TOOLBOX
THE #1 COMMUNITY OF SUCCESSFUL CONTRACTORS
CCN
FEBRUARY / MARCH 2021
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
FROM THE PRESIDENT
Above The Fray 3 PPP2 Congress has approved a second
round of funding for the Paycheck Protection Program.
Turning Back 4 No Adapting to Covid forced our company to to immediately implement changes.
6 Feature: When We Meet Again How CCN’s sales process helped carry our company through the pandemic.
news: 9 Member Brothers Big Remodel
Brothers Services wins an award for the classy remodel.
Weighing in on political topics with customers and employees is never a good idea.
SCOTT SIEGAL
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any people have opinions on social and political topics. You probably do too, maybe strong ones. So strong you can’t keep them to yourself, even at work. Why should you? A few reasons. First, whatever your views, you’re almost certain to get on someone’s nerves when expressing them. Notice that in recent national elections, voting split evenly, with the winning side gaining only a threepoint popular vote advantage. What that says is that wherever you stand on a political issue, at least half your customers won’t agree with you. Second, your customers come to you because they need new windows, new siding, a new roof, handyman work, remodeling, or solar. They’re not contacting your company because they’re interested in what you think about tax rates, abortion or race and gender discrimination. If you want to weigh in on those, you’re only introducing a distraction into the conversation.
What’s Appropriate There are lots of ways to wreck a customer relationship and among them political conversations you don’t need to have are the most easily avoided. How can you possibly gain by instigating political confrontations with people you don’t really know? There’s nothing in it for you and your business.
But what if the customer strikes up a political conversation? I’ve had any number who spouted off on one political topic or another, expecting me to agree with them 100 percent. It’s tempting to let yourself get pulled into a conversation about a controversial subject. Let’s say a customer casually disparages a candidate you happen to support. You want to leap to the defense, explain what they clearly don’t understand, rebut a point, etc. continued on page 2
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TOOLBOX
Don’t. What I do is pause, and then tactfully shift the discussion back to the issues that brought me to the house to begin with. You don’t need to be abrupt or start deflecting. Just remind yourself, and the customer, why you’re there. Then move the conversation back to the condition of the roof, level of insulation underneath it, drainage issues, water intrusion, etc.
THE #1 COMMUNIT Y OF SUCCESSFUL CONTRACTORS
MISSION STATEMENT To enhance the professionalism, performance and perception of the construction industry. We promote ethics, education, leadership and innovation, so that the construction industry and the community achieve mutual benefit. CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS 6476 Sligo Mill Road Takoma Park, MD 20912 301.891.0999 800.396.1510 866.250.3270 fax www.contractors.net STAFF Scott Siegal, President scott@contractors.net John Martindale, Principal johnm@contractors.net Catherine Honigsberg, GM catherine@contractors.net Matthew Winslow, Director of Operations matthew@contractors.net Anthoy Brooks, Director of Sales anthony@contractors.net Sindy Wohl, Director of VIP sindy@contractors.net Denise Metheny, Accounting denise@contractors.net Troy Timmer, CCN Business Consultant troy@contractors.net Larry Pazienza, CCN Business Consultant lpazienza@contractors.net Daniel Murgo, Events Manager danny@contractors.net Carla Sarabia, IT Manager carla@contractors.net Brad Lindner, Production Coordinator blindner@contractors.net Julie Casey, Member Services jcasey@contractors.net Toolbox is a publication of the Certified Contractors Network. Toolbox is a member benefit. Non-members may subscribe for $75 annually. editor: Jim Cory design: Stacy Claywell www.thatdesigngirl.net thank you to our: contributing writers
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Managing The Conversation Sound too easy? If customers want to start a political conversation, think about how you’d manage any such face-to-face conversation at your company. Say, for instance, you have a problem with an employee’s performance. Production is running way behind getting jobs scheduled. You start the conversation and the employee says something like: “I think I’m a pretty good production manager.” A good GM would respond by saying: “We’re not here to discuss whether or not you’re a good production manager, we’re here to talk about scheduling problems and how we can resolve that.” Then move the conversation forward.
Stay Strictly Professional Politics is personal. It’s also highly sensitive. Just how sensitive I discovered once when I made a flippant political remark at a CCN meeting. I got an earful about it. One member emailed saying: “I don’t come to CCN meetings to hear about politics.” Another wrote: “You have a big pulpit and you have influence whether you realize it or not.”
What I learned was to keep business practices— including conversations—strictly professional, avoiding political topics in general conversations with colleagues, customers and employees. It’s a selfdelivered ego stroke that never ends well. Managing To Win And what about those employees? Does it matter? It matters at least as much, maybe more. Employees with the skills, mindset and trainability to excel at their jobs are not easy to come by. We all know that. Also, the employees who will be with you longest are the young people who join your company, acquire skills and grow as the company grows. Many are decidedly liberal. I always thought of myself as a centrist—socially liberal, fiscally conservative—but my kids make me look like Archie Bunker. Of course that cuts both ways, because I have some employees with strongly conservative views. If you have a diverse workforce, and we do at Maggio Roofing and CCN, it’s even more important to think about what you say before expressing yourself on some social or political topic. New employees, or prospective employees, will quickly form an opinion about what kind of place your company is to work for when they hear remarks interpreted as awkward or unwelcoming. Yes, you’re the owner, but would you like to be the owner with an ongoing hiring problem?
Think Strategic Vision Managing well involves knowing what to say and when and how to say it. I’ve noticed, for instance, that when it comes to the most successful business owners in CCN, I usually have no idea what their political views are, because they see that as irrelevant to managing a company. Your politics are just that, yours. You don’t need to talk about them in the break room or splash them across the company website. Your strategic vision is what’s important. Promoting respect for employees and customers is the best place for me, as an owner, to put my energy and attention. You’ll find out soon enough that they know and appreciate it. —Scott Siegal is president of CCN.
PPP2
Congress has approved a second round of funding for the Paycheck Protection Program, which helps small businesses weather economic stress. BY JIM CORY
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new bill passed by Congress on December 27, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, includes a fresh round of funding for the Paycheck Protection Program. That program, originating as part of the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act) made $350 billion in federally guaranteed loans available to small businesses through local lending institutions. Some 5.2 million small businesses and non-profits received loans in the program’s first two-part round. The idea is to help companies that have seen a drop in revenue sustain cash flow, and operations, and keep employees on the payroll through the pandemic.
Conditions of Repayment The loans, once secured, are forgiven—i.e., borrowers are not obliged to repay them—if certain conditions are met. Since the aim of the program is two-fold—to keep companies afloat, and workers on payrolls—employers who obtain loans are required to spend 60 percent of the loan they receive on payroll costs, typically the largest overhead item for most businesses. Other costs initially covered included rent, covered mortgage interest and utilities. PPP2 expands that list to include purchases of personal protective equipment, expenditures to suppliers that are essential at the time of purchase, cost of constructing barriers to comply with social distancing, property damage not covered by insurance, and operating costs such as software, cloud computing and accounting needs.
Second Time Around The first time Congress made PPP loans available, the funds, distributed through local banks, were exhausted within 13 days. The aggressiveness of any one bank in pursuing funding, and the relationship a business has with that bank, quickly determined whether or not a company would get the money. “We work with five bankers,” says Catherine Honigsberg, GM of Maggio Roofing and GM of CCN. “One pulled ahead and said they were going after the funding. We got a heads up and started preparing our paperwork. We had it done and were
waiting in line before the opening deadline because we knew the money would run out.” Maggio filled out five separate sets of paperwork because “they kept changing what they wanted.”
More Funding Made Available Subsequent legislation added funds to the program, carrying it to the end of August. That legislation also expanded the amount of time business owners had to spend the funds, and made it easier to get a loan forgiven. “We didn’t make the cut the first time around,” says Mark Franzoso, owner of CCN member Franzoso Contracting, in Croton-on-Hudson, NY. “We did get in on the second one. It was very helpful.” Companies who’ve experienced a 25 percent or greater drop in gross receipts in any one quarter of 2020 are eligible for funding under the recently passed stimulus package, which makes an additional $284.5 billion available, including $35 billion for first-time loan applicants. Already received funds? The new PPP makes funding available for businesses that have already gotten a PPP loan. According to the Journal of Accountancy, your business would be eligible for a second draw if you have 300 or fewer employees, if you’ve used or will use the full amount of a first loan and, as with the first round of PPP, have experienced a 25 percent or greater drop in revenue in all or any quarter of 2020, compared with all or part of 2019. Unlike the first round, however, publicly traded companies are not eligible.
Deadline Looming If you’re borrowing under the program for the first time, you’re eligible for a loan of up to 2.5 times the amount of average payroll costs in 2019, up to $10 million. Second time loans are capped at $2 million for eligible expenses. The funds will be made available though thousands of participating lenders, from major banks to credit unions. The deadline to apply is March 31. No collateral or personal guarantees are required. Loan forgiveness is up to 100 percent if the funds are used for designated expenses while maintaining salaries and headcount for the given period.
"If you’re borrowing under the program for the first time, you’re eligible for a loan of up to 2.5 times the amount of average payroll costs in 2019, up to $10 million." C C N T O O L B OX F E B / M A R C H 2 0 2 1
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BY CATHERINE HONIGSBERG
No Turning Back Adapting to Covid forced our company to to immediately implement changes. Some will be long-term.
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ike most people, when the announcement was made that businesses in our state were required to shut down last March, I thought it would last two weeks. Here we are almost a year later, working from home. The pandemic caught everybody by surprise, including us. There’s never been anything comparable, in our lifetimes, so in figuring out how to respond and adapt we were left to improvise. Our business is located in Maryland, just outside DC, and the governor of Maryland classified roofing companies as an essential businesses. There’s a good reason for that: we do emergency repairs. Rain keeps falling, pandemic or no pandemic, and when your roof is leaking, you need a professional to fix it. So we operated our offices and shop on a limited basis, meanwhile with all our crews busy installing jobs.
Safer On The Roof Adapting to the pandemic meant finding a way for each leg of the three-legged contracting company stool to stay standing. Above all, we wanted our people to be safe. So we had to create some solutions. Could they be safe if everyone was inside the same office? How would we sell jobs to customers who didn’t want our salespeople inside their homes? And since we install with our own crews, how would we keep those crews beyond the reach of contagion? Fortunately, we live at a time when people can work at home and interact with management at the office. Zoom, company cellphones and Cloud-based files make that possible. So in one afternoon in March I got our admin employees the equipment they needed and sent them home. This was supposed to be temporary. Because we were organized, and everyone had company cell phones, our key people were able to run the company administratively without actually being on the premises. The sales situation was trickier. We had a number of homeowners who wanted us to work for them, but refused to meet in person with our representatives out of safety concerns. We’d already had some experience in online selling and knew the platforms—Zoom for instance—conducive to that. So we moved our sales effort online. We set up a Maggio Roofing backdrop to use on Zoom calls, and our salespeople appear wearing company polo shirts. Going virtual was awkward at first, of course, but the more 4
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salespeople do it, the better they get. A lot of companies in our area did not go to virtual sales. They’re still doing in-home selling, essentially in denial about what’s going on. That caused some of their employees to leave and I was able to pick up a few salespeople from other companies.
Company Wide Commitment The governor’s decision classifying roofing companies as essential meant that we could continue to install the work we were selling. At Maggio we use our own in-house installers. Like everyone else, they were concerned about being exposed to Covid. We needed to set up mask, distancing and disinfecting protocols so that our installers would feel safe coming to work. What we now know about the germ that causes Covid19 is that it is an aerosol virus, that is, it hangs suspended in the air, waiting for you to breathe it in. That’s why it’s seven times more contagious than the flu. It also lingers on surfaces, but disintegrates within 24 hours. I sat down and talked with the installers and told them what was going on. We had to have their buy-in. First off, they needed to know what our policy was. I told them they work in the safest possible place in the house: on the roof. I let them know that if anyone did test positive for Covid, we could pay them for two weeks, the length of time the CDC recommends for quarantine. I also told them that paid time off was available if someone in their family got sick.
In the first weeks of the pandemic, I’d spend half my day resourcing PPE— personal protective equipment— including masks, sanitizing wipes, hand sanitizer and face shields. We started taking everyone’s temperature every day. I hand out sanitizing wipes every morning to the drivers of our trucks so they can wipe their vehicles down before using them. Another measure we took is that instead of switching personnel around from one crew to the next, crews stayed the same, to reduce the risk of infection. We asked people to take precautions, wear masks and socially distance, when they weren’t on the job, so that we could keep each other safe.
Office Protocols So we were able to keep the crews busy, supplied with jobs, and do as much as we could to make their interactions with each other risk-free. They are on the roof, and they don’t go in the house. Admin is another story. Here, working safe and smart meant working from home. In an office environment, an enclosed space with lots of people, one infected person could spread the virus throughout the workplace. And the CDC says individuals are most contagious in the 24 hours before symptoms develop, when they don’t even know they’re infected. So I sent them home with company cell phones and laptops. We use many Cloud-based programs, including a Cloud-based filing system. One afternoon they got their equipment and went home to work. The only ones who remained were those dealing with paper files, which includes mainly accounting people. Some people work well from home. Not everyone. How do you know people are doing the jobs they’re supposed to be doing, if you’re not physically there to observe it? There are always some people in any workplace who are not as motivated as the rest, and who need more structure than the others. In the beginning I did go a bit overboard and used programs to monitor their performance. The best way to monitor performance, however, is productivity. You have to look at results. Not everyone produced. I took the opportunity to replace people in several positions, hiring and firing via Zoom. If someone isn’t pulling their weight in the office and needs a lot of help, and suddenly they’re working from home, they’re going to flounder and not make the cut. This forces you to make a decision. Meanwhile I have 25 or 30 people showing up at our office every morning to do roofing and I need admin support to get those guys out the door.
Water Cooler Talk Regular communication, staying in touch with those working at home, and everybody else, is key to managing well. We have employees who’ve been sitting at home for nine months and I realize the stress and fatigue they’re under. If you’re not in an office, with people around you, that means there’s no chance to talk and laugh. So once a week we have a one-hour meeting. It’s not about anything specific to work, it’s just conversation, water cooler talk. Topics are all over the place. We swap recipes, talk about the people in our lives, what we did the night before. People miss each other and it’s a chance for them to interact as a group. I used to do it every morning, as a check in, a way to get the employees working from home organized and started on their day. Now we do it for one hour every week. It took a while to adjust to pandemic conditions. People’s jobs have changed quite a bit. They’re happy to be working from home and dropping by the office every now and then. So at the moment, I don’t see any change at all in the way we’re operating until summer or fall. Long term, we’ll continue doing what we’re doing right now. After everything that’s happened and all the adjustments we’ve made, I don’t think things are ever going back to what they were before at our company. I don’t have any plans to bring the people who are working remotely back into the office. As long as they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we don’t need to. We’ve made a shift and we’re fine operating the way we’re doing it. So we’re going to stay on that track. —Catherine Honigsberg is General Manager of CCN and member Maggio Roofing, in Takoma Park, MD. C C N T O O L B OX F E B / M A R C H 2 0 2 1
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When We Meet Again How CCN’s sales process helped carry our company through the pandemic. BY DON DARRAGH
When Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolfe, responding to the steady escalation in cases of Covid19, shut the state down last March, we halted production for eight weeks. Of course if you don’t install anything you can’t collect anything but we, like many CCN members, were able to get a PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) loan through the Small Business Administration to cover payroll costs. We also continued to sell jobs and collect deposits on the jobs we sold. Quick Adjustments We use the CCN two-step sales method in our company. Step One, the measure call, involves going out to the house to look at the property and collect the information necessary to put together a proposal. Step Two involves presenting that proposal to the customer, and selling them on our solution.
The pandemic created a set of circumstances absolutely unique. In one sense, it was like a recession, because people stopped spending money. Some stopped spending because they lost their jobs. Many more remained employed, with the difference that they weren’t reporting to a regular workplace, such as an office. Meanwhile they weren’t going into restaurants, malls, gyms or other locations where the public gathered. Online retail exploded, with Amazon straining to fill an avalanche of orders. When the pandemic hit, we found that key lead sources— event marketing, for instance, such as our annual Customer Appreciation Day—simply disappeared, at least for the time being. But we’ve always built our marketing around customer satisfaction, asking people, as a last step in the process, what they thought about our product and service levels. 6
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So when the shutdown hit, for however long we didn’t know, we were at least in a position to ask former customers for additional business, whether repeat or referral. We worked harder generating these previous customer leads, and even though we weren’t producing anything in those first two months, we continued to run leads and sell. The result was that while the PA economy was shut down, we built up a substantial backlog to install.
From Measure Call To Meeting Not surprisingly, we had all manner of responses when we went to set sales appointments. Many homeowners were highly fearful of direct contact with anyone they didn’t know. Who can blame them? There was as yet not a lot of clear information about how the virus that causes Covid19 spreads. What I explained to homeowners last March and April was that I was going to come by their house and, without going inside, look at what needed to be done. People were petrified. They didn’t want you around them. I pointed out that I wouldn’t need to actually meet with them across the kitchen table, a situation that would not have been acceptable at that point to most customers. I told them preparing a proposal and a detailed scope of work for their project strictly from photos would be limiting. Most had no problem with that. Of course then the proposal
"When the pandemic hit, we found that key lead sources— event marketing, for instance, such as our annual Customer Appreciation Day—simply disappeared, at least for the time being." is ready and now we move to the second stage of the sale: presenting and discussing it. So we asked people if they would prefer to meet on their porch, or to use Zoom, i.e., a live video meeting via computer.
It’s Cold Out Here I am far more in favor of the person-to-person meeting. In this case, those meetings were mostly on the porch or in the garage. In the first months of selling that way my fingers got so cold it was hard to move a pen. Oddly enough people, both customers and salespeople, quickly got used to it. Once we started doing it regularly we got better at it. I’m a touchy-feely type of salesperson. By that I don’t mean high pressure, I mean I need to read a homeowner’s body language as part of the process of selling the project. The posture, the facial expression, what the hands are doing, all these tell me a lot about where any hesitation about moving forward is coming from. Body language and vocal intonation are at least as important as the actual words you say. Some communication experts argue that they’re even more important in creating an impression. It’s hard to pick up on any of that in a Snapchat or Zoom presentation, let alone on the phone.
How It Evolved We made it completely clear, in our appointment setting, that any visit to the house would strictly accord with Center For Disease Control recommended health practices, i.e., social distancing and especially use of masks. Customers were equally clear that that’s what they wanted. While the pandemic produced situations not conducive to selling—millions out of work suddenly—it did, oddly enough, create a two-fold situation that made it possible not only to do business, but to eventually do more business. First, people had money in their pocket because weren’t spending in retail stores or going anywhere on vacations. Second, because they were in their homes, they began to look at and think about improving those homes. For instance, our company’s core business is making and selling windows but we also install basements and, like most window companies, new front doors. If, pre-pandemic, our fenestration sales were 75 percent windows and 25 percent doors, doors have now jumped to 50 percent. Through our relationship with door manufacturer ProVia, we’ve put doors front and center and we sold more entry doors than we ever sold before. I think it’s because when people are home that much they begin to think about what could make the house look better, or function more efficiently.
So Many Facets Sometime around August I was having a porch meeting with homeowners and I needed to use their restroom. They were gracious enough to allow me to do that, and we ended up moving the conversation indoors. As time went on, there was more of that, masked and distanced, of course. Being able to see people face-to-face makes them more disposed to buying. I realized right away that we closed a lot better on person-to-person calls than we would on Zoom,
because Zoom doesn’t really allow for building that personal relationship that convinces people to sign. We could do the Zoom thing if we had gobs of leads, like Renewal by Andersen, but as good as we are at marketing, we’re not that kind of lead-generating national juggernaut. We’re a local company in our own market. One of the other options we offered people was to come down to our newly opened design center and have a socially distanced meeting about their project. The important thing was to be able to interact with them. I honestly believe it’s a basic trust issue. We get customers who’ll say, “Oh, just email me a price.” How do you build trust that way? That’s not selling, that’s order taking. For companies that sell by price, Zoom would be the ideal solution. In our case customers need to see the product, know how it works, touch it, feel it, and smell it. I need the project to make sense to them so they want to invest.
After Sale Zoom Follow-Up Zoom has its place. Imagine how much more complicated the pandemic would’ve been without online sales meetings, staff meetings and supplier meetings. And in our case, it’s made me do a lot more work up front. That involves communicating with my co-workers in admin and production to make the job move forward, from ordering to installation, even more seamlessly. At some point we can use Zoom to enhance our after-the-sale relationship and we’re talking about that now. That relationship proved invaluable here. The fact that we’ve always treated customers with kid gloves really helped us navigate the pandemic. It was our prior customers who referred jobs to us and who made the decision to invest in more windows or in a door. That happened not because of what we do at the end of a job, but because of the service we provide throughout and the fact that we regularly reach out to ensure satisfaction. We don’t just take their money and walk. We establish a relationship based on satisfaction and trust and then we work to continue that. The pandemic proved the value of that philosophy to us yet again. —Don Darragh is vice president of sales for Energy Swing Windows, in Monroeville, PA.
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One Of The Big Boys Pandemic or no, the Pittsburgh-area CCN member hardly missed a beat in opening its door and window showroom.
What is it about window contractors and Pittsburgh? Pennsylvania’s second largest city has an uncommonly large number of door and window companies, including not just the usual suspects (Window World, Renewal by Andersen) but homegrown competitors such as West Shore and Window Nation. In competing against them, Steve Rennekamp, president of CCN member Energy Swing Windows, has long aimed to open up a showroom separate from the facility where the company manufactures its product. “We needed,” he says, “to step up and look like one of the big boys.” The company checked out a number of available buildings before locating a former baked goods retailer which had been vacant for six years because its owner was “very particular about who he rents to.”
“He felt that we would be a great tenant,” Rennekamp says. The lease was signed in January of 2020, with the understanding that a certain amount of renovation work needed to precede any grand opening. The facility contains 1,400 sq ft of showroom and another 1,000 sq ft for offices. Then along came the pandemic and all bets were off. Energy Swing shut down installations for several weeks, per order of PA governor Tom Wolfe, but while crews could not put windows in customers’ homes, they were dispatched to the new showroom to get it ready to open to the public. The facility, a little more than a mile from Energy Swing’s manufacturing plant, is located on Golden Mile Highway, in Monroeville, at a location 20,000 cars a day pass by. With ample door and window displays, plus a fully built out basement finishing room, the company began meeting customers in its showroom in June and by July the facility was fully operational. The showroom, plus winning the Better Business Bureau’s Torch Award for ethics not once but four times, will give the company “a different perception,” says Rennekamp. “We’re the good guys. We’re here to serve you, not sell you.”
Many Balls In The Air If you lived in the Westchester County or Hudson Valley areas of New York, or over the state line in Fairfield County, CT, you may very well have heard of Mark Franzoso. The owner of CCN member company Franzoso Contracting, in Croton-on-Hudson, NY, is spokesman on his company’s radio and television commercials. He’s also a national GAF mentor program member, active in the local Chamber of Commerce and runs a $9 million company that ranked #157 on Qualified Remodeler’s Top 500 list of contractors, which he first made 15 years ago. Above all, he is a music fan. A recent story in The Gazette, of Clover, NY, detailed the contractor’s many activities, which also includes sitting on the board of the Allman Bros. Band Museum at the Big House, in Macon, GA, hosting local rock and roll shows. Most recently, Franzoso was elected chairman of the Board of Directors of the Mozartina Musical Arts Conservatory, which operates the historic Tarrytown Music Hall. He may sometimes be found there introducing acts on the stage. Beyond that, he is active in philanthropic causes such as Support Connection, which provides support to women affected by breast and ovarian cancer, and The Friends Network, a non-profit that works with young adults with special needs. How does he manage this dizzying assortment of activities? “I try to keep all the balls in the air,” Franzoso says. “They haven’t dropped yet.” 8
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Quarve Contracting Changes Hands
Brothers Big Remodel Brothers Services wins an award for the classy remodel that quintupled the size of a small farmhouse.
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rothers Services, a CCN member in Baltimore, is no stranger to awards. Last year it was among the 125 companies cited as part of the Baltimore Sun’s Top Places to Work, was named the Most Recommended Remodeling Company in Maryland, was cited as Number One Full Service Remodeler in the Mid-Atlantic Region by trade publication Qualified Remodeler and was lauded by the Maryland Building Industry Association with a Remodeling and Custom Building Award for Excellence for its work as general contractor on a year-long undertaking that transformed a 1,088 sq ft 19th Century farmhouse into a 5,400 21st Century mansion without skipping a beat. Executive Vice President Dave MacLean says transforming the stick-built and balloonframed original had a number of goals, including deepening the foundation and transforming it into living space, retaining the existing staircase and integrating it seamlessly into the new design, installing a mud room and a pet room that includes a shower and installing a small elevator. The remodel has five full baths and a half-bath. “Meanwhile,” MacLean says, “we were trying to do as many roofing and siding projects as we could, so there was the coordination challenge.”
Twin Cities resident Rob Collins first encountered CCN member Quarve Contracting as a customer for its vertical seamless siding. Pat Quarve came out to the house in a sales capacity to sell him a job. “I thought the guy was solid and really knowledgeable,” Collins says. But two weeks before the siding job could move forward, Collins had to call and put a hold on it, as he had been furloughed from his corporate executive job due to the Covid pandemic. A few months later, Quarve contacted Collins. “He said he’d been reading about all these executives getting laid off” and suggested that Collins should buy the company. For Collins, who’d already spent time in the home improvement industry, the idea held immediate appeal. “I felt like I was ready for a switch,” Collins, 50, says, “and owning a business was the way to go.” He bought the company. Collins, whose previous experience in marketing and selling has included stints with Pella Windows and its Store Within A Store program in Lowes locations, says Quarve’s strong reputation in the Twin Cities, along with its 60 percent plus repeat/referral rate, and a great staff, were major attractions, as was the ability to continue to rely on the expertise of Pat Quarve, who will stay on for a time in a sales capacity. Joining Collins in running the business will be his wife, Heather Collins, vice president, who has a degree in Transportation Logistics/Supply Chain Management and who once worked for Holland Roofing. Rob Collins says he sees among his challenges the need to “get a handle on the processes” Quarve Contracting has put in place as well as to thoroughly familiarize himself with the products and accessories regularly sold and installed by Quarve, a leading metal roofer in the state, which also sells windows and siding. “We have a huge opportunity to evolve,” he says. C C N T O O L B OX F E B / M A R C H 2 0 2 1
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ON HR
Plan Long Term For Employee Health Covid vaccination issues make this a good time to think about safeguarding the wellness of those who work at your company. BY ANITA DOMBROWSKI
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he good news about Covid and your company is that, in many areas, construction is classified as essential and doors remain open. Most companies, from the beginning, implemented workplace rules—masking, distancing, and disinfecting—to prevent contagion. Some simply handed admin employees phones and computers and had them work from home, which can be effective. Vaccines are the latest tools in the box, available now on a limited basis, with availability prioritized by occupational and demographic groups. Though the rollout has been slower than anticipated, the number of people inoculated grows daily. As an owner or manager, you want everyone in your operation to get vaccinated as soon as possible. The question is, when supplies are fully available, can you make that mandatory?
Vaccinate Or Else? Yes, you can, but with caveats. On December 16, 2020, the EEOC updated its guidelines making it okay for employers to mandate vaccination under the Americans with Disabilities Act, with the requirement that employers be prepared to exempt employees with disabilities and religious objections. A reasonable accommodation could be something like working remotely or being reassigned as long as the accommodation does not cause an undue hardship for the employer. As Covid lingers, you might want to ask yourself how long you can maintain these accommodations without impact to your business. Bear in mind that the EEOC is a federal agency. Every state can make its own vaccine rules and guidelines, and even at the state level politicians are torn between allowing a vaccine mandate and forbidding it. When it comes to requiring vaccination, a simple rule of thumb is that no one likes to be forced into a decision, especially regarding something so controversial. If you choose to mandate vaccination, it could spark an employee backlash. What then? Would you terminate a good employee who refuses? Termination, suspension or disciplinary action of any type could lay the groundwork for an adverse action, whether it's an unjust termination charge at the state or local level or a complaint to a federal agency. What if several have concerns? Also consider, if you mandate vaccination, how to address any 10
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temporary workers. And if your workforce is unionized, you will definitely want to discuss mandating vaccinations before implementing.
Volunteer to Vaccinate Rather than force employees to do something they may not agree with, it might be more effective to encourage voluntary participation. You could try the bonus approach being used by companies such as Dollar General, or you can partner with a local healthcare provider or pharmacy to make vaccinations available onsite once they become more plentiful. Providing educational materials on the vaccine would help dispel hesitation. Another alternative would be to make inoculation part of an organized Wellness Program at your company. A Wellness Program is a comprehensive initiative to promote healthy behavior. However, since decisions about vaccinations need to be made immediately, this option is more of a future goal.
Stay Flexible The key to managing Covid in the workplace is flexibility. Employers cannot control what employees do outside that may ultimately bring the virus inside. You can, though, control internal issues. Continue taking necessary precautions to prevent viral spread. It wouldn’t hurt to remind employees about all of the extra things you’re doing as part of your precaution program, such as extra disinfecting cleanings, substantial fogging/disinfecting programs when someone tests positive and social distancing in lunchrooms and with the crowd at the time clock. I recommend you closely monitor your state laws about mandating vaccinations. They change every day! Follow Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines, updated regularly, especially regarding 14-day quarantine for employees who show symptoms or test positive. You will even find some printable posters on this topic to share with employees. We’re all anxious to make Covid go away but that can only happen if we all work together to manage the spread. —Anita Dombrowski is an HR professional who works with CCN member companies. Her recommendations should not be regarded as legal advice.
MEMBER PROFILE
Eye on the Storm Hailstorms in the Upper Midwest are almost enough to keep a storm damage company scrambling. Almost. BY JIM CORY
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s a carpenter, Ryan Stinson remembers visiting a supply house to pick up materials and seeing “a bunch of fancy trucks.” He wondered, he says, about the companies that owned those trucks and “why I was driving a rusting out Ranger.” As it turned out, the arrival of a major storm in the area changed things. Stinson, since 2003 the owner of Stinson Services, in Minneapolis, contacted friends who owned houses to see about doing storm damage work. “I realized,” he says, “I liked the efficiencies associated with exterior contracting.” Today 80 percent of the work his company does is storm work, a specialization that requires the ability to quickly mobilize teams to restore and repair the damage that follows the massive hailstorms that periodically sweep through the Upper Midwest. “Every two years,” Stinson says, “we get a decent-sized event we can capitalize on and ride it out. That’s been consistent. Every time we hit a dry spell people get concerned. In the end there are still opportunities. We’ve had consistent growth for the last seven years.”
Larger Strategic Objectives Still, like other companies specializing in storm, Stinson moved to develop “the retail piece”—residential and commercial roofing, siding and gutters not related to weather events—to balance out the “ebbs and flows” of hailstorms. He mapped out a plan for his company’s future growth. Working from a financial modeling worksheet as a forecasting template, he realized that he and the company COO were the only ones proficient at reading the plan and interpreting and working from the information in it. That needed to change. What drew him to CCN, he says, was the emphasis on business planning and the ability to use the network’s educational resources to upgrade the skills of his staff, especially in admin and sales. “I need them to develop additional skills,” he says, “and CCN provides that.” The idea is for managers at the company, whom he describes as “a good core group
that cares a lot about what they’re doing,” to grow their skills “so we can hire additional people in their departments and they can focus on larger strategic objectives instead of daily operations. No one outside me received any training in that. That’s what I’m looking for.”
Built To Last In a market with many excellent home improvement companies, Stinson Services distinguishes itself by a number of best practices. For example, in place of the one-year or five-year workmanship warranty typically offered by contractors, the company offers a 20-year guarantee on its work, a “built to last” time frame that meets or exceeds the warranties provided by many manufacturers of building products. To do it is one thing, to communicate that is another. Most remodeling companies executing five- and six-figure projects schedule a preconstruction conference to let homeowners know what to expect. Exterior companies typically just show up and start hammering. Holding a preconstruction conference has worked well for Stinson Services. “For us, it’s a really key part of our production team’s success,” Stinson says. “It allows them to make that transition from sales to production in a personal manner.” Homeowners, he says, often “don’t understand that their property is going to be a war zone.”
Smart People Stinson, 42, says that in addition to carpentry skills, learned from a father in commercial construction and then a stepfather who was a custom carpenter, he developed the habit of seeking out those who can do what he can’t on his own. His aim in connecting to CCN is to help grow “the retail part” of the business. “Being in CCN gives us a better tool kit,” he says, especially at a time when consumers have reined in spending during the pandemic and have a lot of cash. Many want to improve their homes. “I’m always looking for people who know more than I do,” he says, “and CCN has people who know more than I do, know more than the people on my team. We want to develop people on a continuous basis and CCN provides a platform for that, and more.” C C N T O O L B OX F E B / M A R C H 2 0 2 1
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CCN LIVE-STREAM EVENT CCN LIVE-STREAM EVENT CCN LIVE-STREAM EVENT
OWNERS MASTERMIND FEBRUARY 10, 2021 12pm-1:00pm (EST)
ADMIN PRODUCTIVITY FEBRUARY 12, 2021 12pm-1:30pm (EST)
SALES MASTERY FEBRUARY 16-18, 2021 10:30am-5pm (EST)
BUSINESS PLANNING 101 FEBRUARY 23-25, 2021 10:30am-5pm (EST)
For a full schedule of 2021 events & more details visit contractors.net