The importance of proactive preparation

RCS Influencer Randy Chaffee says contractors should be working harder now than they ever have to get ready for the upcoming season.

Editor's note: The following is a transcript of a conversation with Randy Chaffee of Source One Marketing. You can Read the transcript below, Listen to the recording or Watch the conversation. 

Jenny Yu: Hello everyone. I'm Jenny with RoofersCoffeeShop and I'm joined by Randy Chaffee of Source One Marketing. How are you today, Randy?

Randy Chaffee: Jenny, I am great. How are you? I'm pretty good, too, thanks.

Jenny Yu: Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, we're excited to kick off January with this month's influencer question, which is how can roofing contractors use the off season to tighten operations and improve job site efficiency?

Randy Chaffee: Man, that's a great question, Jenny, because I think the first thing is remember it's a short time between here and April. And I think we all think it's a long time, right? It's forever till June. No, it's not. And it's certainly not forever until the season really kicks off. I mean, I'm in the south most of my life, even though my work sales world is in the north.

So I go back to the snow and we can sit there and go it's cold and we can't do much work. We got time. And I think that is probably the biggest killer you're going to have to think we have time because you know all of a sudden we blaze through the the holidays, right? All of a sudden we're going to blaze through the college playoffs and we're going to blaze through the Super Bowl and all of a sudden it's February 28 and then it's March 15 and we haven't done anything right.

So I think it's really important to first to identify that we have to use this time because, to me as a rep and that's where I kind of come from in most of my experience even though I was a builder about seven million years ago, you know the the pyramids, but anyway, the point is there's limited time, but some of the most valuable time because planning time tightening up our
policies and procedures, hiring those new people and onboarding them.

I think in one of the Coffee Shops episodes a while back we had a conversation about what to do if do we need new people. If we need new people, I understand the the the the economy of that. Well, we don't we're not busy yet, so let's wait till we're busy.

But then you have a brand new employee that knows nothing when you're busy. And I think it's a cost of doing business if you can do it. It's a cost of doing business that you need to put into your margin structure is I need to bring these new people on now so I can get them trained on policies, on procedures, on safety training, how we do things, who we are, how I need you to conduct yourself on the job site, all those things, as opposed to, okay, we'll hire you March 12 and March 15 you're one of five
guys on a crew and and then you wonder why things aren't as efficient, right? Or why safety issues don't get followed or god forbid somebody gets hurt because they never got all that stuff done. So, now's the time to do it.

And Jenny, I also think now's the time to build the business towards next year. Hopefully everybody's booked and has some work, but it's again March 20, April 1 is not the time to go. I suppose we should do a little marketing. I don't know, maybe we should do some advertising. Maybe we should try to find some sales somewhere because, you know, we're not booked that
far out already. Now's the time.

Now's the time to get ahead of that game. So, that would be probably the biggest thing is it's culture. So many things in
our businesses, our culture, and we have a mindset to prepare because none of us want to do that, right? No, we we don't Well, not none of us. Some people love that stuff. And you can get too geeky over that stuff, too, and prepare forever and never do anything, right?

But we have to think about it, think the plan, and then take action before it's too late. Because I'll just tell you, Jenny, anybody that wakes up on March 15 and goes, "You know what? Weather's starting to clear a little bit. It's going to be in the 40s and 50s. We could probably start building, but I don't know. We don't have any crew and Billy went to California to live and we don't have anybody, and we needed a new truck, and and our portable roll former isn't working because we didn't work on it to fix it over the winter."

Jenny Yu: Yeah, you're going to get what you get with that. Right. I think it's so important for people to get the ball rolling now versus waiting and expecting everything to be ready.

Randy Chaffee: Exactly. And like I said, it's important because that's where my world is is is in the sales and marketing world. Now's the time for visibility. Now's the time to to work both ends. You know, you need to be working that sales end. You need to be filling that funnel. You need to be quoting those jobs. you need to be training that.

It's the same thing with a salesperson. If you have a salesperson or two, you lost one or you know, you've geared up and I need to hire the third one or whatever that number is. Again, March is not the time to start going, I guess we should put an ad out or do a social media blast and say we're looking for a salesperson because you're now six weeks or six months away from them being good and that's not their fault.

Yeah. Unless you got lucky and they came from a competitor, right? Or from the industry, but then you might cut that in half because they got to learn your way of doing business, how you present yourself, how you build versus the competitor. So, you might cut that in half, but you just both ends of that have to be worked together. And you know, again, this is the time to get out
to trade shows, out to the the IRE and the METALCONs and the NFBA post frame builder show, all those shows.

This is the time to get out, meet people, network, and uh because you're not going to have time for doing that when it comes you know, mid-March or whenever the weather starts to break a little bit. It's Katie by the door, right? So that'd be my last advice is you know, right now you should be working harder now than you ever have getting ready.

Jenny Yu: Perfect. Thank you so much, Randy.

Randy Chaffee: Absolutely. It's always a pleasure to chat with you, Jenny. Good to see you.