Contractors Toolbox

As the Customer Success Manager for Soprema USA, Jeanette Alston-Watkins is responsible for building relationships and networks which can develop into sales opportunities in a professional and ethical manner.

She has worked in the contracting industry for years and talks about the keys to maximizing customer experience.

A first-class customer experience has a huge impact on a contracting firm's growth and reduces customer acquisition costs with dramatic increases in referrals from delighted customers.

Jeanette shares pearls of wisdom on the methods she has used successfully over the years to maximize customer delight, and this is something all contractors should make a priority in their businesses.

Anna Anderson is CEO of Art Unlimited, a full-service marketing agency with a rapidly growing portfolio of home improvement contractors as clients.

Anna talks about numerous aspects of contractor marketing including paid digital campaigns, organic social media marketing, CRMs, the importance of building a brand and much more.

Anna shares how she grew up with marketing, learning from the ground up with her parents as mentors and then taking over the company along with her sister.

She discusses how much marketing has changed because of advances in technology. There is also a discussion about marketing metrics and their importance in managing this part of a home improvement contractor's business.

John Martindale had a small roofing company and built it into one of the largest full-service home improvement remodeling companies in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States.

He shares his story about the struggles he dealt with early on and these are the very same struggles that are experienced by most contractors.

He discusses the steps he took to overcome obstacles and grow his business.

John also discusses the value his CCN membership in helping the company get where it is today and talk about why he was driven to buy into the company to help other contractors overcome obstacles and scale their businesses.

He also talks about the development of a new course, KPIs – Managing by the Numbers.

Heidi Ellsworth is the CEO of Roofers Coffee Shop. She discusses the Roofers Coffee Shop journey since their humble beginnings in 2002, and everything it now has to offer the overall industry.

Roofers Coffee Shop is breaking new ground in digital marketing for the roofing industry. It is comprised of a community of roofing professionals who share ideas, tell stories, conduct research, sell items, find items, and get help.

Roofing Contractors can add numerous tools to their toolboxes with all that Roofers Coffee Shop has to offer.

Heidi also talks about the introduction of Metal Coffee Shop, offering educational, informational and community experience for metal contractors and the metal industry. Metal Coffee Shop delivers the same industry-leading content wholly focused on metal construction while creating a unique online community for metal professionals overall.

Scott Siegal is the founder and CEO of Maggio Roofing in the Washington, DC area.

Scott talks about how he started Maggio Roofing and profitably grew the company to become one of the largest and most successful roofing companies in his market area by embracing the tools he acquired through his Certified Contractors Network (CCN) membership.

This positive experience had a profound impact on Scott, and he explains how it motivated him to acquire CCN and help other contractors across the U.S. and Canada.

Scott also discusses how CCN has continued to expand its offerings to contractors by focusing on continuous improvement and offering valuable tools and processes to help them profitably scale their businesses too.

Craig Leary was a corporate executive and decided he wanted his own contracting company.

Craig purchased Home Remodeling Pros of Central PA.

He talks about how he leveraged his industry and consulting experience in helping contractors across the country embrace Root Cause Analysis and Value Stream Analysis as tools for problem solving in a contracting business.

Root Cause Analysis is a technique that helps people understand why the problem occurred in the first place. It seeks to identify the origin of a problem using a specific set of steps to find the primary cause of the problem, so that you can: (1) Determine what happened; (2) Determine why it happened; (3) What do to reduce the likelihood of it happening again.

Value Stream Analysis and Mapping is a Lean management method that allows you to visualize, analyze and improve all the steps in your processes.

Industry icon, Charlie Gindele, talks about how he started in the contracting business and scaled his company to a $40 million dollar enterprise.

Charlie went from humble beginnings in Philadelphia to building his Renewable by Andersen business in Southern California.

Charlie has served as a mentor to hundreds of home improvement contractors across North America.

You will certainly add to your toolbox in learning from one of the best in the contracting business. Charlie now serves as a coach and trainer for Certified Contractors Network (CCN) and continues his work in helping contractors build successful business.

Thanks for your interest in 'The Contractors Toolbox Podcast' from Certified Contractors Network!

Join CCN's Gary Cohen every two weeks starting June 14, 2022 for interviews with contracting icons.

They will be sharing some of their 'tools' for contracting success with you!