With my sister done with her spring term at UoI, she has come on-board to help us during the Summer. With her assistance, we were able to get our entire mailing out within a couple days. The great thing is that so far we have only gotten a few returned back to us. They were pretty easy fixes though and we sent the Ridgeworth Roofing Review out to those customers. We’ve already gotten positive feedback on the Ridgeworth Roofing Review and our new addition to the logo (the superhero). It’s really great to get the feedback to know that the marketing is having a positive effect on our image. I think in the future we’ll be doing more of our own publications. As the founders of 37 Signals state in their book, Rework, “Emulate chefs”. Share your knowledge with your customers; we agree.
Archive for May, 2010
Mailing Done!!!
Roofwatch Error
As I had previously reported, we’ve been gearing-up for our first mailing. I ordered 200 copies short of our mailer, Roofwatch, through the Midwest Contractor’s Association (MRCA). MRCA was kind enough to request that the printer send us all of the overruns, so we are now 53 copies short. Not wanting to go back to the printer, I had to come-up with a solution.
I created a one-page newsletter of our own. It actually turned out really great. We were able to use our own pictures and make it very specific to Northern Illinois spring roof issues. The 53 will also be getting a promotional magnet with their “Ridgeworth Roofing Review”. I think we’ll probably also be sending the newsletter out to everyone else in a couple weeks, it turned out so well.
Crisis adverted.
First Mailing
Ridgeworth is gearing-up to send out a mailing called “Roofwatch”. It’s a small brochure, educating customers about roofing, tailored to the season. The last page also provides some background information and capabilities of Ridgeworth Roofing. In the past, our mailing list was maintained by my Mom and Linda in an excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was actually quite good, but there was no connection to Dataforma, which in the past had been used for CRM. There was no easy way to ensure that new contacts were added to the mailing list, which hadn’t been updated for at least the past year. I tried multiple times to pull a list out of Dataforma (ex., by date created), but it wasn’t “clean” and there was no easy way to identify contacts by type of work, who the main contact was, etc. The process just wasn’t working all that well for us.
Long story short, the solution was to pull a list of companies with warranties and manually look-up (and identify) the main contact in dataforma, pull a list of new customers from our accounting software (Peachtree), and use the previous Excel spreadsheet. After ensuring accuracy and manually identifying any duplicates, the spreadsheets can then be uploaded into Highrise CRM. Highrise works well in that once I have the good contact list(s) uploaded, I can add “tags”. For example, I can add tags for contacts that are getting Roofwatch, that are Churches, General Contractors, Homeowners, Property Managers, that have had their roof replaced in 2010, etc. This really helps because than we can pull a list any way we want to and across multiple tags.
It’s been a lot of work up-front, but will be well-worth it down the road.
Blackhawks Game 1
Rod and I were graciously taken out to dinner and Game 1 of the Blackhawks playoff game last Saturday. We had a great time and want to thank Jim Bone of Bone Roofing Supply, Inc. for inviting us. Unfortunately, the Hawks lost pretty bad. At least they pulled through last night, tying the series 1-1 with Vancouver! Thanks again Mr. Bone.
Promotional Magnet
My first promotional material order came in yesterday and I wanted to share my experience with the process. To create the artwork, I used both Scribus and Inkscape (both open-source programs). Once I had something I liked, I did a web search for “promotional magnets”. I decided to try-out fourcolormagnets.com, by jhspecialty because they were based out of Fort Wayne, IN, had great testimonials on their site, and had comparable prices.
A great experience and I’m glad we ordered through them. The communication about the artwork, format, and tracking was excellent. I had the magnets in-hand within one week of placing the order, even though I had communicated that we needed them no later than next week. My sister is going to be working with us during her summer break and I wanted her to help out with customer follow-ups. We are going to start-out by sending “thank-you” letters to customers we’ve done work for recently, with a magnet included (I’m using Highrise to track it). Here’s the artwork for the magnet:
Not too bad, right? If you click on the image, you’ll see that it actually has a white background. Hopefully people will hang-on to it longer than they would a business card.
I don’t know where to even begin on this topic. One of the most daunting tasks I’ve faced was trying to choose the right CRM program for us. When I came on-board, Ridgeworth was (and currently still is) using a cloud-based (new buzzword) program called Dataforma to manage their contact information and electronic document storage related to jobs. Dataforma states on their website “Software built by roofing contractors for roofing contractors . . .”. All I will say is that Dataforma and I do not click. Likewise, my brother shares my views. For CRM, Dataforma does not meet our needs. Therefore, I went looking for an alternative that was both cheaper and more functional for tracking prospective customers.
First off, I tried a couple open-source CRMs: SugarCRM and VTiger. They both took quite a bit of time to set-up and I was concerned about functionality. Did I really know what I was doing with Apache, MySQL, and the CRM program? I’m not really sure. I also had issues with importing our existing contact info from a Dataforma export. I think I spent about a half-day trying to get it all in there correctly.
My father, Rod, is a member of The Alternative Board (TAB), a group of small business owners that meet to help each other out with various aspects of their business. With TAB’s recommendation, I tried out Salesforce. Wow! Within 10 minutes I had signed-up for their free 30-day trial and had our contact information uploaded and ready to go. Being so impressed and always looking for alternatives, I went searching for other “pay-for” CRMs.
There are so many of them out there! I honestly have no idea how I found 37signals and their Highrise CRM through all of the others (I think I may have searched for “Chicago CRM”). I am so glad I did. It was such a relief to find a company and a program that shared the same ideas as me (minimal, functional, to the point, etc.) You have to read the book Rework from the founders of 37signals. Amazing. It will open your eyes to a new way to look at small business. By the way, 37signals is backed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
Nothing against Salesforce. It seemed like a good CRM and probably works for many businesses. We went with Highrise. Here are the main reasons: the structure is unique and uncomplicated, it is very easy to learn (important when trying to implement something new in an office with no IT personnel), there are so many neat functions, and the cost was $3312/year cheaper than Salesforce. I don’t know how much more to say about it; you simply have to try it for yourself.
By the way, we still use Dataforma for managing projects and associated documents. However, please check back. You may find a writeup on Backpack soon, also by 37signals.
Rod Petrick was invited by Fred Creed of All Weather Products, Inc. to visit New York City to check-out a really cutting-edge epoxy-like roof system used on many of the city’s buildings. It’s called Soprema Alsan RS. The New Yorkers use the system to eliminate hot application methods (like torches). Really neat stuff if you’ve got money. A view of the city from a rooftop is above.
A second view of the city. Did Rod even look at a roof?
A little bit of business. Above is the roof system. Rod did have to work!
This is about as close as Rod could get to the new buildings going up to replace the World Trade Center(s). Check out all of the cranes!
Ridgeworth Website
Websites are a lot of work, especially if you’ve never done one before. When I joined Ridgeworth there was a definitive need to update our website, www.ridgeworthroofing.com. The old site contained the basic information for our company and even had a contact form. However, it was clearly outdated and based on one of those late 90′s templates. It pretty much hadn’t been maintained or updated since it’s inception.
Constructing the new site, I learned a lot along the way. If anyone is looking to construct or update a webpage, I’d strongly recommend learning html by just playing around with a basic page in word or notepad. Try it, it’s pretty neat. The editors I later used were open-source, meaning the programs are free. I recommend trying out open source programs, as well as Linux and BSD in general. There are many, many operating systems out there. Please don’t limit yourself to only Windows and Macintosh. Check out distrowatch.com. Really neat operating systems that will open your eyes. Why pay hundreds of dollars for Windows if you can get an operating system for free? My wife and I use Ubuntu at home and I installed Linux Mint on a couple laptops we bought at the Krahl Construction auction. My younger sister, a college student at University of Illinois, worked on one of the laptops and was really impressed with Mint (mostly by the 3D effects available).
PS: The editors I used were Bluefish and KompoZer.
Introduction
I thought it would be good to start with an introduction about the Ridgeworth Roofing Blog.
I’m a new employee to Ridgeworth Roofing and am working for my Family, taking on Marketing and Business development. My father owns the business my Grandfather started in 1974. My mom works for the company, handling customer interface and finance. My younger brother handles bids, proposals, and project coordination. It is interesting every day. We should apply for a reality TV show!
In the blog we hope to discuss commercial and industrial roofing (mostly “flat” roofs) to help better educate our existing and new customers. I also think the blog will be a great place to discuss some of the challenges I encounter working on Marketing and Business Development from the ground up. It might be a good perspective considering I have little to no experience in this area, just a lot of great (I hope) ideas. A little background; I have a Master’s in Chemistry and worked for a few large Healthcare corps in clinical research. Long story short, why work for someone you don’t even know and have never even met if you have the opportunity to be a part of a family business? That was more than enough reason for me to make a drastic change and I’m confident that I can help to fill a much needed position.
So here we go!
