Robert Gaspard - Market Intelligence and Financing in the Palm of Your Hand! - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Robert Gaspard from SRS Distribution, Inc. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro/Outro: Welcome to Roofing Road Trips with Heidi. Explore the roofing industry through the eyes of a long-term professional within the trade. Listen for insights, interviews, and exciting news in the roofing industry today.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello and welcome to another Roofing Road Trips from Roofers Coffee Shop. This is Heidi Ellsworth, and we're going to be talking today about funding. Yeah, financing. How do you finance, and how do you help homeowners who maybe need just a little bit of help to get that roof to protect everything that's so important in their lives. Well, we're going to talk to the expert at ProFund, Robert Gaspard, about this, about how contractors can use funding, and specifically this is a program through SRS Distribution. We're very excited about this. Robert, welcome to the show.

Robert Gaspard: Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Robert, please introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about ProFund. I'm really excited to hear about all this.

Robert Gaspard: Perfect. So again, my name's Robert Gaspard and I'm the vice president of operations for ProFund. ProFund, we're a software as a service. We were really built for contractors to help them understand their customers buying habits and styles, as well as help the contractors engage their homeowners really on a deeper level than they've been able to in the past, really to help them close more business and more deals. We also provide as you said financing via one-click access to multiple lenders that really helps contractors provide options for payments for homeowners in the form of financing.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So important because it's, I don't know, financing always seems to be a little scary. I mean, there's those things that you worry about and you want to make it easy and nice for the customers, with the contractors. So let's start with can you tell us about how SRS and ProFund are working together for contractors to help make this financing journey with their customers easier and nicer?

Robert Gaspard: Definitely. So ProFund is available on a monthly subscription basis for contractors, and SRS is partnering with us as a sponsoring supplier, so each of their brands has the ability to sponsor a contractor. If you're an SRS customer they'll actually pay the monthly subscription for you to have access to the ProFund platform.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow, very cool. That's a huge help.

Robert Gaspard: Great partnership for us.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. So let's talk about the bigger picture, and you already kind of hit on it just a little bit, but why is financing important for roofing contractors? And for roofing companies, why should they be focused on offering strong financing and really understanding it for their customers?

Robert Gaspard: Sure. So roofing, just like the other trades, a lot of times when a roof needs to be replaced it's an emergency. Most people don't set aside dollars to say, "Well, I'd really like to change the color of my roof in the next five years, so let's start budgeting away for it." But more importantly, an important reason for financing, it provides more options for homeowners, provides flexibility for those homeowners. Every homeowner's situation is different obviously. Many do not have or do not want to replace and deplete their savings with cash to replace a roof. But by breaking down the cost of a new roof into low monthly payments a homeowner is actually better able to determine which proposal that a contractor's providing, which one they can afford, and really kind of remove price from being an objection for that contractor.

Other reasons, it benefits the contractor in ways, it's the options, improves customer satisfaction, access really kind of guaranteed money once they're approved so they're not chasing dollars. It increases revenue, and a lot of times it increases job size by providing those options to a homeowner, they may choose options that they may not have otherwise been able to afford, cash out of their pocket or savings. And really customers benefit, reduced stress, access to larger projects, faster start and completion dates. There's a whole host of reasons why financing is better in the contractor space, the roofing space, but HVAC, et cetera.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well, one of the things I think about too is I really liked your point about it enables a homeowner or business owner to be able to upgrade to a more premium product that's going to last longer. So they may only be able to afford a roof that maybe it's only going to last seven, 10 years, but with financing they can get a roof that really will last them 30, 40, 50 years, and really they save money in the long run.

Robert Gaspard: Absolutely, absolutely. And financing is really kind of an integral part of most shoppers experiences, whether it's a big box store at the mall, retails give their customers more ways to buy by using financing, and it's at the retail level, not just the contractor level. And again, it helps customers with decisions by providing more options is the best way to kind of put it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, it makes so much sense. Okay, so one of the things that ProFund does that is so unique is provide market intelligence, and so really understanding what customers are looking for, but can you explain that a little bit how that works?

Robert Gaspard: Sure, it's a great question. That's where ProFund, we really kind of shine. As you know, the roofing market is a very competitive market. We're in Atlanta, we're in Georgia, lots of contractors here. We're a semi-storm market plus retail, but it's a very competitive market. And really differentiating yourself as a contractor, demonstrating your expertise, demonstrating how you bring value to the homeowner are keys to winning that business in our opinion.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right.

Robert Gaspard: Market intelligence helps them validate that lead. We actually can validate leads for contractors if they're purchasing leads, and kind of develop the most appropriate sales strategy before they knock the front door, before they arrive at the appointment.

It's an area where we really excel. We use thousands of data points about that home and the homeowner to develop buyer personas. We develop an upsell score that helps the contractor understand homeowner situation and decision making. And really we have another unique piece that's called the Property Report, and it is a host of information and market intelligence on the actual home and the property that they're going to.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I worked at EagleView and we had property reports and we saw all the market intelligence and it really... I know some people probably go a little bit oh, privacy, I'm a little scared of this, but what it really does is it helps the contractors really be empathetic I think, and prepared for that customer. So they aren't putting them in... They can kind of understand the needs of that customer before they ever get there. What do you see? What's some of the feedback you have?

Robert Gaspard: And that's spot on, it helps them prepare, so what we see is the contractors and the salespeople that use our system, it helps them really pre-plan their approach with the homeowner, and be prepared to recommend products or the actual system that they sell. We give the salesperson insights into the type of buyer they're about to meet with the scheduled appointment with, and we provide them the upsell score, which really helps them understand the homeowner's receptiveness to hearing about enhanced proposals, or options that the homeowner may not have even contemplated thinking about, right?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right.

Robert Gaspard: But it really identifies the likelihood of the buyer matching any of several different personas so that again I can present the right product mix when I'm there meeting and it helps me prepare ahead of time.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, and for contractors who are doing numerous exteriors where they're doing siding, windows, doors, roofing, that property report will also help them kind of determine when the house was last remodeled, kind of where it's at.

Robert Gaspard: Definitely. We provide when the home was built, how long the homeowner's been there. One of the things that we provide on our property report, our profile, is whether it's a homeowner owned home or is it a rental house, which is important to know if you're meeting with the decision maker or not when you show up to the appointment, or in the storm market when you're knocking doors, you don't want to knock a door and spend an hour on a roof that the decision makers aren't even there to make a choice.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right, it's a rental.

Robert Gaspard: Yes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Robert Gaspard: Yes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay, so once they're in the home, it's going through the sales call, all is going good, they're prepared, but then you offer financing through the ProFund where they can kind of check out multiple lenders for that homeowner. How does that work?

Robert Gaspard: Yeah, definitely. Great question. So ProFund's not a lender. We have one click access to nearly 20 lenders all through one single common application. So in the current space if you're working with a lender, you have one lender, one application, if that's not a fit or those options don't match a homeowner then you have to resell the deal and you're sending another application to another lender where for us we help the homeowners. They're receiving offers right now from multiple lenders. They're able to look through various options, whether it's a low monthly payment, whether it's a fixed rate that they're looking for, or other types of offers that any number of lenders again, up to 20 lenders on our platform, but it allows the homeowner to see multiple options upfront right then within seconds through again, one common app, one click inside of our application. And the lenders on our platform have a range of programs for every type of credit.

And the biggest thing is that what we've done in the financing arena for contractors, we've removed all the complexity of using financing and made it simple for the sales teams to offer those options to the homeowners. That's really kind of what we've done. We've built a better mousetrap for those contractors to be able to make it simple for them to offer options to the homeowners.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. I love it. And sometimes they can get approval right away right, or is it all the time?

Robert Gaspard: Yeah, so depending on the lender, we have lenders that will approve and fund same day or next day. We have other lenders, depending on what the homeowner chooses, it could take five to seven days, but all of the lenders on the platform will give the homeowners a pre-approval within seconds of completing the app and choosing an option.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's great. That's great. And that makes it so much easier for everybody. I just think back in the day when you just wondered what was going to happen and they were calling on a phone.

Robert Gaspard: Sending it back to the office and having to fax the application in, and hoping that there's an approval that comes back. Everything's done digitally on the homeowner's device as well.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That is so cool. I love it. I love it. So is there training for the sales team to use this app?

Robert Gaspard: Yeah, definitely. So once a contractor signs up the ownership or a signature for the contract, they sign up, we have a full team here in Atlanta that will do a number of trainings via Zoom. Sometimes we can come out, depending on the sponsor and supplier, we'll come out in person. And then we have trainings all over the country. SRS's national sales trainer, John DeRosa, incorporates some ProFund information into his actual sales training of how to include us in his process, our property report profiles. So there's a number of opportunities for sales teams to learn about how to use it and how to present the information to the homeowner.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I watched a video with John on ProFund and it was really good. I mean, it really talked about-

Robert Gaspard: Yeah, he's great.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, he's so good. And I love sales and marketing, and it really made a lot of sense on how to incorporate it into your sales and marketing program for the roofing companies to really take their program to the next level.

Robert Gaspard: Yeah. And definitely SRS has been a great partner and they've allowed John to really get ingrained in our system to see how it would fit with contractors, and how they can use the tool in their sales process. So again, he's been a good partner, SRS has been a great partner for us.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, that's so good. So how can... Well, before we go there, one of the other things is SRS has this amazing roof hub system also, technology for the contractors. Do you work in lockstep with that? It's kind of like two separate programs or how do contractors... Is there any connection?

Robert Gaspard: So right now we're working on an integration into SRS's roof hub platform.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Awesome.

Robert Gaspard: It is kind of their central hub to get access for contractors to all kinds of their tools at SRS. We're working on some integration tools that would help out to make the link easier for their customers to get the ProFund. But in order for a company to get started with us it's really easy. Then can go to proFund.net and sign up. We provide a free 60-day free trial. They can use all of the tools, the sales tools, the profile, the property report, for 60 days for free, no credit card, it's not one of the things to try to grab it. And if they are an SRS customer they would input their SRS customer number and they have to sign up for one of our lending options. From there, their subscription is paid for and they're off to the races. So pretty easy, we make it simple.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow, that is awesome. I love it. I love it. So just some feedback from what you're hearing from contractors who have been using your product, what's some of the feedback and some of the success stories?

Robert Gaspard: Sure. A lot of the feedback, and again in the roofing space you have the storm markets and the retail markets.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Robert Gaspard: So I'll start in the retail side. On the retail market again, one of the big benefits to use us is lead validation. Guys are spending thousands of dollars a month to purchase leads so that they can fill their sales guys calendars. And a lot of the feedback we get is we're able to with just an address validate who the ownership is, give a lot of the data and information that they need. And many of our customers are going they're getting refunds on bad leads that are coming in.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Excellent.

Robert Gaspard: Because they're able to validate that that's not an appropriate lead, that's not ownership. And then the bigger part is they're telling us their sales guys are happy. With fuel being anywhere between $4 to $5 a gallon, driving out 45 minutes to a customer's house just to realize that it's not the decision maker, or to realize that the address doesn't exist, it can get expensive, not just in terms of dollars but time and efficiency.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, time wasted.

Robert Gaspard: So we're helping people be efficient.

Some of the other feedback is the financing. Obviously you understand the financial times that the country's going through. Financing is helpful. It lets people get projects done that they wouldn't have otherwise happened.

In the storm market, with the way that deductibles are now, 1% of the home value with increased home values, a lot of feedback we're getting is customers and homeowners are using the financing tool to pay their deductible so that they can get their roof repaired.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow. Yeah.

Robert Gaspard: And then in the storm market some of the feedback is it's helping with door knocking. It's helping them validate when I do actually knock on the door is that the homeowner that I need to be speaking to? And again, it's helping close business. We have a contractor in Houston, Texas. He said he is more efficient. They're closing about 55% more business than they have traditionally, which is a big win for him, a big win for us. And they're using our upsell score in order to prioritize their appointment scheduling for their salespeople. So if somebody's a four or a five, which is our highest level, they're prioritizing those appointments rather than going to a one that may or may not be an appropriate fit in their retail space. So a lot of good feedback coming back. Again, ProFund was built to help sell, built to help close business. All of our tools are tailored for that.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. I love it. I think it's brilliant. What a great technology.

Robert Gaspard: Thank you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you. Well okay, I'm just kind of blown away by this, this is so cool. So okay, you can go to SRS and get signed up. You can go direct to ProFund.net. You can also go to the SRS directory on Roofers Coffee Shop, so Roofers Coffee Shop will get you all that information and you can get to figure out how to do this. To me, this just seems like a no-brainer. So easy and such a great thing for the contracting. And I love seeing this Robert. I love seeing this new technology come out, it's just like we see it. And I didn't even ask how old is Profund?

Robert Gaspard: So ProFund's been around for about three years. We launched kind of beta, we went through a whole host of evolution for Profund. We had a beta testing nationally with some very key customers that we chose. And then we did a limited rollout in certain states to test the data, to test our upsell score, to work on the scripting. And then in March we actually rolled out nationally, opened it up with a 60-day free trial, so it's new nationwide but we've been using the technology for about three years, and we're constantly trying to upgrade or add new features to it to help contractors close business.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: This is a differentiator for roofing companies because it is something that's new that's out there that's going to differentiate your company, but it is proven exactly what a contractor should be looking for.

Robert Gaspard: Definitely.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes. Robert, thank you so much for being on the show today. I appreciate it. This is great. And we will get the word out.

Robert Gaspard: Well, we appreciate you guys having us, and thank you. Looking forward to seeing everybody sign up for ProFund.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes, me too. So be sure to check it out on the SRS directory, on Roofers Coffee Shop, Metal Coffee Shop, or Coatings Coffee Shop. SRS is on all three. And also be sure to check out all the Roofing Road Trip podcasts under the RLW section under podcasts. Also on your favorite podcast channel be sure to subscribe and hit those notifications so you don't miss a single episode. We'll be seeing you next time on Roofing Road Trips.

Intro/Outro: Make sure to subscribe to our channel and leave a review. Thanks for listening. This has been Roofing Road Trips with Heidi from the rooferscoffeeshop.com.