Limitless Roofing Show
We give you a seat at the table as we interview Owners, CEO's, and key executives in roofing companies. Our goal is to equip you with key insights gleaned from these conversations so you can achieve mastery in your roofing business.
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Limitless Roofing Show
Mastering Roofing Sales: Lessons from a Third-Generation Contractor
What does it really take to build a thriving roofing business in today's competitive market? According to Ronnie Lawler, CEO of Avco Roofing, the answer might surprise you.
"The most important part of our business is the people side," reveals Lawler in this compelling conversation that peels back the curtain on what truly drives sustainable growth in the roofing industry. From his unlikely start as an 11-year-old newspaper salesman knocking doors in New Jersey to building a multimillion-dollar roofing company, Lawler shares the hard-won wisdom that comes from being in the trenches.
Lawler doesn't shy away from discussing the mistakes that shaped his leadership philosophy. He candidly explains how promoting top salespeople into management roles backfired when they lacked leadership skills, and how ignoring "yellow flags" about character in favor of potential performance created costly problems. These lessons transformed how Avco approaches hiring, training, and retention.
Perhaps most valuable is Lawler's insight into why door-to-door sales remains effective despite changing times. "Our number one sales guy this year has knocked the most doors," he notes, while breaking down the psychology that separates successful reps from those who fail. His practical advice for overcoming mental barriers and rejection will resonate with anyone who's ever felt anxiety about prospecting.
What truly sets this conversation apart is Lawler's counterintuitive approach to retaining talent. Despite not being the highest-paying company in their markets, Avco rarely loses employees to competitors. The secret? Lawler blocks the first hour of every day for connecting with team members – no meetings, no exceptions – a practice he's maintained for seven years. "Professional problems are personal problems, just in fancier clothes," he explains, emphasizing the power of understanding the whole person.
Whether you're running a roofing business or simply interested in leadership principles that work, this episode delivers actionable strategies for building systems, developing people, and creating a culture where everyone thrives. Subscribe now and discover why the human element remains the ultimate competitive advantage.
all right, everybody, welcome to the limitless roofing show, and today I've got a special guest, mr ronnie lawler.
Speaker 2:So thanks for joining us, man yeah, thanks for having me, dylan happy to be here yeah, buddy.
Speaker 1:So I wanted you to be on the show because we have a friendship. You've got a very successful roofing business. You're also into health and wellness and stuff that I'm passionate about too. But I just I knew that you would be easy to talk to and real about the highs and the lows of running a roofing company. You know painful lessons learned, wonderful things learned all along the way. So that's what we want to get into. But for people that may not know, ronnie Lawler, kind of just tell us who you are and what's Avco Roofing stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm the chief executive officer at Avco Roofing. I've been there for 10 years. I've known Heath Hicks, who's also the co-founder of the Catchall known him for 20 plus years. At this point in time which is kind of crazy you start to feel a little bit older. That's. The only time I kind of start to feel a little bit older is whenever I start referring to friends of mine that I've known for 20 plus years. So yeah, I'm kind of a third-generation contractor. My dad's a master plumber, master electrician, gc. My grandfather was a tradesman as well. So I kind of grew up in the construction industry. I was sweating copper by the time I was 11 years old. So I kind of grew up in the business, got into sales pretty early on.
Speaker 2:I was born and raised in New Jersey. Had somebody one day that I was riding my bike, as we used to do back in the day, whenever the streetlights came on and we knew it was time to go home Probably very familiar for Dylan, for our generation, for everybody else that's younger than us. They're like I don't have a clue what you're talking about. We didn't ride our bikes anywhere, right, and so I had a had a guy pull up one day, while I was riding my bike, uh, in New Jersey, and he's driving a, you know, wood panel uh station wagon, uh. And so he, uh, you know, rolled the crank window down and was like, hey, you want to make some money. And you know, uh, I was like, yeah, sure, that sounds good. I don't know about you, but if anybody was to randomly roll up to my kids and try to talk to them right now, we'd be probably fighting at this point in time.
Speaker 2:But life was a little bit different back then. And so he told me about newspaper sales. And so he told me you just got to knock more doors and sell subscriptions to adults and deliver the papers. And so I was like, wow, I could make my own money outside of the family business. And I was 11, so uh told me that I could win a boombox cd player.
Speaker 2:Uh, at that time we're talking like 1990, 1991, at this point time for kind of reference, cd players were kind of a new thing I was like, well, I could never afford a cd player. My parents couldn't buy me one. So what, what do I got to do to win that? And just got to sell the most. And so I started and I sold the most. So that kind of started my sales career and my door knocking career. So it was something that I was excited about and I love the idea of being able to go find my customer. I guess you could say and yeah, I started in roofing specifically back all the way back in. I guess it was about 2007,. 2008 was when I first started in the industry.
Speaker 1:Man so door knocking since 11 years old yeah yeah, yeah, it's kind of crazy.
Speaker 2:I hadn't really thought about it. My dad owned, uh, when we were growing up in New Jersey he owned an irrigation business and we worked predominantly in, um uh, retirement communities, and so I guess I technically started knocking doors even before I was 11. Cause he would be working across the street. He like, hey, we gotta go, uh, you know, blow out their system, go, knock on their door and you know, tell them, you know, uh, that you're my son and uh. So I was talking to adults by the time I was like six, like knocking on people's doors. So for me, even when it was 11, like I didn't have kind of the fear and trepidation of being 11 years old and knocking and uh, and talking to adults, so that never bothered me. So like my mindset's always just been kind of a little bit different when it came to door knocking.
Speaker 1:Man, that's so cool. That makes me think about my daughters. So they, my daughters are 10, eight and five, and the 10 and eight year old like to set up a lemonade stand at the corner of our neighborhood. Right, they made 80 bucks the other day. That's awesome 80 bucks selling other day 80 bucks, I'm like that's like right Right.
Speaker 1:The 10 year old. This is huge. And then the next day they made 70 bucks. Wow, I'm just like you want a gab watch, you want to order whatever these things are, and it's like you can easily get this within a week or two. Yeah, yeah, but I didn't think, I, but I thought, I thought the same thing. I thought, man, this is going to help them down the road If they keep doing stuff like this, to just get over that fear of man, that anxiety over talking to people about stuff that you have in sales. So, so then, so you did that. How did you get into?
Speaker 2:roofing of reefing. So my wife and I my wife and I have been married for 19 years and thankfully I don't just like my wife, I love her and vice versa. So that's, that's a added bonus. So we were, we were living in a 450 square foot apartment. We had a kid on the way. I was actually selling insurance door to door, funny enough. So I worked for a company that I sold insurance door to door and we had to collect, which was a whole other thing. So we got to do our own claims, had to collect the money and sell the policy. So not sure how that wasn't a conflict of interest there, but that's another story for a different day, I guess.
Speaker 2:And so I was coming home from work and every single day I just didn't enjoy doing what I was doing. I just I was not passionate about it. What they said I could make, I really, you know, there was really probably like one guy in like 1979 that worked 120 hours, you know a week, that was able to make that kind of money. Like it just didn't seem feasible, based off of like what they had originally sold me on as the opportunity and it just was. You know, I kind of felt like the life was getting sucked out of me every day. And I'm in my mid twenties and I'm thinking man, is my next 10 years of my life going to look like this? If that's the case, like I, something has to change, cause I know what this life looks like right now. I can't even afford a two bedroom apartment. We're about to have a kid. Where are we going to put this kid? There's no place to put a crib in a 450 square foot apartment.
Speaker 2:And so I was coming home one day and one of my buddies that I'd known for a number of years his name is Matthew and Matthew was like man every time. Ronnie, every time I see you nowadays, you just look defeated and down and just like life is really, really rough. What's going on? And I told him work, life's not great, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:He's like dude, you grew up doing construction, you are in the insurance business. Have you ever thought of roofing sales? And I was like that is a made up job. You just made that up on the spot. Roofing sales, I've never heard of this. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. That doesn't sound like that's a real thing. He's like no, no, no, dude, just come meet the owner of this company that I work for. I've been doing this and I'm not even a good salesperson and he told me how much money he had made in the last like six months and I was like sell some stuff, so let's go talk to that owner. So, um, I did uh, and yeah, that was kind of what uh launched me into uh, into roofing sales and then you eventually made your way to avco.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, tell us, tell the audience, a little bit about avco roofing yeah, so, um, heath hicks uh, he's the owner of Avco, good friend of mine. Like I said, we've known each other for 20 plus years and I was working for another roofing company in East Texas at the time and he was in the process of buying Avco from the widow original owner. Unfortunately, he had passed away kind of suddenly and unexpectedly and his wife kind of inherited the company and she didn't want to own a roofing company, and so he was somebody that she trusted and believed in and offered to sell the company to him, and so he was in the process of buying it. While he was in the process of buying it, he was trying to recruit me to come work for him, and so he just kind of was like, hey, man, why don't we, why don't we create this thing? That was a place that you and I wish that we would have been able to work at from the start, someplace that cares about people, a place that trains people well, a place that gives people the opportunity to move up and kind of earn, earn their opportunity for upward mobility, and, you know, place that, uh, family is important and you're going to have time to spend with your family and I'm like, yes, all those things resonate greatly with me and so, um, so I said yes. Eventually he actually asked me six times and then on the sixth time I finally said yes.
Speaker 2:So, uh, and yeah, one of the best decisions as an adult that I've ever made outside of asking my wife to marry me, and so that was, yeah, that was that'll be 10 years ago in October, and so initially, really like, we just kind of looked at some of our existing friend circle, if I, you know, for people that worked really hard, that had kind of good character, that the opportunity they currently were at wasn't the most ideal opportunity for them, and so some of those people still work for us to this day, which is really, really cool.
Speaker 2:And so that was what kind of just got us started. And then we were like, huh, we should probably put some processes and things in place Because, like, we went on our first year we did, you know, $5 million in revenue. The best year that they had ever done in business in the first seven years was like $1.5, $1.7 million, and we tripled that in our first year and it was like, all right, we're kind of off to the races at that point in time. So that was kind of the start of it.
Speaker 1:Man, that's wild. And I know you guys, I know Avco's. You guys could make one of the top 100 roofing companies lists, cause I think that I think that list starts out with guys at about a hundred million plus or whatever, but it goes. It goes all the way down to guys that are doing like 10 million a year. I think they've.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, which is kind of interesting, that it's that's in a year, I think they've. Yeah, yeah, which is kind of interesting. That's a pretty vastly different yeah, on the residential side, for sure. I mean, there's some monstrous commercial companies that are out there, but on the residential side you're probably right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I know you guys have done well above the bottom end of that list. Oh, yeah, for sure. And so one thing I know you guys have done really well is the door-to-door thing, which makes total sense, because you've been doing that since you were 11 or 6 or whatever. What's one of the biggest challenges you guys faced as you grew to 5 million, then 10, and then 15, and 20, and just kept going. What were a couple of the biggest challenges you faced? Let's get into that, because a lot of guys listening to this I think it's just the nature of our culture. You see people's highlight reels on Facebook. You see a guy driving a brand new, jacked up Ford F-250. Right, and it's just like dang, what am I doing wrong? Sure, what am I missing, you know? So let's get into some of the challenges.
Speaker 2:Yeah, some of the biggest challenges, like I said right from the outset, was oh, this is kind of already bigger. You know, the five-year goal was 5 million, like that was Heath's original goal was 5 million in five years and we did it our first year. So it was like, oh well, that got blown out of the water. But in doing so, like we didn't have a CRM, we were still using, like paper folders. After, like, I think we were part of the way into our second year before we ever, like even got a CRM. So, you know, we're using paper folders, which was, you know, kind of interesting to do all those things. But it really probably the initial first like you know issues or whatever was well, now we have people that are wanting to come work for us that we're not even like recruiting at that point in time, like, which was kind of weird, right, like we'd all love those problems nowadays, right To where, like, people are like throwing themselves at you. That was, uh, that's not the, you know, uh, necessarily the norm, but it was getting systems in place, getting processes in place, cause we were good at selling stuff. But the whole back end side of the business from you know production, you know, accounting, all those things like that wasn't my skill set, like I didn't know how to operate QuickBooks or anything along those lines that was. That was not what I was good at. I knew what I was good at, and so trying to find the right people to get in the right kind of seats, that was kind of a big problem. But really then it was the training side of things, like getting people up to speed as fast as possible. And so then Heath and I both we got kind of like for my first roofing job. That was a door knocking, specific roofing job. I got dropped off at the end of the driveway and said, hey, you know, you talk real good, go see if you can get on that person's roof, you know. And at that point in time it's like, well, I got to figure it out. I already quit my insurance job. My wife is about to have a kid Like I got to figure this part out. Have a kid? Like I gotta, I gotta figure this part out.
Speaker 2:And so then we just kind of fumbled into like teaching ourselves how to do the job, heath and I both. You know, over the years, and so obviously for anybody that's done this, this is probably several of our stories where, like, we just kind of got thrown to the wolves and you kind of had to figure it out and if you made it past three years, you're, you know, an exception to the rule. But we realized that's not what we wanted to do, and so then we really started kind of building out more of a training program to get everybody on the same page doing similar things. So that way it was kind of like wash, rinse, repeat, and so having to come up with like a training plan, the crm, um, actually, um, you know processes to follow, because everything was like in Heath's and my brain, right, it was just up in our heads and it was like, oh well, this is how I just have done it for such a long time. How do I communicate that to somebody else that's never been in roofing? How do I communicate that to somebody that's never been in sales? Right, and so that was a big thing for us was, you know, getting people up to speed, because the thing that always bothered me was seeing at other companies. I'm like this is a good candidate, this is a good person, this guy's got good culture, fit, he's got sales DNA. But because of the trainer, sales manager, owner or whatever. They didn't actually know how to coach people, they didn't know how to train people, they didn't know how to onboard people, and so somebody that I think probably could have done well at it ended up falling to the wayside and getting burned out or not making enough money in the first three months. So they couldn't continue to do it.
Speaker 2:And I think we probably all have those stories that we either you know, unfortunately, that we were a part of, either you know, unfortunately, that we were a part of um or that we've heard stories of, or or whatever, and so we wanted to kind of curb some of that stuff, uh, from the beginning.
Speaker 2:So, um, you know, then there's always just the people component, which is always, uh, always an interesting part once you just starting adding more and more people to the mix. But, yeah, we could definitely continue to dive into. I mean, there's definitely plenty of things that we did not do right. So I definitely don't want people to think like oh yeah, like we just kill it all the time, like, no, like we've definitely made mistakes, we've had a lot of errors, there's a lot of things that you know, hindsight's 2020, that we could have. We could have done differently, we could have done better. And yeah, I think that's just part of the learning process, right, that learning is failing at something, learning from that opportunity and then hopefully not making the same mistake again and then growing from that. You know, quote unquote failure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. Um. Well, so let's get into that, though. Let's get in maybe a story and you don't have to mention any names, but maybe a story where you guys made a big people mistake and what did you learn from that and how did you deal with it, and then how. And then let's get into how do you start getting the right people from there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean there's several, so let me let me think of what's probably the, the ones that are some of the more noteworthy ones that I think that would be helpful um to to other folks, um, I would say, um what? I'll give a couple instances here um, one of them being that, uh, putting the wrong people into positions of leadership because of the potential that they have as individuals, and so putting people into positions of leadership because of what the upside possibly could be with them, whether they're in sales or whether they're in production or whatever. And so we had put people in place, whether they were maybe a top salesperson, as a sales manager, and it's like, oh well, that's the obvious thing. How many times have we heard that story where top sales guy goes in and he's the sales manager all of a sudden and then sales go down because you just took out your number one producing guy. Everybody is being treated terribly because he's actually not a good people manager, he's not a good leader, he's good at kind of caring about himself and making his own personal sales. And so we definitely had some of those where we put somebody in a position of leadership.
Speaker 2:That was because of the upward potential was greater than we should have looked at the whole picture and been like, okay, well, there's a couple of yellow flags.
Speaker 2:Maybe they weren't red flags at the time, they kind of became red flags, but they were kind of yellow flags.
Speaker 2:It was like, uh, well, the the upside of what we could maybe get out of this individual person might be better than what the downside of, like, their character flaws, uh, or that they're not a culture fit, um, and so that's something for me nowadays that that's the most important thing is are they core value alignment, and are they culture fit?
Speaker 2:Before I ever consider them for anything else, those two things nowadays I look through that lens because I don't want to ever make that mistake again, and unfortunately we did make some of those mistakes and it cost us dearly in multiple different ways. Whether other people I care about most in the business is the people side of the business. This isn't for everybody and we know that. So some people are going to leave and they're not going to stay in the industry, and that's fine. But at the end of the day, I hope that I can put my head on the pillow at the end of the night and say that I did write as much as I possibly could for the people that I engaged with in that specific day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right. So why so? Well, first, how do you I mean, how do you filter through finding the right people now training, and so, yeah, we do utilize.
Speaker 2:Predictive Index. I really like that tool Been around for, I think at this point in time, around 50 years, so they've got a lot of information. They've got a lot of data to pull from. It's been helpful to us to kind of narrow down the specific person that we're looking for or the specific role of what we're wanting. Right, because if we are just like, I'll take any warm body, or if it's a cultural alignment right, like we've also made the mistake of being, uh, going too far the other way, which is, as long as they're a cultural fit, you know, let's give them a shot. They didn't have sales dna. It actually ends up not working out great for them or us. Everybody's kind of frustrated after, you know, three months of a failed effort and so really dialing in what your candidate is that you're actually looking for instead of being like well, I have five different types of candidates that I could possibly bring on, probably not one, maybe two.
Speaker 2:When we're talking about like more on the sales role side of things, you need a certain archetype, if you will, to be able to reference. You know, it's kind of like counterfeiting, right, whenever somebody's double checking bills that are counterfeited or not, right, they have that hundred dollar bill. That is the real one that they look at after every single time they come back right, and that's the the main one. This is real. This is fake. That archetype that you're building when it comes to the type of salesperson that you want, you got to keep referencing back to that. This is actually what we really want, and not deviating from that just because that was a good person, it's a friend of yours, it's a relative. He knows one of my sales guys. Right, they're a good culture fit. Well, if they're not going to fit that archetype that you're designing, then you're going to be frustrated. They're going to be frustrated. You're going to spend hundreds of hours trying to bring in the wrong person. Right, it's kind of that square peg, you know round hole. You keep pounding that. It's never going to work. It's going to continue to be a frustration point. And so, understanding whether you use predictive index or not, you really need to ask yourself what is it exactly we are looking in? If you're hiring for sales this applies to every role in your organization but really, really narrowing down what it is that you're looking for in that salesperson. So, since we were talking about sales, I'll just give you some examples of like what was some of ours. And so, since we were talking about sales, I'll just give you some examples of like what was some of ours right. And so we were.
Speaker 2:We wanted somebody that was emotionally intelligent, right. That way that person could understand and read the room. They could read the body language of the decision maker. So if that person all of a sudden you know the husband leans back and he's crossing his arms and before he had been leaning in, listening intently, it's like okay, something else in my presentation went awry. An emotionally intelligent person is going to pause, they're not going to keep going in their presentation and then they're going to try to find out what happened to where, you know that communication kind of derailed, if you will. Right, that's an emotionally intelligent person, um, somebody of high character, like we talked about before. Um, that was a really, really important part.
Speaker 2:One of the ones that we added just in the last couple of years was somebody that actually is money motivated and they had left the job, that they had made 35K a year and then, when they were making 60 to 65K, they were good and they like, wanted to like call it a day. Well, for me, that's not what I need. That's not gonna be really, really helpful to have somebody you know selling $350,000, $400,000 a year in roofing. That's a lot of effort for that sales manager to you know. Continue to meet with them one on one and, you know, for all it was just like you're trying to get them to keep going and going out and finding new business or getting more referrals or whatever. And then they just were like I'm good, I have way more money in the bank than I've ever had. I live below my means, which is great. I'm not saying we shouldn't, but I needed somebody that wanted to have more, that they were somewhat money motivated. I don't want them to be terrible human beings because all they care about is money and they want to take advantage of every single person, but they had to have some kind of drive that they wanted to better themselves and their family financially.
Speaker 2:So those are a couple examples of getting really really clear on what you want in your, in your candidates, whether it's, like I said, sales or something different. And then from there really like well, now, now that we're clear on that, how do I get people in right? Like, how do we create a funnel to get more and more people in. So you know what, how do we, how do we do that? How do we get as many people in as possible? That's kind of the golden question that everybody wants to always have, like a really you know, kind of easy answer to.
Speaker 2:And, unfortunately, depending on the market you're in, depending on your brand recognition, all those kind of things there's. You know, like I was on a call with you a couple, I think last week and you know some some weeks, we've got 200 to 500 candidates between our different locations. Uh, sometimes, um and so that was it always like that? No, um, you know, I'll give you a little snippet. I would say beta test, like the actual, like job title, like, try three different things. You know entry-level home sales, uh, you know something along the lines of, like, home service sales, rep, um, roofing sales, like you know, come up with three different things, see what actually gets more candidates applying to the role and then shift and put more of your money back into the number one or number two thing. So do multiple different tests to see what actually is going to hit for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good. A lot of guys I think there's just a lot you guys are doing that make a complete process from the advertising, the role to the interview process. I know you've got pretty, really tight interview process with several steps, um, and then the training after that. So I think it's guys wonder like, how do they keep people or how do they, how are they building their team? We really have to build a whole system around it. Why do you think a lot of roofing companies struggle with sales?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's multiple things here, right.
Speaker 2:I mean if the culture doesn't feel inviting who wants to go to work, you know what I mean Like so nobody really wants to sign up for that. So that's kind of like the easy answer. And if you don't know whether or not your culture is good and maybe as a leader or the owner you think it's good I would say do a SurveyMonkey that's able to be anonymous and ask some hard questions that you're going to be okay with getting hard answers for We've done that a couple different times and, man, that'll smack you in the face for sure. You're like, oh yeah, culture is doing great, everybody loves being here. And then you're like, oh my gosh, like wow, okay, that was like more than one person that said that. And so you know, be willing to be asked to ask the hard questions there. So I would say cultures, cultures, number one. Number two would be that most people don't really have a process. They don't have a way of onboarding people. They don't have a way of training people. They don't have a way of continuing education. They don't have a way of connecting with their sales reps on at least a weekly or biweekly basis.
Speaker 2:The owner or the leader a lot of times kind of defers to their learning style. I see this pretty regularly where it's somebody like you, Dylan, you might be like, show me one time and let me do it once and I'm going to have it. And so, as a leader, we end up assuming that everybody operates like that. Well, probably not right. Like you're a parent, you got kids, do you get to encourage or discipline all your kids the same? No, everybody's different, right. So you kind of have to be willing to tailor fit a bit of the training to the individual person. Now you need to hit like the major milestones and the bigger points and stuff like that. But if this person is more of a um, of a doer, show them how to do it and then let them show you three to five times that they understand how to do it. Let them do it on their own and then come back and inspect their work again to see if they're actually catching on.
Speaker 2:But I think most of the time it's because there's a lack of structure, there's a lack of understanding from whoever their trainer is, of actually how to train people instead of, well, just follow me around and I'll show you how to do the job. That's not really necessarily a training methodology that's not necessarily going to be like. Oh well, johnny's the best sales guy, follow him around and you know, and he'll, and he'll show you. And Johnny's, you know, over there talking mad smack about you know how much he doesn't like it and he's going to start his own roofing company in the next year. And hey, do you want to come with me? Like you never know, right.
Speaker 2:Like there's all kinds of crazy stories that we hear. But we want to make sure that we're not just kind of, like you know, being kind of the old school roofing way, which is like, well, if they can figure it out, that means that they're meant to be here, and if they can't, that means that you know the job's not for them. Well, is that actually a them problem, or is that a them and maybe an us problem? Maybe we should actually look at ourselves and realize, you know and I've had to have an honest, hard conversation with myself in the past when I've trained people and somebody didn't work out and I was like, huh, I don't know if I did right by that person or I didn't give them everything and all the tools to see if they could be successful, um, like, I wish I would have. And so that's what really helped us kind of like refine the process a lot more was cause.
Speaker 2:I didn't like having that feeling at the end of the day of like maybe I could have done better, maybe I could have done, um, you know something a little bit more. Instead, nowadays I'm like, hey, man, that's not on us. Like, you know, that person just that's, it's not the right fit. They're just not right for the role. Like, I feel very, very confident for us that that's generally how that works nowadays. It's not because of lack of training, lack of care, lack of accountability or anything along those lines.
Speaker 1:That's good. What do you think about? What do you think are some keys to door knocking, because I know you've done that for a long time. Abco is a door knocking company. You guys teach door knocking through the Roof Warrior program, which feel free to unpack that. Well, first of all, why do a lot of roofing companies struggle with door knocking? And then, what are some real tips or tactics you could share that work? What are some real tips or tactics you could share that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's multifaceted here. Most of the time, I think door knocking it's from the top down. So if you're an owner and you don't believe in door knocking, it's going to be a really, really hard sell to the rest of your people. That door knocking is actually going to work no-transcript, that's going to be felt throughout. Other people like well, if the owner doesn't believe in it, right, say that you're, say you're a heavy marketing company and you're spending 10 of your revenue dollars on uh marketing, but you're also wanting to see if you can generate leads via door knocking. Well, you've never seen in your own company door knocking work. But probably somebody else in your market has probably made door knocking work, whether it's roofing or it's pest control or, you know, used to be solar. We won't get into solar nowadays, but you know all these different means of door knocking works. It really doesn't even matter what you're selling Like, people still buy, right? Our number one sales guy this year that signed the most contracts. Guess what he's signed? He's knocked the most doors. Oh my gosh, that's crazy. And so it still works.
Speaker 2:So I would say you know, making sure that you believe that it's actually a viable business strategy. So I would. I would say that that's part of it. Really, most of it comes between the ears, right, most of it is between the ears. Um, I've coached, at this point in time, you know hundreds, if not thousands, of reps between avco and roof warrior and uh, you know different uh conferences and different things like that, and what I generally believe is the biggest downfall for most people is that they just get in their head too much right?
Speaker 2:So I think that there's I've kind of narrowed it down to what I think are some core fears that most people have. People, you know, you alluded to it earlier. Like you know, people have the fear of man. Well, if I knock on this door, maybe they're going to yell at me. Maybe they're going to be really, really mad at me. Maybe they're going to cuss at me door. Maybe they're going to yell at me. Maybe they're going to be really, really mad at me. Maybe they're going to cuss at me. Maybe they're going to call the cops. Right. Or you have the fear of failure. Well, if I don't knock this door and I don't sign, if I knock this door and I don't sign a contract, I'm not putting food on the table, I'm not providing for my wife, my kids are going to go hungry, right like that just continues to cascade.
Speaker 2:Or there's like the fear of the unknown, which is like I've never knocked a door and so I don't know what the possibilities are. But my mind just spirals and spins to where this could be anything and this could be the worst catastrophic thing that I've ever chose to do. And so a lot of people fall into those categories that they generally lean towards, where they're going to be more fearful and in fear of man. For a lot of people, that's a, that's a big part of it, especially when you're first starting off, and so I always think about this whenever I'm knocking on this person's door. Right, I don't know what kind of day they're having, I don't know what's going on in their life, so whatever response that they give me, I'm not carrying that weight to the next door. So if, dylan, if I knocked on your door and you're like you're the worst human being of all time, I can't believe you. You roofers are terrible. You guys suck. You're ruthless. I don't carry that weight to the next door.
Speaker 2:I kind of think like, huh, I wonder what's going on in that guy's life that he responded like that. Maybe he just found out, you know, his wife has cancer. Maybe he just got fired. Maybe he's just also a terrible human being, I don't know. But I'm not going to internalize that and let that affect me, because I know what the upside is, what the potential is. I know that you know, if the average commission at your company is $2,500, letting our sales guys know like, hey, there's potentially $2,500 behind every door, it's kind of like price is right and I don't know what door it's behind, but it's behind some door, there's $2,500. The only way you find out is by going up there and knocking on the door to find out if it's that door and if it's not, you just go to the next door.
Speaker 2:And so don't live in that rumination cycle of like the worst case scenarios and like that person yelled at me. And you know I'm not going to give somebody that kind of power over me personally to make me feel bad because I'm out there trying to provide for my family. I have. There is no shame in my game when it comes down to, I'll do whatever it takes to provide for my family and at the end of the day, like I know that it's their best interest if I'm the one that's going to take care of them, because I'm going to do right by that homeowner I'm going to do right by them to take care of them. And so I would also say some of the other things that we kind of talk about is kind of take the pressure off. Don't think so much of like oh my gosh, I got to sign a contract today because my sales manager said I got to hit this.
Speaker 2:Many Like go out there. We're out there to meet people, see if they have a need, and can I help fill that need? That's really it. If you simplify it like that, then you kind of weed out all the other things, right? So meet people. Do they have a need? Right? Is there a roof damage? Yes or no? Right? There's not a lot of options here. Roof's not damaged, roof needs to be repaired or roof needs to be replaced. That's it. Can I help fill that need and help them with retail or an insurance claims process, yes or no? If it's a yes, that's my customer. If it's no, that means they're not my customer, and then I just move on to the next one. So don't make it a way bigger deal than it actually has to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good. I remember reading in I think it's called the sales Bible by Jeffrey Gittimer and he called he says go for no. Every no gets you closer to a yes.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's as many doors as you can where they say no or they don't answer whatever, and every single one you build up is a closer to a yes. Yeah, I heard at a conference one time when I was speaking on a panel I think it was Wind, the Storm a couple of years back, and one of the other panelists that was up there she was at the time selling solar and she said I kind of just shifted my mindset and instead of like I got to get 100 doors and I got to talk to 17 decision makers, I got to get you know a hundred doors and I got to talk to you know 17 decision makers. I got to sign this many agreements. Instead, take the quote, unquote, negative, the no.
Speaker 2:Well, I need to get 25 people to tell me no today. I got to get 25 people to tell me no today. Like where's my first no going to come from? Like it kind of takes all the power away from it whenever you kind of turn it on its head that way. Right, it's like huh, that's a really interesting perspective and I really appreciated that perspective. It's like that's a, that's a great outlook on it, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting. So what would be your? We're kind of rounding the corner on our time together. What would be some advice you have to companies that are that are struggling to grow their sales and their door knocking? What are one or two things that you would tell them today?
Speaker 2:Well, you mentioned earlier, we do have our Roof Warrior product and that's something that Heath and I had built a few years back when we were getting guys to come to our office. But, like every other week, sometimes people were flying in from Indianapolis, people were coming in from florida, people were flying in from the northeast and you know, asking all these questions, and heath and I are both coaches kind of at heart, like we enjoy helping people and uh, so we decided to, you know, take some of the things we learned and kind of package it into a product, and so that's one of the things I really like about our product is that, like we're we're still running a roofing company every single day. Um, currently, that's what kind of I think separates us a little bit from some other coaches. Like I'm friends with several of the other guys. I think everybody's got uh, for the most part, has a really good product. It just or it was just a little bit different, um, whenever it comes down to it.
Speaker 2:So if you don't have a training program that you've already created, you need to get a training program. It takes quite a while to create your own. So find somebody you connect with, find somebody that you feel core value alignment, have a call, discovery call with them, see if it's something that you're going to enjoy, and get on a training program of some sort. Because if you're not consistent with how you onboard people and you're just kind of throwing them to the wolves, you're probably going to continue to get the same results that you've been yielding, which I would assume is probably not very good. And so the other thing that I would say is really the most important part of our business is the people side. I'll say that again the most important part of our business is the people side, the people component, the way that we do that, the way that we build relationships right. Time spent equals relationship right. If I want to get to know my wife better, after 20 plus years of being together, I still need to date. My wife Took her on a date last night, right after we went to therapy. So we did therapy and we went out to dinner right after that. Right and so. But if I don't spend that time, I'm not going to continue to develop that relationship and then, whenever the kids are gone, like we're going to be strangers, right? We can't have this expectation of bringing in a sales rep and not spending time with them to understand who they are. Where do they come from, what are their strengths, what are their weaknesses, what are areas that they're going to struggle? Where is their headspace at? Where are they at emotionally, where are they at physically? You know, like we're whole people, whole people but yet we're trying to talk to this small segment of them as an individual person, when everything else might be on fire in their life. And you're wondering why Johnny's not performing. Well, you don't know Johnny well enough to know that him and his wife are having fertility issues right now. I don't know if you've ever and some of you have obviously struggled with that, and you know what that's like. Well, that's going to play a big part.
Speaker 2:Whether we think that people should be able to compartmentalize their life or not. It's still really, really hard to do that right. I always say that professional problems are personal problems, just in fancier clothes. So, at the end of the day, whatever's going on in Johnny's life, more than likely it's something else. Maybe he's not hitting his sales numbers because something else is going on in his life, and so the thing that I personally really enjoy is spending that time with people in the office, whether they're salespeople, whether they're ops people, whether they're accounting people. Let's not forget, because we're so in the weeds, we have're ops people, whether they're accounting people. Let's not forget, because we're so in the weeds, we have so many meetings, we got so many hats we're wearing right, especially if you're kind of in the startup phase, you're going to be wearing a lot of hats and that's okay, that's going to be for a season, but at the end of the day we can't bypass that.
Speaker 2:People component part of the business. For me, that's the most paramount thing. My first hour of my day and it's been this way for years is 8 o'clock to 9 o'clock. In my calendar every single day, it says connection. I do not allow myself to have a meeting from 8 o'clock to 9 o'clock. The most important part of the day is that connection time with everybody in the office at that hour time slot. Nobody's. No meeting ever gets put in that time slot. That's it. It's there. It's stayed there for years and I've done that for probably six or seven years now.
Speaker 2:And when I'm gone and you know, thankfully get to go on vacation and not have to worry about the business falling apart, which has not always been that way. Coming back, it's cool when people are like man, I miss getting to see you every single day in our talks. That means a lot to me. Whenever they're like man, I miss my. Ronnie time is what some of them will call it I'm like, oh okay, cool. And so finding out what's going on with your people, sitting with your people, being a safe place for them, right, like if we only look at them as profit centers and how much money they can bring us and all that kind of stuff, I feel like that lack of sincerity, that lack of authenticity will eventually be found out and felt. And then, when push comes to shove and they get offered more money to go somewhere else, if they feel like it's a better culture fit for somewhere else, if they feel like it's a better culture, fit for somewhere else, they're going to leave. But if you make it a place that's welcoming, inviting upward mobility opportunities, they can grow personally, they can see what a healthy life is modeled to them. People want to be around those kinds of things.
Speaker 2:I think it's like number nine or number 10 on the list that people leave a job because of money. That means there's eight plus other things that people leave a job for that's crazy. Most of us think it's fine. You know it's financially that they're leaving because this other guy is going to offer them. You know two more points on their sales. If they come sell for them, our people get offered. We don't pay the most in probably any of our markets. Our guys get offered all the time because guess what? Those companies they know we train really really well.
Speaker 2:And so therefore they don't know how to train people, so they want to try to steal our people because we're like oh, they're already like up and ready and raring to go, but our people don't go because they feel cared for they been ready and raring to go, but our people don't go because they feel cared for, they feel heard, they feel appreciated. And I think that's a missing part of the piece for us, because we just get so kind of uh, you know, bogged down with the, uh, the day-to-day stuff and we don't just kind of take a moment, take a pause and, uh, really sit with somebody moment, take a pause and really sit with somebody yeah, that's so good, yeah, you can't, you can't, you can't like, look at your business and go well, I wish we had better processes.
Speaker 1:Our people suck, but I wish we had better processes. Our sales are doing great, but our people suck, but I wish we had better processes. Right, sales are doing great, but our people suck. You know, it's like nobody would look back on their company and wish they had worse people. You're always going to want better people sure and it's it's interesting.
Speaker 1:I look at it like I mean, it's you spend so much time at your job when you're you're away from home? Right, it's kind of it's your home away from home. So, so, these people that you're working with all day, it's like man, I want to be around people that I like, yeah, and that I enjoy being around, that are also the right people in the right seats. But, like sure, there's a friendship part there too, and, of course, there's boundaries inherent in that. As leaders. I don't want to be talking to everybody about business owner problems, but you know you want to. You want to make it like being part of a family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we, we. We kind of went away from saying family and more started saying team, just because some people's view of family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, family can get messy and you know like when you're family, you're family. You can put boundaries up, but you know your blood. So we started saying team and that seemed to kind of resonate a little bit better for us. But yeah, I just kind of try to take a little bit more of a holistic approach to life. We talked about before we got on that work-life synergy. I don't really believe there's work-life balance, because balance means that it's 50-50. I don't spend 50% of my time at home. I just don't. It's not going to be balanced right. So that synergy of home life versus your professional life, the whole other aspects of fitness, is important to me overall wellness right. If I feel good, then I'm probably going to be able to perform well right. So you know that's an important part of the component. You know I mentioned therapy earlier.
Speaker 2:You know, for me that's one of those things that's really really been a game changer for myself is to make sure that you know emotionally and mental health wise which I used to never pay attention to. I was just kind of living in the chaos, living in the grind and the you know the hustle culture and stuff like that, and realizing that there's there's there's an important other part of it that I need to be a little bit more readily available. You readily available because for my wife and my kids and all that stuff, they don't need me being CEO dad when I come there. I need to be able to be just dad or just my wife's partner.
Speaker 2:There's a lot that we can learn from each other and how to do life in a good, healthy way. Be around the kind of people that you want to be like. Create boundaries from those others that might not be best suited for the type of life that you want to lead. I think being a good, genuine, authentic person can kind of take you pretty far in life nowadays, which is kind of crazy Because I think that over time, people's character will be kind of proven out over time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we did a when I was in my undergrad. We went through a whole leadership training thing for a year because I might agree. But they built out this model and they taught leadership from the perspective of a like a compass. Like you know, if you were to draw a compass on a piece of paper with north, south, east, west and north was character. Like that's always your true north. It always comes back to character. You'll never outpace your character, right, doesn't matter how skilled you are. You know, if you're skilled at making sales but you don't have a character and you're sleeping with your secretary, you're, you know things are going to collapse, right, sure. So, uh, character was North, um, and then East was vision and South was skills and West with relationships, and so they built that out over the course of a year.
Speaker 1:But I'm sitting there and this is at Bible college and the teacher's writing this stuff up there, and at the time I was really, really focused and intense, preaching a lot, studying all the time, tons of head knowledge, you know, in my mid twenties, and it was almost as if God highlighted the word relationships, like with a glowing. I mean it just stuck out like crazy on the whiteboard and I didn't hear an audible voice or anything. But it was almost like God said hey man, you're hard enough on yourself to where you're not going to let your character get jacked up. You can develop vision, you can get trained on skills, but your relationships are. You need help. Like you don't know how to get along with people, you don't even really love people very well, you don't appreciate their company.
Speaker 1:And it was really powerful because I was like wow, I don't like people kind of get on my nerves a little bit. I just want to tell them truth like biblical truth at the time. I mean, I'm 45 now. This is 20 years ago and then God led me up to Dallas to go to Dallas Seminary and I got a job as an apartment manager on campus at Dallas Seminary and I was surrounded by 400 seminary students who are all so much different than me and it was awesome because God taught me how to love people and how to appreciate people and appreciate diversity and all this stuff. But I think that's the challenge I'm taking away from this conversation with you is for anybody listening to this, like man, go deep on people, learn how to love people, appreciate people, how to be a people person, because it's. Any business is a people business. So that's the biggest thing I'm taking away from all this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it doesn't matter if you're introverted or extroverted. That's not really what we're talking about. Right? I'm extroverted, my wife is introverted. That doesn't mean that you can't people well. It just means that when it comes time to recharging your batteries, it's just different.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, I would highly encourage you know, maybe that's not something that you've been great at in your current place of employment whether you're a leader, whether you're the owner, the great thing is that, as people, we get a new day every single day, as long as we wake up, right. So you can choose that. You want to be a different person tomorrow. You don't have to continue to do the things Now. It's going to be hard, because you're going to have to now create a new skill set, right. You're going to have to create a new habit because your default mechanism is to be that way. So you're going to have to make the conscious effort to change. But we get a new day tomorrow, and so you can make that choice. Whenever it comes down to it, it's like this is part that I want to change. I don't want to continue to be negative. I don't want to continue to be hard on people. I don't want to be yelling, know be yelling at people or cussing at people, you know, and people be wanting to leave.
Speaker 1:Like you can make that change, you know it's going to be difficult, but you can make that change. That's good stuff. Well, Ronnie man, I appreciate you being on the podcast Always good talking to you and I want to get you back, actually maybe in six months or something, and talk more about the leadership, the personal leadership, everything from mental health to physical health to just leadership in general. I think it'd be really fun to talk about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd love to, yeah, I'd be happy to hop back on. All right, man? Thanks a lot, thanks.