Summer minisode series: Understanding the Sherwin-Williams difference

Zach Wojtowicz (00:05):

What’s up everybody? Zach Wojtowiczhere, “The Building Code” miniseries where we’re going through our vendor partners talking about all the things happening with their businesses as well as CBSA and Buildertrend Purchasing. Today, we’ve got Sherwin-Williams, Jason Jones, all the way from Dallas. Jason, how are you doing today?

Jason Jones (00:20):

I’m doing awesome. Thanks for having me, Zach.

Zach Wojtowicz (00:22):

Of course. It’s great to meet you. Great to have you here in person in the studio. Before we get into it a little about Sherwin-Williams. I always like to ask, tell us a little about yourself.

Jason Jones (00:29):

Sure. Well, let’s see. First of all, I’m in Omaha for the very first time.

Zach Wojtowicz (00:34):

Welcome.

Jason Jones (00:35):

It’s perfect timing because of the College World Series because I am a Texas A&M Aggie.

Zach Wojtowicz (00:40):

Oh, gig ‘em.

Jason Jones (00:41):

Gig ‘em. That’s right. So, tomorrow night, assuming the weather cooperates, I will be watching.

Zach Wojtowicz (00:46):

Are you going to get to go see in person?

Jason Jones (00:48):

I am.

Zach Wojtowicz (00:48):

Good stuff. Good for you. Have you been to games before and do you go down to College Station and …

Jason Jones (00:54):

Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz (00:55):

Good. So, Jason, tell us a little bit about your role at Sherwin-Williams.

Jason Jones (00:59):

Sure. So I’m going to back up just a tad and just tell you a little bit about my history with Sherwin-Williams.

Zach Wojtowicz (01:04):

Yeah, that’d be great.

Jason Jones (01:05):

So, I went to school at Texas A&M. I hired on as a manager trainee right out of college. That was 28 years ago. So, during that timeframe, I’ve held many roles throughout our paint stores group division, including assistant store manager, store manager at a local store. Then I transitioned over into our sales side as far as a sales rep and worked in our multifamily, our commercial, our new residential segment.

(01:34):

I spent five years working in our marketing department in one of our divisions, a Southwest division based out of Dallas. And then I moved into our national account world, and that’s where I reside today. But I’ve had three different roles during that timeframe. Started out as a national account executive in South Central part of the U.S. Had a book of business that I managed there, moved into our national sales manager role where then I had a larger national presence, and now, I’m currently in our director role for our national accounts. And so, I have a book of business that I still manage, but also, I help develop the strategy and implement our new residential approach across the country.

Zach Wojtowicz (02:13):

I love it. Well, and Sherwin-Williams is an extremely well known brand and one of the largest paint manufacturers in the country, the world, probably. How do you work with CBUSA customers in our partnership with CBUSA. What’s that relationship like?

Jason Jones (02:28):

Yeah, so we’re really excited. It’s a pretty new exclusive partnership that we have with CBUSA. And if you look at what we had done historically, Sherwin-Williams focused more on the paint contractor when it comes to some of these smaller builder partners that are members of the CBUSA network. And so, what this is allowing us to do is to get the opportunity to work directly with the builder partners themselves to start having dialogue, show the value of why a builder would partner with Sherwin-Williams. Let’s just say oftentimes in the past they may have said, “Well, I use whatever the painter wants to use.” And so, we’re trying to engage with the builder, so that they understand better why they would want to partner with Sherwin-Williams, the additional resources and tools that we have to offer them that’s more than just the gallon of paint itself that goes onto the wall.

Zach Wojtowicz (03:29):

Yeah, let’s talk a little bit about that. I mean, there’s a lot of paint manufacturers, choices. It’s more than just the paint, though. So, what does that look like from a customer service standpoint and customer satisfaction? What’s the Sherwin-Williams difference?

Jason Jones (03:42):

Yeah, so if you look at the builder partners themselves, we have many, many tools and resources that they could utilize. So, let’s just start with trainings. So, we can do trainings that are for the paint contractors that are on site. We also have online videos that they could watch as well. But we have these on-site trainings to where we can walk through best practices of how to apply the products or how to choose the correct product, how to identify challenges on the job site so that they can create solutions to rectify those issues or actually even avoid those issues on the job site.

(04:24):

But then also we take that training to trainings for the sales team within the home builder themselves, so that they can see the features and the benefits and the pros of why they would select this product over another product. And then we take that even further and we have trainings with the warranty team, the customer service side of the home builder, so that they are able to have the appropriate products at the time that they’re doing their warranty calls and be able to direct the homebuyers at the end of the day.

(04:59):

And then, of course, we have all sorts of tools when it comes to color resources. We have our own in-house designers that work at our corporate office in Cleveland, Ohio, that they will partner with the builders to provide customized fan decks or customized color brochures, virtual visualizers that they could utilize, digital imaging. We’ve even launched recently virtual color consultations. So, this is geared toward the homebuyer themselves, so that the home buyer can register for a free 30-minute consultation to where before the call actually takes place, they can provide photos of their home or photos of their furniture and their surroundings, so that our team can develop a color palette, so that when they get on the virtual call, they can maximize their time and try to help direct the color choices for any type of painting.

Zach Wojtowicz (06:01):

I love it. Yeah, I mean color theory, so that your house looks like the Sherwin-Williams advertisement.

Jason Jones (06:06):

Right.

Zach Wojtowicz (06:07):

That’s amazing. I think it’s something really interesting. You have a ton of experience with Sherwin-Williams that feeds into some of these things around the support side as well. Let’s say a builder wants to become a Sherwin-Williams customer, or they’re partnering with you to buy your product consistently. Do they get an account manager? What’s that relationship look like if they become a Sherwin-Williams customer?

Jason Jones (06:31):

Sure. So, for CBUSA, we have a singular point of contact and Phil Rutter, who is our national account executive that works directly with CBUSA. But then when you look at the breadth of Sherwin-Williams, we have over 5,000 stores across the US, over 3,500 sales reps. And so, what Phil does is he helps to connect that builder to a local rep in their specific market, so they can have a singular point of contact at that local level.

Zach Wojtowicz (06:59):

Yeah, that’s amazing. And something that is more and more becoming a premium, harder to find companies committing to those resources. They understand that they really want to make sure that the builder has a great relationship with you, so that if there is a problem or a question or even education, I think it’s amazing that you guys do actual training sessions. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of that before. That’s fantastic.

(07:22):

What about some other products or areas that Sherwin-Williams is focused on? Based around what you’re hearing from your customers or what are the things that you guys are doing with the product itself that you’re excited to talk about today?

Jason Jones (07:34):

Yeah, we’ve launched some new products here recently. One in particular, I’ll highlight a couple of them, but one in particular is called our Gallery product line. So, what it does is it’s a water-based enamel that has lacquer-like qualities. So, in other words, it’s going to dry at a faster pace, but yet it’s in a waterborne formula, so it’s not going to have the odors that you would get in a lacquer finish, but it’s still going to be able to deliver dark colors that, it doesn’t have to be dark, but some dark colors that would dry at a quicker pace for a production type setting.

(08:17):

Another one is our Rain Refresh. We have our Emerald product line for the exterior. The nice part about that is if you envision, like Rain-X on a windshield of a car, that when the rain comes down, it just sheds the water off the windshield. That’s what this paint does. So, you paint the exterior of your home with this product, dirt settles onto the house. When it rains, it will just naturally wash off the dirt from the finish. So, we’re pretty proud of that technology, and we’ve actually even launched that into an exterior stain product as well.

Zach Wojtowicz (08:53):

Really? I think maybe it’s just my bias as a consumer a little less on the construction side. I don’t even fully know that Sherwin-Williams was doing exterior paint as well as interior paint as well.

Jason Jones (09:03):

Oh, yes, sir.

Zach Wojtowicz (09:05):

It’s really exciting to see that if you’re a Sherwin-Williams customer as a builder or a CBUSA, you can cover the whole house with the product and there’s all this new technology that’s coming to even make it better. What about the things that … Are there any particular projects that you’re really proud of that have been worked on Sherwin-Williams, or anything in that realm? What does that look like?

Jason Jones (09:29):

Sure. So, I mean, if you think about back in 2020 when we went through COVID and then shortly after that, many partners in the building industry experienced some supply chain challenges during that time. Sherwin-Williams was very proactive at that point to expand our footprint. So, we continue to invest into our store count, and we’re continuing to do that today. We also made a lot of investments in our fleet.

(09:59):

We’re a totally vertically integrated company from our R&D to our manufacturing, to our distribution, to our fleet themselves, as well as the drivers that are on our trucks are Sherwin-Williams employees. And so, what we did is we made these additional investments to expand our capacity at our manufacturing facilities. And so, we’ve really stepped up our ability to meet the demand in the market, and we’re prepared for future growth.

Zach Wojtowicz (10:30):

Oh, that’s fantastic. And something great to hear from all our partners is that they’re investing in their companies, that they’re continuing to push the edge to really be market leaders. I think it’s really important to make sure our listeners know. What’s the best way to find information about Sherwin-Williams if they need other questions or support? What would be your recommendation for them to stay in touch with Sherwin-Williams?

Jason Jones (10:53):

Sure. So, I think if you look at CBUSA in particular, it would probably start with the regional manager. So, if they reach out to their regional manager, they would be able to get in contact with our national account team who would be able to direct them to that local store level. Because that’s the point of contact that we want these builder partners to have is boots on the ground in their specific market, and we definitely have that penetration. And so, it’s probably contacting the regional manager first so that we can connect the dots.

Zach Wojtowicz (11:28):

I love it. I love it. Well, we’ll make sure to link that in our show notes, the information, the best way to stay in touch with CBUSA. To all our listeners out there, thank you so much for listening to this episode of “The Building Code.” We covered all things Sherwin-Williams. Jason, it was great to have you on today.

Jason Jones (11:43):

Thanks, Zach. Appreciate it.

Zach Wojtowicz (11:44):

Thanks everybody. Make sure to check out cbusa.us if you want to learn more about CBUSA as well, and we’ll catch you next time.