Roofing Success
The Roofing Success Podcast is a show created to inspire roofing contractors to achieve optimal success in their roofing businesses. The host, Jim Ahlin, is the co-author of the book, "Internet Marketing For Roofing Contractors, How to TRIPLE Your Sales and Turn Your Roofing Website Into an Online Lead Generation Machine", and Co-Founder of Roofer Marketers, the Digital Marketing Agency for the roofing industry. On each episode, Jim will be sitting down with industry leaders to talk about their processes, the lessons they learned, and how to find success in roofing.
Roofing Success
Proven Strategies to Mastering Employee Motivation and Retention with Jessica Stahl
Discover how resilience can transform adversity into opportunity as Dr. Jessica Stahl shares her powerful journey from losing everything in a hurricane to finding new purpose in the roofing industry. Dr. Stahl's story highlights the crucial role that contractors play in rebuilding communities, and she offers valuable insights into building a rock-solid team and cultivating a business culture that drives meaningful impact. You'll gain practical strategies for recruiting and onboarding, learning from her wealth of experience to avoid common hiring pitfalls and create a team that supports your company's mission.
Uncover the secrets behind effective career development and optimizing sales performance by recognizing the importance of self-awareness among business owners. Explore how tailored training programs, career paths, and compensation structures can elevate employee growth and performance. Real-world examples illustrate the importance of defining clear expectations and measuring metrics to align your team with business goals. Whether you're dealing with challenges in recruitment or striving to enhance your sales strategy, this episode provides actionable advice for making informed decisions that lead to success.
Get to grips with the finer details of effective recruiting and communication strategies that treat job applicants with the same urgency as potential business leads. Dr. Stahl explains how prompt candidate communication is pivotal in maintaining interest and reducing turnover. You'll learn about structuring compensation to foster a sense of purpose, creating engaging onboarding experiences, and maintaining strong communication to boost long-term employee satisfaction. With insights into job ads and employee retention strategies, this episode will arm you with the tools to build a committed and motivated team from the ground up.
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Imagine losing everything in a hurricane your home, your belongings and, within days, seeing your community rally around you, reminding you why you're in the industry that you're in. In today's episode, dr Jessica Stahl shares how this personal disaster reaffirmed her commitment to the roofing industry and contracting community, and how building the right team and culture is critical to success in this space. Dr Jessica Stahl is an expert in recruiting and onboarding, with years of experience in corporate. Despite facing an unimaginable loss recently, her dedication to helping contractors grow their business is stronger than ever, and what makes Jessica's story so impactful is her connection to the contractors that she serves and her ability to bring people together, especially during tough times. So today we're talking about the four biggest hiring mistakes and how to create a team culture that truly makes a difference. So let's jump into this insightful conversation with Dr Jessica Stahl. Welcome to the Roofing Success Podcast. I'm Jim Alin and I'm here to bring you insights from top leaders in the roofing industry to help you grow and scale your roofing business. Dr Jessica Stahl, how are you? Oh?
Speaker 2:I'm hanging in there.
Speaker 1:We got hit, you're hanging in there. Yeah, you had a little. You had some stuff happen recently, got caught in the hurricane.
Speaker 2:Yeah, living in Florida, it's got like Tampa was hit pretty bad so my house was flooded and I lost like the house and everything that I own last week. So yeah that's been hard, we were scheduled on the day.
Speaker 1:We were scheduled to do this on the day that the hurricane was coming in and it was like, yeah, let's reschedule. And so I'm happy that you're, you know, you're kind of rebounding and getting stuff together and are able to come back on so quickly. But my goodness, it's not fun living through those situations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, like I guess, if there's like a silver lining, like I have a new appreciation for contractors after this experience like I made a post on facebook that my house was flooded and I needed like mitigation contractor, I needed people to help me demo like people to help with roofing, and like the whole community showed up I probably had 50 messages. Like people drove from like even an hour away, dropped everything they they had to show up for me and it just like like it's definitely been like an emotional process, but like seeing it's like reaffirms that like I'm in the right space. Like being in roofing and working with contractors is like is where I'm supposed to be. And like I feel like you know I've contributed a lot to the industry and helped contractors quite a bit grow their business. And then, like when I needed help, everybody showed up, everyone rallied, they bought me new cowboy boots and just like I feel really, really grateful for the community right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's amazing and and you know the community is great Contractors are amazing. You know there's the bad rap that everyone gets a bad or a lot of bad raps out there and especially in these emergency situations, right Like there's a lot of people that come in.
Speaker 1:There's, like, you know, there's always the talk about the scam, but, my goodness man, that they, the, the contractors are, are the come in and save the day yeah, like they come like they are the only reason that florida rebuilds and the gulf coast and the and now with all the you know flooding all the way up into North Carolina and man, it is that that's what happens is the convergence of the contractors from around the country and the resources that get brought in to do that. It is really amazing. I think another thing that happens in these situations is we see we get past the normal kind of place that we are in society where we barely talk to our neighbors and we barely talk to our right Like it gets. Everyone is there, everyone's jumping in, everyone's there to help People are. You know, I mean my folks got hit in Ian.
Speaker 1:They were down by Naples and Pelican Bay. I was on the first. My mom and I were on the first flight, that first flight from Minneapolis that landed in an RSW in Fort Myers right after EN and there were some touching moments of people helping their neighbors and trying to get everyone situated and making sure everyone's okay, making sure that they have what they need. It's pretty cool. It really is. So it's unfortunate that you have to go through things like that, but it's cool to see that silver lining too and be able to experience it Really what that comes down to.
Speaker 1:To me, man, it's the people, it's really the people and it's not just the me man, it's the people, right, like it's really the people, and it's not just the owners, it's the teams and, and you know we've we've done events in the past before and and and, and I know you talk a lot about hiring and building teams and recruiting and onboarding and and culture and and things like that, and and so that that's what I wanted to talk to you about. This is we're going to talk about this before the hurricane hit, but there's even more of a connection here.
Speaker 1:Right, this is what it was it's the people that are reaching out to the people, and so having the right people on your team, having the right culture in your business, really expands that reach of what you can do for people, right, what the good that you can have in your community or other communities. So you know first off, like you know what are, I guess, what are some of the mistakes like that that people make in hiring and onboarding new team members.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I love talking about like recruiting and hiring, because as a business owner, you have the most control over your employees in that interview process, whether they get in the door or not. Like that's when you have the most hiring. And all of my research and my master's and PhD and working at Publix and corporate companies was centered around the hiring process. So what I've noticed with contractors is there's really four reasons why you're hiring. An onboarding process is failing. So we'll run through all of those. But the first one is not having the right type of applicants. So you have, like, the wrong type of applicants or you don't have enough applicants. People aren't showing up to the interview process and then people are leaving, turning over in the first 30 days, like those are the four main mistakes that contractors are making. So we've hired-.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's start with those wrong type of applicants. Like that's. Yeah, I think about it from a marketing perspective, right. Like I think of recruiting and hiring as a marketing initiative, right, like, of course I do. Right, of course I do. But that you know getting I think about. Like, in marketing, we look at like a customer avatar. Right, we're looking at who is our perfect customer. Who do we want to serve? Do you want to serve the customer that's trying to get the lowest? You know the cheapest bid? The customer that's trying to get the lowest, you know the cheapest bid? Probably not right. Or maybe that is your customer, maybe that's your avatar. Maybe you're the cheapest. Your focus is being the cheapest. But I think, in understanding your company, understanding who, like your culture, that helps with knowing who you're looking for. Is that what you're talking about in terms of the knowing who you're looking for? Is that, is that what you're talking about?
Speaker 2:in terms of the like finding the right type of applicant. Yeah, so I think it it comes. Like with any business decision, it comes down to strategy. And so a lot of times, like we just resort to warm body recruiting because we're like, oh, like a storm, storm hit, like we just need to get somebody in here, like if you have a heartbeat like it's totally fine and you can breathe, like let's go and like, potentially, if you could even climb on a roof, that would be better.
Speaker 2:But like there's really no thought, or like proactively thinking about the type of person, the type of applicant we want. So everything is very reactive and and like the determining factor and who we hire is who can we get in first? And that's really like if you have a plan in place, then that alleviates that need. So there, when we're thinking about like, like if let's just take sales reps, like you have three types of reps you can hire and there's really only three. So like the first one is like the 22 year old, like maybe he's bartended, dropped out of college, like great potential customer service skills. We'll call him like Brad, like no, I feel like we need to call him like skylar like I feel like skylar's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the 22 year old.
Speaker 2:That's a better 22 year old name, yeah I feel like you're like like skylar, like 22, like bartender and uh, like dropped out of college but has good people skills, never been in roofing, like maybe lives with his parents, yeah, and then you have like your next rep you know that's had, you know, maybe like five years of sales experience. Maybe is coming from a different industry, like car sales, pharmaceutical sales, like any, maybe solar, any type of other industry. So like an experienced sales rep from outside of roofing, we'll call him, we'll call him Brad. I feel like that's, I feel like that's, yeah, I feel like that's Brad. And then, and then you have an experienced rep from a different roofing company, so like rep number three and we'll call him Bubba. I feel like that's a great name. So, like first determining which type of those If we want a Skylar, a Brad or a Bubba, because the way that we're going to go after them and do the recruiting is different, because those people want different things.
Speaker 2:So, like your point, recruiting is 100% marketing. The way that we're going to advertise to those applicants is much different. Like, if we are going after, like the experienced roofing sales rep, we have to think about why they're probably leaving, like not getting paid on time. That's a huge thing. So we would want to put like something in the job ad like hey, you know, we pay on time, we're reputable, we've been in business you know 15 years. Competitive compensation they're going to want to get paid the highest amount of compensation versus somebody like a Skylar, the 22 year old. We want to focus on hey, this is like a career that you can make a great money. We have all the training and the tools provided for you. And then you have somebody like a Brad. We want to. We would want to hit on stability of like hey, we've got like a health and wellness plan, we have a career path. So there's different things we would want to focus on, depending on who we want, and then those comp structures would be different for all of those different type of applicants.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Do you think each company has to decide like, hey, I want Skylar, brad or Bubba. Do you think it's best for them to say our company does best with this type of new rep or additional rep? I've heard lots of people in the industry say I'll never hire someone who's been in the industry because I don't want to. You know, retrain them, Right. I've heard other people that are like, man, I just go find reps that have a good essentially a good book of business, right, and I have, I provide that good support and pay them on time and, do you know, actually get them paid and, you know, provide a solid comp structure. And so I go after those industry, the people that have that experience, and I let them go, like they do their thing, like, do you think that a company should decide who they want before they go out on this recruiting process?
Speaker 2:So I think where companies fail is, I mean, I think they need to decide, like if you want all of them, then you need to be able to support all of them. So I guess, like the main thing is, if you want a Skyler, you have to invest in a training program, because otherwise they are going to fail. Like there's just really no way around that If you don't have somebody with industry experience and you don't have training, it's just not going to work. So like yes and no, like you can go after all three different candidates, but you have to have all the resources to support that.
Speaker 1:Resources and I think you're right there. So then, like the Brad, you need the roofing training, like roofing retraining. He needs roofing knowledge and product knowledge and and you know things like that the more of the buying cycle and roofing trained on that versus, you know, versus Skylar needs everything everything.
Speaker 1:He needs to learn how to like, how to knock a door, what door to knock what? Like we're taking baby steps with Skylar versus. Brad has that sales experience. He knows how to overcome objections, you know, knows how to be professional, knows how to show value in the service that he's selling or product that he's selling. But he doesn't know the product yet. So I see there, yeah, so that's a good point.
Speaker 1:I've been on this self-awareness kick. Owners need self-awareness, right. They need to look at their business, look at themselves and say these are our strengths and weaknesses. Like, if you have, if your strength. I know some companies that their strength is recruiting higher and training and building massive sales teams. Right, like, they do it well, like they. And then there's others that are like I can't find a rep. Like I hire all these guys and they're gone within a month or two or three. Well, that's that self-awareness. They don't. They don't realize what they don't have. Right, like they don't realize, man, this isn't. You know, I do. You have the training for them, you know, it's a simple question. So yeah.
Speaker 2:And then like, yeah, when we get into like onboarding, like why they're leaving in the first 30 days, there's, there's some specific things there. I think, like also, when we're thinking about like the compensation structure, the way I always do compensation structures is I put them on a career path from when they're brand new of you know. Let's just say we're paying off the gross, like maybe we'd start them out at 8%, brand new. Once they're hit their first milestone 250,000, we'll put them at, you know, 9%, 10%. And the reason that I typically put them on that career path is they need more help in the beginning, the less experience that they have.
Speaker 2:So like there's going to be more oversight from the office, more handholding from a trainer. So like paying them the full commission, like you're losing money there. So like that's where you know, start them off at 8% and give a 2% override to a team lead or a sales manager when they're new. But if you have somebody experienced, like a experienced roofing sales rep from another company, you don't have to start them off at the beginning of the career path, like you can start them off at the top of the career path and so like, hey, you're coming in at full commission 10%. Because we don't have to train you, we don't need oversight, like like you, you can start. So, like I think that goes back to the question, do you have to decide exactly which one of these? Not necessarily, but you need a full spectrum of training and a full like career development plan and comp structure to match where they're at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think in in large corporations it's.
Speaker 1:it's much more standard, right Like you could have a um, a customer service rep level one level two level three right, like you have these different and then from there they move to, uh, you know, a sales associate level one, two, three, and then from there it's a sale. You know, like there's these from from a small business perspective, how do you, how do you, how do you plan that? Like, how do you put together that? A career path? Like, how do you, how do you do you do it for each role in your company? Path? Like, how do you, how do you do you do it for each role in your company? Do you look at, like what, like from an EOS perspective, your accountability chart and look towards, like, building a career path out of that? Would you look at your org chart? How would you? How would you do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So when I work with companies I build career paths for every department. Like the larger the company, the more important that's going to be. So like sales, it's pretty like clear cut from you know, like a sales rep to a senior sales rep, to a team lead to a sales manager. Like with sales reps, typically that's tied to the number of jobs that they've sold, like revenue. But also I have my contractors do performance reviews. Just because you sold $250,000, you're eligible to get a commission increase. But you could have sold that and had all of your paperwork's turned in wrong. You could have like pissed off a bunch of customers. So I have them give performance ratings. In addition, just because you sell doesn't mean you get more money because you could be causing like so many issues for the office. So like that triggers eligibility. But you don't just get more money if you're causing so many issues in sales.
Speaker 1:I hear that a lot. It's like how do I get my team to do what I need them to do? And it's really through things like this, it's through these performance reviews, but I think it's also in setting the expectations to them. This is what you will be reviewed on a hundred percent.
Speaker 1:Like you don't know what you're being reviewed on. You're just out there doing whatever. And then all of a sudden you're your boss is mad at you, you know, and you're like I'm just doing what. I'm just doing. It Like why is he? You know, like I just sold 250,000. Yeah, but you didn't get your paperwork in on time. Like I think this is a big thing. I just have a coaching client in the marketing space that I just kind of went through this with. He's having a challenge with one of his salespeople. He's like and they're not closing, and I'm like well, what are what you know? What are their metrics? What metrics are you measuring? And he didn't have any metrics to measure.
Speaker 1:And I was like, ok, well, let's start there, let's let's go to the metrics. And you know he was. He was not sure if he wanted to let this person go. I feel it was the wrong person for the role I was, you know, based on the information that he provided me. But I said, look, if you want to give the person another chance, let's reset expectations. Let's put metrics on the table, have them agree that they would, that they'll be able to meet those metrics, and then give them a period of time to hit those metrics.
Speaker 1:But if you don't have the metrics in the first place, if you don't express to people what the performance review is going to be about, we're like what are you talking about? What are you doing here? Like, why are we talking about this? Like it's amazing, I'm sure that you run across this. So what kind of metrics? I guess, from a sales perspective, what are you reviewing on? I think it's what you focus on. You get more of right. So right, if you're putting metrics together for a salesperson and you want better paperwork turned in and you want things done on time and you want, like, maybe have some metrics around it, what are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. So I work a lot with accountability. So, like with accountability it's, there's a couple of things. There is one when they have, when they come in on day one, they should have a job description that outlines everything in writing that they're expected to do. So, like what are these? The standards of excellence is what I call them. So you know how many jobs need to be sold, the number of revenue. That's what contractors typically start with, but it's also all the activity that then generates those jobs.
Speaker 2:So what I do? I have them fill out their one-on-one sheets because really, sales reps need to be in one-on-ones every week to be successful, at least for that first six months, and then every other week after the first year, at least once a month. They need to be in their one-on-ones because a lot of times we don't give attention to sales reps until they're failing, and then we wonder why, so like having that one-on-one where they're meeting every week to go over metrics. So let's, for insurance, that would be the number of doors knocked. If they don't knock doors, like referrals, how many leads are they generating? Then I would want to know the number of conversations that they're having, like how many people answered that door, then the number of inspections, then the number of contingencies that were signed after that inspection, inspection, and then, yeah, the number of contracts signed as well. And so, like sales reps, they do not want to do this, they do not want to track things, but that's okay. Like they're going to have to do it anyway. They're not historically great at it, so, and we can talk about the best ways to get them to do that.
Speaker 2:But but those are the metrics and people are like, well, we don't really care how many doors they knocked and if they're, you know, getting enough revenue and that's fine, you may not want to track that. Maybe that's a metric you don't want to track, but we need to know where in that process things are failing. Like thirty three to one is the typical ratio. Like 30 doors knocked, three inspections, one contingency that's industry standard. So where in that process is it breaking down? Are you great at knocking the door but no one's letting you on the roof, or you're on the roof and there's no damage, or can you not get that contingency signed? Like, is there a problem there or is any? Are people, are the claims not being filed? Like where in that process? Because that's going to trigger retraining. If we don't have that data, then it's really hard to know where things are failing. If we're just looking at top line revenue, we don't know where that is.
Speaker 1:That's where, like that is the exact thing that I think people should really pay attention to is you're not tracking these metrics a lot of times for people who are performing well. I think right Like you're tracking them so that you can assist the people who are not performing well.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like you said, if, if this person has knocked X amount of doors but they haven't gotten on a roof and done an inspection, oh, okay, let's work on your scripting, right? Like, let's work on that, let's work on your scripting at the door. What are you saying? What do you do? Like how, if you are, if you're getting on the roof and no claims are being filed, what's the conversation like there? Why are they not filing the claim? Are you? You know? Like what? Where's the gap? What? What is? What are we missing here?
Speaker 1:And so I encourage, like, think of all of the points that you can develop metrics or any metric that you can look at that will identify an issue in what's happening, and that, to simplify it, you had great metrics there. That's perfect. Like, just have these metrics. Know the activity, track the activity, because it's the activity that leads to the result that you want. The result doesn't come from nowhere, like you have to like the result comes from the activity. So track the activity.
Speaker 1:But you also said sales reps don't want to do this and even internal team members have a hard time with it. Sometimes it's easier with internal team members because you can see things in the software you like in your CRM and things like that, you could see oh, this one sat in the order. You know materials ordered stage for you know too long Like you can, but from a sales rep perspective, a lot of times it's not in the pipeline yet. You don't get to manage that. How do you suggest that contractors should? How can they get their team, their sales team specifically, to actually use the metrics, write the metrics down, provide their data?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one of the best ways I've found is, at the end of the day, that they text their sales manager, their number, either text or Slack or whatever like communication channel, that Microsoft Teams that they're texting those numbers of doors not conversations, inspections, contingencies, contract signings, like at the end of every day, and then the sales manager would then go back and compile that. So that's. We found that to be one of the most effective ways to get those numbers.
Speaker 1:And it's simple. Hey, these are the numbers I need every day. Text them to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like the other way we do. It is each sales rep has their own spreadsheet and at the end of the week they do the tally for how many doors they knocked, how many inspections. Like that would be ideal for sales reps to take personal accountability and turn it in weekly.
Speaker 1:It just doesn't always happen, so yeah, have you had any companies that you work with that have had creative I don't want to say punishments creative punishments for not doing what, not doing what, what you know not doing what they're supposed to do? Because, to me, like you can draw it's carrot or stick, right, you have a carrot or stick, but you can draw a hard line and say, look, if you don't turn this in, you're gone, Like care to stick. But you can draw a hard line and say, look, if you don't turn this in, you're gone. Like you are, you do not work here. If you don't turn this in, it is part of what you do on a day to day basis or on a weekly basis, Right, and so how far do people go in it? And have you seen any creative ways that people are managing this or any just good ways that people are managing this?
Speaker 2:Any just good ways that people are managing this. Yeah, I mean, the first thing is when you have new reps coming in to onboard them properly and just say, oh, this is the way that we do it, because they're not going to know any other way, that's right. Just get them excited Like, hey, we meet with you one-on-one, we're here Really saying we want to focus on training and helping you and this is the way we do it. So just like from the beginning. And then it is more difficult to change reps that are there, especially top performing. Top performing reps because they think, well, I'm already doing a great job. Performing reps because they think, well, I'm already doing a great job, I shouldn't have to do this. So that is a more difficult conversation and it is going to be uncomfortable and it really what I've found is takes about 90 days to make that transition of people not wanting to do it, wanting to do it, seeing the benefit.
Speaker 2:And it always works Like when there's accountability, people are more likely to put in the activity because they know that they have to report that activity, and coming to a sales meeting every week and reporting zero is not a fun experience.
Speaker 2:So we always see an increase in activity and then the increase in activity generates numbers. So after 90 days everyone's going to see oh wow, like sales have increased, so they're more likely to do it. But there is that really uncomfortable period in the first 90 days and so if you're having one-on-one meetings, be like oh, you didn't fill out your sheet, okay, let's fill it out right now together. Or you didn't report the numbers. What did you do on Monday, tuesday, let's get those numbers right now to fill it out. So, but firing someone for not filling out the sheet, that's definitely like a last resort, or like firing someone for not tracking their numbers. It's like I would probably even have four, five conversations about it and chances are, if that rep is not wanting to track their numbers, there's probably other things in the company that are going on that that would lead to like the like, not wanting to follow rules or or or a lack of relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like if that's what I think you're I think you kind of mentioned it to like OK a night. I think there's some key points there. Ninety days, like stuff like this doesn't happen overnight, you have to cut. You're essentially reinforcing this, you're creating new habits in your team. So if you're not tracking numbers in an efficient way, you have to. You have to give them some time to adapt, but you have to make sure that it is understood that this is the way we're going to do things. Like we have to do things Maybe up front, get some buy-in, help them develop the metrics, or help them develop the metrics to get some buy-in so that they're not tracking things that they think are stupid, right, like that. You know, maybe some of that stuff. It might be some good advice there, um, but it has to be done, and I think that you said there's under there might be underlying issues on another level.
Speaker 1:If they're, if people are just not doing what they're supposed to be doing and I think that's that self-awareness too Is your team not being led in the right way. Do you not have the right culture? Because to have a successful company, the culture has to be we're getting things done. We're going to get this stuff done and we're going to all work together and we're going to create great communication between us and we're going to and if people aren't acting in that manner, well, this person's doing this over here and that person's doing that over there and no one wants to do anything else. Yeah, that's probably a culture problem too. So let's, let's go into a little bit about recruiting strategies, like, let's, let's talk a little bit about how to you know, how do you find these people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's. If we look at the different referral and referral sources, recruiting sources like Indeed is definitely the best job board. So, depending on how many employees that we need to hire, or team members, if they're 1099, indeed is the strongest job board. Indeed has acquired a lot of the other smaller job boards, so just their functionality is the best. I think I wouldn't do, really I wouldn't waste my money on like Monster and like they're just a lot of the same applicants are going to be on multiple boards. It's just Indeed is the strongest one. So that.
Speaker 2:And then employee referrals like having that, that referral from if you have great team members, they have the ability to recruit great team members. If you have crappy team members, they're also probably going to recruit crappy team members. So, like, getting employee referrals as long as you have great people on your team, is is the best and you need to pay for those referrals. Like recruiting is expensive. So at least 500 to a thousand dollars when if you, if they recruit an employee, or or 1099, even 1099, I would do that.
Speaker 1:I think that's something to call out. People don't think of what it costs to hire someone Like they just think of and they don't probably have. No, there are probably very, very few companies that actually have budgeted for that. Or, look, we need, we need, we know we're going to hire 10, 10 people this year. Okay, we're going to have a budget of you know, 10,000 or $20,000 to hire those people, to find the right people, to find the right people, to recruit the right people.
Speaker 1:Indeed, I think you're right. Indeed is the way I look at it. It's like Indeed is the Google of, of, of, of of of job boards. Right Like. It's where people go, it's where most people go. You could put your ad on, you could hope you're, or you could try to optimize your website for Bing and some people go there, but not not a lot. Right Like. So, if you know you don't need the monster, you don't need Bing, you don't need these other things. You focus, especially in the beginning, on the, on the main thing, which is Indeed. Indeed is interesting. Indeed to me, I mean, I hate job postings because I love marketing and job postings are so terrible, so bad. They're just so bad. Right, it's like if you go on Indeed right now and are looking for a sales rep job, it'll you know you could type sales representative. Like could be the title of the like. That's the title of your ad. Like what are you doing? Like there's so many better ways.
Speaker 2:You want someone if you're thinking about it like marketing you want someone to click on that ad, correct, yeah, like.
Speaker 1:This is an ad, it's not a like. Your job posting is your ad. You want someone to click on the ad. Then you want them to read the ad and and and qualify themselves in some way. Am I the right like? Should I apply for ad? Then you want a call to action. Submit your resume, fill out this form, like you know, send us your information, whatever that is. So again, I think about it as marketing. I know you do too, and so let's talk a little bit about job ads Best practices, worst practices.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean spell things correctly. That's always a good one. But people, they want to know what's in it for them. They like a lot of times you're not like contractors. They don't list the benefits of the job until the very end of the ad. But I always use a flipped approach where at the beginning of the job ad is I always call that section why you'll love it here, and then I list the benefits before we get into the responsibilities or the qualifications or anything like that at the very top. Because really, like, you have 20 to 30 seconds of attention for a job seeker and there's a lot of jobs, so that beginning I I usually put a creative like hook at the beginning.
Speaker 2:Are you, you know, working for a company where you're underpaid and underappreciated? Do you want a company where you can be valued, contribute, like same as marketing, and then go into why I love it here. Company truck, 401k, flexible hours. You know a company that has 1200 reviews on Google. So then I do a high level of responsibilities, maybe like six to eight responsibilities.
Speaker 2:I'm not going into a full narrative about the job and then the qualifications. I'm not. I don't get a full overview of the company story because the first thing they're going to do 68% of applicants they're going to that website to figure out what information if they're interested. All we need to do is get enough interest for them to apply. Everything else, they're either going to take action on their own to go to the website and then, yeah, call them to action. Everything else, they're either going to take action on their own to go to the website and then, yeah, call to action. If you sound, if this sounds like you know something that you're interested in, we want you to apply and and then, like, getting enough applicants that way, yeah, just like you're saying, marketing.
Speaker 1:I think that for people that don't know this, the about us page is always the second most visited web page page on a website, and I think you made a point there that it's not always just the potent prospective customers that are going to that page, right like the about us and team pages.
Speaker 1:I I'm sure, like you said, that people are looking at your job ad, they're Googling your company, they're going to your website, they're looking at your team page. So make sure your website doesn't suck, because that's a red flag right there. If they look you up on Google, if they Google your business name, your Google business profile will probably come up and your reviews are right there in front of them. So if you have bad reviews, I know I wouldn't want to work for a company that has bad reviews like that. So it's interesting of the correlation of what you're doing from a marketing perspective, a digital marketing perspective. You have to understand that people are going to look you up prospective customers, prospective employees, what are some like? I love the idea of what's in it for them, because that's that, that's really what what we're shooting for for. It's not job duties, qualifications like that's you, that's all the ads are, or job ads are most of the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here's your job duties, here's your qualifications there's no excitement and like, yeah, we get confused sometimes and think that that choosing a job is a logical process. It is definitely not a logical process. It is very much a psychological process. So people want to go where they find a place of development, they can be developed, they have a sense of purpose, like those are the two main reasons why, why people want to choose a new career. It's not money, Like that is not the first, that's not even in the top five of why people choose a company. So like they're not going to take a job below market value, but like that's like development and a sense of purpose is is the main reasons they're going. So being able to to effectively communicate that super important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now you've gotten them to excited about applying to your company, they apply. Now what?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So this is. This is where I see the biggest failure in the recruiting process. This is where I see the biggest failure in the recruiting process. This is, this is it is there's no system to deal with applicants. Like we should be treating applicants with the same amount of urgency that we treat a lead, because, especially if it's a sales rep, like so you're telling me that you have somebody that can make you a million dollars and we're not going to respond to him for two weeks. Like if your lead called in, a million dollar lead called in and we didn't respond to them. Like I would imagine that five, six, seven other contractors would respond that day.
Speaker 2:So, like the, the sense of urgency I see is is not there. Oh, we're busy. If they really liked our company and they were really the one, then they would wait for us. And that's not true because right now, especially on on, indeed, you're just a number. There is no, no commitment to you. There's no psychological commitment. One, if they see a video, they feel more committed, like on your website. And two, a conversation with somebody in your office immediately. So I say, between 24 and 48 hours, contact needs to be made with that applicant.
Speaker 1:I've never heard it put that way. This is awesome. Like, would you like? Would you call a million dollar lead Right? Like if there was a million dollar job on the table, how fast should you call that lead Right, like there's a million dollar producer on the table and you're not calling them back? I mean it's, it's. It's probably the biggest flaw in most contracting companies is their attentiveness to new business and, now that I'm seeing it in this light, their attentiveness to new employees. Right, I may have said this on the podcast recently, but I've been at my cab or at our family's lake home all summer and small towns northern Minnesota, and boy, I actually called a contractor, left a voicemail and it was 28 days between the time I left the voicemail and the time I got a call back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1:What Are you crazy? Like I'm trying to give you money, like I'm really trying to give you money. There was another contractor that I called who I had been given a referral from, and so I got I think what was their cell phone number. I call. They say we don't accept voice. We don't accept, we don't take voicemails on this phone. So call the office phone if you need to leave a voicemail. And so the voicemail was full on the cell phone that I called. Then I called the office phone and they specifically said only leave one voicemail. That was about eight days ago and I have not received a call back. No man, it is so wild to me. And this doesn't just happen in small towns, this happens in big metro areas too. You guys are nuts. Like, if you're not answering your phone every time, if you're not setting that appointment.
Speaker 1:The way I think about lead flow is, when you set the appointment, the person, the customer, feels like their problem is going to be solved. They don't. They feel less urged to reach out to more companies. That same like what you're saying is the same thing as a job seeker. Right, like if they submit their application and within 24 hours they get at least an intro call, a welcome call, a call to set their first interview, first interview. Like if they get some kind of communication, they feel like, oh cool, I, I might get that. Like they may psychologically think, oh, I have a chance of getting this job. Right, like they're actually reaching out to me, I'm going to not stick my resume in as many places. Right, like maybe that, maybe it's the same psychological effect on both sides of the coin.
Speaker 2:Yeah right yeah, we just like getting that phone call, like creating that, like relationship yeah I always like to call to like, like hear their voice, kind of do the initial pre-screening. There should always be a 15 minute interview. I would never like, on Indeed, just invite someone to the office for an interview Because one there's too many days that could go by and we need that commitment really quick. So, at least, like getting on the phone and then doing the 15 minute screening are you willing and able to get on a roof? Like, do you have a reliable, you know transportation? Like, are you comfortable?
Speaker 2:And I never say, are you comfortable door knocking? Because if they're outside the industry, they're not going to understand what that means. So I always say are you comfortable? Hey, like when you have a job site, would you be willing to go build relationships with everyone in the neighborhood? Like, are you that person that could, you know, make that effort and be willing to put yourself out there to talk to strangers? That's what I would want to know in the beginning. But just saying, are you willing to door knock? They're not going to understand that.
Speaker 1:I like that one. Are you willing to put yourself out there and talk to strangers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a great question. Like, not really. Some people are, some people don't want to do that Right and and that's good to get that, that initial thing over with. Now, once you get that, so on that initial screen, you're kind of you're qualifying them, is what you're doing right. Okay, this is someone that. Okay, they have reliable transportation, they're willing to learn, they're, they're willing to talk to people. Okay, now how do you move them through an interview process and what are some key tips for identifying? Because my favorite thing I've said it on the podcast a million times probably, but one of my favorite quotes is from Gary Vaynerchuk hiring is guessingiring is knowing, and so to me, in that hiring process, you're just making the best guess possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the way that I compare it is like compiling all the evidence to file a claim, like when you're submitting a claim to an insurance company. It's like taking the pictures, interviewing the homeowner, like documenting everything, making the best guess. It's the same. Or even like with your Carfax of like or buying a new car. Like doing the Carfax, going for a test drive, calling you know, checking with friends about their experience. It's the same of information gathering, of doing like a reference check, doing an interview, a screening gathering, of doing like a reference check, doing an interview, a screening, looking at their resume, checking out their Facebook. Yeah, so like getting as much information to make the best possible decision. But the question was like back to the process, so once they've passed the screening, like the screening is only designed to weed out the bottom 30% of applicants and to like have just like initial information.
Speaker 2:We're not doing a full. I don't really discuss compensation structure. In that interview I talked maybe a little bit about pay for performance. I never say commission only because that creates scarcity. This is a psychological process and it's really not commission only, it's pay for performance. So a lot of times there's paid training, there's bonuses, there's like a truck allowance, there's a gas card. It is heavily commission driven, but I never say only in that word in that beginning because it creates scarcity.
Speaker 2:So if they pass that, I schedule them for that interview right then on Calendly or whatever scheduling tool you have, and I have them accept that interview right then. So we need to schedule that while they're on the phone and have them accept that while they're on the phone. Otherwise, like we could send it to the wrong email, they may not get it. And then, like with us we have a 90% show rate for interviews. 90%, like that is massive.
Speaker 2:Doing this system like that, like we pretty much solved the interview. No shows, because you treat them like a lead, like when someone calls of, like you getting appointment reminders and the best thing is like they have the ability to cancel or reschedule that interview with a click of a button. And this helps for people that really aren't interested in the job. This is not like, oh, if somebody is really interested, then they will show up. We don't need to do reminders to show up to an interview. No, you don't. This is for more people that that aren't that interested and they're more likely to click a button to cancel than to call in to cancel.
Speaker 1:Nice. So now you've interviewed them, you're going through the interview process, you're filtering, you're, you're qualifying them, you're getting them. Now it's like, okay, I'm making a decision, we're hiring you. Let's talk a little bit about onboarding and reducing that turnover in those initial applicants or initial candidates.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So turnover in the first 30 days for sales reps is huge. So it's about 70% turnover rate industry-wide. And that's just crazy. When you think about all the effort it takes to put these ads on Indeed, to go to the interview process, to set up their onboarding and their new hire paperwork and all the things Like 70% it's a huge problem.
Speaker 2:So there's a couple reasons. Like onboarding, it needs to be an engaging process where people immediately feel loyal to the company. So going over things like core values and meeting the leadership team, going over expectations and being able to give them the proper training so that they could go out and sell a job within their first two weeks, that's really like with Ignite's training. That's all that's really. What we're focused on is how can we give you enough information to be independent just enough to be able to sell a job in two weeks? At least do that first job from the time you knock a door to the time that you sign the contingency. Everything else, like contract signing, adjuster meetings those can be supported with other team members, but be independent enough in two weeks. It's kind of like the race for the two weeks. Like it's kind of like the race for the two weeks, otherwise people are more likely to leave.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. You want to get yeah, get them up and running as fast as possible, right, you want to get them, and I bet that that gives them some confidence in the, in being able to do the job right, at least give them a baseline of confidence. They're like, oh, I could do this, like I could, I might be able to really do this, what like it in the training process? Okay, you have the initial couple of weeks. You're getting them up to speed.
Speaker 1:What do you think of like ongoing and you know continuing to reinforce that that we're the right company to to stay with right, cause then you have retention. It might you know continuing to reinforce that we're the right company to stay with right, because then you have retention. It might you're reducing that initial 30 days, but I believe you always have to sell your employees on continuing to be employees of you. They're not tied to you forever, right, and so you have to continuously over time this could be a year, two years, three years, five years how do you continuously reinforce that you are the company to work for?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think it goes back to what people are looking for in a job. And the first thing is development. So there needs to be ongoing development, whether I mean a lot of times that can take the place in sales meetings, like having ongoing training, like we're going to pick out a part of the process, like we've been doing, developing a lot of retail based training right now of like, hey, you know, let's go over, you know presenting the price we just created a training on that. How, how, how can we build value, enough value before we present the price? Or closing the job.
Speaker 2:And like taking different pieces of the of the sales process each week, super important feeling developed, like having what I do is I create a culture plan around people's core values. So like, for instance, like one of my companies, their core value is build a legacy, and so everything in that quarter is is rallied around one of their core values of building a legacy. Like they're speaking in middle schools, they are working at a soup kitchen, they are doing toys for tots, like everything about, like the community. So like it's development and a sense of purpose is really what it comes down to of why people stay. And then the third thing is communication with their manager. Like those. Those are your top three things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. I love that, because they have to have the sense of purpose, they have to under, they have to have a shared mission with you, and you don't have a mission. You know they. You know there is no one. They're not the right company to follow. Really, what do you see the things changing into the future? Like, if you could give a company like, hey, this is, you're here today. Maybe you don't have a lot of these systems in place. You know, what do they need to do? To to get some things in place, that the simplest things that they could do to get some things in place. To to get a better hiring and recruiting system, or and and and what are some things that that you see going on in the future? That that they better do this now.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I mean, I think as time progresses, things move faster.
Speaker 2:So I would say, like speed is, is everything Um in the in when you're talking about hiring people, from you know the speed of how we're communicating with applicants to how we get them to interview, like really really having a process and being proactive in that interview process, like how we're moving candidates through that, like really having that roadmap.
Speaker 2:I think is really really important to be able to adapt really quickly, like with all these weather events and all these having that roadmap. I think is really really important to be able to adapt really quickly, like with all these weather events and all these storms that hit. Like if you don't have a hiring process, like you're back to warm body recruiting. So like that's like our system is called retention recruiting and it's a full system on being proactive and from determining the type of candidates to how we pre to how we interview and every interview question, the onboarding process. But like if you really want to grow, then you have to be proactive and thinking about from the type of applicants to how we can get people in the company and onboarded, having a plan.
Speaker 1:You got to have a plan. Thanks for your time today. This has been another episode of the Roofing Success Podcast. Thank you for tuning into the Roofing Success Podcast. For more valuable content, visit roofingsuccesspodcastcom While there, check out our sponsors for exclusive offers, shop for merchandise and sign up for our newsletter for industry updates and tips. Also join the Roofing Success Facebook group to connect with other professionals and stay updated on the latest trends. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, like, share and leave a comment. Your support helps us continue to bring you top industry insights. The website link is in the description. Thanks for listening.
