Optimize for a Dream Storm without Creating a Nightmare Part 1: Storm Attack Plan

Hey, everybody, it's Jim Johnson here, the head coach at Contractor Coach Pro and your host here on Contractor Radio where we help contractors get control of their business so they can grow their business and find some personal and financial freedom. We're here to share with you guys valuable content that should help you in certain situations out there. And today the one I'm going to be talking about is one that's very near and dear to my heart, actually gets back to my roots and this idea of storm restoration. You're a contractor out there, you do insurance work. Maybe insurance work has presented itself to you. There's been a lot of storms this year and so today's show is going to be totally about that. So if you're not in a storm restoration, hey, check out one of our other episodes. But if you are, this is going to be one that should hit pretty hard for you and give you this opportunity to optimize a dream storm without creating an absolute nightmare. And I've been in those situations before. I want to share with you some of the tips that I learned along the way through this little bit of hard knocks and from the hip approach and also from the coaching that we've done over the last 10 years or so in helping contractors handle these situations. I got some pretty good training early on, some insight. I gathered a lot of information from a variety of folks throughout the industry back in the late 90s and continue to do so through the 2000s. Again, more during my time at Acculinx and meeting a lot of storm restoration contractors and finally these last 10 years of coaching contractors with a lot of those folks doing some type of insurance work. So if you're a storm restoration contractor, hasn't gone real well for you so far, or you want to optimize it even more, or maybe you've got the opportunity to do some storm work. I want to go through a few of the things that helped those that I've helped over the years and maybe they'll help you as well. So guess what, you've got a storm. This opportunity has presented. So if you were rolling along just fine, you had plans for your year. You don't plan for a storm necessarily, but you're ready for one if one happens and so many are not. So many have a storm happen in their area and then they don't know what to do, they don't know all the ins and outs of it, they don't have any plan for it and they end up shooting from the hip, running off half cocked, creating an absolute nightmare for themselves because they're used to doing a certain level of business and having this slow growth. And then all of a sudden, bamboo, you have this opportunity to double, triple, quadruple and 10x your business in this really short time frame. And you don't want to not take advantage of that opportunity. You're sitting there going, I gotta go get it. And I would caution you a little bit there, if you don't already have a plan, you're in a storm and everything already follow the plan. You already had this plan that control growth, following your systems, those type of things. Stick to that as much as you possibly can. Now, with all of that said, I would strongly advise being proactive about these things and having a storm attack plan, that's what we call it. We actually coach a lot of folks out there that do this type of work and we actually build out the storm attack plan. This approach and way to do things that gives you a running start. You have things in place to actually cover all the bases that need to be covered. So first things first, the very first thing storm happens. Have a recon plan. In other words, you're going to go out and do some reconnaissance on it. Whether that's a storm that's local to you or you're thinking about going to another storm. We'll talk about that in just a minute. The two differences between those. But this idea that I've got opportunity, it has presented itself to me and I need to do something about it. And so we're going to go out and we're going to go look, we're going to get the information from our resources like Hail Trace. We're big fans of Hail Trace. If you don't use Hail Trace, you should. They have some great technology. Not just the storm maps and stuff like that, but names and addresses of homeowners inside of those storms. And actually able now, which is super awesome, the ability to tell which houses are damaged, which I can't believe that that's even a piece of technology today. But Hell Trace has figured it out and might be worth you checking them out to do some of your recon with. It gives you where you need to go or at least really close. Hell Trace is the most accurate of the ones that we've seen. There's others out there. There's hail recon and anything weather. There's several others that are out there as choices. But the one that we found to work best is Hail Trace. It gives you where to go and then you can go and confirm. And I don't care how accurate any of those ever get. I want to put eyes on it and I want to have somebody put eyes on it that knows what they're doing. They know what hail damage looks like, they know significant damage versus borderline damage. And having a plan of how I want to go about it. Do I want to go into ground zero? Like I'm going to go into ground zero where everybody else is going to be and we're going to battle it out there. Are we going to be more of an edge approach? We're going to put a phalanx around the storm and work those outer edges. Different approaches for different folks. I kind of like both. We are a big enough team where we could handle both both. But sometimes we have to make a decision of which one we want to do. But assuming that we've done our recon, we've gone to at least 10 locations in a variety of spots throughout that storm. We've identified a few things. We've identified the type of homes that we want to work on, the demographics, the target, the bullseye. We talk about bullseye marketing all the time that, hey, I have this bullseye that I want to go after. Not just anybody that's got damage or anybody with a roof for that matter, but a very specific group. Because if I have a specific group, I can market to them really easily. Like for me, whenever a storm had happened and I was a salesperson, my target was gated golf course communities with specialty roofing, high dollar roofs. They were behind gates. So once I got in, I was by myself. I didn't have a lot of competition and they liked something I liked, which was golf. And so I could speak that language with them. I could apply incentive to them that fit them. So, hey, everybody that does an inspection with me gets a free case of Tylenolis Pro V1 golf balls. I got a lot of inspections and then I would put them all in a drawing for anybody that went with me for a set of irons, tightless AP1 irons, which are really nice irons. And so I was able to apply incentive that I could do because of the type of bullseye I was after versus just everybody out there. And so think about who your bullseye is and how could you market specifically to them to get into those neighbors. Because we don't have to get everybody. That's the whole thing. Like, as a salesperson, we don't have to get everybody. We'd like to get a lot of people, but we don't have to get everybo. I really need 30. We're going to talk about that in just a minute and what that means to me over a year. Then we want to set some goals. We say, hey, there is a storm. Based on where we stand right now, this is what our goal is. Our goal could be a slight increase because we don't have much of a plan just yet. We do have a team. More opportunities present itself. With that opportunity, we know we can close better. So we believe that we could actually do this. Maybe we could hire one or two more people and handle that halfway deal decently and create an opportunity to have a pretty good year. Or you actually have a storm attack plan and you actually know how to put the things in place to ramp up quickly for these type of situations. You might set your goals based on that. So your goals can be different, but you gotta have them. This is what we're gonna do in this storm. This is gonna break it down by quarter, by month, by week, by day. And it starts to become a lot more realistic if you really think about it. You know, most markets out there have about 40 weeks to work. And if we just met two people a day that were interested in what we do, that would be 10 people a week. If you're in storm restoration, if you're not closing at least 50%, you need to get some training. We're going to talk about that today too. But I close 50%. That's five deals a week times 40 weeks. That's 200 jobs. And you can do the math on your own commission of what that would be, but, boy, that's really achievable. It's not all that hard to do to kind of hit those types of numbers. So get your goals down, then understand what your resources are. What resources do you currently have available to you? You probably got a client list, people that you've been helping over the years, doing work for and being involved with. That's your first attack. That's the first thing you should do. You got to get information out to them and say, hey, we have a warranty on your roof. We need to come inspect it. Not, we would like to come inspect it. We. Would you like us to. We have a warranty on it. We have to make sure that that warranty is still in place. You will set an appointment with everybody that you have a contract with. And it's not an option. It's a must do, not a maybe. So that gets you in the door and gets you this ability to get a lot of business really quickly. Your network know Your network, that's another resource that you have available to you. All the people that you've connected with, whether that's on social media or maybe in a BNI group or Toastmasters or some of those types of groups that are out there knowing what your network is, maybe you've created your own personal network of gutter companies and window companies and pool companies and all these other people that work with other people. And you've created some type of exchange incentive wise, that, hey, send somebody to me and I'll do this for you, whatever that may be, but have a plan for that. Then think about your staffing. Do I have the staff to handle a big increase in volume? If not, what will I do about it? Can the staff that I have currently, do they know somebody that would fit into our culture pretty well and pretty fast because of the opportunity that has presented itself. So think about your staff and then their friends. Their friends will be very similar to who they are, which allows them to probably fit your culture a little bit better. So that's your first plan of action, is, hey, is my staff what they need to be? If they're not, who are their friends? If my staff is good and get them in? And then the third option is to start going out there following a hiring process, which we'll talk about a little bit today as well. What do we have as far as crew availability? So if we don't have many crews and all this opportunity has created itself, we can't go out there and obtain a bunch of work without putting people way back in time. And the further back in time you put them is more of an opportunity for somebody else to come in and snag that deal out from underneath you. So prior to a storm, as we coach, we say build a Rolodex of crews that are out there. All of these folks that you can call. Ideally you find a crew foreman or crew leader that has several crews available to them. There are some tools out there nowadays and some resources that allow to hire subcontractors if that's what you're going to go after. And is that the approach? Do you want to use subcontractors or do you want to use your own crews? It's hard to scale up really fast by having your own people where having subcontractors allows you to scale quickly. But before you do that, you want to make sure that they're in line with the type of quality that you want to do. We used to have a test roll and they had to take a test. They had to show we had a little roof built inside of our building. They would have to take it off and put it on. So the first crew would come in and put it on. The next crew would come in and take it off, put it back on and have to meet our criteria for exactly how the drip edge needed to be put on, how underlayment was applied, how many nails and shingles, the approach on the eve edges and rake edges. I mean everything was like, hey, let's do a test. If they didn't pass, we would say, hey, this is how you do it. Are you willing to do it that way? And if they were, we would then make sure they did by inspecting what we expect with final inspections. But hey, we were able to obtain some crews fairly quickly. The other thing is your crews might get sucked up really fast. Think about places that may have had storms before you and that are kind of dying down. That's a great place to advertise and bring some folks from. Plus there's those third party groups out there that can connect you with Subcontractor Cruise. As a matter of fact, we're going to do a podcast with one of them here in the near future. So excited to do that. Subcontractor Hub I think is the name of that. And then your tech, what kind of technology are you going to be using? How do you ramp that up quickly? Also the tools like so ladders and things like that, can you have those ready and ready to go for people as they come in? Do you need iPads because you're doing your presentations and stuff like that on iPads? Signing documents on iPads. What about phones? What about all of the different pieces of technology that you might need out there, both hardware and software in order to handle this? So are you going to track all of the contacts that you have? If you do, are you using something like sales rabbit to follow your field sales team? And then what is your approach? Think about that a little bit. Is your approach of very digital and you're generating leads through Facebook and Google and SEO and things like that. Or are you a door knocking crew? They're like, hey, we can go and door knock and get jobs that way. I like both kind of put together. Hey, we're going to provide some leads, but they're not going to be all of your leads. So you need to have some self generation. We actually have some great training on that in our all star marketing program where we give 10 different ways for salespeople beyond just door knocking to obtain business with personalized Letters, flyers, door hangers, barbecues and picnic. Like, there are all kinds of things and ways to generate more business. So think about that quite a bit as you approach the storm is how am I going to go after it? If you're going after that digital thing and you have the capital and resources available to you, it might be time to pull that lever and invest hard into your Google, Google Ads, Google business listings, and your Facebook approach to offset maybe those guys that are out there knocking doors like crazy. Or the other way around, hey, I'm gonna invest heavily in knocking doors. Keeps my budget down low and reduces my overhead quite a bit. So you can look at it either way. Both approaches work. And like I said, I like a little bit of both. And then last but not least, this is an important one. You gotta have your leadership figured out. You get this storm thing that happens, you're maybe gonna be hiring some new people. Do you have the leadership and the coaching and TR somebody on your team that can do those kind of things for these people? You've got this sales manager maybe. Is he capable and able and if you bring on enough people, is he going to be able to handle them all? I can remember having this opportunity early in my career. I was a sales guy. I sold a bunch of jobs and I got approached to be sales manager. I'm like, hey, what's, what does that mean? I had been sales manager in another type of business, but I hadn't been one in this type of business. And so I said, hey, what's the job description? What do you expect of me? They like I said, I don't know, I don't have one. We just want people to do it like you. So I've created it, I put it all together like, hey, this is what I think I should do, what I shouldn't do, and what think we can do. And. And I was that leader that had a vision, and that's the big thing. Like, if you're looking at people leading a thing, have them put together a bit of a vision for you. What they is possible, what they think is realistic, why they want to actually lead the how. How are they going to actually do what they have set out to do as their vision? Like, hey man, I can lead a team that sells $5 million. Well, how are you going to do that? Because there's hiring and there's training, there's supervision, there's coaching, there's all these things that go along with it. Like, how do you lay all that out and then how does it benefit Everybody else. So that's a leader should be able to do those types of things. And then when it comes to hiring training, what's the approach going to be? Is it going to be onesie twosies? Because you're not really built for handling a whole volume. You didn't really have a storm of attack plants. You're going to hire them onesie twosie and kind of follow this ride along training approach. Or are you able to hire in groups and bring people, a group of people on? We'll talk about that a little bit more as we move forward with this. And then how are we going to train them like that Training is going to be really important to the success rate and how quickly they're able to go to making some money. Because that's the key to this entire thing. Whenever you're hiring salespeople is time to money. How fast can I start making money with you? And there's some things that we can do in that approach that allow us to give some of that incentive right away based on some activity and some results that isn't necessarily I got all the money from the homeowner but we have to be capitalized to be able to do that. Like I said, I'm going to talk about that in just a minute. And then last but not least, the customer experience this, you've got this opportunity. There's all of these jobs that are slaying out there and sitting there for you to go and get and you can. And it's not real hard. That was the one thing I noticed whenever I first got into this is like, hey, somebody else is paying for the majority of this. How hard can that be to really sell? It's like, hey, I'm going to give you a Mercedes for $3,000. Do you want it? Yeah, you would figure out how to get $3,000. It's the same approach and same mindset in this. But I also had to change my mindset when it came to procuring work. I used to go out there and think like every single one of them meant money to me. That's what it was like. They meant money to me. And sometimes I had great experiences. I was able to obtain and get a lot of work that way because I had the mindset like boo. Every door I knock at some point somebody's going to say yes and I'm going to get some money for helping them out. The reality came down to got a few people that were upset and approaching. It's the energy and the vibe you give off if you give off this selfish and greedy type of vibe, some people are going to be okay with that, but most people aren't, and they're going to sniff it out right away. But if you come at it with more of a servant approach, hey, I'm here to help you. I'm here to educate you. I'm here to do something for you that's valuable and free, which is an inspection to let you know where you stand. And if you like all that and you want to be my client, great. If not, at least I've given you the information to make some educated choices and decisions. Throughout this, it became a whole different thing. I started looking at this as a community involvement project. This how do I support my communities? Well. And I'm going to go inspect every house in an entire neighborhood. And that was my actual approach. Hey, Mrs. Jones. My name is Jim Johnson. I'm with ABC Roofing and I'm here inspecting every home in the neighborhood to give each homeowner an assessment of their property. And it's free. It doesn't cost anything. There's no obligation. I mean, of course, if you want to work with me after I do it, great. But I want to give you the tools that whenever you deal with your insurance company or you deal with another contractor, you're in a place that's educated and allows you to make good choices. And that approach just changed everything. Everybody I talked to was listening. They could feel my energy. I was genuine and authentic. I really did want to help. And it was just unbelievable, the numbers that I could generate. Right. So what does that customer experience look like? Not from just the upfront or during the sale or meeting the adjusters and those type of things, but during the production? And how is that laid out and what is this experience going to be like for them? That takes them from A to Z. It's not A to. You have damage. Sign up with me, we'll get it taken care of with the insurance company. Because there's a lot more. There's picking colors, delivery and materials, expectations of the homeowner, special instructions. There's so many different things that come into play with crew and workday and what that looks like after the work is done, the inspections and making sure that everything's done right. Making sure that the customer isn't satisfied but ecstatic. They just want to tell everybody about you. Because here's the thing about that person that became your customer. They're the person that knows everyone. You don't know, they know your next customer. And if it's a bad experience. They're not going to tell them. If it's a great experience. They're going to do nothing but tell them. We want them to become our evangelist. We want them to go out and tell everybody every time they hear the word roof. That experience is so great, they think of us first. So think about your customer experience. Do you have a plan for that? What that looks like? Is it part of your culture? And have you built that in with your team? And if you haven't, as you bring these new folks on, what would you do to install something like that?