Shane Millwood – Strong Bonds Fuel Success - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Shane Millwood of BITEC. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

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: Hello welcome to another Roofing Road Trips from RoofersCoffeeShop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth and we are here today to talk about the importance of customer relationships. I am telling you in my whole career in roofing I have looked at it and having that relationship between a manufacturer and a contractor is so important so we've asked our friends and experts in this area from BITEC to be with us. Shane welcome to Roofing Road Trips.  

Shane Millwood: Thank you for having me, Heidi. 

Heidi Ellsworth: We are excited to have you. This is so good. And let's start out with an introduction if you could introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your company. 

Shane Millwood: Yes ma'am.  My name is Shane Millwood I am the vice president of sales at BITEC. BITEC is almost forty years old. BITEC historically has been a Modified Bitumen and high-temp underlayment manufacturer. A few years ago, Joel Sheeley took the helm and decided to change some things so we've moved into a lot of different categories inside of the roofing commercial and industrial roofing space and he brought me in about a year and a half ago and our goal is to be really good at what we do, so we do have a lot of opportunity inside of BITEC but we are focusing on the parts that we’re really good at, and then we’ll grow the rest of the parts as we get good at those.  

Heidi Ellsworth: I love it I love it. You know Shane I have to tell you when I first started in roofing back in 1993, 1994, my very first show I had I met David with BITEC and we were both setting up our booths so I feel like I've been friends with the folks at BITEC for well, I already have over thirty years, so what a great group I'm so happy you're there and what a fun job sales for BITEC. I have to tell you I think it's cool. 

Shane Millwood: It is exciting every day in a different way. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, a different way of putting it all together. Ok let's talk just a little bit about that growth you know tell us a little bit about how old the company is and what you've seen in the growth over the last year and how you and Joel and the team have really kept in touch with your customers. 

Shane Millwood: BITEC next year will celebrate our fortieth year in business. And the Modified space as anybody in the roofing industry knows is not quite as large as it once was, so we've had to reinvent who BITEC is. I think you've probably heard the term BITEC 2.0 in the past. 

Heidi Ellsworth: I have  

Shane Millwood: And most recently we've reintroduced BITEC 3.0 and it's who we want to be now, but with the ever-changing industry with technological advancements we don't know what that looks like in five years or ten years so who knows there could be BITEC 4.0 down the road but for now we're going to concentrate on who we are and we're BITEC all caps BITEC. You know I don't think it was me that ushered it in but I come from a long history of sales and relationship sales and being in the construction industry for over thirty years myself I believe that people buy from people that they trust whether its product advisors, or if you're in the design space, design advisors, whatever space that you are in I believe that when you build a solid foundational relationship, ultimately the opportunity will arise more often than not that you get a chance at something cause they trust you not that we're all friends and that we're hanging out all the time but it's that trusted relationship of the manufacturer representative that I believe in wholly and we focus on that. Our team's directive is to go build relationships, trusted relationships, with contractors every single day. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Love it. That is perfect. Building trusted relationships with contractors every single day, I love it. I just think that is what it's all about and really like you said, manufacturers, reps, they're in the field, they're talking to the contractors of course they are also at distribution. They're probably doing some architects and some consultants but those contractors are the ones who install it and so that relationship is so important. How do you see that collaboration really helping, and probably over the last couple years really helping to lead to better products improvements, 2.0, 3.0, how contractor driven is that? 

Shane Millwood: I think it’s very heavily contractor driven. Of course, innovation comes from a lot of different places. Contractors are the experts in roofing. I think most innovations come because somewhere smart people were listening to the right people. Contractors are the right people. They may not always have the right answer, but they can usually dream up a solution and if we're collaborating on a daily basis, if that's our job is to go talk with, listen to, build trusting relationships with. We just launched a product recently. I don't want to get ahead of where we're at in our launch because you guys will be a big part of that, I'm sure. But we just launched the product recently for emergency repairs that contractors have been asking for, for a long time. Another, for example, was our IRE-launch BITEC’s quality underlayment base ply has always been extremely thick compared to the rest of the industry. Therefore, to keep the weight down we could only manufacture it in a 1.5 square row. Well contractors have talked to us and talked to us and talked to us and we listened and now we offer a reduced thickness, I mean it's standard in the industry, compared to everybody else, but it is our two square base sheet for modified roofing.  

Shane Millwood: It's just the conversations. I teach my team two ears, one mouth all the time. God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason so we'd listen more than we talk if we can do that and do it successfully, we can generally figure out the contractors’ needs number one, we can also figure out what's missing in the space and hopefully that intelligence leads us to innovation to create that product that is missing in our space. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah it’s so true because listening to the manufacturers who listen to the contractors work in conjunction because you know whether they always say if you would've asked people what they wanted, if Henry Ford had asked people what they wanted they would've said a faster horse right? They would've never said a car and so sometimes bringing things to the contracting community is about bringing things that they hadn't thought about that are new but solving that pain whatever it is that they have out there. I love your example of the 1.5 square roll compared to the 2.0 roll but still having the 1.5 for those who want the thicker membrane, that's exactly the kind of relationships the contractors I believe are looking for with manufacturers. You know with your sales background Shane how do those relationships, trusted relationships with contractors, really help you and your sales team to see success not only for BITEC but also for the contractors? 

Shane Millwood: That's a great question. I’ve got over thirty years of relationship sales experience and at some point, along the way, on the sales side of it, our job is to create the relationship, create the trusted relationship, provide real solutions for the contractors not just sell them a product. We’re not in the business of selling just products. Ok, we're in the business to provide real solutions that last to who we hope are tenured clients, customers, relationships that last for decades. I'm not interested in a one-off, you know we will take that sale, but our job is to go and grow our account list and build those relationships so that it lasts for years and years. Hopefully along the way, and we don’t tell contractors how to run their business, hopefully along the way we rub off on them. I believe that if we do what we say when we say it, we’re honest and we say when we’ve messed up as well.  I believe that that's leading. No what level of our organization that we're doing at as long we're doing it correctly we're leading anybody we come in contact with so the contract who we are in contact with every single day if they're watching us do our job successfully that doesn't mean financially successfully that just means that we're doing the steps. I say this and my guys they probably get tired of me - stay focused follow the process do everything we do great and do it with integrity, and if we do those things well we lead everybody we come in contact with. If a contractor in turn is doing those things whether they're learning it from us or not I think the collaboration between two people that really have the best interest of the end user in mind because that’s where it all comes in. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yes  

Shane Millwood: We want solutions for their customers in the end so if we can collaborate to get the best possible scenario on that customer’s roof, then I think at the end of the day we're going to be looked upon and be a better organization. Contractors are going to be looked upon and be a better organization and our relationship should only grow stronger through those collaborations. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Agreed I love that I love that. With integrity you know everything you're saying is just so spot on for sustained long-term relationships. I want to think back, I mean your contractors go back forty years, you're going to be celebrating forty years you have contractors who have been installing and partnering with you for all forty years. 

Shane Millwood: We just hired a salesperson. He’s been installing BITEC products for over twenty years. 

Heidi Ellsworth: He knows it and he believes in it, that is so great. So I’m curious Shane on what you are seeing around trends in talking to the BITEC contractors having been in the industry myself for thirty years having seen the growth how much mod bit was being used in built-up and then with self-adhered built-up of course now I am hearing it coming back again on a lot of levels from consultants from architects, and it's all around resiliency and performance. Can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing in the market around modified bitumen products? 

Shane Millwood: That’s a broad question, but a great question. And honestly it’s regional in a lot of those opportunities, it's regional. But I will say in the design community, I do believe that belts and suspenders are coming back. And that means redundancy, right? Built up or hybrid roofs or some sort of multi-ply systems give you that resiliency. Resiliency that you're talking about. If I look at different regions, even different states inside of regions, depending on, I don't want to be far out there politically, but depending on governmental interactions with codes and things like that, that can also change the shape of what type of roof systems are getting put down. We are really good at modifieds. We're really good at any built up roof situation we do cold tar pitch we do hot asphalt built up roofs. We’re really good. Our Storm Breaker coatings line is phenomenal and we're good at it. We're really good at service and repair products and across service and repair departments. And by being in there talking to all of those guys, I was on the phone before you and I got on the phone today with a person in Alabama. And that person said I’m seeing modified and multi-ply systems coming back here. You know institutionally depending on life of buildings, how long is this owner going to own this building, what are they going to use it for, are they going to keep it forever. So sometimes that's tied to private corporation sometimes it's tied to government entities so sometimes that's tied to other things. But when owners realize hey I’m going to keep this thing for a while. I’m going to have it for thirty, forty, fifty years. I need a roof that's going to last thirty, forty, fifty years. 

Instead of putting a roof on every eight to twelve years. They are going with longer life cycle roofs. And that’s where the built ups and the modifieds and the multi plies and the redundancy comes back to play. So, I think it’s circular, where we were in the fifties and sixties with coal tar pitch through the seventies and eighties and nineties with modifieds and then you know there's a shift and that shift to singleplys is not going away. We're going to be good at that one of these days we have a singleply line and we're learning more and more about it every day and we're going to be good at it. I believe there's always going to be a home for that and a large one at that. Most of the commercial roofing that’s going on percentage wise in the United States is single ply roofing. That’s a large percentage of redundancy coming back. When I say redundancy, that’s multiple plys. So I do think generationally the younger generation prefers cleaner work. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yes  

Shane Millwood: Believe they want to get off and go hang out with their friends. They don’t necessarily want to scrub off in a shower for thirty minutes to get asphalt pitch off for their bodies, so I think they want to get off and go hang out and it's just a little different viewpoint not wrong or right necessarily. But perspective changes with each generation of course I think that is a shift also, so our job is to provide the very best solution for the contractor to give the end user what they're looking for. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Right, you know I love that generational thought because they are pretty smart they're working a little bit smarter and you know cleaner, I guess exactly what you just said. I think that’s also one of the reasons you see self-adhered people want the modified bitumen layer you know built up now with self-adhered and you kind of started out there with your two squared role that is the technology is starting to kind of answer some of these pain points and wanting to make changes and we're seeing that as we go through they still want the redundancy modified bitumen but they just want to be a little bit cleaner.  

Shane Millwood: I want to take a chance to plug our Imperflex line so that is our self-adhered modified rolls. So we have a base sheet with one and a half and two square base sheets and we have our MSA which is our mineral-surfaced cap sheets of all of our self-adhered products so we do have those and we talked about them a little bit earlier but I should have plugged the actual term so thank you for giving me that. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Love it. So one of the things I kind of want to go back a little bit to sales now that we've talked about this, especially is the next generation what the demand for different products is. So, as your sales team is building these relationships and you are adding products to your line as you said now you have singleplys and plus you have the awesome coating line and service to repair your sales folks as they are out with the contractors. Talk to me a little bit about how they are helping getting to understand like what kind of crews you have on the roof. What are some of your expectations? What are your customers looking for? I can see that sales teams, especially when we talked about the young man from Louisiana, you know really getting to know the contractors in understanding not just from a sales point but also from a production, from an operational, all of that, how important that relationship is between your sales team and your contractors. 

Shane Millwood: I developed last year our core disciplines. Anybody is welcome to use these you know they probably not just for us. But our core disciplines are C equals O R E And that's Organization Relationships and Education which leads us to the question that you just brought in and that’s all education. So our job is to be educated on our industry on our products, honestly our competitors' products, our contractors’ needs, wants, desires and how they run their business because that matters as a salesperson because every contractor is different so we're going to have offerings for some that don’t fit others and we're going to have intricacies with that. We also need to understand terms in roofing you know we talked about short term roofing, long-term roofing, lifecycle costing things like that so we have to be educated across the spectrum. I don't expect my team to know everything right now. I don't expect to know everything ever. I do expect them to learn daily and I hope we’re doing that through our communications with our contractors and we do try to inherently somehow subconsciously put that on contractors as well. We want them educated on all of our products, on the industry, on lifecycle cost and why like to like products usually longer than not. Okay, so things of that nature and that educational process never ending. I was just in Arkansas at HQ, and we had twelve of our guys doing some follow up training, putting down self-adhered roofs, putting down torch roofs teaching them about our new product offerings, we spread some coatings we did a lot of work. 

We have a fastener line so because we sell the entire assembly of products with our roof systems. We have a fastener line it's called Imperfast and we had them learning about our fastener line and then we have some vendors in because in our assemblies we don't make everything of course so we sell other people’s stuff with their name on it. If there's cover board we don't make a cover board so we sell other peoples’s cover boards and so we had some people in doing some training on that but education even though it’s the last letter but it’s the last letter in CORE, because it wouldn’t be spelled CORE without that. 

I believe if you're organized if you're spending eighty percent of your time building relationships with the buyer and you're spending all day every day educating yourself, you don't have to read a book, you do it through conversation, you do it through listening in those conversations, you do it through watching a contractor do their job, you do it through our training, you do it through going on YouTube and watching somebody. I mean there's infinite ways to educate yourself and become a better version of whatever you’re trying to do. I believe if you do those three things, if you’re organized, you build your relationships successfully and you are educated or getting educated, C on the other side of that equals mark is Confidence. It gives you the confidence you need to go do your job every single day and do it well. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah I love it that is great. I thought you were going to say customer so I love confidence I really do I love that. Well Shane, for the contractors who are out there listening to this, and there'll be quite a few, if they want to get more involved with BITEC, learn more about your products, get some trainings, start you know really looking at your forty year old modified bitumen pretty awesome product line, how do they get ahold of you and how should they get started? 

Shane Millwood: Use our website bitec.com  

Heidi Ellsworth: Perfect. 

Shane Millwood: Call they can call at 800-535-8597 they can be transferred instantly to a rep in their area if you go on our website you can probably find my information if you just want to call me direct I'll take the call and then I'll get you with the right person. We are here to be accessible, we want to be found, we are not hiding. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Thank you that's a real way it's nothing worse than getting on a website not being able to find a phone number. So, there you go. I just probably showed my age there but I also have to say if you're looking to get information about BITEC they have an amazing Directory on RoofersCoffeeShop and CoatingsCoffeeShop where you can get all the information. You can get the contact phone numbers, you can get emails, you can learn about the product lines and see all the great things that BITEC has done this last year, last forty years. So first of all, happy anniversary next year for forty years and Shane, it is so great to get to know you and see that BITEC is in very good hands going forward. 

Shane Millwood: Well Heidi I am quite certain you will play a big role in us for next year so thank you.  

Heidi Ellsworth: Ah, can't wait. 

Shane Millwood: Well we’re going to talk about it all next year. I’ve heard about it, all year next year, so that's going to be fantastic. I look at our team today versus a few years ago. And our team, probably the median age was about 45 eighteen months ago and now it's closer to 30. We've got young guys, aggressive guys, energetic and we’re spreading them across the country so we're super excited. Please get in touch with us and I can't wait to see you again and do this again. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Well Shane, I'm sure we'll see you at the Florida show. There's a lot of shows coming up that we get to spend some time at, and we'll have you back on this podcast. Thank you so much. 

Shane Millwood: Thank you great to see you. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Great to see you and thank you all for listening please be sure to check out the BITEC Directory on RoofersCoffeeShop. Great information also some great articles and past podcast we've done, so many different videos, great information to help you get involved with BITEC. Also check out all of our podcasts under the Read Listed Watch navigation and the Roofing Road Trips be sure to subscribe and set those notifications on your favorite podcast channel so you don't miss a single episode. We'll be seeing you next time on Roofing Road Trips. 

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