Dinner

A conversation at dinner last night with very close real friends. One of our friends travel the world. He is a lecturer proponent and advocate of paperless business. He made a comment last night I did'n't think about till this morning. " A good name doesn't mean much in a very competitive world of business" It was very counter intuitive to my thinking. B) :) :) B) Deep Down In Florida Where The Sun Shines Damn Near Every Day

Tim, Because of the nature of the business he is in he sees things on a global scale. Our line of site in this trade is purely domestic and focuses only on our home market. Most if not all of us have no current ambitions of expanding abroad. I'm hearing on this and other forums a perceived significant competition from roaming stormier's with SOB foreign crews threatening our bottom line and good name. Are the suppliers concerned about good name of the industry. They only want to sell product to whom ever will pay and can afford it. Are the manufactures concerned about product. To some extent I can only hope. With the failure of so many products I have to ascertain they are concernd about cash flow and planned obsolescent. Not all roofing problems are roofing contractor error. We have to battle all these and more as end users trying to maintain a "Good Name." B) :) :) B) Deep Down In Florida Where The Sun Shines Damn Near Every Day

He's being too broad. In my car wash business, how long you've been in business and your reputation meant nothing at all. All the customer cared about was: did I have modern equipment, did I keep it maintained well, does it do a good job of washing, and does the property look clean and inviting.

Roofing is a whole 'nother can of worms. How long you've been in business and your reputation means a great deal to the roofing customer. His clean car only has to last a week, but his new roof needs to last many years. Roofers without a lot of experience will try to distract from that by having snazzy marketing, etc, and sometimes it works. But, if I'm sitting down with Mr. Propect to sell him a $250,000 roof, I would a LOT rather be armed with decades of experience, and very old roofs I can show him, than to have all the latest selling gizmos to use but little experience.

That said, now that I've sold my car wash, I want both! I want to be armed with my experience, and the most high tech sales gizmos. Just spent $1400 for a new iMac and $1300 for new productivity software toward that goal.

A storm trooper roofer from Olahoma was giving me fits one year, following me around trying to take my customers. I stood right behind him as he was trying to sell a roof to the owner of a John Deere dealership by telling him that he's been local for many years. When I got to see the owner he was laughing about the guy - I told him when he comes back in to follow up on his bid, ask to see his Texas drivers license. :cheer: I don't know if he asked, but we got the roof.

In my way of thinking, a "bad" name would mean a lot more.