Emotional Intelligence in Roofing - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Sue Burkett and Jessica Tinney from Owens Corning, Tara Coopley from Third Estimate Corporation and Pam Torrey from Ingage. You can read the interview below, watch the YouTube video or listen to the podcast.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Good morning. Welcome to Coffee Conversations, our last one of 2023. My name is Heidi Ellsworth, and this is going to be an amazing conversation as we talk about emotional intelligence in roofing. When we came up with this title and we brought our experts from Owens Corning, and The Third Estimate and Ingage, we knew this was going to be an amazing conversation. So let's first go over some housekeeping. This is being recorded and it will be available within 24 hours, so be sure to share it out with all of your roofing professional friends within your company, even your family over Christmas. This is a great topic. We will also have the chat open, so of course I would love to know who you are, where you're from, what kind of business you have, and then throughout the conversation, please be sure to ask questions, make comments, any insights that you may have.

This is a coffee conversation and we're all in it together. So welcome and let's get started. As I said, I am very excited to be talking about emotional intelligence in roofing. So before we started, I just thought I would read what is emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the ability to manage both your own emotions and understand the emotions of people around you. There are five key elements to emotional intelligence, self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills.

So we thought, how does this apply in roofing and how are we as an industry starting to make changes to really understand other people's emotions and the fact that how much research they are doing ahead of time into color and design and the beautiful exterior of their homes. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. Let's get started and introduce our guests, but first I would like to thank Owens Corning, who is our sponsor today. Talk about emotional intelligence and beautiful roofing, leading in color out there in our industry. So we, as I said, have some representatives from Owens Corning who are going to tell us maybe a few of their secrets. Here we go.

I would like to first welcome Sue to the show. Sue, welcome. Thank you so much. Can you introduce yourself and also tell us a little bit about what you do with Owens Corning?

Sue Burkett: Sure. I am an Owens Corning employee now for over 40 years, so a long time. I've been in roofing 20 years. I spent a stint in the sales field and then I've been in marketing most of that other time, but spent time in insulation and in the other businesses of Owens Corning. I am focused on design, selling to women, color, homeowner brand, but I've also touched product introductions and other things, but right now I'm focused on exactly this topic that we're going to talk about.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That is excellent. Thank you. I'm so happy to have you on this morning. This is going to be great. I also from Owens Corning would like to introduce Jessica. Jessica, please introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about what you do at Owens Corning.

Jessica Tinney: Hi. I am the product leader for Duration and Duration Designer product lines. I've been with Owens Corning for over two years now, coming into the construction industry for almost eight and have always had a passion around creating innovative, customer-driven solutions that are beautiful and that people buy without me needing to be there to sell it to them. So I think that's a really important topic and I love partnering with Sue consistently to give this to our contractors and homeowners.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That is great. Thank you so much and welcome to the show. And I am so excited to welcome Tara, one of our R-Club members and leading roofing contractors in the country on this topic to the show. Tara, welcome.

Tara Colopy: Good morning.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Good morning.

Tara Colopy: Glad to be here.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I'm so happy. Please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your company.

Tara Colopy: Okay, so I'm Tara Colopy. I'm the CEO of the Third Estimate Corporation. We're heading into our 28th year in business. It'll be my 21st year here at The Third Estimate. Our home office is in Solon, Ohio. I'm a huge champion of women in my building, in the industry and really pushing that emotional intelligence in sales, and that's who we are.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That's great. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here this morning-

Tara Colopy: Thank you.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And finally, but definitely not least, I am excited to introduce Pam from Ingage. Ingage is very involved with Roofers Coffee Shop. Pam, please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about Ingage.

Pam Torrey: Yeah. Hi everybody. I'm Pam Torrey. I'm the director of marketing at Ingage. I've been with Ingage for just over four years now, built the marketing department from the ground up. We are the industry-leading sales presentation enablement platform for home improvement and home services. So that means we help you to create beautiful, interactive, engaging, pun intended, presentations, share them with the people who need them and then measure their impact through Rich Analytics. We're really excited to be part of this. We have a great relationship with both Roofers Coffee Shop as well as Owens Corning. I actually been really involved in that relationship and we love working with them and additionally, some fun stuff. You see on my bio, I actually have a master's of music in voice performance, so this is my busy season. If you are in the Chicagoland area, you might see me around at this time of year singing. I'm kind of everywhere. It's a fun time of the year.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Wow. I'm glad we got you here.

Pam Torrey: Here. Yeah, I'm thrilled to be here. This is the first ever panel I've ever been on with all women for this industry-

Heidi J Ellsworth: Awesome.

Pam Torrey: And I've been doing webinars for Ingage for four years. It's the first time I've ever been on an all female panel, so really I am really excited.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Can I just say it won't be the last.

Pam Torrey: I'm jazzed about it. Yeah, I'm really excited to be here.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That is so great. Well, we want to start out really talking about the psychology, the psychology of color, of design, of what is that homeowner, and we really have to point out women and that next generation that's coming up of homeowners, what's important to them? What are they looking for? So let's start out with our first question. Remember everyone please, and I've already seen some comments come in, I'll be reading, but please comments, questions as we go. Sue, I would love to start with you to talk about the psychology behind the development of roofing materials. Take it away.

Sue Burkett: Yeah, thank you. Yeah. I will admit, when I first saw all the emotional intelligence and the psychology, I mean those are big, scary, hairy words, right? I was like, "Oh my God, what is that?" The way we look at it from Owens Corning, is just about feeling. We know we're talking to women. We know that why would women not be interested in color in roofing when they're interested in color in everything else they do, they wear, they put on their lips, the car they drive. Why all of a sudden, would it not be important in roofing?

It has been a male dominated industry, and we all know from history it's men selling to men and the little wife sitting there and the contractors patting around the head. Those days are gone. Women are a force to be reckoned with, and so you have to understand women and what they want and how we feel about color. It's really easy for me because I'm a woman. I say, "How would I want to be sold to and what would I want to see and what do I think about when I need this and this?" And I've put on six roofs in my lifetime and what do I go through.

At Owens Corning really, we've embarked on this journey of moving roofing from a building material commodity to a design element and just saying that you go, "Yeah." You would think about things differently. You would talk about it differently. You would feel differently about it if it is not just this thing, yeah, red, black, put it on, it's in the same aisle with the nails in the big buck store. You feel differently about it. So we're moving to a position. We've already moved there really, it's what we do.

So really when you start from a place of that which is, "Okay, what do we need?" Then you start moving into, okay, specific colors, and I won't share any secrets about, well, how do we do our colors or whatever, but it's how we think about them always through the lens of what somebody like me or a female would want to see. And I would say that's the beauty of asphalt. There are some products that are just a flat color. It's a flat color. You better choose wisely when you pick that color 'cause it's a flat color. Asphalt gives you that ability, especially with laminants and other specialty shapes, that you can introduce different colors of tab, which allows that roof to transition from maybe a yellow phase in your life to a stage green phase in your life. If that roof has enough color in it, it can make that transition with you.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That's a great point Sue. I hadn't even thought about that. As you're changing colors on the siding or doing different accents, that roof will really move with you. Tara, I would love for you to add in on what Sue just said and how important that is with you actually in the home talking to the owners and consumers.

Tara Colopy: So we like to say that the exterior of your home is the lasting first impression. We use keywords like playing dress up with your home to go after the inner child of the woman playing dress up and how exciting it was as a kid to do that. And we talk about the roof of your home being the jewelry on the house. Women always cared about the interior. That's where this all started, and now we care about what the exterior of our home looks like. We want the grandeur of, if you look at this house that we're looking at right now, how grand that roof looks on there, and to have all these different options that Owens Corning has given us, it's been an easy sell.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, I've been involved in a long time and have seen a lot of roofs and everybody has their own feeling, but as you start putting things together and how does this look? That's the first impression that you have on your home is when people walk up and see the exterior and the roof. And I think a lot of times that gets lost and now today it's like, "Nope, this is really, that curb appeal is so important." And Pam, I want to get everybody tuned in on this because your software is what really gives that feel, that first glimpse of that curb appeal to the consumers. How important is color and putting all that together?

Pam Torrey: Oh, it's incredibly important. What we advise our customers to do when they're creating sales presentations is to use as many visuals as possible because you can talk about the color of a shingle till your blue in the face. You can talk about it on how is this going to pick up different colors with your siding. If you show them a gallery of examples of that single shingle on all different kinds of homes that have different colors of siding, maybe different architectural choices, that is how you're going to close that sale. That's how you're going to connect with that buyer because you're going to have the tools at your fingertips to really be able to show her what this would look like on her home.

And if you come armed with all of those photos, all those videos, all those visual assets in your sales presentation, you're more likely to have one that will connect with that buyer. And that's really where the emotional savvy of the sales rep comes into play too, because they have to know what they have in their sales presentation to be able to connect with that buyer, to be able to read the room and see what she might like to look at in the presentation.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. You're about other people's emotions. Yeah, Tara.

Tara Colopy: If I could just jump off that, along with having a great presentation, at The Third Estimate we call our fleets, our vehicles that our salespeople drive, we call them mobile showrooms because there's not a lot of showrooms to go see. You can go to the big buck stores and go look at roofing, but we make sure that our people are armed with samples and large samples, not just you go to the paint store and you're trying to pick paint for your wall, and it's a chip this big, and you get it up on the wall and it looks terrible. So we make sure that our mobile showrooms are stocked with tons of samples of all different colors and textures, and that's really important, very important to hit that emotional button in the home.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I love that, mobile showroom.

Tara Colopy: Thank you.

Sue Burkett: I would say too, it's really important to have a list of your previous installations because I can look at chip online, I can look at a chip in a brochure, you can bring me a board that's four feet by four feet, nothing will take the place of seeing it up on a slope in its natural environment against different colors of siding in different times of day, different lighting conditions. So we hear all the time from homeowners, they call us and say, "Hey, could you give us an address where we can go see this?" We don't install it, so we don't have those addresses. But all that contractor network, it is really important for you to do that, to keep track of those.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, yeah. In fact, I just want to say Lauren Tears from Her Roofing in Portland, Oregon, a great company, said, "I absolutely love that purple color of the year. I felt so seen at last and excited." So I love that. So Jess, let's talk a little bit about the process of creating and maintaining these colors. I have to tell you, Jess, back in the day when I first started in roofing, I was with another roofing company, but I was able to actually go in and see the granule mixes and how things were put together, one of the coolest things I think about in my career. So it's exciting to hear how you put all this together and make it happen.

Jessica Tinney: Yeah, I mean, it's a team effort. So Sue leads a lot of that as well as we have a color scientist, so we partner with them, but a lot goes into the process overall of developing and creating the shingle colors. We have to evaluate market needs, gaps in trends. Sometimes you're looking outside of the industry you're looking at. Sue always brings up interiors, but also are there other companies that we're seeing colors or things that are resonating and creating an emotional connection that people are going to want?

And we then have to, going into the operational side, test all of the formulas and all of our plants that's going to offer them. We need consistency. Our contractors expect the color that they're showing on the sample board to be the color that goes up on the house. And it's all happening the same time as we're trying to develop this messaging. And it's a really important piece to be able to produce as quickly one color as we do seven colors. So we've invested operationally to do that, but our plants are a huge part of this too, and it's truly a team effort in getting these colors to market and creating that emotional connection for the homeowners and contractors too.

Sue Burkett: We can identify, we want a color, we can go into the lab and create the color, but if our plants can't make it doesn't matter. It just doesn't. And if they can't make it consistently across the board, it doesn't matter. And the one thing that I think people need to realize, let's just talk about the midnight plum, the purple shingle. There isn't a purple granule. I mean, all of us manufacturers have a very limited number of granule colors. The trick is then how do I get to purple? Well, go back to grade school. You take red and you take some blue and you mix it together and you get a purple. Now it may not be the right shade of purple, so then you got to tamper it with some black or tamper it with some light brown, so the whole point here is they're beautiful colors, but it takes a lot of manipulation to get those limited number of granules into the right combination that when you stand back on the curb and you look up and you say, "Oh, wow, that's purple. I like that."

Heidi J Ellsworth: And I love that. I love the colors that are popping out of that. But Sue, I'm so glad you said that because it is, it's like a puzzle of how everything has to, or a formula I guess, would be a better way of saying it. So okay. One of the things we've talked about so far is we've really talked about how women, and I really feel like the next generation too, the Gen Zs and millennials really care a lot more about the exterior, the look of their home. And we're talking about color.

Tara Colopy: Hundred percent.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. Hundred percent.

Tara Colopy: I couldn't agree more. And that's going to be our biggest buyer. I mean, this next generation is massive, and they care. They absolutely care about the exterior of their home.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Tara, it's not just the guy or the gal, but it's together as a full group. This is more important and equal.

Tara Colopy: Yes. I think I use the word pride a lot and people have a lot of the pride in the home, the exterior has really done a full circle over the last couple of decades, and people want to pull up and feel pride when they look at their home. They want to look down their street and feel pride. And I think, like you said, this next generation, it's going to be even more important than it is right now.

Pam Torrey: Yeah. We do a lot of research on how to connect with buyers in sales presentations because that's my job. And it is so much harder today for millennials to buy their first home than it was 20, 30 years ago. I'm a millennial homeowner. I bought a house during the pandemic. It is so much harder and so much more expensive to get into your first home today. So of course, when we're designing sales presentations, we want to talk about this. This is your biggest investment. This is where your wealth is built. If you're just starting out, this is your asset. So yeah, there's tons of pride in connecting with that. You build that into your messaging, into your communication that this is your home. This is your biggest investment. You want to take pride in it. And I think that's being reflected in the way that millennials and Gen Z buyers think about their homes.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I do too. Oh, go ahead.

Sue Burkett: I'm just going to say, because we brought up how equal and these next generations, it's more of a joint decision. We just did some research where we asked women, "But how much homework do you do upfront? How much research do you do?" And then we had them rank, "Do you do all the research and make the choice and tell your significant other? Do you do most of it, you present only the ones you want so that there is an equal choice, but you've narrowed that choice down to the things that you find acceptable?" And the biggest chunk is in that. So while in research they'll say, "Oh yeah, we made the decision together. Well, but I did all the work upfront. I narrowed it down. I got to the three that I thought were good", and this is the way it would work in the home, or the husband, you'd show it to them and they'd make a choice and you'd go, "Really? Really? Is that the one you like?" Right.

And then he would go, "Well, I mean, which one do you like?" And you'd say, "Oh, well, I like the middle one." And okay, that's good. Okay. Did we make that decision together? We sure did. But was it a fair fight? No, it was not a fair fight because I did it all and I put guardrails on you and said, "Okay, make your choice, honey. As long it's here, you're good."

Tara Colopy: Yes, I agree Sue. If you think about after dinner, you're sitting on the couch or you're laying in bed at night and the wife is on Pinterest, building what she wants her home to look like, and I'm guilty of doing that, so.

Heidi J Ellsworth: We know.

Tara Colopy: Steve is not doing that one.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Oh, he don't. Okay. Jess, you were saying something, we missed it.

Jessica Tinney: [inaudible 00:21:48] because this is a conversation I've had.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, you're breaking up just a little bit Jess because then-

Jessica Tinney: I'm sorry.

Heidi J Ellsworth: So, there you go. There you go. You're better. Well, okay, so to this point, this is exactly the point that I think there's been this myth, and maybe it was the case before, but this has totally changed now that it's just color or just the look, but that's not the case. It's about performance and it can look beautiful, but if it doesn't perform and if it doesn't have the wind, the hail, all of the things that you need in a really good roof, that's going to take away from that. And I believe, I mean, just from what all you have said, women are doing that research just as much as men used to and sounds like from what I'm hearing even more now. So just how, when you're looking at that with the design elements and really the overall performance aspects, how important is that and how do you guys get there?

Jessica Tinney: I think we often think of color and performance separately, but they're extremely intertwined. Markets in California are very heavily code driven by the solar reflectivity index that we use specific granules, color formulations to meet those performance needs. We also have and must consider regions that have algae growth. And by enhancing our color formulas with the street guard technology and the copper granules, we're able to offer one of the best in class warranties. But that's all doing it. You have to make sure that your formulations and your colors still look beautiful with those performance enhancements. And then performance of the color is actually really important over time. We want them to be happy with the colors they choose, whether it be a month after installation or five years after installation. So even performance color comes into play when it comes to aesthetics.

Heidi J Ellsworth: There's nothing worse than when you have streaks on your beautiful roof. We don't want that. And so I love that the copper granules and really asking those kinds of questions. What is this going to look like way down the road? And Tara, you probably have these questions come to you all the time.

Tara Colopy: About what it looks like down the road?

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yes.

Tara Colopy: Yeah, I think we talked about this last week. I had said that it's a very large investment to put a roof or to do an exterior makeover on your home, but when you have the backing of a national brand such as Owens Corning, it makes it really easy to sell that roof and its performance. So I mean, when you have a backing, it's easier.

Heidi J Ellsworth: You want the warranties, you want to know it's going to last. You want the performance qualities. We do have a question that's come in that I want to address because... Thank you so much everybody. Dave Vanna, thank you. You're out there answering some of these, helping out and Terry, but Terry said, "I believe OC has a place online where you can upload a picture of your home and put particular colors on the home through the photograph. Not sure that it includes all the colors though." And Alana was saying, "Great. Can you show us that website?" Terry put the website up. And then so did Dave on the visualizer, the roof visualizer. And I think that roof visualizers are so important. In fact, Dave was saying contractors can add the visualizer to their own website with the DEQ widget found here. So everybody check out the chat. You can find all these links in there. But Sue, I think I'm going to start with you and then go to Pam, but the visualizer has just really changed the way contractors can sell in the home.

Sue Burkett: Right.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And research.

Sue Burkett: Yeah, I mean, in our research, what we found was that I may need a roof, but it has to fit into that exterior plan. It's either a new one that I'm building toward or it's one that I have to live with. I bought a house, it's got yellow siding. I can't change it, so I've got to find the right thing to go with that that fits my personality and all of that. When we did research with women, I mean, it was like 78% top box. I mean, almost everybody said. "An exterior design plan is important to me." If it's important to her, it's important to you as the roofing contractor.

So if you go in there and you are hitting it hard and roof, roof, roof by this roof, roof, get a roof, and you're not acknowledging or at least engaging a little bit into what we're trying to get done here. Nobody is asking a roofing contractor to be an exterior design professional, because you know what, you just got to get in my head. You have to get me to say it. You just have to acknowledge the fact that, "Mr. Jones, I know you need a roof. What are we thinking here? What you trying to do? You want light?" I mean, just a couple questions has you acknowledging in your key target that there is an exterior design plan that I'm trying to get to. So that's really important. That would be a key takeaway for me.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. Pam, as you're looking at visualization and being able to... I mean, as the technology of visualization, it's been a game changer I know with your platform.

Pam Torrey: Absolutely. One of the things that we always encourage our customers to do is if they have tools like that that are available through a web link, embed it in your presentation. So with an engaged presentation, as long as you have a data connection, you can access the internet directly from your presentation. It's within the format of your presentation. And what this allows you to do is to create that personalized experience. You can have a consistent presentation that you're delivering to every homeowner that you talk to, but you have to be able to personalize it to the buyer who's in front of you at that moment in time. We've pulled a lot of research on this topic, and 80% of customers feel that brands do not understand them. And that's across the board. That's large brands, that's small brands, those are all businesses that they talk to, but 90% of customers find personalization to be appealing.

And if you personalize the experience, you're going to patch more of those customers than if you're just presenting a page with a bunch of shingle options on it. That visualizer is a way to personalize the experience. It's a way to say, "This is your home and this is a tool we have to help you as the homeowner to see what this could do for your largest asset, what this could do for the place that your family lives, where your kids are growing up." And so these specific tools help you to create that personal connection while also helping to get them to that selection a little bit faster so that you can get that contract signed and get out of there. So it's a really helpful tool.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And it's interesting, Tara, you have some great comments here saying almost all the roof colors pitched for the roof are made by the woman under the roof. Rarely do men actually make that determination on their own. And absolutely-

Tara Colopy: If I could join in here, Heidi, it is our job as contractors to help them design and to lead them and to build the long-term dream. So whether you're just a roofing contractor or you are roofing, siding, windows, you want to build that long-term dream for multifaceted reasons. Number one, it creates a customer that is going to return. Nobody is going into a home and saying, "Look at your home." I think I had showed this picture before. I wish I would've given it a clip, but here's a home that we did on the visualizer with hover, and we were able to show this homeowner, look what your home could look like if you did multi projects, and maybe you don't have the budget in 2023 to do that, but let's do your roof in 2023. Let's look at the siding in 24. Let's look on down the line. But it is our job as a contractor to help them to be the expert in our colors that we can show them, to be the expert in building that pipe dream for them.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And Tara, I want to real quick, this is just clicking in my head right now, but I've sat in, [inaudible 00:30:43] yeah, I've sat in presentations before where I've been ignored and they don't realize that I'm now going to talk to my husband. I'm going to say, "I don't want to work with these folks because they didn't engage, they didn't talk to both of us." And if I feel like someone's ignoring Tim, I'm going to feel the exact same way. It's that emotional intelligence of connecting with those folks. But for what you're saying too, you are building, talk a little bit about that importance of really talking and engaging with everybody in the room and also how that leads to siding, windows, everything else down the road.

Tara Colopy: Well, you're pulling swatches. It's almost like when you put an outfit together in the morning, you're not throwing just things on in the dark and hoping that it matches when you walk out. You're trying to plan for how you're going to look for the day. With your home, for this house in particular, we're starting with the roof, and then we're looking at Hardie Board for the siding here in the future. So we started with a roof that was outside of the comfort zone of that client, but let's look at what it will look like when we throw in some black windows next year, and then we go to a different charcoal siding or charcoal Hardie Board, just building that out for them. But showing the swatches, putting colors together, it is very difficult in a home because you'll get a lot of him-haw. I don't know what to choose. And being confident with the homeowner in color selection and giving them a few choices with all products built out, it makes the decision so much easier, so.

Heidi J Ellsworth: No, I think that's what... We just had Todd. Thank you. Beginning with the end in mind, the true test of the sales consultant is to be able to get both spouses in an initial consult where typically the alpha male doesn't see the need to have her present. Having that both. Yeah, but I also want to say too, I think it's, Todd to your point, and we're not going to go too far off color, but I think it's also important to be respectful and I think what this next generation's going to be even more so, how are you respectful of time? Because time is so valuable to families right now, and you really do need to have both people there to be able, so you're getting all sides of the story, but also, and Tara, I'm going to go back to you one more time. From your sales perspective, how do you handle that?

Tara Colopy: I'm sorry, could you repeat that question? I want to [inaudible 00:33:17]-

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, no, just... Oh, no, it's great 'cause they were saying it's important to have both people, both partners in the home, but also at the same time respecting their time because time is valuable. You've got soccer practice, you've got all these things going on. How do you make that emotional connection that both of them are there with sales folks, but yet not feeling like, "Oh, it's taking so long. What's happening?"

Tara Colopy: Well, I think having, like Pam was saying about presentation and having a presentation that's cut into a certain amount of time is going to be helpful. The homeowner is going to lead you into the length of time that... I've seen some of our sales teams sit in houses for four hours and they were having meals with a customer, and we've seen people that meet at the front door and they just want to know what color and what product you're sticking on their roof. So you just got to build that rapport immediately and build that emotional connection off the bat. And that starts from the phone call, that starts from in the building here with our team, that we're setting expectations before we're showing up at the house.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That's awesome.

Sue Burkett: We recommended Owens Corning, again, but we're not out there on the street selling, but what we hear is homeowners feel a lot of pressure as soon as the contractor comes there. You can be the nicest people on earth, they already expect pressure. So give them homework before you show up. Start asking the questions on the phone call, just so you bring the right boards, so you bring the right colors. You don't bring green when I wanted red, and then try to sell around it from a little chip on the board. What do you like? What don't you like? Can you give addresses over the phone? How much homework can you give the homeowner so that by the time you arrive, you're not starting at scratch, you're not going, "Okay, let's talk about color now. What are you thinking?

Pam Torrey: Heidi, I also-

Sue Burkett: [inaudible 00:35:14] What you can do upfront.

Pam Torrey: Heidi, I [inaudible 00:35:17]-

Tara Colopy: And don't bring all of your samples in the front door right away. That is overwhelming for a consumer to have this person that's walking in with boxes and briefcases and it's like, "Oh my God, this is so much." Just walk in and shake their hand and look in the eye and be the expert.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Love it. And Pam?

Pam Torrey: Heidi, I also think there's something to be said for the kinds of tools that you use to shorten your sales appointment. If you do not want to be in the home for four hours, that's a very, very long appointment.

Heidi J Ellsworth: [inaudible 00:35:46].

Pam Torrey: That's aggressive. If you want to shorten your appointment and be able to get the information across in a faster way, you need to use tools that help people to process and retain information more quickly. So that's why I recommend that people include video in their sales content. If a customer watches a video, they retain 95% of the information that's delivered in that video versus 10% of text that they read. So if you're trying to explain installation to someone who has never purchased an exterior home product before, put together a video on it or call your manufacturer and ask them for a video. Owens Corning has incredible assets. We have them in our presentation from Owens Corning. They have incredible assets that help you to explain that process. You can cut down that component of your sales presentation from 15 minutes of talking about installation to a three-minute video, and your customer's going to retain that information and move on. So if you're looking for ways to make your sales cycle shorter, use your tech.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Well, and Terry just said here in the thing, we do it virtually yet, build the connection from the first intake phone call. Just like what Tara is saying, we take off all the pressure, total time in the phone, video call is about 30 minutes.

Tara Colopy: We do a video in our presentation that is a video of me and Steve talking to the homeowner, and we're telling them a little bit about who we are as people, as the company, so they get to see the owner of the company and who they are as a person and try to make that connection before we jump right into sign the contract. So that's very helpful, and it's like Pam said, it shortens and it gives people insight into who the company is.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I love it. Well, I want to talk just a little bit about what trends we're seeing in design, design trends. So I'm just going to scroll through these a little bit, so everyone can see them. But I really wanted to have, Tara, I wanted to start with you on design trends that you're seeing and then trends that you're recommending. And maybe tell us a little bit about this picture too.

Tara Colopy: Well, if I were to start with this picture, it was a home makeover that we did for a veteran household. They were both veterans of the military. One was injured. He was the Cleveland police officer that was injured. So we wanted to give them a home. They were stuck on having a farmhouse look, but she was very interested in gardens, and you can't see it in this picture, but she had gardens all through the back of the home and he was building her this little greenhouse type thing. And so when it came to the drawing table with us as a company, we said, "Why don't we give her a cottage look?"

And we wanted to implement the blue roof because of the patriotic element of it. So this is a trend that I think, I mean, this brought in a lot of phone calls when people saw this because this took a lot of guts to put all of these elements on their home, but they fell in love with it. And I can't believe the outpouring of positive support we've had for this look for this cottage. It's a twist on a cottage look. It's stunning.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, it's darling. I love it.

Tara Colopy: Isn't it cute? If you saw all her gardens, it was just so sweet. Yeah, we were really proud of that.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And so this is a case where you're actually making the suggestions on helping them to create that design and looking at their life, looking at the gardens. I love that. And then coming back with ideas.

Tara Colopy: Yes, we took what they wanted. They wanted black and white, and I said, "Let's do something totally different." So my team and I sat in a room and we used a visualizer and we gave them four options. So before we even went into their home, we were guiding them right off the bat. And when they came down to the blue door, they were like, "Oh, the blue door, it's going to look fabulous with the American flag that we're installing in your front yard." So it turned out great.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That is so cool.

Jessica Tinney: I'd love to make a comment too. I just think Tara, as we're listening to how you sell and the value you're driving, it's not only about listening, and that's I think a key thing, but also being prepared with all the tools that you could have and as you're hearing what they want, being able to say, I know you think you want this, but we have something better or we have a different option that you might like better. And I think that's such a key thing and why I think Tara, you've seen such success because you're able to provide that personalization to your homeowners that they are not getting other places. And that I think is really key.

Tara Colopy: Thank you.

Sue Burkett: And I think the example that you have on the screen, a lot of people can't put it together themselves.

Jessica Tinney: Right.

Sue Burkett: "Well, I don't know. I'll just take black shutters and let's just make it outside white." And when you show them, they go, "Yes, okay, I'll do that." But if you had asked them up front design the perfect exterior plan, they might have trouble. And so that's really great about this and why you have so much interest after you do it. People are like, "Wow, love that color of the door. Love those shutters. Love that combination."

Tara Colopy: You never would've thought to put that together. You hear that all the time. People walk out on the front step and they look up and down the street, and I like that color. Why not be different? Why not stand out? Right.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Well, and Tara, you talked about coming prepared with the visualizer and having different options available. It's a big, big scary project. It's audacious to change the color of your house. That is a big project, and I think a lot of people are hesitant to take a risk, and if you come armed with the, "Here's what it's actually going to look like on your house", it takes away that fear.

Tara Colopy: Well, it keeps the sizzle going?

Pam Torrey: I like that, the sizzle.

Tara Colopy: If you leave the home and the homeowner is all over the board with what color they want. "I want purple, I want black, I want gray." They have no idea. They have no vision for their home. That project, that sizzle that you had with them in that moment is going to fade out. It is a large project, unless it's a need, if it's a want. So why not keep it going and give them a leave behind that shows that they can put up on their refrigerator, a couple of pictures and let it simmer a little bit when they're making their decision.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Well, and I even love what you talk about too, is maybe we're starting right now with the roof, and because homeowners are budgeting, they can only afford so much at a time. But if they have this picture, this visualization of what this is going to look like in three or four years by doing a little something every year, not only is that great for you as a contractor, but that's great for them because I do visualization all the time. I love to put pictures up and say, "Okay, this is where we're going to be someday, hopefully."

Tara Colopy: And there's nothing cheaper in marketing than a return customer, right?

Heidi J Ellsworth: Right. It makes so much sense.

Tara Colopy: Referral and a return customer, the two greatest things we could have.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. So, I'm not... Oh, go ahead.

Tara Colopy: I'm sorry. If we talked about resale, which we haven't really talked about here, so let's say you have this exact same house and the misconception is it's got to be colors on the exterior that people won't find defensive. So put a black roof, make it white house. I'm telling you, if you had this exact house next door in your vanilla exterior, this house here is going to sell for more and it's going to sell quicker. So it goes against the grain of what most people think is, "Oh my God, I'm selling. I need to need to come back." No, no, no, no. A well-designed exterior is going to sell.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yes. That's their first impression when they drive up. Their lasting first impression, as we say.

Tara Colopy: Yeah.

Jessica Tinney: I think to that point too is we're looking at trends. One trend is that people don't want to always look just like their neighbor. They want to be differentiated in the neighborhood.

Heidi J Ellsworth: We do.

Jessica Tinney: And we're seeing that in color. We're seeing it in our designer line, the different tabs and the different personalities. You're able to have that on your home, which hasn't always been the case. And I think we're going to start seeing that even more and more over the next few years.

Sue Burkett: I love that.

Heidi J Ellsworth: The trend of not being in same as everybody else.

Sue Burkett: Yeah. And our research with women showed the younger, there were four different age breakouts, the youngers were all about, "Bring me color, bring me color. Let me see it." Now, I don't know if they want to be that house on the block, but they definitely don't want to be what everybody else is.

Heidi J Ellsworth: So what are you all seeing? And maybe Sue, I'll start with you, but what are you seeing as trends? I mean, as a manufacturer, you see what's selling right? What colors are selling? What's your hottest colors out there? What are some of the trends in roofing that you see this year, but also going into 2024?

Sue Burkett: For us, color is trend. It's not a particular color. I get asked this a lot. People want me to say, "Well, it's red." It's color, right. It's color that fits your personality. And who am I to say, "Nope, sorry. We're not going to sell red. No, sorry, we're out of the red business. Whatever. I'm making it up. But we see color perform in places we wouldn't like in Florida, Onyx Black, our black is a big seller. What, really? In Florida? I mean we make this terracotta color. It's an orange meant to look like barrel tile. We sell a ton of it up in Chicago, you would think that would be down in the southwest. It's just people want color.

Pam Torrey: It's dark here, Sue. It's dark here. We want bright color. I live in Chicago. We want bright color things.

Sue Burkett: Yes. Well, and I think we can thank HGTV for a lot of that stuff.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yes.

Sue Burkett: They showed us that more color, the better. Sometimes you watch a show and go, "Nope, I'm not doing that." But you know what? That's part of the process too. When you pick a color is not only knowing what you want, because a lot of times you can't articulate what I want, but I can definitely tell you what I don't want. So I don't want this, don't want this. And it's just the narrowing down process of, "Okay, that's one way to go at it. If you can't tell me what I want, then let's just talk about what you don't want." So the beauty of HGTV showed us, of course in a weekend you can boom, boom, boom, all this is done. But you do have the beauty of seeing the befores and the afters and the huge transformation and how color a lot of times is it. So really for us, the trend is color. It's not a particular color. It's just having a lot of colors that can go with whatever trends might get thrown at us.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I would love it if everyone in the chat, if you put in what you see as the most popular color that you're selling right now, it would be, I'd love to see that in the chat, just what's the most popular color out there that you're selling? One of the things you brought up that I think is really important is that HGTV culture, right?

Tara Colopy: Yes.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That really has helped to change us. So Tara, how much is that influencing?

Tara Colopy: Oh, I talk about this all the time. Thank you HGTV is what I say. I think that, again, I mean the interior of the home was so important, and HGTV has really changed that with those, like Sue just said, the quick turnover of the house and you think you can get it done in a weekend and have a whole new exterior and things, which is what we actually did with this house. That was an HGTV style. It took us five days, but I think it gave women a voice, and I think we have them to thank for part of that. I think that HGTV gave women a voice in home remodeling, and so I'm really passionate about that. I talk about it a lot.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, I see the same thing because, I mean, look at this roof, and we had some other great pictures in there, but when you're looking at it now to think that roofing is in Pinterest, right?

Tara Colopy: Yes.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That they're actually using it and going through there and just, you're nodding a lot. And I'm really interested as we're talking too about that next generation. We talked a little bit earlier about Gen Z and millennials, but from a Owens Corning side as we are HGTV culture, the next generation, what are some of the trends you're seeing?

Jessica Tinney: I think so talking through color, I agree with Sue wholeheartedly. I think that's the next trend. But it comes down to our contractors also feeling comfortable and confident selling color. And I think Tara's group does a great job and I think there's still a lot of opportunity there, and we're going to see people investing and asking more. They're doing the research first, so they're not waiting always for their contractor to come. And Tara, I don't know if you see this a lot, but they might start coming to you with, "Hey, we need a new roof. This is the color I want." And they've already done a lot of that research. So having the tools, but also having examples to Sue's point of houses that already have roofs on them that you can really see how it would look or certain styles that are similar to yours. You could see how it looks.

I know, and Sue could speak to this too, is when we introduced Duration Designer product line, it was 2010, we really, I mean, I think some of the old school roofers were like, "What the heck are you guys doing? We want black, brown, and gray." But we focused on that, and honestly, we've seen amazing success with these product lines, and I think it's because we've been able to harness, we were patenting designs, we're showcasing that color and your roof is the jewelry, to Tara's point, of your house and can make a huge difference.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah.

Tara Colopy: Contractors don't do the best job focusing on their own experience. For me, I put a roof on my home and I thought through the emotional points of view through the entire process. I made my poor husband go up and nail four different shingles on the back of my house and to paint four different colors on the house. I mean, it looked like a carnival for a while, but I thought, had I had a contractor show up to my home and help me through this process, it would've been an easier decision for me to pull the trigger. And so every time I think about what we do in a home, I make sure to think about what my own experience is. And I think from a woman's perspective, if more contractors could do that, they would have much more success.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. We've had some great comments on colors. Still a lot of blacks and browns, but they want to get these pops. But Gen Z is that Pinterest really, they use it. They collect things and they put things in there. I think Tara, you took to, one of my last questions, I think so important is the importance of technology in the sell and in the visualization. We talked about the visualizer a little bit earlier, but where do you see technology and the use of technology really influencing the future of in-home sells Tara?

Tara Colopy: You have to use technology. I mean, look at the two-year-old kid that can probably navigate my iPhone better than I could. It's so important, but you can't let it take the place of the emotional connection. It has to be an add-in. You have to have a good balance of both. You don't want to just send somebody your sales pitch through an email and expect that they're going to, "Oh, yes, let me sign that contract." You have to still be able to make that emotional connection with your homeowner, but if you don't have technology in your presentation, you're a dinosaur at this point. You have to have it.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And Pam talk about putting the emotion into the technology too. I think it's both. You're saying you have to have that emotional tie. How are you not replacing the in-person and that emotional, but how are you infusing the technology with emotional intelligence?

Pam Torrey: Yeah. I think you can do this in a couple of important ways. Number one is that we recommend at Ingage that you get sales training. You need to have a sales process. You need to be following some kind of a methodology that helps your reps to know how to sell. You can't just send somebody into the home with an iPad and hope that they're going to figure it out. That's not how things go well in this industry. You need to do good training, so we always recommend that you work with one of our sales training partners if you don't have a process already in place. That process will be bolstered by the technology. The technology is what's going to allow you to take someone off the street who was maybe doing a different job. They were doing a different industry, they were somewhere else, and they want to get into home improvement.

Great. You need to train them. They need to know what they're doing, and then you give them the tools to effectively do their job. The other element of that is that technology enables you to make those connections faster. It enables you to pivot when the buyer is giving you signals that they want to go a different direction than you were planning. I think Jessica talked about this earlier, that buyers are doing more research ahead of time, like 57% of the buying process is done before you walk into the house. That's over half the buying process, and that's just on average. If you're dealing with a younger buyer, you're usually dealing with somebody who has done a lot more research and they've been online, 'cause they don't want to talk to you on the phone. They don't want to have a conversation with you on the phone.

They're going to do a lot more research. So when you encounter someone who's maybe farther down the funnel than you would anticipate them being, you need to be able to pivot and meet that customer where they are in the moment. That might mean skipping part of your sales presentation. That might mean that you go to your visualizer earlier than you were planning. That might mean that you're pricing stuff out within a few minutes of being in the home. Every buyer is different. And I would encourage everyone on here who sells Owens Corning products to take a look at the tech stack presentation that Owens Corning built out earlier this year. Actually, I built it with them. It lays out an incredible tech stack for all Owens Corning contractors from the start of the sales process. So from the second you need a website, the second a lead hits your website, how do you get those folks through to the close and asking for the referral using technology?

And it's really a great tool. Ingage is part of it. But we have wonderful partners who are part of it. We actually integrate with most of those partners on that list, and it's going to revolutionize the way you sell. And what's wonderful is that Owens Corning has actually set up preferred pricing on most of these platforms for all of their contractors with these tech partners. So there's so many resources out there, and I would love to be one of your resources. We'd love to work with you, but there are so many different options out there. You figure out where you are in the process and who your buyer is, and then what's most important to them to bring the technology piece by piece.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And we had a question here, and Sue, or I'm not sure who exactly he's going to answer this, but who are your sales training partners? Jessica?

Jessica Tinney: Yeah. So working with your local ASMs, we host events with our sales training partners. Either Rodney Webb or Adam Benzeman, they host for large groups of contractors. And then we also do provide OC University that is for our contractors. And honestly, I think even contractors that we may not be part of our program can go on it and learn more about product training, about the selling process. So we have a ton of different types of tools that we currently utilize.

Heidi J Ellsworth: It's excellent.

Tara Colopy: Can I touch base on one more thing that we haven't really-

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yes.

Tara Colopy: Talked about besides just the in-home sale portion of selling, we have to also talk about when you're in your advertising and in your marketing pieces and your leave behinds, that it's a cohesive and consistent message from the company that this doesn't all just happen in the house. It has to be, like I said, that each marketing piece has to be cohesive and you have to lead towards the type of business you are. So if you're designers, then you lead them towards being my company stands out because we can help you design your home. So it starts way sooner than a phone call to your business or being in the home.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And I think Tara to that point, work with your manufacturers to get so great materials, I mean, help you in [inaudible 00:57:40]-

Tara Colopy: Well, the asset is unbeatable.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Asset, everything. And so I've put back up here, Owens Corning, who is the sponsor of this Coffee Conversations, which has been amazing. But we always like to say, "What's the next step?" And the next step is get in touch with Owens Corning, find out what they have color of the year, what kind of sales training, tech stacks, collateral you can get, because there is just so much out there. And I will say for any of your manufacturers, we encourage this to contractors all the time. Get with your manufacturers, whoever you're working with, you can take all of this and start incorporating it. So ladies, thank you so much. This has been phenomenal.

Tara Colopy: Thank you.

Sue Burkett: Thank you.

Pam Torrey: Thank you.

Jessica Tinney: Thank you.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Thank you.

Tara Colopy: Happy holidays everybody.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, happy holidays and thank you everybody for being here this morning. Remember to check out the directories on Owens Corning. You're going to find the Tech Stack information there. You're going to find out about color, everything in the Roofers Coffee Shop directory for Owens Corning, the Roofers Coffee Shop directory for Ingage. You can get all of the information you want there. And for The Third Estimate, if you want to get in touch with Tara, she has a full directory for their company as part of the R-Club. And you can see all of that and everything that they're doing is so amazing.

I want to say to all of you, from all of us at the Coffee Shops, happy holidays. We're grateful for you. We know this has been a great year, and we're looking forward to a spectacular year in 2024, and we are going to start it off with a bang. On January 11th our Coffee Conversations is going to be shining a light on the dark side of the labor shortage, and this is in response to some recent articles that have come out about child labor, about safety, about immigration. We will have McKay Daniels, Jason Stanley, and Trent Cotney. I'm telling you you don't want to miss this one. So thank you all. Thank you for the great conversation today, and we'll see you all in the new year.