service department. And it is just as absurd. The mindset and disposition of someone who is great at running a service department is one of stability and routine. To grow a service department, by definition, requires change (lack of stability and lack of routine).

When we train service departments, we do behavior assessments on all the key employees involved (the ones we use are called DISC). We know what the DISC of a great service manager looks like. It does not look like that of someone who is good at implementing new ideas. You know who is typically the best in a company at implementing new ideas based on the hundreds of DISCs we see? You, the boss.

This is not to say that you have to become the service manager or spend all your time in the service department. But it does mean that you have to be engaged. You need to recognize, understand and embrace the idea that you can’t delegate growth initiatives. You are going to have to be involved.

About Hayne Coaching Group Hayne Coaching Group helps roofing contractors prosper by discovering and implementing smarter, better ways to work.  We provide executive coaching for key leaders in a company and organized and facilitated industry peer groups, so that companies may benefit from their group’s collective experience, buying power, accountability and so much more. For more information, visit www.haynecoachinggroup.com.