Closing the deal: Why problem solving is the key to sales success

Zach Wojtowicz:

What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to “The Building Code.” Zach Wojtowicz here.

Charley Burtwistle:

Charley Burtwistle here.

Zach Wojtowicz:

How you been, buddy?

Charley Burtwistle:

Been well. Been hanging out with you a lot in the office, which has been great.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Not so well.

Charley Burtwistle:

Not so well. We don’t have …

Zach Wojtowicz:

People got a front row peek of what it’s like behind the scenes on the podcast in a meeting yesterday.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, Zach and I got into a bit of an argument and everyone was …

Zach Wojtowicz:

It was over punctuation use. It was a little aggressive.

Charley Burtwistle:

No, it wasn’t. You just blatantly said the wrong time of the meeting.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Well, see? Do you see how defensive he gets? It’s impossible to get anything done around here.

Charley Burtwistle:

But the good news is …

Zach Wojtowicz:

We’re here to record.

Charley Burtwistle:

We’re here to record, which means Zach and I are a lot more laid back and friendly …

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s right.

Charley Burtwistle:

Than we normally are. And very special guest in person, Mike Weaver, VP of Sales at Emser Tile. Very excited to have you, Mike. How’s it been going?

Mike Weaver:

You know what? It’s awesome. I’m happy to be here. I’m glad I could make it in person.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. We’re also very, very glad you could make it in person.

Mike Weaver:

I also want to go on the record and say you’re nicer in person than I thought you were going to be.

Charley Burtwistle:

Oh, well, thank you.

Zach Wojtowicz:

In real life? Wow.

Mike Weaver:

Keep it up for the next 30 minutes.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, you haven’t met non-podcast Zach and Charley.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Charley Burtwistle:

It’s all an act.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Charley Burtwistle:

It’s all a persona.

Mike Weaver:

Oh, I can’t wait.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We just smile really nicely on the camera, right?

Mike Weaver:

I actually say the same thing, so it’s fine.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, it’s great to have you here in the studio. We love having people in studio. A little different vibe.

Mike Weaver:

Yeah, for sure.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We’ll kind of keep it conversational, a little more kind of around the script, if you will. We’re throwing that out. No, I’m just kidding. But …

Mike Weaver:

I don’t like scripts anyway.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mike, I always like to ask people, have you been on a podcast before?

Mike Weaver:

I have.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Okay. You’re a veteran.

Mike Weaver:

Quite a few.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You know how this works.

Mike Weaver:

Mostly.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Okay. Yeah. We’re here to mix up the formula.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, forget everything you know.

Mike Weaver:

Oh, good.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We like to always ask our guests, tell us a little bit about your backstory, your story prior to Emser Tile, now VP of Sales at Emser Tile. We like to kind give people a little context.

Mike Weaver:

Okay. All right. I’ll give you the backstory both personally and professionally. How about that? Okay.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Love it.

Mike Weaver:

Okay, good. I’ll start with Emser. First of all, I’ve been with Emser Tile for, this is year 18, which I can’t believe they’ve kept me around so long, but that’s a fact.

Zach Wojtowicz:

When did that hit?

Mike Weaver:

What?

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s year 10. You’re like, “I can’t believe I’m still here.”

Mike Weaver:

Like year two.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s what I was asking.

Mike Weaver:

For sure. But let’s see. I started out in operations in Reno, Nevada. Technically I was the operations manager, but at that time you were a warehouse guy in customer support, right? I answered phones and did stuff in the warehouse, et cetera, et cetera. Then I am enrolled number nine now as the vice president in 18 years, and I live in Dallas now and this is the sixth state.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Wow.

Mike Weaver:

I’ve been in Dallas for four years, and I don’t plan on leaving. Emser, if you’re listening, don’t move me.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Clip it.

Mike Weaver:

Yes. I’ve been a branch manager, operations manager, regional operations manager, regional operations analyst, the director of operations for the company, regional vice president, and now of course the vice president of sales. That’s my Emser story. It’s kind of exciting.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Mike Weaver:

You look like you had a question.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Well, it’s just interesting that you were all back of house operational roles and now you’re in sales.

Mike Weaver:

I think it made me a better sales guy because once I understood that solving a problem helped you earn more business, I acknowledged I’m very good at solving problems and we found a lot of success in solving problems.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, that made me shift my career trajectory into maybe sales. I’m a lot more on the operational side historically at Buildertrend here. Yeah, maybe I talk to TK and Josh …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Get this guy a phone.

Charley Burtwistle:

And start hammering some dials.

Mike Weaver:

Well, if you invite me to your wedding, I would buy something.

Charley Burtwistle:

Like a plane ticket and …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Those commissions, bro.

Mike Weaver:

Listen. Amen.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah.

Mike Weaver:

Okay. Personally, let’s see. I’m married. I’ve been married for 18 years, actually celebrated my 18th year anniversary on April 1st on Monday. It’s very cool. Thank you. I have a ten-year-old daughter who is the love of my life and kind of a terror.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And a baller.

Mike Weaver:

Yes. She’s an incredible basketball player.

Charley Burtwistle:

There you go.

Mike Weaver:

She plays basketball, volleyball, soccer. She played tennis for a little bit and golf.

Charley Burtwistle:

Awesome. I’m just now connecting the dots. You two must have met each other before.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I didn’t want to bring it up. I know it’s a sore subject.

Charley Burtwistle:

I was like, you seem to know a lot about …

Mike Weaver:

It’s only a sore subject for me because he doesn’t answer my calls.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, I called you back yesterday twice. It went straight to voicemail. No, it’s true. I could show you. All right, we’re not going to pack this on “The Building Code.” Well, maybe we should. It’s now a therapy session in our friendship.

Mike Weaver:

Well, I don’t know. We’ll talk about it later.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, yeah.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, awesome backstory. Very cool to hear.

Mike Weaver:

Thank you.

Charley Burtwistle:

A little curious now in your current role, VP of sales, sounds like you’re still doing quite a bit of selling versus managing a team or what’s kind of your day-to-day look like here?

Mike Weaver:

Yeah, so I do a little bit of both. First of all, I manage a pretty large team within our organization, but transparently, I like to lead by example. A lot of our growth over the past, at least two years specifically, has been related to showing people how to do kind of the job that we want them to accomplish in the field. It’s a lot more than just selling a product. And I think I like to be the one to teach that.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, absolutely. And assuming that’s part of the reason for the trip to Omaha today or this week?

Mike Weaver:

Well, the team here is very good, but yes, it does offer me an opportunity to give them some tips and tricks.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. I mean Mike and I have talked about this quite a bit because he will often at the engagements where we met at Contract Coalition with Brad, Morgan and Nick, he’ll come and talk, and he’ll always open up his conversations not about Emser Tile, which I love. It’s always about you can find a lot of tile providers, but you’re not going to find the relationship that Emser can provide you. And on top of that a great product as well. We brought you on today to talk a little bit about that approach on the sales side of things about how do you build that sales culture because sales teams notoriously can have reputations for not being consultative, being a little more just buy it, try it, as opposed to we’re not just selling you a product, we’re selling you an experience and everything that goes with it. Where did you learn that? You said in the operation side or when …

Mike Weaver:

Honestly, I really have no idea. I mean, I think that I truly learned that being able to solve a problem helped us win business. Even as an operator, I know that I have a lot of roles that span operations, but I was consistently solving problems, which landed to a lot more business, right? As I was doing that, I started to learn that customers like that maybe a little more than us selling them a product, right? If I’m giving a presentation or a talk or at a speaking engagement, I’ll usually say the most important thing we’re going to get out of this is the fact that we know each other, right? And that when you choose, you will choose me, and I will choose you. That’s the answer. There are a lot of companies that sell product. Matter of fact, there’s probably a dozen competitors in this very market that probably do a great job. It’s not my job to compete with product.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. And what I love about the podcast, and Zach and I have talked about this before, is a lot of the interview questions that we ask are applicable across any industry.

Mike Weaver:

Sure.

Charley Burtwistle:

Obviously, it’s construction-based podcast here, but you’re talking about things on the supplier side of things. We’re going to get into some questions a bit more on the home builder side of things, how can they take this approach?

Mike Weaver:

Sure.

Charley Burtwistle:

But even as you were just talking, Zach and I were looking at each other. We had these same conversations with our sales team here at Buildertrend. Selling more consultatively, not just selling a product but an experience and 10 meetings today, we’ll be talking about exactly how to do just that. If you see me jotting some notes down here, I hope you know that I’m getting a lot more out of this other than a podcast recording.

Mike Weaver:

I was in a meeting earlier today with a customer in the local market, and my team does a great job here. They’ve got a great merchandising presence, et cetera, et cetera, and there’s no other way really to grow our business with them from a merchandising or product perspective, but there are things that he isn’t doing that we could help him do to grow his business. There’s channels of business he’s not calling on that we could help him call on. Things of that nature that suppliers don’t do that. Suppliers supply a product and a price, right? Our job is to be more than that. I actually get offended. I had a good customer of ours call me a vendor once and the exact opposite of what I do for a living.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. Yeah. I know one of the things that you mentioned that I want to get a little deeper into is just a different approach depending on who you’re selling to or who you’re talking to. I don’t know, I’m trying not to use sales buzzwords, but what are some of the pre-qualifying questions or how do you go about understanding your customer to start off with understanding their problems and their needs before you can tailor your …

Mike Weaver:

That’s a great question. Gosh you’re good at this.

Charley Burtwistle:

… Pitch to them? Someone else wrote it down for me.

Mike Weaver:

Okay. All right, good. Here’s the deal. We sell a product. I think most people know that we sell tile, right? And we’ve got a ton of SKUs. I think 5,000 when I last counted. To be honest, I never bring a sample to my first meeting. I tell most customers that my job is to be educated. I want to understand what you do, how you do it, what you love and what you don’t love. My objective is to be the perfect fit for you. Until I understand what that means, I can do that.

Charley Burtwistle:

Mm-hmm.

Mike Weaver:

Lots of people will bring a product and a price program and things of that nature and think that’s going to sell the job. People don’t want that. People want to be able to explain what their challenges are and what they need help with and areas that they need help growing in, etc. And then I tailor and actually our company does this so well, we tailor every program to each customer individually once we understand what their challenges are or the products that are important, etc. That’s the first thing, I always tell customers upfront, my job is to be educated. If you teach us how to be the best supplier, we will be.

Charley Burtwistle:

It sounds great, but at the end of the day you still have to close deals and continue to bring business in. Was there ever any pushback either in any of your previous roles or the current role you’re in now of this taking this more consultative approach of we just need to go and sling a whole bunch of product as fast as possible versus, trust me in the long run this will end up being, or has everyone kind of been bought in from the start?

Mike Weaver:

No. The opposite may be. I’ve had to prove a lot.

Charley Burtwistle:

Mm-hmm.

Mike Weaver:

Honestly, it’s a different way of selling and connecting with customers and transparently, most companies aren’t used to it. Most companies that sell a product aren’t used to this style, but the style garners a lot of business. And we go from supplying a product on a project, a few products on a project to the entire project period. And every time that customer has a project, that project is mine.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. And Zach, I’m actually interested to hear your perspective from your consultative days, consulting days. I feel like based on guests that we’ve had on here is kind of the same problem. People say they have an ideal customer they want to work with and the pre-sales process is really important to them. At the end of the day, they still need to bring in new jobs.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mm-hmm.

Charley Burtwistle:

What have you seen across the home-building landscape of how they kind of weigh the balance between those two?

Zach Wojtowicz:

I think a lot of it, my experiences where the maturity, so I was thinking about Emser Tiles been in the business for a century, right? They’ve been around for a long time.

Mike Weaver:

1968.

Zach Wojtowicz:

1968. Okay. They’re in an old LA building though-

Mike Weaver:

That’s right.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That was at turn of the century, so I was connecting in my head there.

Mike Weaver:

The old Beacon’s building.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s right.

Mike Weaver:

Very cool.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And so, if they’re an older business, I have found they kind of have that patience, that assumption that they can be selective, right? But they’re starting to want to mature their marketing and sales process. They are interested in building social media or more or less, they have a strong word-of-mouth network, but they know that isn’t the right way to do things, or they want to grow it. It’s like how do I evolve that? Then you have newer businesses who will just take anything, and they’ll just be like, we’ll do the work. We just want to be able to keep the lights on sort of thing. And as they grow, they start to, eventually, either have to decide, do I always want to be in this take anything mindset or do I want to actually take control of the reins and establish an actual process or a sales process or … It’s really interesting talking to a couple builders that we’ve had on the podcast.

They have very mature sales cycles that has a brand presence and experience that they’re catering to, and they’ll turn customers away if the customer doesn’t get those exact details and needs. I don’t think that’s probably right for everyone, or it just takes a while to have that confidence. To your point, the way you sell, it’s different than just like, we’re selling you a house, we’ll just deliver it for you. But the best builders that I’ve seen really are conscious of those choices, and I want to work with even that customer’s personality type.

Mike Weaver:

Well, yeah, they think about the experience with that customer.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mm-hmm.

Mike Weaver:

You’re married to a customer for a good year if you’re building them a custom home, right?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mm-hmm.

Mike Weaver:

And so, you have to have a connection. For that matter, there’s probably designers and architects involved you also have to connect with and that takes a lot.

Charley Burtwistle:

What are some of the best things that, or maybe not best things, but what are some of the ways you combat when you’re met with objections? Obviously this sounds great of selling the experience, but when someone says no, or they don’t understand the fit, they don’t see the same vision that you do, how do you kind of work through those with them?

Mike Weaver:

It depends on how bad I want the business.

Charley Burtwistle:

Great answer.

Mike Weaver:

I have a selling rule that it’s also part of, I guess my connection with people is I look for a switch, and I think everybody has a switch. There is something in everyone’s purchasing relationship that they wish was better. I’m fortunate because I work for a company that’s very flexible and is open to flipping switches if it means it makes sense for us and the customer. You know what I mean? And so honestly, I rarely meet an objection that we can’t overcome. As a matter of fact, outside of being the cheapest in town, because I’m not always, that’s probably the only objection I’ve ever hit.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I was just about to ask what would be the most price?

Mike Weaver:

Maybe a pricing objective or distance. We’ve got some builders that are outside of, we have 78 locations across the country, but we’re not in every single market.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mm-hmm.

Mike Weaver:

And I’ve got builders in markets where we don’t have a presence.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Right.

Mike Weaver:

That has become a challenge before, but honestly, we’ve built custom programs to support those builders where we ship into their market. And so, again, that’s rarely an objection or at least it’s not an objection that keeps us from earning the business.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mm-hmm.

Charley Burtwistle:

And there’s your operations background, problem solving, solutioning. Oh, you don’t have a market here? We can figure that out.

Mike Weaver:

I have a cool story. I don’t know if time permits, I’m not going to say it.

Charley Burtwistle:

Time always permits.

Mike Weaver:

Well, I have a cool story that when it comes to an example of how we’ve kind of created something that fit for us and the customer totally off of the beating path, different than any sales cycle you’ve ever heard, it really goes to show that it’s important to understand where the customer’s needs are first and then cater to that need.

Charley Burtwistle:

Mm-hmm.

Mike Weaver:

Again, sometimes samples, product and price don’t do it.

Charley Burtwistle:

Right.

Mike Weaver:

Anyway, we’ll see if we get to it, but I’d be cool to tell you about that.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Well, what is your differentiation value props then? You have a customer who’s price sensitive. I’m curious if we went through a role play, if I was a customer who was like, well, you’re not cheaper than your next competitor, a Mohawk or something. What …

Mike Weaver:

Can you say a name on this podcast?

Zach Wojtowicz:

I don’t know, cease and desist letter.

Mike Weaver:

It’s okay.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Put it with the rest.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Right? But what’s the talk track that you say?

Mike Weaver:

First of all, we’re the second-largest tile company in the country and the largest privately held tile company in the country. There isn’t something that someone can do that we can’t. The question is do we choose to do it or not, right? That’s first and foremost.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Interesting.

Mike Weaver:

Very rarely do we lose a product because of a price, right? And typically we’re doing a whole project. One price on one product doesn’t make much of a difference.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mm-hmm.

Mike Weaver:

You know what I mean? We can always move it somewhere else or capture it another way, right? We’re also looking for a long-term relationship. Very rarely do I have someone come and say, “okay, I’ve got this project. All of my projects have to be a buck.” It’s very rare, but if they have a project that they’re on a super tight budget and we have to get crazy, I would rather not give that business to the competition. I may take one for the team and the rest will be great.

Zach Wojtowicz:

The price?

Mike Weaver:

You know what I mean?

Zach Wojtowicz:

What I was thinking about, too, is if you’re in business, price is always the consideration. If you’re trying to sell someone something, whether it’s a house, whether it’s software, whether it’s tile, that’s always going to be the number one thing. It’s not a unique problem. And so, I think it’s interesting to see how people find ways to, I call it create perceived value that can make up the difference in the willingness to pay of the customer, right? And you can do it through these relationship triggers. You can do it through access to something. You can do it through just discounting and pricing it down. I think the people who typically are really successful in selling actually do the best job of justifying the price rather than trying to just give away the price to try and win the business.

Mike Weaver:

Yeah. Look, I think you almost always have to have a combination of both.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Right.

Mike Weaver:

If you’re super expensive compared to everyone else that’s really inexpensive, you’re not going to win consistently, right? But if you meet them where they need to be sometimes and then they understand the value of your relationship and what you bring to the table, then you can command higher prices other times, right? I leverage a lot of connections. Look, I love people, and I love connecting with people that are good people. I do business with customers that want to do business with me, and I introduce them to people, and they introduce me to people, and we are just consistent. Again, they get to a point where they’re no longer worried about us being the least expensive player. We are just the people they want to work with.

Charley Burtwistle:

Right. Gosh, yeah. That’s applicable across everything we’ve talked about, relationships and community building and stuff like that and something that Buildertrend’s actively trying to promote here in the Omaha market. It’s not what you know is who at the end of the day, right?

Mike Weaver:

For sure. It’s very, very true. I met with a customer today, and they were talking about growing their business, and there was a category of business that they don’t sell. And they said, “Well, I want to put it in our showroom and see if we’ll get it to sell.” I said, “Well, product, it’s not a build it and they will come story,” right? Tell me about your business. He says, “Well, most of our business is luxury custom homes.” I said, “Great. Every luxury custom home has an outdoor space, right?” “Yes.” Okay. “Well then instead of trying to cold call a bunch of landscape architects, why don’t we meet all of the builders that you work with already and ask them who does their hardscapes and then ask them to give us an introduction? Once they give us an introduction, we will help you find out what they buy, and we’ll provide it for you.”

We’ve just taken what seems like an insurmountable task growing this channel of business for a customer, and we’re going to leverage all of the people we already know that they already work very closely with, a warm introduction is better than a cold call and now the rest is history. And that’s how we’re going to grow that part of his business. And we will both benefit, we’ll help him grow his outdoor business, and we will get a crap ton of business from it.

Charley Burtwistle:

I love that. And I think kind of segueing off that a little bit, but one of the questions you wanted to ask was just the role social media plays in today’s kind of digital age and when we’ve talked about this with other builders and other marketers before is developing that same sort of community and connection, but on a much wider, broader scale. Zach just named 10 different people that we’re friends with now that we never see in person, but keep up with and follow on social media and stuff like that. Is that something that you guys are actively pushing to or how do you view that role in your day-to-day selling landscape?

Mike Weaver:

I actually really wasn’t, and I don’t think we were as a company until I think probably the first time I met Zach or even the team from Buildertrend. I don’t know if you were at the first coalition.

Charley Burtwistle:

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Mike Weaver:

Okay. We really hadn’t been. And then I met this group of luxury home builders and remodelers and they were building a community, and I thought, man, this is a great space for us to be in. And really, it’s less about selling product, it’s more about finding like-minded people that you want to work with that will make a commitment to you that you can also make a commitment to. You know what I mean? And that’s really what it created. And so, it’s really just been the last two years. Social media’s always played a part in marketing a product and things that look pretty, et cetera, but using it to develop a relationship and a network of people that introduce you to people that introduce you to people, it’s a bit of a new world for us, but it works very well.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. You think about 2024, people are kind of burnt out on things that don’t feel authentic. Right now, nostalgia is really hot, authenticity is really hot. And so, knowing someone who likes a thing just carries so much more weight when it comes to the traditional sales funnel, which is group that we want to acquire, demo, sell, but the flywheel effect is kind of the new age, and there’s been tons of bigger companies that have mastered this to say, if we can get this network to then sell for us, not only does it make it more, I’m getting better leads, my close rates are going up, but ultimately, I have to do less work in order to get better customers. And that’s the dream, right?

Mike Weaver:

Look, I wouldn’t want my team, and I don’t want my team fishing for leads. We know enough people, what we need is the dollar amount, right? If you want me to grow $100 million this year, I’m going to back that into how many customers do we need to find. And I’m going to leverage the relationships we already have to find the customers that will get us to $100 million. I’m not going to create some big lead list and go beg for business, although I appreciate new business and love new people, et cetera, right?

Zach Wojtowicz:

A lot of opportunity.

Mike Weaver:

For sure there is, but I prefer leveraging the relationships we have because those customers already understand our value, and they help us tell that story.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Oh, Jinx.

Charley Burtwistle:

Jinx. No, I think that’s great. And that’s one of the main reasons other than I love hanging out with Zach, but my favorite thing on the podcast is exactly what you’re talking about is meeting people like you. And we have Breakthrough Academy right after this who we’re formally partnering with and Aspire, and we’ve had some great guests turn into that kind of partner network for us across our business as well, where they’re doing the same thing that Zach is talking about as we’re referring them business, they’re referring us business, we’re growing together, sharing our learnings. And then when it comes time to scaling, you already have those connections established. It’s just leveraging them to solve the right problems as they pop up as opportunities.

Mike Weaver:

Let me tell you, I had a builder ask me to come, me and a local sales rep to come and spend a few days in their market, and he wanted to introduce us to all of the designers that he works with who do a bunch of work for a bunch of other builders. And so, we spent two days in the market meeting all of his design network and the network of people that he’s connected with that are connected to so many other people. And we’ve already picked up projects from almost all of the designers we met with, and we are exclusive now with this builder, and that’s worth more than a group of 10 leads that my team has to cold call. You know what I mean?

Charley Burtwistle:

Right.

Mike Weaver:

And again, it goes back to having that relationship with the customer, so that they want to, right? I didn’t ask for them. I mean, I was appreciative, but I didn’t ask for it.

Charley Burtwistle:

Right. Yeah, I love that. I think we’re getting close to time here, but I have a couple more questions.

Mike Weaver:

Yeah, for sure.

Charley Burtwistle:

While we have you here, I want to make sure we’re extracting as much info as we possibly can, but another thing that I know we struggle with at Buildertrend, I’m sure other people do, too, is how do you effectively follow up with the leads? People that you’ve had kind of initial conversation with didn’t close, you maybe made that connection. How do you make that feel organic without it being pushy of like, “hey, have you made a decision yet? I’m calling you again. I know you just called me yesterday, too.” What’s the right line to walk there from a friendly versus pushy perspective?

Zach Wojtowicz:

You show up at their house.

Charley Burtwistle:

You show up at their office at Buildertrend.

Mike Weaver:

You call them twice and they don’t answer.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Mike Weaver:

Like Zach did to me yesterday.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Straight to voicemail, I thought you just hit ignore.

Mike Weaver:

Whatever.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I was following up.

Mike Weaver:

I mean really, I think it depends. You kind of know from a customer what kind of follow up they like after the first couple of times you follow up, right? I’ve got some customers that say, “oh my gosh, I forgot that order was in,” and they want to be called as soon as the order gets there, right? Other customers where the sales cycle is longer, the build gets extended and we’ll follow up with them once a month. I don’t usually tell my team to stop until the customer says stop, but the frequency in which we follow up is dependent on our relationship with the customer. If they tell us the project’s going to be a year, then we won’t follow up in six months.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. That makes sense.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And I’m sure that, again, that goes a long way, too, because customers, as a consumer myself, I look for that honesty.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

They say what they do, they do what they say, they walk the walk, they don’t just talk the talk. It makes a lot of sense. It’s really hard to stay patient in the era of revenue growth of like, oh, some of these things take time. It takes time for trees to bear fruit, right? I really just admire that you have that as a VP to be able to have that patience. I think for your team who traditionally a VP kind of draws the culture line says, this is how we’re going to do business, to have the leader doing that probably cascades into the entire organization, which I think is really, really cool.

Mike Weaver:

First of all, I appreciate that. Look, at the end of the day, we have a sales expectation, and my team often meets that sales expectation and mostly exceeds it. It doesn’t mean that one customer has to move faster. You have to have enough customers, so that we can operate at their pace and still reach the level of success we need, and that’s the expectation we set. It’s not always about a bunch of new acquisition or pushing those customers to take product faster. It’s making sure that your book of business is large enough to support what your sales goals are.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. I love that. Well, Mike, this has been a fantastic interview. Really.

Mike Weaver:

It has?

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, I think so.

Zach Wojtowicz:

10 Out of 10.

Charley Burtwistle:

One of our best.

Mike Weaver:

I don’t think so.

Charley Burtwistle:

Oh, no. Is it because of us?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Immediately like, “oh no, did we mess up?”

Mike Weaver:

That’s because the people watching didn’t get to hear what I heard before. No, I’m just kidding. It was great.

Zach Wojtowicz:

They’re cheering in the booth. I don’t care what Mike’s saying, they’re just over here like yeah.

Mike Weaver:

It was great. I loved it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Before we let you go, of course we’re here representing Emser Tile. If anyone wanted to contact you or get a hold of Emser Tile, what would be the best way to do that? Plug, shameless plug. Sales moment.

Mike Weaver:

I like a plug.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Mike Weaver:

There’s a couple of ways. First of all, you can of course reach us out on our website. It’s just emser.com. I’d also be happy to give you my phone number. I love to make connections. These guys have a way to contact me, so just you can shoot us an email, and we’ll set you up with a local rep.

Charley Burtwistle:

Love it. We’ll make sure to link that out in our show notes as well, too.

Mike Weaver:

I love it.

Charley Burtwistle:

Love a good show note shout out.

Mike Weaver:

I love it.

Charley Burtwistle:

Otherwise, Mike, thank you very much. This is great to meet you officially and really appreciate you making the time in your trip to beautiful Omaha.

Mike Weaver:

You’re very welcome. It’s my pleasure. I appreciate it.

Charley Burtwistle:

Anything else, Zach?

Zach Wojtowicz:

That should do it. This was a great episode. Thank you everybody for joining today on “The Building Code.” Don’t forget to check those show notes, Charley and Mike.

Charley Burtwistle:

Like, comment, subscribe.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, don’t forget to like, comment, subscribe. Speaking of social media following, and check out all of us here at Buildertrend Social. Please do. We will catch you next time on “The Building Code.”

Charley Burtwistle:

I’m Charley Burtwistle.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And I’m Zach Wojtowicz.

Charley Burtwistle:

See you.

Mike Weaver:

Thanks guys.