How Innovation is Changing Contracting – April Hall

The industry has moved from Yellow Pages to websites to all-social-media, and the contractors growing fastest are consistently on social, posting videos and building their brand.

A counterintuitive winning trend: some of the fastest-growing companies hire reps with no prior experience and train them from scratch to avoid inheriting bad habits.

Consistency is the secret to social media, at least a weekly post, and it correlates with extreme business growth.

Certain tools are now must-haves: Hail Trace for weather data, CompanyCam for organization, a real CRM to replace hand-written estimates, and EagleView/SkyMeasure to eliminate manual roof measuring.

Measurement tools multiply efficiency; April inspected 19 roofs in a single day as an adjuster because ordering a SkyMeasure freed her from measuring by hand.

The biggest fear about innovation is 'one more thing on my plate', cost, whether you're using it right, and the time to learn, which is why staff and outsourced services matter.

National Women in Roofing is growing (learning, networking, mutual support), and April's SRC women's leadership panel drew record numbers, though women still face having their knowledge questioned in a male-dominated field.

The biggest cultural shift is contractors sharing knowledge instead of hiding from competitors; when April started restoration training in 2011, contractors wouldn't talk, but they discovered they can be friends and help each other.

Being an isolated contractor 'island' is the most dangerous place to be; get involved in groups and events (SRC, IRE, the Catalyst Group) to gain knowledge, a network, and support before complacency costs you.