Know Your Roofing Products Before Selling Them

MCS Influencer Mark Standifer says that roofing salespeople should know more about the products you are selling than your vendor.

Editor's note: The following is a transcript of a conversation between Coffee Shops' COO Karen Edwards and Mark Standifer.

Karen Edwards: So this month, for the month of May, we are going to be talking about when looking at the true cost of metal, when you compare it to other building materials, how does longevity, durability, and the resilience factor into that conversation? Right? So you're talking about maybe talking with a customer and they're balking at that price. How do you address those concerns?

Mark Standifer: The first thing is, as a salesperson, project manager, estimator, whatever, salesperson bottom line, you have to be more knowledgeable about your product or products than the vendor that you purchase them from. You're the person that installs them. So you should have some more knowledge there than the guy that sells it to you.

And that knowledge there coupled with experience will let you lead the customer towards the choice you want him to make. Now, what you have to do when you're comparing stuff, you have to think about what you're comparing to. If you're comparing an ACM panel, an aluminum composite material panel up against a two-inch granite panel, all right, when it comes to durability and finish, all right, you may have an uphill battle right there, but now if you were comparing ACM or even sheet metal to like, a painted wood product, all right, your sales points there are, "Look, you'll never have to come back and paint this again." Nowadays, you're getting 25 and 30-year paint warranties.

Even with ACM and some of the metal composite materials, when we were just talking about that, you can get finishes that look like granite, marble, red granite, black granite, they've got some different finishes like that. But to sell it is one of the things, that metal's been around forever. Paul Revere put a metal roof on a building, many, many years ago, a copper roof on a building.

There's a gold dome over in the Middle East. These things, it's been around forever. Some of the issues you used to have when I got in this business and we were competing, and normally the problem was that we bumped up against... When we were selling ACM, it was against ACM against an exterior insulated finish system.

If cost was all the same and everything, then it got down to, well, which product's going to last the longest? Well, with the painted finish, we got a 20-year finish. With the EIFS, I didn't know that much about it, so I couldn't speak on it. So there again, you need to learn a little bit about some of the other products. You need to become knowledgeable about some of the other products you may be up against. You can't go in there and say, "Well, Dryvit, it's really, really costly and it costs a whole bunch to get it repaired." If you don't know that, you shouldn't be saying that.

Karen Edwards: It sounds to me like if you look at metal and that initial cost, you could almost say if this is going to last 30, 40 years, that breaks down into a very small cost per year, where if you're going to have to replace it in 15 or 20 years, that's going to end up potentially being more expensive.

Mark Standifer: Well, and you can look at a comp shingle roof up against the standing seam metal roof. I did a standing seam metal roof over here in Grapevine on a Bass Pro Shop. Since then, there have been others built in the area that have gone with comp shingle and they've had to replace their shingles more than once.

Nothing's been replaced. We haven't replaced any metal roof panels out at that Bass Pro Shop, and that thing is over 20 years old, and even with a 20-year paint warranty, you can't tell it. Yeah, it looks fabulous. You can look it up online, you can probably find an overhead view of it. It's the Bass Pro Shop in Grapevine, Texas.

There are other things you can do. Some of the things you can do with metal that doesn't lend itself to wood unless there's a whole lot of hand work going on, like if you wanted to create a curved wall and you wanted to do it out of wood, that would be very time-consuming. But doing that with metal, you can get shapes formed and then put up a prefinished wall panel or a standing seam panel, whatever you need to.

Here again, it all comes down to your education about your products. I have had a job here years ago where the customer wanted to go with an ACM panel on an equipment screen, and we had to explain to them about delamination of the product, because of exposed edges and all this stuff like that. They didn't understand it, didn't understand it, didn't want to do it. We explained, "Well, first off, you got to have the wall re-engineered, this thing over here engineered for these things. Let's do it like this."

We went with a heavy gauge deep corrugated panel. Didn't get the flat look that the architect wanted, but got something that worked. There again, I was selling a metal product against another metal product, but it was giving the customer what was going to work and be economical.

Karen Edwards: Excellent. Yeah, all very, very good points, and I really like that you keep going back to education. You really have to understand the product, the repair cost involved, like you mentioned. If you're not sure, don't say it. If it's going to last however many years, what the warranties are. I think all of that is all a big part of the conversation.

Mark Standifer: Yeah, yeah. It used to be too that when it came to metal against wood, okay, wood's going to have to be repainted. Well, nowadays, there are products out there that are basically a cement board that has a wood grain finish. I believe the finish is impregnated into the product. All right. Now, can that be painted? I don't know. I can't tell you. Why? Because I'm not educated on it. I don't know that much about it. I do know this, when it comes to installing it, is a bear to install, because you're trying to drill a concrete, you're drilling a cement panel, all right? To attach it.

Yeah. There's some work going on there. When you got to cut them, there's some work going on there. Yeah, there's different things to think about. It comes to selling the building too. What did the customer want? Was there a specific look they were looking for? Did you help achieve that? Can you help achieve it with the materials that you want to use? This goes back to architectural sheet metals like stainless steel, bronze, brass, or copper.

Does the customer want a look that's going to age over time? Okay, well, let's go ahead with something that's copper because it'll go from being bright copper to a dark look, and eventually look a little greenish. It'll go from looking like a dark penny to green. Do they want to go with something that is corrosive-resistant? When it comes to other materials, well, I know for a fact that stainless steel is very corrosive-resistant. It can be. All right? Is that something you want to use to trim out a window? There again, it's all educating yourself on the products, like we're talking about.

Karen Edwards: Excellent. Well, I think that you certainly have provided a good insight into addressing those concerns and how to talk about the longevity value, all that.

Mark Standifer: Yeah. Educate yourself on the other products, you have to, not just yours. You need to know your products inside-out. When I got in this business, the company I worked for, the only thing we did was standing seam and sheet metal siding, concealed fastener panels, or exposed fastener panels on equipment screens. Well, within about two years, we've done an ACM job, one of the first jobs in North Texas.

So now, the guy who did the job and me and the other estimator/project manager, we've got to get ourselves educated on it. Not just how to price it, but how it installs and everything, and what it does and what you can and can't do with it. Because now it's on the market. So, we had to learn something else.

There again, it's learning everything in your field. In this business, you can buy a pre-insulated metal panel. Or depending on the job you're doing, you may want to do a field insulated system. They all have their pros and cons, and I've even come across that, where they were looking at a job where they wanted to install a thin concrete wall panel that was going to sandwich some blanket insulation. It was going to be two sheets of this concrete wall panel on this little building.

They were looking for an alternative, because this was going to be expensive. I suggested to them, "Let me field insulate it." I told them what a field insulation job was. "We'll do it with sheet metal panels. All right, we'll put the insulation in the stud framing like you want, but in lieu of the exterior being concrete, we'll do it in a sheet metal panel."

And there again, the big difference there was I could get the metal quicker. It looked a lot nicer. The concrete was going to have to be painted and then repainted at some point, and plus it went a lot faster, and the whole deal was, if it ever had to be repaired, it would be an easy repair. Where it tied in at the flat roof, it was an easy tie-in at the flat roof, as opposed to just been a concrete panel. So yeah, there again, knowing your products and what you can and can't do with them.

Karen Edwards: Wow. Thank you, Mark. As always, you provide excellent insight and we will be sharing this with our visitors to MetalCoffeeShop and hopefully, they're always out there learning more about the products too.

Mark Standifer: Well, this is probably going to be the last time you hear from me. I'm fixing to do something different. I'm fixing to take a part-time job as a... I'm going to learn shoe and boot repair, learn how to repair heels and soles.

Karen Edwards: Well, you certainly have enough pairs of boots to keep yourself busy while you learn.

Mark Standifer: Yeah, yeah. I can take care of those, and then the other deal is, we just got a new grandson last Saturday, so I'm going to help take care of him too. Yeah.

Karen Edwards: Oh, well, enjoy your new hobby. Enjoy your new grandson. Congratulations, and you know where to find us, Mark. We appreciate your wisdom.

Mark Standifer: I do, I do.

Karen Edwards: We hope that we see you around.

Mark Standifer: Yeah, you will. Probably whenever y'all come to Dallas, or if I'm ever in Vegas or someplace like that crazy.

Karen Edwards: Yeah, yeah, you've got my number.

Mark Standifer: It's been fun.

Karen Edwards: I've got your number. We'll keep in touch. Thank you so much, Mark.

Mark Standifer: I'll keep looking at the blogs, and you may see me drop a line every now and then.

Karen Edwards: Excellent. Sounds good.

Mark Standifer: All right.