Katy Rebernak & Alexandra Bohannon: Building Trust in Roofing Tech - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Katy Rebernak from Beacon Building Products and Alexandra Bohannon from Leap. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro: Welcome to Roofing Road Trips, the podcast that takes you on a thrilling journey across the world of roofing. From fascinating interviews with roofing experts to on-the-road Adventures, we'll uncover the stories, innovations and challenges that shape the rooftops over our heads. So fasten your seatbelts and join us as we embark on this exciting roofing road trip.

Heidi Ellsworth: Hello and welcome to another Roofing Road trips from Roofer's Coffee Shop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth, and today we are talking about building trust and great partnerships. We have the experts here today from Beacon Building Products and Leap. So I am so happy to introduce Katy Rebernak and Alex Bohannon to the show. Welcome ladies.

Alexandra Bohannon: Hello. It's great to be here and glad to join you today.

Katy Rebernak: Yeah, thanks for having us today, Heidi.

Heidi Ellsworth: Oh, I'm just so excited. This is a great topic. Very top of mind, what everybody is thinking about right now, how technology is working, how we're able to really do digital ordering in a way that makes sense and how distribution is working with technology across the board. Let's start out with some introductions. First of all, Alex, can you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about what you do.

Alexandra Bohannon: Yeah, so I'm Alex Bohannon as you previously discussed. I'm the product marketing manager here at Leap. I cover mostly the CRM side because we have two great products, Leap CRM and Leap Sales Pro. I cover the CRM side and then I also tackle most of our integrations for Leap CRM as well. All those go-to-market launches. I'm your gal.

Heidi Ellsworth: I was going to say, that's a lot of work. And well done.

Alexandra Bohannon: Well, there's more of us, so it's not just me.

Heidi Ellsworth: Put it all together. I love it. Katy, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do?

Katy Rebernak: Absolutely. So I'm Katy Rebernak, as you mentioned. I'm our director of strategy and operations for E-Commerce with Beacon Building Products. Beacon is a Fortune 500 roofing wholesaler, the biggest in US and Canada. We have decided that we want to be the best when it comes to customer experience and make sure that customers are able to engage with us however they want to shop, and that includes online. We're very committed to having a premier e-commerce experience, and that's what I do for Beacon. I help deliver that through great partnerships like this one with Leap.

Heidi Ellsworth: I love it. That is great. Well, Katy, let's start out with that. Let's talk about what inspired that partnership. You kind of alluded to that, but what's really inspired the partnership between Leap and Beacon?

Katy Rebernak: Beacon is committed to helping contractors order in the software that they already use. We, like I said, want to make it as seamless as possible to do business with us. One of those great ways is finding great CRM companies like Leap who have developed an end-to-end customer experience that help roofers manage every step of that journey. Ultimately, we want to be able to plug into that and take advantage of that and offer the ability to purchase materials within that platform as well. We met Leap, what? About a year ago. We saw that the technology is really superior and high quality, and we have tons of roofers who already love it and use it and recommended that we proceed with this partnership.

Heidi Ellsworth: That is awesome. Alex, just as this started coming together, talk to us a little bit about this partnership.

Alexandra Bohannon: I talked to our partnership manager, Nick and he's been kind of the go-to guy for the whole gamut for working with Beacon. He was saying that when we were looking at developing more partnerships and integrations, one thing that's really important to us and it's probably super important to Beacon as well, is the alignment of core company values.

Beacon, we saw their values, putting people first doing the right thing, that's really in alignment with what we do here at Leap. Plus, we do have that huge mutual customer base that Katy already referenced. So it's pretty much just leaning into what the future holds for material integrations into the technology people already use. We want to take those everyday tasks, the stuff you do all the time, like ordering and finding pricing, streamline that user experience so that people can have a lot more easier time, a more comfortable time, making it pretty straightforward to order the types of materials you need.

Beacon's an industry giant. We knew that the partnership would be make a huge splash, and we knew that we would both complement each other with our mutual customer base. Beacon's amazing and we're really big fans, so we're glad that they're in the product now.

Katy Rebernak: That's very kind of you. Y'all are amazing too.

Alexandra Bohannon: Yeah. We can just mutual admiration all of this call right now for sure.

Heidi Ellsworth: That that's the way it should be when you're working together. Really, you don't want to be at that place where you're like, "Oh no, I don't want to work with them." No, you want to be excited. So I love it.

Alexandra Bohannon: A hundred percent.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah. Well, talking about being excited, Katy, you said it right at the beginning, is that it's really about making customers who are working with Beacon, who are working with Leap, have the best customer experience and really be able in turn to grow their business. Why don't you, both of you actually, I want to walk through that order process of the Leap CRM when using Beacon products. What's making it so simple and secure? I'm not sure, maybe Alex, why don't we start with you?

Alexandra Bohannon: Sure. Yeah, that's super great. This is a great question. Over the course of the past few months, definitely this quarter, we've had the privilege of delivering so much great training content to not just our internal folks, but to external folks. We just got off a really awesome webinar, which I can send you a link to that so people can get a recording of it where we go through all these details in detail with a picture on screen so you can follow along. Anyway, that's my boilerplate before I go into explaining how to actually order within Leave CRM. The first thing you need is you need that Beacon ProPlus account. You have the company managed accounts, which Katy can go more into how all that the company management of user identities works, but each user that's trying to place an order needs their own unique credentials. Some material suppliers don't require that, but that's one thing that we really like about Beacon is that extra layer security, you have one account, one user is placing those orders and you can kind of trace the line of command all the way back to that one person.

First you'll need that. After you have your admin turn on the integration into your account, and then folks start to log in, you'll start with your materials worksheet. So you click that materials estimate worksheet button, and then you can go through and either just type materials as they come, it's like, "Oh, I know I need these GAF shingles. I can type that in the materials search bar." Or you can actually import Beacon templates into Leap CRM as macros. We call them macros in Leap, they're templates.

With those templates you can make custom formulas, so that say that you have a roofing measurement integration partner, like a hover or an eagle view, you can take those measure room at reports. If you have those formulas set up, you can import those right into that estimate worksheet. And you don't have to do any of the math of like, "Oh, how many squares am I going to need to fulfill this order?"

You can do all of that from the estimate worksheet. Then whenever you're ready to manipulate that further, say you're going to send it off for a customer signature, you get that back, then you can turn that same document, again, you've not had to manually re-enter anything, it's all been like, "I'm transforming this into a materials order now," or, "I'm turning this into a Beacon order form now." With just a couple clicks, you can turn it into that materials list, you can turn it into a Beacon order form and then you place that order right in Leap. That's one of the coolest things about the integration. So Katy, if you wanted to talk a little bit about that material ordering process, whenever we start that handoff to your side of things.

Katy Rebernak: Yeah, Alex, I think you described it really well. Here's what happens when it comes over to the Beacon side of the house, that I think differentiates this partnership. We put this into our order management system, and then someone at the local Beacon branch is still checking that order in detail. So every single line item is getting looked at. Even though it came through electronically, we still have eyeballs on it. Often we'll still have our local inside sales rep give the contractor a call, "Hey, I noticed that you have let's say like black caulk, but the roof is brown, the shingles are brown. Is that what you intended to do?" That's how we can differentiate ourselves and create that better customer experience. We're still providing that concierge inside sales rep reviewing and checking all of these details.

I was at the branch once and someone accidentally ordered things in square feet instead of squares, or maybe in bundled, it was a brand new person to the roofing industry. I've seen people order things in terms of bundles versus squares, and there's confusion about which do I use? That's why we've got our Beacon internal team still providing that expertise, even though the order was technically placed through Leap. Again, really cool that it helps the contractor save a lot of time from not doing double entry or having to pick up the phone or worse, drive to a local branch, that it can all be done in the Leap platform.

Heidi Ellsworth: Because what you were saying, both Alex and Katy, not having to re-enter numbers, not having that problem where the numbers are going to get messed up or you're going to transpose them, whatever that may be. Those advantages of being in one system that talks to each other. Alex, talk just a little bit about that because that is really one of the biggest leaps, no pun intended or maybe it's intended.

Alexandra Bohannon: Well, we take it.

Heidi Ellsworth: We acknowledge you.

Alexandra Bohannon: [Inaudible 00:10:39] we have to. One of the really cool things about the integration is that our connection to Beacon is via authenticated API. What that means is that we can pull things like the live materials library. That library, whenever someone's typing in, if you're just typing in one at a time the products you need from Beacon or you're just pulling it through your templates and macros, that all is updated live. You're going to know if once you've set that estimate worksheet to whatever branch you're ordering from, if that product is or isn't in stock and you're also going to know how much that product is costing you literally right now, not like 24 hours ago, a week ago, it's pretty much a pull whenever you start typing in that information. It takes half a second, it updates instantly and then there you go.

I was actually talking to one of our project managers, and this is just an interesting note. Say you're ordering something in Leap and you've typed in the materials price, you've got it all in, you've locked and loaded. By the time you might be manipulating that estimate again, the price could have changed. That's how accurate the pricing is. It's literally down to the moment that you've typed in all of that stuff. Now granted, I don't know how frequently the pricing changes on the Beacon side of things, but it's just good to keep in mind that that's how accurate the pricing is, that that might be something to have to consider. We really are big fans about that. Then how helpful color coding. So say you're going really fast and you're like, "Oh yeah, sure, sure, sure, this works." And it's like, "No." It flags it. It's like, "This is not in stock here, you will not have a good time trying to find that product here."

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah. Well, talk to that a little bit too, Katy. Because knowing... I just think back in the day, you never knew where the pricing was going to be if you were from one day to call to the next, now having that at your fingertips. Also just product availability, inventory, all of that. Talk a little bit about how strong that is for the salespeople out there who are using Leap to sell and be able to have that kind of information.

Katy Rebernak: Alex mentioned it, we're pulling everything in real time between our systems. If we're sold out of a particular product, as soon as we're sold out, that information is getting transmitted over to Leap via those APIs that were mentioned. So pricing is much the same. The cool thing though about this integration that we haven't mentioned, and this is where Beacon really has a lot of passion. Just because something isn't showing up, doesn't mean we can't get it.

There are a lot of order notes and different capabilities that the Leap team has built in to accommodate the fact that Beacon tries really hard to say yes before we say no. So in the event that there's limited inventory or maybe they can't find a product, we've created a lot of fields that contractors can still use almost to communicate directly with their sales rep. It's truly intended to replace a phone conversation. That's what this integration is all about. It's just making it very easy to track and monitor things digitally. So if there is that conversation that would occur via email or on the phone, it can still be done, just online, which is really nice.

Heidi Ellsworth: And you still have that relationship.

Katy Rebernak: Exactly.

Alexandra Bohannon: Katy, remember, we were on the webinar on Friday, there's a woman in the chat in the Q&A. Do you remember what industry? She was asking about a very niche industry. She was like, "Hey, can you guys get these suppliers?" I think it might've been like pools.

Katy Rebernak: Yeah, she was in a pool supply business. Yes.

Alexandra Bohannon: Then Katy's like, "Yeah, absolutely. We can do anything to just make it happen." I think that goes to show A, Beacon being super customer-centric people-first type of business. And B, just the fact that we're going to try and do our best to empower your business to get the materials you need. We want to be trying to shoot for that, yes, instead of being like, "Oh, well no, we can't do that." But we're going to shoot for that yes before we even breathe into a no, for sure.

Heidi Ellsworth: I love it. I love it. Okay. There's a lot of contractors out there still to this day that are nervous about that digital online ordering, nervous at accuracy, the relationship like we were talking about before. How does this integration between Leap and Beacon and your triple check guarantee, that you talked about earlier from Beacon, how are you helping some of these contractors that just haven't been able to get over that step of going to digital, make it happen through here? Katy, maybe you can start for us.

Katy Rebernak: I'll tell a personal story. I was on a ride along in my hometown, Greenville, South Carolina and there was a contractor. I was bonding with him because we both have tiny humans and no time in our lives and are always juggling one ball too many. He was saying, "I just need a CRM. I just need a tool that's going to help me manage my business. I'm missing my kid's baseball game. He just started T-ball. My wife is starting to get irritated at me. I need to take a vacation." One of his notes was like, "I either need a CRM or I need to hire an office person." He ended up making the choice that he was like, "I'm going to go with the CRM." He was telling me about how he was evaluating those CRMs and what it was looking like, but that's what he was up against.

I think this contractor was obviously a younger millennial and thought of technology, but I think for a lot of contractors, there's still this thought of like, "Well, I'll just hire two or three more people." And CRMs, like Leap, are replacing that overhead in a very cost-effective way. And they're giving contractors a lot more tools and capability of managing their business so that they can get the five-star reviews, they can go sell the next house, they can get the next job. That's really what Beacon wants. Because we know that when contractors are successful, we are successful. We could not exist without helping them and supporting them to grow and be more efficient. That's really our goal with this partnership. As I mentioned, Leap has built something that's top of the line, really, really strong and it just makes sense.

Beacon does not partner with every CRM out there because we're very sensitive to making sure that whoever we partner with is thinking of that customer and is really providing a comprehensive solution to meet their needs.

Heidi Ellsworth: That says a lot, Alex, that's pretty awesome.

Alexandra Bohannon: Yeah. I feel very thankful. Thanks, Katy, that really means a lot to us here at leap, for sure.

Heidi Ellsworth: Well, and you've been responsible and all of the folks at Leap have been responsible for really breaking down those barriers for contractors to make it easier for them to take that next step. Talk a little bit about what you've seen on contractors on the understanding that they can trust the accuracy, they can trust all the information and the data that's coming through and really how you're helping them take that next step, like Katy was talking about, to go digital, to really save themselves time and also to make sure everything's right.

Alexandra Bohannon: It feels like once folks get their foot in the door with a CRM, they have it in their mind, it's like, "I can do some digital adoption and I can make my life easier." That's the first step. It feels like after that first step is taken, from there it's a lot easier to have a conversation. It feels very natural to just encourage folks like, "Hey, did you know could use our two different data reporting tools within Leap to get insight into where your jobs are getting stuck in your workflow or what your profit and loss is for the past couple of quarters?" That's all available within Leap CRM. The data and analytics tools so that contractors and business owners can make the kinds of decisions they need.

Instead of having to download everything out of QuickBooks, maybe put it in a spreadsheet, hope that data visualization is your middle name. You don't have to do any of that legwork just to get some of the insights that these business owners are really truly craving. We have one data tool that has over 500 data points that people can make their own reports. It's really, really slick. It's the stuff that can really be game changing for small businesses, and medium to large businesses too.

Heidi Ellsworth: The thing I love about Leap, is that the data that is there is across the board, like you're talking about. Obviously in this case you're going to be looking at ordering and production and all of that, but Leap also is so phenomenal on the sales side as with data and understanding where the customers are, what they're doing, how the salespeople are interacting with them. Just talk a little bit more, Alex, about the importance of good data. Also, I'm going to ask add to that because I think a lot of contractors are also a little scared about sharing their data or having their data out there. Talk about how important that in and out really is.

Alexandra Bohannon: From the importance of good data, within by the end of the year, we're going to be rolling out new production automation capabilities. So things don't,... If you're worried about like, "Oh, I didn't remember to change the workflow stage on this particular job," we're going to have production automations that kind of keep you rolling and keep you covered. Things don't just get stuck in jobs because nobody remembers to go and check back in on the customer or the sales rep that was responsible for them. We've got features coming in, quality of life features like that, that are going to help folks out. But then from the security piece, we've talked a lot about how all of the things that we're doing on the Leap side and the Beacon side, that's all secured via API that's able to give that extra layer of confidence whenever you're authenticating logging in with your Beacon ProPlus credentials to be able to place those orders.

You can't share those credentials with anybody. If someone tries to log in with your account while in the system and you're in, it's going to kick one of you out. It's really the fact that you can be confident placing orders within Leap CRM, knowing that those little orders are going to go to a real person on the Beacon side. They're going to call you, email you, verify that your order is correct. All those great materials are going to end up on your job site exactly when you want them to. That's pretty nice. Honestly, we've got a really... We're proud of the secure systems we built. I know that Katy and her team are proud of the secure systems that they built over there. I'm just happy to bring all of these components together so that people can place orders with confidence.

Heidi Ellsworth: Katy, you're nodding. I know this is audio, you guys aren't seen here, but Katy's nodding.

Alexandra Bohannon: Sure.

Heidi Ellsworth: Talk to us a little bit about that security from the Beacon side of it, because pricing is a big deal and people are very like, "Don't share your pricing, don't talk," all that kind of stuff. How can they know and be confident that that's still going to maintain that privacy?

Katy Rebernak: The way I like to talk about security, is that Beacon is Fortune 500 and publicly traded. If someone were to introduce malware, it would impact everyone. It would impact shareholders, we'd have to report it to the US government, so we have insane Fort Knox level security and privacy. If you're out listening to this podcast, do not tempt our security and privacy because we have it up and down just to make sure that no one goes after us and targets us. Because of that, every API that we've built, every interface that we've built with Leap and all of our partners is super encrypted and under Beacon's Fort Knox level security.

Heidi Ellsworth: I love it. I love it. Okay, let's talk a little bit about some of the fun stuff you guys have going to. This integration all in its own, it's pretty fun and phenomenal for businesses, but you're doing some exclusive access for customers who are using Leap to order through Beacon from promotions. Talk a little bit about that, Alex, what's going on there?

Alexandra Bohannon: We're proud to partner with Beacon on some really cool stuff. We feel really happy the fact that one, if you're ordering in Leap CRM, if you've got special pricing, that special pricing is going to be accessible to you via Leap CRM. You don't have to worry about, "Hey, do I need to verify if this is right or wrong?" That's there, so you got that covered. Second thing, if people are new to Leap CRM and they are maybe a Beacon customer, we are offering a really special discount to folks, it's 20% off your subscription and a $250 credit. That's going to run until the end of the month, so November 30th. We role out special deals like that all the time. I'm sure we're going to have additional promotions for our Beacon fans and super fans. But I know also, Katy, for the folks that already order with Beacon and they're thinking about adding it to their Leap CRM, there's some really great stuff that the Beacon team has for you too.

Katy Rebernak: Yeah, I feel like this is the moment where we should say, "But wait, there's more."

Alexandra Bohannon: It's very that for sure.

Heidi Ellsworth: Like, "Wait."

Katy Rebernak: Look, I mentioned we know that not every roofer is feeling like they're ready to sign up for a digital tool. It's our goal to make it as exciting as possible because we truly believe in it. We know that once customers start ordering online, they stay and they love it. Again, it's the same with Leap. Once you go with Leap, you just stay with Leap. We have promotions right now, the big one is our Fall Fishing Frenzy. So customers who order through Leap can win one of three luxury fishing trips, like deep sea fishing in Cabo, I think there's an Alaskan adventure. But then if it's the contractors first time ever using a digital ordering tool, we're also handing a $350 gift card.

It's Christmas coming up, and I think a lot of people could probably use an extra 350 bucks. It's just a great reason to just try ordering online. The Ts and Cs are, you just got to spend 5K in TRI-BUILT, our private label brand, which there's tons of TRI-BUILT products out there for the roof or in Owens Corning our special sponsor of this program. $5,000, that's a couple roofing jobs. Gives you a couple of orders to try this out and hopefully get hooked to go out and win in the Fall Fishing Frenzy.

Heidi Ellsworth: I love it. What fun promotions. That is great.

Katy Rebernak: We enjoy coming up with these. It's like all marketing at Beacon gets together in a room and we're like, "What's the craziest thing we think we can do for contractors?" So if a contractor is listening to this and they have an idea or a prize, please email me directly because [inaudible 00:26:46] we may run out of an idea at some point. And again, whatever it takes to help drive trial of online ordering.

Alexandra Bohannon: Yeah, I love that. I love that whenever you go onto the Beacon's promotions page, say it's like, "oh shoot, I missed Fall Fishing Frenzy." There's already two other concurrent promotions that you could sign up for and you could be eligible for. There's always going to be something. It's definitely the page to watch if you like free stuff and you like doing your job and getting rewarded for it.

Heidi Ellsworth: That is excellent. I love the $350 for the first time users. That's a great incentive. Of course, who doesn't like to go deep sea fishing? There you go. Especially, I would vote for Cabo personally, but that's pretty fun. So to get these great promotions, to get entered for all of this, let's talk about how contractors can get started. Let's go from both sides. How does this all happen? So Alex, from the Leap side, how do contractors get started and get connected to their Beacon account?

Alexandra Bohannon: Sure. Again, if you're already in Leap CRM, all you have to do is take those Beacon ProPlus credentials. There's probably going to be a link to signing up for Beacon ProPlus in the show notes, so you can follow that link, sign up for an account. There's no risk of getting started. All you do is you log in with that account credential after turning on the integration into your CRM, and then you can get started ordering within seconds of doing that. That's if you already have Leap CRM. If you don't have Leap CRM, might I suggest you consider having Leap CRM and you can go to hub.leaptodigital.com/partner-beacon and that's going to be in the show notes too because that's a long URL, to be able to find more out about our 20% off and $250 credit promotion to folks that are looking or in the market for a CRM. That's how you can get started on this Leap CRM side with some of these great offers.

Heidi Ellsworth: I love it. I love it. And Katy, how are your Beacon folks getting into Leap?

Katy Rebernak: The first thing is, you've got a roofing job, you need to place an order, make sure that you've got your Beacon ProPlus account and go register for the Fall Fishing promotion, which is go.becn\fall24. Keep our URL slightly shorter there, Alex.

Alexandra Bohannon: Yeah, it's like, "Note to sell."

Katy Rebernak: All you do is register and take that roofing job and plop it directly into Leap CRM, and we'll automatically track it and get credit and your Beacon sales rep will let you know if you've won.

Heidi Ellsworth: I love it. I love it. And for those first timers?

Katy Rebernak: For the first timers, same thing. If you meet the promotion criteria, 5K in OC or TRI-BUILT, again, your Beacon OSR will probably ask you to stop into the branch so they can hand you a gift card or you can get them via email as well.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, that's great. For everyone out there, you can find all this information that we just talked about on the directories for Leap and for Beacon, we have all of this on the directories too, along with, we'll make sure on all the show notes too. Ladies, thank you. This has been amazing. Congratulations. This is a lot of work.

Alexandra Bohannon: Yes.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, the perfect time as everybody gets ready to go into 2025.

Katy Rebernak: Absolutely. Heidi, thank you so much for having us on this show. We really appreciate it.

Heidi Ellsworth: I love it.

Alexandra Bohannon: Yeah, Heidi, this has been a treat. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having us. We're honored, and we hope that all the folks out there consider Leap, consider Beacon to help support a strong 2025 for you.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, that's exactly, I was going to say, 2025, it's all about right now, making those changes in your business to be successful, because it's looking great and you want to have all the tools that you need to make it incredibly successful. Again, ladies, thank you so much and we will be... I'm excited to hear how this all goes, and about the fishing trips and everything else that goes along with it.

Katy Rebernak: Absolutely. Thank you.

Alexandra Bohannon: Yeah, thank you.

Heidi Ellsworth: Thank you. And thank you everybody for listening. Be sure to check out both directories, so one for Leap and for Beacon to get all that information on Roofers Coffee Shop. Also, be sure to check out all of our podcasts, our Roofing Road Trips under the RLW Navigation, look for Roofing Road Trips podcast. Or on your favorite podcast channel, be sure to subscribe and set those notifications so you don't miss a single episode. We'll be seeing you next time on Roofing Road Trips.

Outro: If you've enjoyed the ride, don't forget to hit that subscribe button and join us on every roofing adventure. Make sure to visit rooferscoffeeshop.com to learn more. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll catch you on the next Roofing Road Trip.