Subcontractors are a reflection of your company

RCS Influencer Randy Chaffee says to have a plan in place upfront so subs understand the company culture and expectations.

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with RCS Influencer Randy Chaffee. You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the recording.

Alex Tolle: Hello, I'm Alex Tolle with RoofersCoffeeShop.com and I'm here with Randy Chaffee. For the April influencer question, we are talking about subcontractors. So Randy, what are some of the best practices for hiring, onboarding and managing your subcontractors to ensure quality and consistency in your roofing projects? 

Randy Chaffee: That's a whole lot of stuff, I think it all stems back to first developing the culture that you want to have in your company because subcontractors, whether they're subs or not by legalities and by law they're subs but they're a reflection on your business because most people that buy a roof from you as a contractor are not buying it from the sub they're buying it from you. So make sure you have in place what you want because it's hard to train them, it's hard to hire them, it's hard to onboard them if you don't know what you expect out of subs. So is it uniforms? Is there a way they're going to present themselves? What do you expect out of them? And have some continuity and have that in writing just like with the safety policy. Have safety policies in place for your subs too because they ultimately still work for you just a little they're paid differently, right? They're going to be paid as a 1099 person instead of a W2 person, but there's some responsibility that you're going to have if you don't make sure certain things are adhered to on the job site.

Onboarding is super important. I think even with subs, I think it's easy to, while they're subs, I'll just give them the job and give them a blueprint and tell them the material, have them show up on Thursday at two and let it go. That's the easy way out. But you're probably going to get out of what you put in, right? And I think if you have some onboarding up front so there's some trainings on how does our culture work? How do we do things? How do we work through the system? How do you work in conjunction with your salesperson? Do you have a system to where you understand the salesperson comes to the job site? He's sort of in charge. It's his job site, right? You may be the foreman or the sub, but this is the guy that sold, the gal that sold this job that worked with the customer. And how are they going to relate to the customer? What do you expect? And then I think you have to have a true policy. It doesn't have to be gigantic.  

We've talked about trade associations a lot. All the trade associations have all kinds of onboarding opportunities, textbooks, training programs, literally plug and play policies that you can put into place. But I think it's really important that you have a way to walk these people through the start to finish what you want. Because if you don't, you are going to end up with job A that goes great and job B doesn't because nobody followed the same procedures. You want to get as close to, and I don't eat at McDonald's for a lot of reasons, but I think you want the McDonald's effect, right? The one thing about McDonald's, if you go to McDonald's in Oregon or in Florida or in Maine and you're a cheeseburger, it's going to be 99.5% exactly the same, right? And the order procedure is going to be exactly the same. Everything that happens is the same. There's a reason for that because it works. They found out it works. You don't go to work at McDonald's without going through an onboarding policy, right? And I think it's the same thing with a roofer, with subcontractors, have that plan in place upfront before you talk to your subs and they have to understand there's certain procedures we're going to work with. And if you do that and you make use of the trades and all the forms and the safety manuals and the things like that that are available, it can be pretty smooth. So I just think again, it comes back to like a lot of things and it gets to be an overused term, I suppose, but it's company culture.  

And it's easy, I think, in my opinion, with subs. And I speak from that from a standpoint that as a rep agency that I am a 1099 guy with all my manufacturers, I'm not an employee, but they include all of us in the company culture. Because no matter how I am paid by my manufacturer, I'm still representative of my manufacturer. And there's certain expectations on how I present myself on the rules and procedures that said manufacturer wants to operate. So they have to have an onboarding even for a rep, even though we're not technically an employee. And I think it goes same thing whether it subs on a building site. 

Alex Tolle: Yeah, you're a representation of that company. So being able to represent it well is really important. I agree. 

Randy Chaffee: Well, it is because there's probably many times there's only two people or sets of people that that homeowner that business sees. Mom, Pa, Kettle. That's an old show, just nod. If there's two people, they're going to see the salesman that sells them the job. 

And we're telling you how great we are and what an incredibly great job we're going to do. And then there's the crew that shows up to do it. And that's the only two impressions that 90% of those homeowners are going to have a great impression with the salesman if they did their job. And the lasting impression of, did the job go well? Did they clean up? Did they do the thing? Were they professional? And everything that happens at the end with that sub will undo and do 10 times more damage than all the good the salesperson did upfront. So it's really important that they're in sync, if that makes sense. 

Alex Tolle: Yeah, makes perfect sense and I totally agree. Well, thank you so much, Randy, for answering the April influencer question and we will see you next month.