Scaling Your Roofing Company Like an NFL Draft | Convo w/ Artem

Running a roofing company can make you want to pull your hair out, especially as you grow, whether you're brand new or you've been doing this for decades. Because getting the right people in the right place and following the right system is the only way you're going to get out of the day to day and scale your business. And I want you to think of this almost like running a draft, like in the NFL draft. It's not just saying, oh, you're a good player, join my team. There's a strategy behind it. First, you have to identify the key positions that you need to staff for. And if you're looking for a quarterback, you're looking for very different talents than bringing on alignment. Now the other thing that's important is understanding. Just like an NFL draft, your staff picks, is it more important to harvest the right talent to fill the quarterback position first or a wide receiver first? See, your roofing company is no different. So in this video, I had a conversation with Artem. That's what you're about to watch. He's a member of the Roofing and Solar Reform alliance and I talked him through the systems and procedures and the roles that he needs to hire to get the right people in the right places so he can scale. Now you want to watch this video all the way to the end because you will learn the right positions and the right systems in place to grow your business without having to pull your hair out. Now stick around all the way to the end because there's an exciting update from about Artem that was a result of this session.

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Artem, I know we've been trying to get this on the books for quite some time. We finally made it happen. We've got a 25 minute deep dive into you. So tell me, what's the number one thing that's holding you back from let's say your 12 month goal this year?

Well, I think the biggest thing is getting the systems in place. So the whole employment thing is new to us. As you know, it used to be the whole structure for roofing companies was 1089. W2 is not that common. So now that we have gone W2 route, it was initially hard to get people in the door getting the right hires. Now we have the right hires. Now we have to create the systems for everybody here, make sure we're not stepping over each other. Not sure make sure we don't trip over each other and then create the systems for the people to kind of, you know, make sure that everybody is exactly where they need to be. Everybody's happy to be here, and nobody's feeling stressed out or, you know, doesn't see that there's no structure, no goal in place. Like, I want to make sure that we're all streamlined without anybody burning out or hating their life in the process.

Yeah, the burning out and hating their life piece, that's like. That's real talk right there. Because, I mean, you've watched it happen. You've been in the business for a handful of years. You know the drill. So when you mentioned. And by the way, I'm taking notes here, that's why I'm looking down when you said making sure no one's stepping over each other, what's the sticking point right now from having those systems in place?

So a lot of the new hires that we brought on are newer to the. To the business. So as far as people that are currently involved with us that have experience, we're only at about three people, and the rest is basically brand new. So a lot of construction experience, but not much as far as insurance goes. Insurance supplementing insurance, or sales in general. So, you know, you. They usually recommend hiring, what, like one, two people a season, Just kind of training them properly. We kind of went a little above that. So we are like seven. So. So trying to figure that work out right now. Yeah, yeah. Making sure that everybody's. That's here. Like, there's a lot of, like, you know, kind of the initial stage. I know this season is going to be the hardest by far just because of all the changes that are happening. And everybody's new, trying to set up a process, but at the same time, I want to make sure that there's. The system that we're developing is going to be good for everybody. So we're not trying to pigeon hole somebody into the place where they're not going to be the best at. We want to make sure that everybody fits in the right spots.

Sure. So if you were to wave a magic WAND and in 30 days have everything working perfectly, what would that look like?

That's what we're trying to figure out right now. Basically, I'll be everybody to, like, have a system to know exactly what needs to happen at what time, and then basically like a smooth transition from one stage of the process to the next, all the way through.

Gotcha. Okay, before we get deep, because I'm going to share My screen. I'm going to actually pull some things up and share them with you. But while I get this pulled up, you mentioned supplementing. Are your salespeople responsible for supplementing right now?

No. No kind of supplementing department. We have two guys working on that. Good right hand basically or you know, making co. Basically he's the one that's responsible for nature and supplementing. And then we have another one kind of that's back up for writing specifically just writing estimates.

Gotcha. Okay. The reason that I asked that question is there's. When you mentioned them knowing it, I was like, man, that's the first thing to pull out because you don't wanna have them. Salespeople should be selling and not managing that. But you've definitely got that handled. So I'm gonna share my screen. You've got access to this in the roofing and solar form alliance, but I'm gonna kind of walk you through it. So in the how to build you'd dream team recruiting training, what I wanna pull your attention to is this the foundations for a scalable sales team building your sales process first. And when you look at the files right here, I'm going to pop into this so you can get a little bit of a high level of what I've done to support a lot of companies going through this. Now this is going to seem really simple and it is, but don't let the simplicity take away how powerful it is. So the idea is what you want to do is write down and I just started this in a high level overview to list out everything that happens as part of your job flow. Once you list everything out and again this is just the bones that you would then backfill. We can then highlight who does what. Green in this example is sales, pink is the admin or office, orange is supplementing and then brown is production and the exercise. I first did this with with our company when I was CEO and it started looking just like this. And then we started to bulk, bulk out each section after delegating the responsibilities to the person who was in charge of that role. So for example, sales manager would sit down and highlight start bulleting out how leads are self generated I. E. Door knocking and then how inbound leads are handled. Then how is the inspection done? How do we do an inspection? The way there's a consistent process, you know, I mean as you are, you mentioned insurance so I'll roll with that example. Insurance adjusters, we know they've got their process when they approach the house on the front elevation the left elevation, the rear, the right. They get up on the roof, they're taking pictures from the ladder. So they, you create a consistent process that everybody knows every step of the way. Then closing the sale again, you've got my training to follow the car park formula. You can bullet this out again. If the adjuster meetings are there, if they're doing those, detailing those supplementing, which again is in orange complete and submit the supplement outlining the review process for minimum profitability. If it is minimally profitable, kick it to production. If it's not, kick it back to supplementing and then again putting together the build order, material, order, work order. Again. What I didn't have, don't have on here is pulling the permit and then the production, the walkthrough process, certificate of completion, depreciation, voice collection.

So once you went through this and we actually, I think there's a different file we were going through the leaderboard or the owners. Yeah, there was one that was really detailed and I went through that and kind of adjusted that and we made it very detailed. Like we have this kind of thing. What we're trying to do now is basically like getting the right people in place for each of those categories. Each one of those.

Yeah.

Kind of like trying to find which everybody is good at, you know, kind of like, I don't know, the best fitment for each person. So we're having difficulties because. Because right now we're top heavy. We have a lot of management in place, have enough structure to kind of get everybody in the right place, in the right position. So this is what I'm trying to find and basically put people in the right spots.

I love it. So the first, the first step, you're on it. You've got the system outlined. So it sounds like when you told me that the problem is getting a system in place, it sounds like the system's there. What you need to do is get the people in place. Am I, is that accurate? Yeah.

Move the people into the right portions or that system.

Yeah. So walk me through your current management overview. Who does, who they are and what they do. You can use names or roles, it doesn't matter. But I'm just going to take some notes so I know what's happening.

We have me as a CEO.

Okay.

Vadim, who's basically, you know, sort of a part of our at this point. Like he's a marketing CEO, that kind of thing. And he also does insurance supplementing. Then the one of the newer hires is Doug, who's a general manager.

Okay.

And then Mary, she's our office administrator or office manager.

Okay.

And then management continues on. We have Brandon as a sales manager and we have Igor as a production director.

And. And then how many sales folks?

So everybody is selling currently. So everybody whichever way we can get leads. But then there's also two dedicated. Two to three dedicated people, Alex, Tristan and Leo, who are also the sales reps out in the field generating leads, scouting, door knocking, that kind of thing.

Gotcha. So the first thing that I'd highlight is the red flag when you said everybody is selling. That's a problem. That's a problem. Because right now, if you think of it, this is my general rule of thumb. I don't think anyone needs a sales manager until they have at least seven people that are selling. Doug as the gm, I feel like could very well be redundant between you and Vadim CEO and having a coo, a GM will be needed when you have a sizable team. But right now it sounds like everybody's selling plus wears other hats. And there are certain people. Some people will not agree with me on this, but like Brandon as sales manager. I don't think you need a sales manager with everybody selling and then three people selling.

Brandon, the whole like building out the. Like. The goal is to have the structure in place and.

Sure.

Develop it. So for him that would be the goal. To build a sales team that's going to be strictly field related.

Yeah.

And also focus on getting the business, you know, kind of the presence in the areas.

Sure.

To manage that. So the goal for him is to strictly build that sales team. That's going to be fuel only.

Yeah.

For us to kind of have the back end, the marketing and everything else in place to support that.

Gotcha. So Brandon is he. Is that. Does he have clear goals for this year in terms of how many salespeople you want to.

This is like within the last couple of weeks. So we're developing this as we go. Yeah.

Awesome. Yeah. This is perfect timing. What I would do. I know you. Have you gone through the. Do you guys have. Do you have comp plans and all that nailed down already for all these folks?

Sort of trying to work on that. We have kind of have the basics down, but still trying to work it out as far as the, you know, meeting with the attorney, making sure that the W2 is like whatever we have to classify as W2 we are. But anything that's a draw or something else. We're still working on this.

Okay, you. Have you gone through the part of the training on how to pay managers.

Yes.

Okay, cool. So the where is it Bonus at the bottom bonus. How to pay managers. I would maybe pop through this just one more time. The reason is specifically for your sales manager make getting the proper incentive structures down because what you're very aware. Dude, I love the language. I even wrote it down. You said it. We're top heavy. And there's, there's. And I'm going to give you just some feedback. From what I've seen, there are folks that approach the growth of their business from the bottom up. Meaning sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. Create problems, get a sales team, fewest overhead and office staff and management as possible and then build the management team as the as needed. So that's the bottom up and then there's folks like you that do it top down where they say hey, I want to get the infrastructure in place. We will be top heavy. I'm aware of the fact that we're going to be top heavy and then we're going to build from a strong foundation. So there's the people that make a mess and clean it up. That's the bottom up people. And then there's people that are like you that might approach a building site, so to speak. If we were to use the analogy building a house and be like, hey man, I want to have the, the full blueprint ready to go and I know what I'm doing from the ground up versus some people are just they start building before they have a blueprint there. I've watched people be successful in both models and I've watched people fail in both models. And the only, I shouldn't say only. The main threat that I just see for you is if all of these people are currently being paid salary or something. It won't make economic sense with only three salespeople. So from a high level, your infrastructure ideally like again CEO, you have your COO who also handles marketing. The part with Vadim doing supplementing, that's something that he will very quickly be drowned out of being able to do. And believe me, I get it. When you're growing a business, people have to wear more hats than ideal. And I just want to put that on your radar. I don't want you to hire someone now, but supplementing will become a full time position for someone.

Yeah, that's been an issue for the last couple of years. So that was the reason for bringing on growing. The second one that writes only like that's. Yeah, like that's going to be training like the GM you like, we're going to be all getting training and supplementing so each one of us can jump in. So for the gym, that's kind of looking to oversee the whole thing and kind of fill in the gaps that are missing. Because Doug has had a lot of management experience, he's ran his own business, very good person that's going to be out there to look out for us. That's kind of.

Yeah, I think so if I'm looking at this right, the reason everyone's selling is they need to be selling for first for staff size like this. The number one problem to solve. And I don't mean this in a bad way, my business has problems. All businesses have problems. In fact, they should. If they're not, that means they're not growing. And I think a lot of people are afraid to say, hey, the problem's my business, I'll tell you mine. My problem I'm trying to solve my business is the sit rate people that book an application, call that actually show up. So that, that to me is the number one problem in my business that I'm trying to solve for now. Does it mean we don't have people? No, we have people. But I know that like if I looked at all the, the numbers of my business, if I, if I can increase the number of people who actually show up that say, hey, I'm interested because life gets busy, they cancel a reschedule, then our business grows. So I just want to share that as a level of self awareness and not saying that you have a problem as it's a bad thing, like you should have problems. The problem that I would focus on solving is getting salespeople in. When I look at, you know, the CEO, the only sales that in my opinion in an ideal world that you should be doing are monster deals. These should be developing referral relationships or landing the whales, the commercial properties and the things that, you know, if you mentioned again you're doing storm work, these are the ones where if someone brought something in or you were out chasing the, the monster multimillion dollar projects, that's the only thing that you should be selling. In fact, when I was coo, any referrals that I got, I ended up passing them to someone on our team. There was one relationship and only one relationship that I didn't. And it was a builder. He'd referred me oodles of work, 400 square townhouse, his personal property, all the properties that he built. So I had, I, that was a multi year relationship that I built and I just didn't want him to Feel pass. But everything else outside of that, I took.

A few agricultural and larger projects like farm buildings. We have a few townhome associations. So that takes up a lot of time. And you know, but right now I think the reason everybody's selling is we're kind of having like a shadowing seminar every day. Like somebody follows along and then they see us doing the whole. Running through the whole game plan.

Yeah.

Like itels to meeting adjusters. Like we're just doing everything right now just to get them up to speed on the whole process. Just because, you know, being into the industry.

That makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. So late. Would you suggest bringing in how many salespeople for staff like that? Five staff. I think you could very, very easily have a sales team of 20 very comfortably.

Would you start those off on a draw basis or how would you go about that?

So what I would recommend. I really like Mark in the roofing and solar reform Alliance. The way he. I don't know why, I don't know how I never thought of what he's done because I think it's just simple and it's brilliant. And he pays a salary that's a draw against commission. And when I was going through this process of determining the right tier if you're, you know. Because what in today's world, selling a commission only job, as you know, is difficult. It is doable. We talk about this in the recruiting training which you went through. We never say commission only. We call it performance based pay. You fill out the spreadsheet to. To. To materialize the earning potential for the candidate so they can see it and then their spouse at home can see it. But we all know that people want stability and it makes you look a lot more legitimate. Is an organization when you're able to offer something. Now before I get into this, just one disclaimer. I did have one member of RSRA two years ago that came to me and said, hey dude, I switched from 1099 to W2. It was amazing. I'm also offering a salary. Hiring has never been easier. He's singing the praises. He's like, I don't know why I didn't do this sooner. And then one year later he calls me and he says dude, I did not make. Our company was not nearly as profitable and I did not make nearly as much money as I should have because of how much money he paid for the people that he hired paid to train and paid salaries but didn't produce either anything or not even enough to pay for what they brought in. That doesn't factor in time, missed opportunity, training, overhead, expenses. So in other words, it cost him a boatload of money. So that's why I really like what Mark has done is he'll pay the salary as a draw against commission. And we actually just. There was another thread going on in the owner's roundtable this morning on a similar topic that let's just say, for example, you pay a small salary and I'm just going to use a really small number for simple math, call 500 bucks a week. And that way each week when they get paid, if you pay weekly or biweekly, whatever commissions they earn, you just deduct the draw that was paid. And it is very important if you do this because it's not. I don't believe this is the best solution for everybody. But if you do this, you need to have a quota in place and you need to know they have training wheels for four weeks or three weeks and by week six they, they have to hit a quota of X number of deals either per week or you have a quota per month.

But what would you recommend a quota to be like two a week or what would you kind of call it after?

Are they self generating their own leads? Yes, one a week would be minimum if they're. The reason I say that is if you're selling one deal a week, it's around 50 deals in a month. If it's a $20,000 average sale, I forget what state are you in again? That's what I thought. So you're looking at 20 to 23,000, probably average sale price on a roof. So they're a million dollar producer at one a week. Now you could adjust that because you're in Minnesota. So you probably have a nine month selling season. So 50 divided by nine. I'm just, I have to. Math, I'm not that strong at math. Whatever. That equals 50 divided by nine, it's five deals in a month. Oops, hold on. Five and a half deals a month. It's just one to two a week. And if they don't hit quota, they should be on probation and you jump in the trenches with them and say, hey dude, it's my job to make sure that you're successful and I don't want you to bleed out and not make money. So by next week I want to see two deals on the board and if not, it just tells us that it's not a good fit and we just part ways before we're in too deep and it's our responsibility to let people go. So that's option one. Option two, which I've seen other folks I know, Andy will do a paid training. So again, you're letting go of that money no matter what. But you can do a paid training and then they're on their own for commission only. And then the third option is paying a salary. That's my least favorite method for getting going. It's something that I would say with where you're at in your business, maybe revisit later. But the folks that are paying a salary, generally they have a retail model with a heavy lead flow and a history of consistent lead flow. So they know, hey, I bring someone on, I'm paying $50,000 a year base and they're going to get 15 appointments a week, for example. They know what their lead flow in capabilities are and they can keep a pulse on that. But when it's self generated, it's. It's a different animal. Because you and I both know how some people don't go to work. Yeah. Oh, that's for sure.

And here's what happened to Artem since this conversation. He implemented what he learned, did the work, and had the right people surrounding him to ask for guidance when he needed it. And since then, Artem has grown his team to 13 people and he's bringing almost every single one of them to to the Roofing and Solar Reform Alliance Members Only annual event. It's a two day workshop here in Colorado coming up in October. So whether you own a roofing company or running run a roofing company, you can do the same thing and you can get started 100% free. Go to adamsfreestuff.com right now or click the link to jump into my free training center. And I've got a bundle of my recruiting checklist, my pay plan checklist, my door knocking checklist, my follow up checklist, and more to help you grow your team, get the right people in the right places and doing the right things. Then hang with me here on YouTube. Jump right into this video and I'm going to teach you the fastest way to get your new hires trained in just seven steps.

We'll see you soon.