Greg Hayne, Chad Westbrook, Tracey Donels, and Cody Kline - Live From ServiceCon with Pros - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with industry experts Greg Hayne, Chad Westbrook, Tracey Donels, and Cody Kline. You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the recording.

Intro: Welcome to Roofing Road Trips, the podcast that takes you on a thrilling journey across the world of roofing. From fascinating interviews with roofing experts, to on-the-road adventures, we'll uncover the stories, innovations and challenges that shape the rooftops over our heads. So fasten your seat belts and  join us as we embark on this exciting roofing road trip. 

Heidi Ellsworth: My name is Heidi Ellsworth and  I'm your host today for this live podcast from ServiceCon 2025. We are here in front of an amazing audience of service professionals in the roofing industry who have had a day and a half now of amazing conversation. Let me just tell you, I've been lucky enough to sit and listen and be a part of all these conversations. I'm impressed with every single person here in this audience and  I am really impressed with the speakers that were part of ServiceCon 2025. So we are lucky enough, thank you ServiceCon 2025 for having RoofersCoffeeShop in the house and  for giving us the opportunity to visit with some of these amazing speakers who have been here at the conference. 

So, let's get started, gentlemen. Hello and  I'm going to start with introductions. So we're going to start down on this end with Chad, if you can introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your company. 

Chad Westbrook: Absolutely. So my name's Chad Westbrook, I'm the founder of Service Alignment and  we focus specifically on commercial roofing with a niche within service. So I had an awesome opportunity to be able to speak to everybody about doubling your business overnight, putting the right processes in place. We talked a lot about hiring A players, we got the right people, process, technology and goals. And overall, what I focus on is building eight figure service divisions with contractors across the US. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Loved it, loved it. Cody? 

Cody Kline: Cody Klein, Commercialroofer.com and  we build a marketing business development teams, sales teams and  scalable commercial roofing businesses where the businesses can scale beyond the founder. 

Greg Hayne: I'm Greg Hayne with the Hayne Coaching Group. I facilitate peer groups for commercial roofing contractors. I also train service departments and  we also, we talked today about working on yourself harder than you do on your job. 

Tracey Donels: Tracey Donels, I'm with Service First Solutions. We help people start, grow and  scale their commercial service departments. We say we're going to take your food truck and turn it into a Chick-fil-A drive-thru. And that's what we really do, is we focus on operations because great customer service sells itself. 

Heidi Ellsworth: I love it and  hold on to that microphone there, Tracey, because we are going to start, we're going to start at a little bit higher level. So we've really gotten down into the why, the how, the whats. I mean, it's been so amazing, but I want to from this amazing panel, I want to first start out with what we're seeing. I mean, I've been in the industry now for over 30 years and I think I was telling somebody this the other day. This used to be called negotiated work, that's what it used to be called in the old days. But now, the growth of service and maintenance, the trends that we're seeing, it's just taking the industry by storm. So I'd like to start with you, Tracey, on kind of, why? What have you seen around the growth of service and maintenance and really, what is fueling it? 

Tracey Donels: Well, unfortunately, I think one of the things right now fueling it is the economy and  service and repairs are important in a good economy. And in a bad economy, they're vital and they become really necessary. So I think that's one of the things that's really pushing it right now. But think of just the growth of service that we've seen in the last, I mean, I'm going to give you all the credit in the world. When did you start doing this? 12 years ago, 14 years ago? 

Heidi Ellsworth: 15. 

Tracey Donels: 15 years ago, so see the growth of service in the last 15 years and think about what we are learning that we didn't know. Our clients, our building owners, they have no idea of all the things they need us for and we're just learning. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, it's really true. And I mean, when you think about the growth of national accounts, they've always been there, but communication has also ramped that up and there's a lot higher expectations than I think there ever used to be. Greg, what are you seeing along that lines? 

Greg Hayne: I think I noticed a difference in interest by contractors in building a service division that changed, I don't know, maybe four or five years ago, because I've been speaking at the IRE since 2013 and all of a sudden the number of people that would appear, the types of quality of questions being asked, the number of people that would stop at my booth, just all of a sudden ramped up. So I see that difference. 

And I think the other thing is that as businesses, our customers have gotten more sophisticated, they become more demanding. And so there's an expectation that when they hire you to go out and provide some sort of service for them, that they're going to get the same kind of service that they get when they go to Chick-fil-A or   when they rent from Hertz rather than Budget or   whatever. And if they're not getting that, they're going to be unhappy and that puts pressure on everyone in our industry to perform better. 

Heidi Ellsworth: I agree, agree. Cody, what are you seeing? I mean, especially from the contracting side and  you've all been involved in contracting, but you had a couple of businesses in there and  now with everything you're doing, what's fueling everything? 

Cody Kline: Yeah, I definitely agree with Tracy on the economy side, but more in alignment with what Greg said. It's just the necessity for differentiation of your company within the market. And so over the past couple of days, we've talked about the average lifecycle of a roof being about 25 years, give or take, for a commercial roof system. And we know that if that's true, then about 4% of our market at any given time is ready for a replacement. But we have all of our competitors along with us chasing that 4%, so it's like, how can we differentiate ourselves to create that blue ocean and chase the 96% of roofs that are not ready for replacement? And so, I think that's also fueling the growth for service. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah. 

Greg Hayne: Don't mention that [inaudible 00:06:31]. 

Cody Kline: It's great book, but it's so long. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Chad. 

Chad Westbrook: So what I see is an entirely different buyer coming into the market that's pushing our industry to be better, right? We're talking about ultimately kids that are coming out of college that are taking the positions of property managers that aren't necessarily experts that have been up on the roof, that understand what's going on. So it's forcing our industry to be able to level up not only inside our expertise, how we're doing repairs, but in how we communicate to our customers, the experience that they have. 

It's evolved to a point that we can do beautiful work and we can still get fired. Right? We can still not get the next job simply because the experience that they had was underwhelming, right? Sales makes a promise, operations has to deliver on that promise and  that is really what's pushing everything above and beyond. Because the technology, I mean, you said Chick-fil-A, I mean, you go to Uber, right? UPS will tell me it's two stops away, now our customers want to know how many stops away are our truck? And that's naturally leveling us up, making the expectation higher, but pressing all of us to be able to take this to the next level. 

Tracey Donels: Disneyland, FastPass. 

Chad Westbrook: There you go. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, to that point, I think there is a huge change that is going on when we really look at the purchasing agents. To your point and  I can remember talking about this in the past, is that purchasing agents now are kind of a how-to or a YouTube. They go onto YouTube, how does this work? How does roofing work? And if you aren't taking your company to that next level of really communicating and showing them and being in front of them, they're going to be looking in a lot of different places that they never had a chance to look before. 

Chad Westbrook: I remember having a training with my sales team, this was probably 2018 and  the sales training was about how our customers can go on YouTube and actually find out more about the roof system than our salesmen actually understand about it. Right? So it is going into the point that our customer has the ability and the resources to get the information they need. Right? So we got to influence that experience and ultimately what the end result is, because a lot of times it's more than a roof leak, right? It's more than a roof replacement, it's investment into their business to be able to get them a longer-term vision. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah and  with their tenants and the equipment and everything else they have there, you really, roofing and roofing respect I feel as I've seen as you gentlemen have over the years, is now we are a profession of craftsmen and women, we are a profession of business owners and that is the expectation that everyone has out there. We just had a great presentation on branding and how important that is to this market. 

So Chad, hold on to that because a lot of, first of all... I want to say to everybody in here and  if there's anybody online on YouTube right now, if you have questions, please put those into the comments or the chats and we can get those to you. But if you have questions, this is a podcast, it's about you all. So if you have questions, just raise your hand as we're going along and we're going to stop and we're take those questions and ask these gentlemen and see what they think. 

What I would love to do, especially for everyone in here, is a little bit of a recap and everyone who's watching on YouTube right now, is to talk about your three top takeaways, Chad, on what contractors... And so maybe your takeaways that you gave, your top three takeaways on what contractors should really be thinking about on service and maintenance going into 2025. 

Chad Westbrook: Oh, specifically related to my topic? 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah. 

Chad Westbrook: All right, so- 

Heidi Ellsworth: Or you've been listening to everybody else, so you can go throw some other stuff.   

Chad Westbrook: Yeah, work on yourself, that's what he took away. No, so there's been a lot of really cool things and  the part I love about all of us up here is that we all have an extremely unique way of how we got up here. Right? Whether it was Cody and your story, Greg's, Tracey's, I mean, everybody has their own unique spin on it. 

But I'll say one of the great conversations that I had outside of this is that everybody here can say that you have a great business, but to me that doesn't mean anything. To me, the only way that I know that I have a great business or you guys should know that you have a great business is if your customer says it's great, right? Because we can do everything all day long, we can have the best processes, the best people, all that kind of different stuff. And if we don't have a customer that's raving about what we're doing enough to be able to give us the next job or even more work, that's one of, I would say the best conversations that we took away. 

A couple of other things that I think I spoke about that had some noise around the room was Saturdays. So we talked a lot about house accounts and different things like that and how we just feel these customers are just going to give us work because they like us and that they just give us work, that's how it is. And in a really aggressive sales approach that we had, is that when we would call a customer and they said, "Hey, I got a roofer or   I'm fine," or, "I'll give you a call when something comes up." We would place that follow up in the CRM on Saturday. So as soon as we got any type of rain that would come into Atlanta or whatever metro it was, we would put calls directly in there because I knew if I could get to that customer faster, just like what Tracey was saying, the faster that we can get to value, was the more likely it is that we can get a job. So putting that customer experience first, the Saturday thing, I know we talked a lot about. 

And then I think the other thing was that A player profile, right? It's not about hiring someone that you think is good, it's about knowing exactly what that position needs to perform for the business to be able to get the end result. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, no, that's great. I love it and  I love how you just said and  I think that's great. This is what buzzed after I talked and  this is what people were asking about. I love that. Cody, what did you hear out there? 

Cody Kline: Yeah, same deal for me. So the conversations have kind of expanded outside of this room and  last night I went to dinner with 22 guys and girls and  I got to have the conversations around what's actually happening in their business. And I feel like there's two main points that I would like for everyone to leave here with and  it was kind of a topic of conversation last night. It was like, "Hey, this isn't quite happening for us," or, "Hey, we're feeling the repercussions of X, Y and  Z," where maybe their first quarter didn't go the way they thought it would. And I think the point to remember is that everything that happens in your business is the outcomes, we need to remember that those outcomes happen from the inputs and  so we need to measure the inputs. So if we don't have the opportunities, if we don't have the leads, if we don't have the roofs to walk, we need to take a look at, what are we doing to generate those? And so that would be point number one for me, is like measure your inputs. 

And point number two and  part of my, one of the topics I spoke about yesterday, is really understanding the problems better than your competitors. So what are the building owners or the facility managers or the property managers, what have they dealt with in the past? What are they dealing with currently? Why are you there? And what is their desired outcome? And when you can bridge the gap between what are they experiencing now and what would they like their... or what is their desired outcome? You can be the bridge from point A to point B. 

And then honestly, my favorite takeaway, which was not my topic, was really what Greg spoke about earlier, just really focusing on the business man over the business plan. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Or woman. 

Cody Kline: Or woman. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Thank you. Those are awesome and  I want to make one point to that, Cody, I just, sorry, but it came to my mind. Right now we're seeing a lot that is coming to fruition from all that work in January and February and  I think that is 100% spot on. It may seem like you're just on that bike trying, pedaling as fast as you can in January and February, but nothing's really coming together. And then all of a sudden March hits and all of that starts blooming, which will come to yours too. 

Cody Kline: [inaudible 00:14:36]. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah. 

Cody Kline: Yeah, it could be that or it could be the opposing view of that where it's like things are not happening now in March and we need to look back and say, what did we not do- 

Heidi Ellsworth: Exactly. 

Cody Kline: ... in January or February that we need to do in March and April to ensure we have a good strong May, June, July? 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, yeah. Greg. 

Greg Hayne: Well, my first takeaway and  it's not so much what I said, but I think that Will has done a great job of assembling an agenda to equip all of you to get better at service. I have been really impressed with all the presentations and I think everybody's done a great job. And I was thinking about this last night and I said to myself, I wonder how many people are going to walk out of here feeling like they've been drinking out of a fire hose and they really aren't sure how they're going to go about getting all this implemented? And one of the things I focused on today, the main thing I focused on today was, as I said, the container, not the beans. It's working on yourself as a human being to build the capacity to address these things and  so I got a lot of nice feedback from people on that. 

But I do see when I'm working with and  these guys see this too. Okay? They may not put words on it this way, but when we're working with contractors and they're not making progress, the problem is not, you don't know what to do. The problem is your unwillingness to do it or your inability to figure out how to do it and  that is a you problem, not a process problem. And I think you all need to keep that in mind. Now, that's not three things, but that's a major takeaway for me. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Actually, that was a major takeaway for me too. So working on myself. 

Greg Hayne: Self. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Self and  also I like what you just said is, sometimes it's I'm the... And not sometimes, more often than not, I am the one who's in the way of my business growing. And so I think that is a huge takeaway. 

Greg Hayne: I read some research by someone that said that when you have a problem, 80% of the solution is inside of you, only 20% is outside of you and  if I can elaborate just a little bit. So there's a contractor that came up in conversation earlier, someone mentioned Rackley Roofing and  Curtis Sutton has built a wonderful organization there and  he's really great about having people come in and he'll talk with them about how he does service. He's very generous about that. And when people do this, most of them do it wrong. They walk in and they ask him what he does. That's the wrong question. The correct question is, why are you doing this? Because we had someone from over here ask a question earlier today, I believe about whether dispatch should be centralized if you have multiple offices or   if it should be localized. And Rackley may do it one way one year and do it the next way the next year and be successful either way because of why they are doing it. So it's not what you're doing, it's why you're doing it and  that falls back to working on yourself. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, that's great. Tracey. 

Tracey Donels: I talked a lot about operations and especially the internal operations of an organization. I see it all the time where owners have no problem employing technicians and building trucks, but they have trouble building the internal operations to support that staff. And so much of what we do in service is not roofing, it's communication, it's all the stuff that lies within the office. And so what we really need to remember is, we deal in an industry of need, not of an industry of want. And like I said earlier, we're not competing for work. Think about how much roofing jobs there are out there. We're competing for people. Now, think of how much service work is out there. Every market has maybe three or two contractors that really, really care about service. So there is so much opportunity out there, but you have to have the internal operations to do the work. You have to support your team. You can't expect your team to work 120 miles an hour all the time. 

And I talked about Chick-fil-A lot and  if you count the number of people working in the Chick-fil-A, they have twice as many people working than the place next door and  they're making three times the amount of money because their employees can actually do what's expected of them. They have the time to get the customer's issue turned around quickly. So remember your internal people and give them the tools and the capacity and the time they need to keep your customers happy and  your customers will keep coming back to you day in and day out. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Okay. I'm going to remind everybody, if you have questions, just raise your hand. I'm looking and I'm [inaudible 00:19:54], but I want to go just a little bit tactical. So one of the things I love is when contractors, as we're talking out here and they say, "This is one thing I would've liked to hear about," right? This is one thing and  I think they've already probably are going to Will saying, "We want to do this next year," which is I think a response of a great conference when you're like, "I'm coming next year, can we do this?" And that is, we had them talking about, how do you put together a service truck? What products? How do you decide on the products in the service truck? What kind of goes into that? And I don't know if any of you had some of those questions thinking about all this and how to put it together, but let's just give some of your thoughts on that. 

Tracey Donels: I think it probably goes back to your region and your customer base and what kind of work you do. I mean, obviously in service we need to prepare or be prepared to tackle a little bit of everything, but that only goes to some extent. So I think a lot of times instead of what you say it's not what, it's why or   maybe it's not what you carry, but it's what you carry it in. Right? And do you have the right vehicle enough to carry enough product of whatever it happens to be. But you know your area, you know what material you're of. And as far as which material, just like there's tons of different ways to be successful in roofing, there's tons of great repair materials out there. And we were having a conversation yesterday about coating and repair products and  I chose my coating and repair product the same way I would choose my service department. Who helps me the most? Who helps me train my people? Who responds when I have a question? Who's going to go explain something to a client that I don't understand? Who else? 

Cody Kline: Yeah, sure. I think Tracey had the advantage of being able to go first and  it's hard to say much else outside of that. I agree with everything he said. The only thing that I see kind of changing here recently is that the evolution of coating products and liquid applied products to be able to carry less on a service truck is definitely evolving. And I see that more and more so with the guys in the commercial roofer, university and community. It's like they're able to go from a box truck to a van and  I had some, one of the guys told me at lunch today that they just condensed down to a utility bed. So, leveraging those liquid applied products. 

Tracey Donels: One comment on liquid applied. One comment about the liquid applied, I think it can tend to be overused a little bit. 

Heidi Ellsworth: [inaudible 00:22:23]. 

Tracey Donels: Remember what I said, treat others the way you want to be treated, provide the kind of service you want to receive in the future? If I have a two-year-old car, I don't want somebody to make a repair on it with something that doesn't match or is going to void the warranty. So repair products definitely have their place, but don't be out there voiding somebody's warranty or putting a green patch on a red roof or anything like that, because you wouldn't want that, right? 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, one second. 

Chad Westbrook: So Tracey, 100% right. So one of the biggest things that I run into, especially with contractors who are growing and bringing in new foremen, new trucks, different things like that, is all the different ways that they could have learned what they do. Something as simple as an open seam on a TPO roof, how are we going to fix it? One person's going to tell me cover tape, the other person's going to tell me they're going to clean it and they're going to heat weld it back down, someone else is going to tell me they're going to put some type of liquid membrane over it. All three of those are different products that will be on the truck, there's different labor associated with it. Is it warranty approved? That roof is less than 20 years old, I'm going to assume that there's some type of manufacturer warranty connected to it. Right? So like-for-like is one of the biggest things we put inside there. 

The other part is if you look at the invoices that you guys have over a duration of time, you'll see what materials you are using, which will tell you what materials you either A, need to stock within your shop or   B, stock on the truck. 

One of the hardest things that I had to come across is I did a lot in self-storage, which basically meant they bought anything with four walls and a roof on it. I didn't know if I was going to a brand new prefab metal building or I was going to an old tore down or half tore down most of the time, warehouse. I had no idea what I was getting into, right? So anytime I had variables like that, I had leak diverters on the truck, because at the end of the day, it was about my customer being able to run their business. And my guys, as soon as they got on site, they're assessing it, but I am stocking my truck based upon what I'm consistently using. And you said regions, absolutely. Right? We're going to carry EPDM down the side of Florida, probably not. But if we're up in Chicago, I'm going to have more modified than anything just because what the roof systems are up there and how those territories ultimately grew. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Excellent, excellent. And we have a question over here, Stephanie. 

Stephanie: Yes. Obviously the repair, maintenance service industry is great. And talking about our techs on the roof, what can we do in the industry and what is maybe the NRCA doing to make sure that when we hire new employees that we are training them to be an excellent roofing contractor? Because it's, not everybody is able to become a roofer. So what can we do locally and nationally to make sure we have great employees coming into the industry? 

Heidi Ellsworth: Great. So for everyone out there, just in case, make sure they heard Stephanie, she's asking about training and how are we training our next, our employees coming in,? What are some things that are happening with the NRCA? And what are some things you can do locally? So I'll go ahead and start real quick on the NRCA start a part of it. I recommend everybody look into their TRAC program, which is all training and  PROCertification, which is actually a certification for installers in the field. Great stuff. You can find all of that on RoofersCoffeeShop, but we can also get you that information. So that's one of the big things that we're seeing right now with NRCA coming through there. 

Tracey Donels: And TRAC is free if you're an NRCA member. 

Heidi Ellsworth: And TRAC is free, yeah, as a NRCA member. So if you're not an NRCA member, very, I think one of the most important memberships for your company. Chad, thoughts on training? 

Chad Westbrook: So first I would always go back to process. Right? There's a very specific experience that your company delivers to your clients and  you want to make sure that stays exactly where it's at. So having that journey or something along that side that I shared with in mind. 

The second part is you have hard skills and you have soft skills, right? One, do I know how to put a patch down? Do I know how to do it right? I think we've all mentioned the NRCA repair guidebook for low slope. It's beautiful and it's consistent, to where everybody operates the same way. The most beautiful part, it's a PDF that you can put on the phone. So there's never a question of, how do I do this repair? So you don't run into the same issue, right? We have an open seam and how are we doing it? So consistency. The soft skills is something that I'll say hasn't really been addressed to I would say my liking, just within the industry. So checking in, checking out, which you can lean a lot on if you have technology providers or something like that to help you with the automation that you might have. But that's something you would need to figure out for your business within your journey to be able to say, "This is the experience I want my client to have, so these are the things that I'm going to do." 

Heidi Ellsworth: That sounds great. Cody? 

Cody Kline: Yeah, two parts to my answer. And so this is right up our wheelhouse, this is exactly what we do. So we look at every business as having four main functions. Right? We have to generate opportunities with marketing. We have to convert those opportunities with sales. We have to produce whatever our sales team promised through production and  then we have internal operations. And for all four of those functions, we look at getting everybody on the same page as three levels. Okay, so level one is systemizing the business. And so when somebody comes into our organization, you have to show them what you do. We love visual representations with flowcharts. So flowcharts for the marketing process, for the sales process, for the production process, for all the different types of things that you produce. But when you can show people what you do, you have the playbooks for how to do it and  who does every single step of that process, it's a complete game changer and a culture shifter for bringing people into your world. 

And then I think the second part to my answer is really, I'm going to lean on what Brian Mitchell said in his virtual presentation the other day. He said it doesn't have to be this fancy, a roof mock-up in a huge facility. It could be two pieces of plywood out in the parking lot and you're just, I don't know, putting down a cap sheet or   whatever his actual reference was. But yeah, I don't think it has to be overthought. I think it's just building that culture of like, hey, we're here to get 1% better every day and continuing to instill that throughout the organization. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, very cool. 

Greg Hayne: Is it okay if- 

Cody Kline: Yeah. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Go ahead, Greg. 

Greg Hayne: Yeah, [inaudible 00:29:13]. I'm going to tackle this a little different way. I think the ideal way to handle training is to have your field staff train the field staff, which means that in a service truck, one of the foreman's jobs is to train the helper and he should be... We've heard a lot about scorecards. Okay, you got to have a scorecard. And so what you do is you go to the helper, is he teaching you stuff? No, okay, then that's not okay. So that's a piece. The service superintendent should be responsible for making sure that the crews have the training they need. And I have no problem with relying on the NRCA or any other organization, but ultimately the service superintendent is in my view, the guy that's ultimately responsible for the quality of what happens in the field. And that means he's ultimately responsible for making sure that the training work that they need gets done. 

Tracey Donels: And to kind of tackle onto that, it needs to be repetitive. I don't like the word training. Training means, we kind of went through it one time. I like the word practice. We're having service practice today. Are we practicing the fancy stuff? No. When football teams go to practice, they practice the basic stuff. That's what we need to be practicing, the basic stuff, the soft skills and the hard skills. Right? Put them through a role play training where they have to come in through and pretend the leak's in your building, right? So that's one thing. 

Second thing, I think the last question kind of ties into this question a little bit, because who's teaching us how to make repairs? Is Manville going to come in and show you how to do repairs? Is Carlisle going to come? I love them, they're great companies, but they're here to sell you truckloads of material. The repair companies and the coating companies are the ones, unfortunately, the only ones who are training us right now in office, so that's how we're learning, to Chad's point. So you have to take control of that, you have to build your own programs to practice the basics. 

And last thing, pay your foremen to do it. I had a bonus for every one of my foremen, if their technician gets the foreman job, $2,500 immediately. So then I combine my training program with my compensation program. Now my foremen are picking a little bit better technician. They're not going to pick their dimwitted nephew because I can't make any money off that kid. I'm going to pick a little bit smarter person. And if you needed a foreman today and I told you, "Hey, I got this guy that's been with you for two years. He's been vetted. He knows his way to the bathroom and  you trust him. He knows how to make repairs. 2,500 bucks." You might say, "Hey, do you have three of them? Because I'd take them right now." 

Heidi Ellsworth: Excellent. 

Greg Hayne: Hang on. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Okay, here we go. 

Greg Hayne: So when I was training the service department, working with the service department at KPost and  Tracey was the service manager, I walked in there one day and I saw something that was happening in there, at that time every day. And what I would call it is training. They're in the morning and he and Heath and the superintendents are sitting down with the techs and they're reviewing all the paperwork for the purpose of teaching the techs how to do a better job of doing the paperwork. They were training every day. Now, that didn't go on forever and  there were people that already knew how to do the paperwork and they didn't have to do that. Okay? They're gone, but everybody else were getting trained every day. So if you think this is a once a month thing, you're kidding yourself. Now, it doesn't necessarily have to be an everyday thing, but it has to be very regular. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Excellent answers, excellent question, thank you. More questions? Okay, I happen to have a few more. Okay, I want to talk about and  Greg, you're going to love this one and you have the microphone, so this is perfect. Pitfalls. What if you were, as you're talking to everyone here and everyone out in YouTube land, the biggest pitfall that they need to be careful not to step in. 

Greg Hayne: To do what? 

Heidi Ellsworth: To not to have big problems with their service department. So, pitfalls of service. 

Greg Hayne: I think that the biggest problem I see that contractors have in building a vibrant sales organization is lack of proper engagement from the owner of the company. When I used to train and I would walk into KPost, which at that time was a 60 or $70 million a year company, Steve Little, the president, stopped what he did and  spent time with me. When I walk into Rackley Roofing, Curtis stopped what he did and spent time with me. And when I told Curtis or I told Steve something needed to happen, it got attention. Now, it didn't always get done, but it got attention. Okay? But when I have worked with people where they delegate service to somebody else and the owner's not actively engaged, service does not normally grow nearly as fast or   at all. So that's- 

Heidi Ellsworth: Tracey. 

Tracey Donels: Yeah, I would say to that point, almost on a broader general or a broader view, what the boss cares about, everybody cares about. And one of our peer groups, we go and tour other contractors' offices. And when you take a tour through Rackley Roofing and you talk to Curtis, you see why every single one of his people eats, sleeps and  breathes service. If you go through, we just went through BELDON Roofing. Brad's one of the foremost safety experts in the world and  every single one in his organization eats, sleeps and breathes safety, right? Steve Little, every single person at KPost is a salesperson, because Steve is a salesperson and he eats, sleeps and breathes sales. So remember that, speed of the captain, speed of the crew. What you care about, they're going to care about. 

Heidi Ellsworth: That's a takeaway. I'm taking that home, speed of the captain, speed of the crew, just saying. 

Cody Kline: Same, yeah, the... For me, I thought about it a little more esoterically. So I think we have to have a vision that is transparent to our team. And so if they can't understand what the North Star is and where we're headed as a company, people run out of runway. And so if you're losing people, if you're losing people and you're feeling like your service department isn't humming along, things aren't clicking, it's probably because they don't understand where you're going and they can't see the vision for that. 

And so there's been a couple tools that have been mentioned in almost everybody's presentation and  one of those being the scorecard. And I think there's two linchpins to a successful service department. There's probably more than that, but two that I'll share with you guys. It's the scorecards, which like I said have already been spoken about, but having a scorecard for every single conversion that you want to see, hey, is this happening? Well, that's a conversion. Right? Are the bids that are going out or are the calls coming in actually getting bids? Are the bids actually getting sold? Are the sales getting to how fast are we getting to those? And so having those scorecards to tell the actual story of what's going on. 

And then having a consistent pulse where it's like, hey, every 90 days, we're reimagining, what is the North Star for this 90 days? Checking on that every 30 days. And then even looking at the scorecards on a weekly basis to make sure that you're always rowing in the same direction. And not just that you're rowing in the same direction, but you have everyone behind you or working alongside of you rowing in the same direction as well. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Excellent. 

Chad Westbrook: So I'm going to take a slight variable, probably to all of your guys'. So one, it was really quick for me to be able to say people and  Greg, when you say leader not involved, to me that comes down to employee clarity. I've had the opportunity to have really, really involved leaders and  I've had really disconnected leaders. But the difference between my success inside those two was, I knew exactly what I needed to and  exactly what I needed to do, where when that leader was not there, I was crystal clear on what I needed to accomplish in order for me to be able to hit my goal for him or the company to be able to hit their goal. 

Now as that works its way down, that's where I feel everything falls apart. So in my presentation, as I said, does your helper know how he is a part of the business? Does he truly understand how tied into profitability he is? And most of the time I see a helper show up, he works 40 hours, he gets a check, he goes home and  he comes right back. But truly, the difference between, let's just say five to five plus points on work orders can be helpers correctly executing their spot to be able to improve the GPM on every single ticket. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, excellent. I have one more. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Okay. 

Greg Hayne: There has been a lot of conversation from many of the presenters about the importance of processes and procedures and  I think one of the things that I see, one of the mistakes I see being made, is that you design these processes and procedures around what is easy and most effective and efficient for you. No, you design your processes and procedures around what's best for your customer and  if that makes your life more difficult, tough. This is about taking care of your customer, not taking care of what your boss thinks is important because he doesn't know. You got to. 

So an example of this is and  we were talking about this in one of the peer groups the other day, is that when you have a major rain, you got to take people off your production crews and train them up to get out there because they need to get their leaks fixed. Okay? And when the boss says, "Oh, we can't do that because it's going to screw up our production schedule," what he's really saying is he doesn't care about that customer's leak, he only cares about his production schedule. And that mindset goes through the whole organization on a subtle level. Okay, you design your processes and procedures, there's nothing wrong with making it easy for you, but does it make it easy for the customer? 

Heidi Ellsworth: Right, so good. 

Tracey Donels: Back to Chick-fil-A. Is it easier for them to put three people out in the snow or in the heat of the day to take your order? It'd be easier for them to just let you drive up to the machine and order. But no, it's better for you and  so it's harder for them. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, that's so good. Okay. I'm going to ask another little tactical question, but this is kind of a summary because we talked a lot about this through all the presentations and  that is preventative maintenance. Selling preventative maintenance. Greg, let's just hit on that topic. 

Greg Hayne: I asked her to ask me this. So, does anybody here not want to sell preventive maintenance? I didn't think so. You all do, okay. So, I think there's a piece missing. I've listened carefully to all these presentations. First of all, let's understand that selling preventive maintenance is one of the most difficult sales that you can make because you're trying to get people to buy something for a roof that's not leaking. Okay, but putting that aside, I had an interesting conversation many years ago. So I got a call from a roofing contractor who probably all of you would know by name, whose name has not been mentioned here, but he's a large contractor, well over $50 million in revenue. And he said, "I need for you to talk to my VP of sales because we're having trouble selling our program." Well, that is his preventive maintenance program. All right? 

And so I got on the phone with the VP and I said, "Well," I said, "Explain to me what's going on." And he said, "Well, we're having trouble with selling our program." I said, "How many of them are you selling?" He said, "Well, not very many." I said, "Okay, why are you trying to sell these things?" And he said, "Well, first of all," he said, "When we sell one, we get extra money." He's exactly right about that. Okay. Number two, he said, "When we go up and inspect that roof, we find other stuff." And he said, "That's higher margin work." No, it's the highest margin work. Okay, great. It's absolutely true. He said, "Number three," he said, "It's a way for us to have contact with the customer." Absolutely correct. 

I said, "Anything else?" He said, "No." Doomed to fail. My God, he has no chance of being successful. And if you're not sitting there laughing at the absurdity that came out his mouth, you're guilty of this too. Everything he said was about what was in it for him. He didn't mention the benefit that the customer wants. And when your people go out to sell this stuff, if they're trying to sell it, you're going to lose. Figure out what that person needs, needs and  give them that. If that means service, give them service. If that means a new roof, give them a new roof. Don't go in there, I'm going to sell them this or I'm going to sell them that. Give them what they need. 

Now here's the other piece of this. I used to work as a roof consultant for Kroger and  this was 20 some years ago, but when I did that, they had a policy that they did not do preventive maintenance on their roofs. And so they hired me to be their roof consultant and  we were doing preventive maintenance on their roofs within a month. Why? I didn't call it preventive maintenance. They called me on the phone and they say, "Hey, we've got this problem." And so I went and looked at it and I said, "Well, you could do this and this and this." And they say, "How much?" I said, "Oh, about $15,000." They said, "Fine." It was preventive maintenance. Okay, so don't call it preventive maintenance. What you say to people is, "We want to show you a way to save money on your roof." They all want to do that. None of them want to buy preventive, but they all want to save money on the roof. And then frame what you're going to be sharing with them around how it can save them money and  your closing ratios will skyrocket. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Excellent. Yes. 

Tracey Donels: Right to that same point, I want to show you how you can spend less money with me. I used to go into people's office and say, "Hey, if I sell you a roof, guess what? I don't make any money whatsoever. I make the most money I can possibly make if I can push off you getting a roof for as long as possible. And save you the most money, that's how I make money." And that's really a big door opener. 

Second thing I would say about this is, the more of these you have, the more of these you can figure out how to sell or even give away for the first two years, it really will help your scaling issue. I think at KPost now they have about 1,000 buildings on their preventive maintenance program. That's 1,000 work orders that they get to go do at any time really, that they want. And now if I have a bunch of work I could do whenever I want, I'm not so concerned about my backlog, now I add another truck, now my speed of service increases and my level of trust gets even better than it was before. And now they're going to listen to me when I try to do a recommended work or I talk to them about preventive maintenance or something like that. 

Chad Westbrook: I was just going to throw you a shout, Cody and  in your presentation, you were talking about the compound effect, right? And being able to start each year with those preventative maintenances already in place. That was the world I ran, right? So on the national account side, I had accounts that were four or $5 million a year inside service, but they didn't start at zero. I already had three quarters of a million already done, right? Whether it was through preventative maintenance or I was doing capital budgets or even operational budgets, all that stuff was already set. So as you grow the business, I mean, it's a huge, huge part behind it, but the compound effect will be a huge impact to the success. 

Heidi Ellsworth: This all coming together. 

Tracey Donels: And one more note about the scope. I see far too many preventive maintenance plans that are far too complicated, far too complicated. See, I stole his idea and he knows it. Far too complicated. Easy to understand is easy to sell and  it's easy to carry out. When we go get our oil changed, they change the oil, they check the lubricants, they may rotate the tires, they don't do 87,000 things. They do six things and they do it well, quickly. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, okay. 

Tracey Donels: [inaudible 00:46:16] work together. This is how it was. 

Greg Hayne: So as a roof consultant, I would go to a contractor and say, "Give me a proposal for..." And I would give him an idea, but give me a proposal for preventive maintenance on this property. And I would get it and  I would get out a red, yes, it's going to be 52 pages and I get out a red pen and I'm going, we're not doing that, we're not doing that, we're not doing that. What was he thinking? We're not doing that, we're not doing that. And so just what you guys all do, it's like going to the auto dealer because you have a scratch on the right rear quarter panel of your car that you want to get buffed out and  you get out of the car and you throw the keys to the guy and say, "I'll be back in a week for the quote," and then leave. When you get back, he's going to give you a price for painting this, painting that, new upholstery, tinting the windshield, putting... That's what your scopes of works look like. 

You have to have intelligent conversations with the building owners to understand what their needs are, what their situation is, so that you can frame what you're going to be presenting to them in the context of what they want. Okay? Because when I got a quote for $35,000 on a shopping center that had not leaked in three years, okay? And so we eventually awarded it and  guess what? It wasn't to that roofer, because he doesn't understand. I'll get off my soapbox now. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Okay, good. 

Tracey Donels: Treat others the way you want to be treated. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Exactly. We have one more question that I want to make sure we get to. And upfront I want to say, for ServiceCon, there have been some important sponsors and  I want to mention, they're up here. SRS, thank you. Centerpoint Connect, all of these gentlemen, RoofersCoffeeShop, we have it proactive. I was looking up there, I was making sure we didn't miss anybody, but I want to just say thank you to all those sponsors who helped make this possible. 

But I also want to end, I want our last question to be about technology and  that really made me think about the sponsors. It made me think about Centerpoint Connect. It made me think about Roof Hub and SRS. It made me think about the importance of technology to all of you. So advice and  then from this panel advice, people are out here going, what should I be using? What should I be doing? What is some of your advice? That's going to be our last question. 

Tracey Donels: Don't think that the software is going to, you have to do work the way the software does work. Make the software work the way you do work. All of the softwares are adaptable enough to integrate to your workflow or your service journey, like Chad was talking about. They can all be molded to do work how you do work and  the one you choose is the one you can get your people to use. Just because you think it might be the best, if your people don't use it, it's worthless. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Culture, culture, culture, culture. 

Greg Hayne: On the other hand, I agree with this, but on the other hand, many software technologies have the ability to do things for you that you can't do with paper and pencil. So it makes sense to consider changing some of your processes to take advantage and leverage some of those things. But my advice is this, you cannot solve people problems with technology. Stop trying to do that. It won't work. 

Cody Kline: So, Tom was up here doing his standup bit a little bit ago and  I think he mentioned AI and he made a joke about next year at ServiceCon, we're going to have seats full of a bunch of robots replacing us. Right? And so there's a lot of conversation. AI came up in conversation at lunch today or   I'm sorry, at dinner last night and lunch yesterday. And I think for the next interim, I won't put a time stamp on it, but for the next five to 10 years, we don't have to be worried about AI replacing us. It's not us versus AI, I believe it's you and AI versus you and AI. Right? And so it's like, we don't want to sleep on AI because our competitors, the next guy, they're going to overtake us, but right now it's not us versus AI. And so when it comes to technology, that's my advice. 

Heidi Ellsworth: That's great advice, great advice. 

Chad Westbrook: There are four parts to a business and  what I've found throughout my time building businesses, being a part of and leading it is number one, is people. Greg, to your point, people is number one, you have to have A players and you got to make sure that they're in the right roles. Two is processes, that's how those people work together. I do not allow technology when we create this. Technology comes in third and  it has to be third because it should make everything that you guys do better, easier and  faster. That's my rule with it. 

Now, to Greg's point inside there, there's stuff that technology can do that we can't do on pen and piece of paper, I 100% agree. The automation, all that beautiful stuff, it can make your customer experience so much better, but you have to have the right people in place because even the greatest technology in the world, if you don't have the right people using it, it's going to fail. You can have the best technology inside the world, if your process does not follow it and you buy this technology and you change your entire process, every one of your employees are going to hate it. People, process, technology and  only when you have those three do you put goals for efficiency and profit in place. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Excellent. How about a round of applause for these gentlemen? Yes, so beautiful. Thank you. Thank you very, very much for being on this panel. Thank you for your great wisdom and your presentations at ServiceCon, it's just been phenomenal. Thank you again to all of our sponsors and thank you to everybody here in the audience. Thank you for being live on Roofing Road Trips with us as we bring this great information about service and maintenance going into 2025, exactly what we need. 

And for everybody out there, thank you. Please visit the SRS and the Centerpoint directories on RoofersCoffeeShop, find out what's out there, plus a lot of other great information that you can get on service and maintenance. Be sure to check out all of our podcasts, all of our Roofing Road Trips under our RLW section of the site. And be sure to subscribe and set those notifications for everybody out here on your podcast so you can listen to us every morning on your way to work. And we'll be seeing you next time on Roofing Road Trips. 

Outro: If you've enjoyed the ride, don't forget to hit that subscribe button and join us on every roofing adventure. Make sure to visit rooferscoffeeshop.com to learn more. Thanks for tuning in and  we'll catch you on the next Roofing Road Trip.