Connecting to clients virtually with Burke Florom

Paul Wurth:

Hey everybody, welcome to “The Building Code.” I’m your host, Paul Wurth. Thank you for joining us today. We’ve got a great guest. These are my favorite type episodes because we’re going to bring somebody on that works here at Buildertrend. I think our listeners love to hear and see the faces of the people that they talk to every day. And Burke is definitely one of those people. So, we’re bringing Burke on to talk about the situation we find ourselves in now, which is having to communicate and connect more virtually. We want to talk to Burke about what does that look like through the lens of construction? How can we have some very realistic ways to apply that? So, Burke, I hope you’re ready for all that. That was maybe like intense for me to set you up like that. But I have confidence you’re going to give us some good tips and tricks. Welcome to the show.

Burke Florom:

Yeah. Happy to be here, guys. Appreciate it.

Paul Wurth:

Well, we’re happy to have you. We do this with everybody we bring internally because again, I think our listeners are curious. So, tell everyone about yourself, how you got to Buildertrend and sort of what your role is now.

Burke Florom:

Yeah. So, originally I come from Wyoming, went to school out there.

Paul Wurth:

What school?

Burke Florom:

University of Wyoming. So the Cowboys …

Paul Wurth:

How did you get out there?

Burke Florom:

Well, born and raised, yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Where did you grow up and born?

Burke Florom:

In Laramie where the school is.

Paul Wurth:

Laramie. Okay.

Burke Florom:

Yeah. Southeast corner of the state. Lived there for twenties 22 years. And then I moved to Nashville, Tennessee for a couple of years, was kind of chasing the music, dream out there and then met my now wife. But at the time was girlfriend. So, we dated long distance for a few years.

Paul Wurth:

What’s her name?

Burke Florom:

Emma.

Paul Wurth:

Shout out to her.

Burke Florom:

Yeah. And she’s a nurse here at the med center. So, she was involved in that whole world and in wanting to be a nurse. And I was like, well, I guess I’m going to hang the hat on the music pursuit and maybe move back to the Midwest. And so I …

Paul Wurth:

Was it a cowboy hat? What kind of music were you into?

Burke Florom:

Well, there was a lot of country there. Yeah. I mean …

Paul Wurth:

But for you, specifically.

Burke Florom:

For me, anything I can play. Yeah. I played with indie groups. I played with rock groups. I played with country.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. What’s your instrument? Do you have any instruments?

Burke Florom:

I play drums, and I sing a bit as well. So, yeah, I was out there doing that. And then yeah, my wife was, she didn’t really give me the ultimatum, but at the time we were pretty close to being engaged. And she was like, well, I’ve got to be in Omaha for a while doing this career as it were. I was still waiting tables. So, I was like, well, you know what? I could relocate to the Midwest. I could do that. So, I moved out here and got a job at Buildertrend in our Customer Success department and haven’t turned back, and I love it.

Paul Wurth:

Wow. So, Emma’s at UMC?

Burke Florom:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

So, for those that don’t know, UNMC is becoming one of the premier hospitals in the Midwest and in the U.S. maybe in the world. Yeah. And they’re definitely on the forefront of this pandemic. How’s her life right now?

Burke Florom:

Good. I mean, oh, shout out to every first responder, any person that works in the medical field right now. I mean, these people see another side of this that we don’t get to see. I mean, she comes home, and she’s exhausted, and you can just see it on her. She doesn’t even have to say a word, so she’s stressed as most people are, but she loves what she does. She wouldn’t be a nurse. She wouldn’t be in this situation if she didn’t love doing it.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. No, good point and shout out to Emma, and everybody who’s on the front lines during this surge, but yeah, we’ll get through this. We always do.

Burke Florom:

Yeah, we will.

Paul Wurth:

Alright. So, Wyoming to Nashville, really boring city in Nashville I bet?

Burke Florom:

Terrible.

Paul Wurth:

To Omaha, as hopefully most people know we’re based in Omaha, Neb. When did you start? Was it a year ago?

Burke Florom:

I started in May of 2019.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. So, you’ve got a year under your belt before you went to work from home?

Burke Florom:

I did.

Paul Wurth:

Which is probably really good.

Burke Florom:

It was good.

Paul Wurth:

Because the culture here in this building that we’re in today, is it bringing back memories?

Burke Florom:

It does. I came back once since March, since we shut down to grab some stuff from my desk, and it’s like a ghost town.

Paul Wurth:

It is, it’s weird. So, we have a huge building in Omaha and part of the reason people love working here is we all just have a great culture. I think that’s an overused word, but we’ve got a great group of people behind Buildertrend, and we love hanging out. I mean, you met friends here that outside Buildertrend you’re friends with?

Burke Florom:

Oh yeah. I mean, I had friends here that, I mean, so I kind of to round up the answer from earlier, Emma and I did end up getting married back in September. So, just a few months ago.

Paul Wurth:

Congrats.

Burke Florom:

Thank you. And a lot of the people in attendance of that wedding were people that I met through Buildertrend or working with Buildertrend.

Paul Wurth:

Like a lot of people in your initial class.

Burke Florom:

Yeah. A lot of people in my initial class were still very close friends. And so, that was like one of the first times I’ve gotten to see a lot of them during … I mean, we try to be respectful as possible to not hang out in huge groups, but when you can see them, that’s always a good thing, but …

Paul Wurth:

That’s great to hear, man.

Burke Florom:

Yeah. I was really thankful that I got the year under my belt here at Buildertrend. Because like you said, a big part of being involved in the Buildertrend culture is who you sit with, who you’re communicating with. And that’s why I think people stay here and have quite a long tenure here at Buildertrend because they are involved in such a live active, thriving work culture that I’ve never been a part of before working at Buildertrend.

Paul Wurth:

That’s great to hear. You know, the other thing I think it is, is that we talk to … like our clients are so important to us. For people who haven’t been here and you should come whenever we kick on the Buildertrend University stuff, which is, you fly to Omaha. It’s two days, you get to know us. We may have a few beers. We may become friends, but you’ll tour our facility here and, one of the things that most good business owners will say is like, if you believe in something, put it on the wall and our walls are covered with stuff. And they really focused on three things. It’s our people here, our clients and our technology. Like our entire engineering division, which is world-class, it takes care of that. So, I think what I’ve always loved about working here is talking to our clients.

Like they’re real people, we’re not talking to huge corporations who have a budget for this thing. And it’s just a line item and they check it off. We’re talking to people who are investing their own money, their business’s money into Buildertrend. They are hoping that it improves their lives. They’re hoping they get that return. And I can tell people behind the wall, like that’s all our hope is to, we drive to that every day. So, you started in the customer success division, which essentially is that’s your goal, right?

Burke Florom:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

It’s to, when somebody signs up for Buildertrend and goes, yeah, I’m going to try this thing out. I hope it helps us. You guys are, are trying to deliver that promise. Right?

Burke Florom:

Absolutely. So, one thing to go along with what you were saying as well as is when these real people, a lot of them, small companies, a lot of them, small businesses when they’re investing their real money, they’re not just investing in a software that they buy. And I think that’s a big piece of what we’re trying to let them know when they purchase this software. That is, you’re buying into a team as well that’s going to help you through the cycle of you having Buildertrend. So, from day one, we’re reaching out, we’re trying to help you know, that you’re going to learn this software one way or another, and we’re we’re here to help you in that. So, knowing that you’re investing in not only just a piece of software, but a team of individuals that’s going to help you learn, implement that software into your business and help you thrive in that, is a big piece of what we do in the customer success department.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. I mean, look, the reality is that construction in all of the top industries is very low in the tech adoption, right? And I think this pandemic has pushed that a little forward, which we’re going to get into. But it’s not sign up and it’s going to work for you if you don’t put any work into it. It’s something you’ve got to ingrain into your business, into your workflows. You’ve got to change some habits. We can help you do that. But is that sort of where the Customer Success team steps in and they like, here’s how you do this.

Burke Florom:

Absolutely. So, I mean from day one of signing up, we’re learning more about your company. So, we want to hear who you are, your background and your company. And we want to see why is Buildertrend a good fit for you? So, the first part of that investment is letting them know, okay. So, this software is going to be huge for your company because like you said, the adoption rate for technology for custom homebuilders, construction workers is appalling, it’s not very high. And so, we’re having to kind of come in with you on that part and teach you some new software that maybe you’ve never seen or touched. You’ve never worked with a project management software before.

So, a big part of that is recognizing who the client is and what their biggest needs are, and then really honing on those little things. And then over time we can adopt more features. I mean, our software’s all encompassing. We have a lot of different things that we offer. We don’t need to throw the kitchen sink at you on the first day, we’re going to start helping you discover different things that are going to be really big for you to adopt right now.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. It’s a process, it’s like crawl, walk, run. I think a lot of people, I attribute this to because I think a lot of the owners of these companies understand where their … maybe their blind spots are in their business. And they’ve just sort of, they’ve known that, but there’s bigger fish to fry. And then I think when you look at the wide ranging set of features, we have, it’s like, yeah, that’ll solve this and this. But it’s like, you can’t do that all at once. So, let’s pick your biggest priorities and let’s attack those things. And then once you’ve adopted Buildertrend and what I mean by that is like, your employees are used to it, you’re used to it, then we can build on that.

And I think it’s so important to lean on our customer success team because there is an individual more importantly, a team of individuals that have the exact same goals as you. And they’ve done this hundreds and hundreds of times other companies. And so, yeah, that’s very good to understand sort of behind the scenes, how we think of customer success. So, like I said you were here about a year before the pandemic, pandemic hits, rules change. Has something changed in the way that we service our customers? Or is it … tell me about that.

Burke Florom:

Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, so one thing that’s been, I think a benefit for our team in terms of keeping up with the communication with our clients is, we’ve been using Zoom for, I mean, the year that I’ve been here, we’ve been using Zoom meetings and using those platforms, to communicate with our clients because not all of them can come to Buildertrend University and come actually visit us in person.

Paul Wurth:

It’s funny that everybody learned what Zoom was, but we, I think we …

Burke Florom:

We’ve been using it for so long.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. I think it’s been like three and a half, four years. I think I signed in, like, I think mine was the main login for a long time. It’s like, no, now we have like three other logins, but we would use Zoom to share our computer screens during the sales process. And then we’d do it during the onboarding and training and then we would record them. And so like, if you were the owner of the business and your project manager, Nick did a training, we’d record that. So, the rest of the employees can see that if they wanted to.

Burke Florom:

And we still do that. And what’s nice about that too, is we record those trainings then we upload them directly into the user’s accounts. So, we don’t have to try to email them or forward them to all …

Paul Wurth:

Send them links somewhere in their email.

Burke Florom:

Yeah. They can go directly to their Buildertrend account and watch those previously recorded trainings. And so, using Zoom, it’s funny because you kind of have to look back on it back when we were using Zoom in the office previous to March, each meeting ID was nine digits and now, it’s like 12 digits because there’s so many people using …

Paul Wurth:

Too many Zoom users.

Burke Florom:

Too many Zoom users, which is just kind of funny. So, when we had that, I guess that’s been one of the only changes in terms of Zoom actually. But I would say, I mean, I wouldn’t say our approach has changed to how we service and how we help our clients. I would just say the maybe amount that we’ve been talking to them has changed and definitely, that’s not something necessarily that we can control all the time. I’ve seen a lot of clients talk to me concerned about how their business is going to go, especially in the front end, when there was a lot of uncertainties of where this was going to go.

The discussions I was having in April, May, June with clients is drastically different now than the ones I’m having, which is good. I think we’ve had a bigger grasp on what’s exactly going on. I think people have had a better understanding of maybe where their finances are going or how the company’s being successful in that. But at first it was, we don’t know if we’re going to have another house built. We don’t know if we’re going to have another contract signed soon.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Things kind of went on pause for everybody, March and April. And, thankfully for our industry and other industries aren’t as lucky, but it’s really coming back full force, which is great. So, when it comes to these companies adjusting to the new normal, or this temporary normal, we are, you know, we’re all looking forward to going back to some version of what we had. Have you seen companies adopt Zoom or like these videos for like the life cycle of their jobs, like leads to meetings and stuff like that?

Burke Florom:

Yes. Yeah. It’s been huge. It’s been not only just for the communication with their clients, which is big for them, but also internally as well. Because a lot of them like us, I don’t know how big everybody’s operation is, but even some of these smaller offices are closing down, working from home. I was talking with a client earlier today, actually. And she was telling us that, she’s like asking some questions, I’m answering the questions and she goes, okay, I’m just writing all these answers down so on our Zoom meeting for work later, I can communicate all of this with my team. And so, that was just another thing that was kind of humbling and recognizing that yeah, okay, people are adopting this platform into their now daily work operations.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. I guess we’ve done it so much like you said, as a business that it’s sort of …

Burke Florom:

It’s normal for us.

Paul Wurth:

That’s interesting. So, I guess we want to give people tangible takeaways. One, I would say what you just brought up is, when you’re having client meetings, we’ll talk about that. But when you’re having any Zoom hit the record button. Because that’s just like, it’s basically meeting notes. Like let’s go back and review what we just talked about. Or a year from now, we can have that. And you can store those things in Buildertrend inside your documents, in your files and your videos, you can store those things. So, started an internal job in Buildertrend if you’re a user. And then when you have these office meetings hit record, throw those in the link, then you’ll have them forever. Which is good. So let’s talk about the client. So, you talk to clients every day. And, have they given you some examples of how they’re using this outside of just like internal meetings? Or is it like, what are other examples?

Burke Florom:

Yeah, so internally it’s huge. I would say externally it’s big as well. A big part of our software is our sales CRM side of the program as well. And so, being able to track activities that are happening with your prospective leads, with potential clients is huge. And so, being able … I’ve seen in that we have, we have the ability to create custom type of activities that are happening on our sales, CRM side. And a lot of the ones I’m seeing are video conference calls, Zoom meetings, virtual meetings.

Paul Wurth:

What you mean by that is like, we’ve got a lead for Joe and a lot of our clients, if you’re using that part of the system, you might log a phone call, but we have a title basically saying, phone call. And we have a title said meeting, like in person meetings. So, you’re saying they’re creating a custom title of an activity call.

Burke Florom:

Yeah. They are. I’m seeing that.

Paul Wurth:

That’s cool.

Burke Florom:

Yeah. So, you can create Zoom calls. You can add notes in there. So, when you go to login activity within Buildertrend, you have the ability on our sales side there to track what exactly is happening with that call. Essentially, a lot of these companies have taken out the ability to go to the coffee shop, have the meeting or bring the client into the office, have those kinds of one-on-one meetings that they were having before for consultations or for any sort of type of meeting that they’re having. So, that’s one thing I’ve seen is people using these channels and these forms of technology, like Zoom, Teams or FaceTime and anything that we once maybe … It’s funny the things that we’ve always seen as maybe privileges to have like video calling, things like that, have now become essentials or necessities. And so, if you didn’t have that, I mean, a conference call is fine. It’s good to hear someone’s voice, but to actually express what you’re saying with them, show them presentations, sharing your screen. Those are big parts of what I feel like this is an ad for Zoom almost.

Paul Wurth:

I know. But it’s good. What’s so interesting about video calls is like, there needs to be a rule. Like if your camera’s on, the first thing you said is no, turn your camera on because I don’t want you in bed somewhere. I don’t want you to give me dirty looks like, we’re on camera the whole time. Wait for your dirty look so after. So, require everybody to be on camera because you can’t be one side of the street, but record everything and then be able to store that somewhere. You can do that in Buildertrend. So, as companies are doing this more and more frequent, is there a cadence that you would recommend? Let’s say you have five builds in progress now. And this is, obviously, specific to this type of contractor, but you’re building for an owner. I know some places you can’t do maybe like your weekly or biweekly walk-through on the job site. So, what would you recommend in lieu of that?

Burke Florom:

Yeah. That’s a great question. I mean, one thing I’ve seen, or one thing I would recommend is setting up weekly, bi-weekly calls like we’re talking about. These Zoom meetings, these calls with your clients. Being able to touch base with them. Hey, did you get the plans that I sent? We’re going to send you out a couple of proposals next week. What kind of things are you looking for on there? What are the biggest needs that you have? Here’s the progress of the job. Being able to say those things through email is great. You’ve always had that technology. That’s always been accessible to you. Now, we’re in a time where we need to have communication face-to-face and where we can’t actually have that in person. We have the next best thing, which is Zoom meetings, which is video chats.

So, my biggest recommendation is creating a pattern. Whether it’s every Tuesday, Thursday, we’re having a meeting at 2:00 with Jane Doe. And we’re going to talk about how the project’s going with her house. We’re going to show her photos. We’re going to show her things like that. Being prepared and being very intentional in those types of communication platforms and how frequently we’re doing that. That’s going to help you in the long run in terms of sustaining this period. Because we really don’t know how long this is going to last. Right?

Paul Wurth:

Correct.

Burke Florom:

Not to make this any sort of like, we’re just waiting on a vaccine thing. We still don’t even know at that point. So, if we’re dependent on an unforeseen circumstance to dictate what’s going to be the future of going back to any sort of normalcy, we have to now take advantage of the things around us. So, my biggest recommendation is setting up frequent meetings with your clients, reaching out.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. I think that’s a good point. I mean, I think that there’s a phrase, like never waste a crisis, I believe, something like that. I mean, don’t quote me on that, but I think that’s it. But if you’ve wanted to set more structure within your own organization or set of process for your business, like no better time than now. It’s the excuse. So, the other thing about setting meetings and being consistent is that it can give instead of a hundred phone calls during the week for the client, with legit questions, they may have for you. If they know that every two weeks or every Friday, I’ve got a Zoom call with my company, my construction to do my project. They’re going to save those things. Or at least you can teach them to save those things for that call.

So, long run a half hour Zoom call every week is going to save you more time than just doing a Zoom call whenever something comes up. So, set it, be consistent with it. Doesn’t have to be every week, obviously, it depends on the project. Do it every two weeks or whatever, but have a consistent schedule. Know what’s on the calendar. Invite the client to it and then be ready for that every time it comes.

Burke Florom:

Yep. That’s huge.

Paul Wurth:

Perfect. Alright. So, Zoom is a part of our life. Good for them. I should have bought stock in Zoom a long time ago. We use it a lot. We love it. But you know, this is a new digital world we’re communicating like that. So, embrace it. And then I think the best takeaway is record it and then have a schedule for everything. Cool. So, you may know Burke from our Instagram feed because you’ve done a lot of our, what do we call those?

Burke Florom:

Quick wins.

Paul Wurth:

Alright. So, if you’re not yet, and you’re a Buildertrend client follow us on Instagram, check out our stories. About every week or two, we have this series called quick wins where you’ll shoot from your house, in your living room. And you’ll talk to you about like different tips and tricks in Buildertrend. So, follow us and keep your eye out for tips and tricks or quick wins on our Instagram channel. Alright. So, to end it Burke, you’ve been here what, like, is it a year and …

Burke Florom:

A year and some change.

Paul Wurth:

Some change now?

Burke Florom:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

What are you most looking forward to in 2021 personally or professionally?

Burke Florom:

Yeah. That’s great. So, I mean, I’m looking forward to continuing my career here at Buildertrend, continuing how we can provide the best sort of service for our clients in terms of what we’re doing as a company. I mean, the sky’s the limit in terms of what we can do to provide good service for our clients. And nothing gives you better joy as a customer support specialist or an onboarding specialist to talk to your client and for them to see how this is truly going to make their business better.

Paul Wurth:

I think people, and this is no fault of anybody’s, but I think some people like hesitate to call us, like bother us. They don’t want to bother us. Or they think the question’s not relevant or not important enough. I mean, I think, do I speak for our team to say like, no. If you want to call, call in like, anytime you have, let us have that conversation.

Burke Florom:

We want to hear that.

Paul Wurth:

Right? Because that one question will lead into probably a few others, give you some more context on how you should be using Buildertrend, and you using Buildertrend better to help the businesses, is what we’re trying to do.

Burke Florom:

And one thing I’ll say along with that is I hear more feedback every day. I mean, I hear new things. I hear repeated things, feedback of people that like certain features want us to expand upon that or things that they think should work a little bit differently. We like hearing all of that. And I know every company is going to say we thrive off of our feedback, but it really is true here. And every single request that gets put in, every single inch of feedback that gets covered within our software, we’re going to review that, read that and determine what’s going to be the best option for all of our clients and our software.

And so, if you’re calling in and you, you really just want to say, hey, this is great. I think that this would be another feature as someone who’s used your program for several months or years, or how long, these are the things that I’ve found really important. And here’s how I think it should work. We’re going to take all those things and consider them. And so, a famous phrase I like to use is what you’re telling me is not falling upon deaf ears. We’re going to hear all of it, consider all of it, and though it might not get adopted right away, it is important for us to kind of weigh the possibility of adopting something?

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. We encourage open the floodgates, give us your feedback, give us your opinions. Yeah. We can’t promise anything.

Burke Florom:

And no question is too small. Like you’re saying too. I mean, we hear that since we’re elementary school kids, there’s no dumb questions. It’s the same thing with Buildertrend. Somebody might call in and say, hey, this is so dumb, but I forgot where you have this little setting, or I forgot how to create a daily log, where is that? I know it’s a dumb question. I say, no, it’s not a dumb question. I would want to create a daily log too, it’s right here under our project management dropdown. Things like that that might take two seconds in the phone call to ask us we’re more than happy to help you in that.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, absolutely. Just call us up. You know, you’re bored. You want to talk to people. I’m just kidding, you’re not bored. Nobody in our team’s bored because they are working really hard, but make the phone call for sure. Alright, Burke, thanks for joining us here. Really appreciate that. Congrats on the wedding.

Burke Florom:

Thank you.

Paul Wurth:

Hopefully, you’re still loving Omaha, Neb. and the winter we’re about to hit, but we’ll keep trucking along. Thanks everybody for listening. And for more, you can check out our show notes page is buildertrend.com/podcast. We’ll throw a picture of Burke up there and we’ll make Burke a recurring guests. We’ll get you back in and keep talking.

Burke Florom:

Look forward to it.

Paul Wurth:

Alright, man. Appreciate it. Thanks. Alright, everyone thanks again for listening to this episode of “The Building Code.” Remember to rate, review and subscribe, whenever you listen to podcast. Help us grow this community of listeners. Tell your friends, tell your family. We do appreciate it. And if you heard anything that you want to learn more about on today’s episode, head out to the show notes website, buildertrend.com/podcast. As always, we appreciate you.