Meet with members of Congress and deliver the industry’s message with one voice during this important event.

The National Roofing Contractors Association invites all industry professionals to register for Roofing Day in D.C. 2024 April 16-17. The event’s purpose is to bring the roofing industry together to meet with members of Congress and their staffs and deliver the industry’s message with one voice.

It is crucial members of Congress see roofing contractors, distributors, manufacturers and other industry stakeholders from throughout the U.S. and hear about the critical issues facing the industry. Advocacy issues for 2024 include workforce shortages, the Main Street Tax Certainty Act and the American Innovation and R&D Competitiveness Act.

Roofing professionals are encouraged to participate and bring one or more standout crew members to help share the industry’s story. Registration for Roofing Day in D.C. 2024 is $95 for company representatives and $35 for field workers, students and spouses. Registration closes March 29.

For more information about Roofing Day in D.C. 2024, contact NRCA’s Washington, D.C., staff at (800) 338-5765 or visit nrca.net/roofingday.

About the National Roofing Contractors Association 

Since 1886, the National Roofing Contractors Association has been the home for generations of entrepreneurial craftsmen and enterprises who shelter and protect America’s families and businesses and each other. Our vision is the recognition of our members as professionals and to unite the industry to that purpose. NRCA is one of the construction industry’s most respected trade associations and the voice of roofing professionals and leading authority in the roofing industry for information, education, technology and advocacy. It represents all segments of the roofing industry, including contractors; manufacturers; distributors; architects; consultants; engineers; building owners; and city, state and government agencies. For information about NRCA and its services and offerings, visit nrca.net.

By Dena Nejad, HOVER.

Before you can start thinking about closing a homeowner’s business, you first need to create awareness around your offering, generate interest, and pinpoint those interested people as leads. But identifying high-quality leads is not a walk in the park.

3D technology can help. Tools like those offered by HOVER transform a few smartphone photos of any property into an accurate, interactive 3D model. When you integrate this 3D model into your arsenal of sales and marketing tools, you have an instant advantage over your competitors. By showcasing the 3D model in your display at home shows, on your print ads, in your brochures, on your website, in social media feeds, and in your other marketing materials, you will be able to easily attract homeowners that your sales team can then turn into customers.

At Home Shows

Use the 3D model at home shows to attract homeowners who are identifying with which contractor they want to bring their next remodeling project to life. By showcasing the fully interactive 3D model of houses that your team has worked on, you can easily display your products and services in a powerful way.

Homeowners who attend home shows are actively thinking about their next project, so they will eagerly anticipate using the 3D model to experiment with potential exterior looks for their house. On top of that, they will realize that you’re a contractor who turns to today’s cutting-edge technology to provide best-in-class service that goes far beyond simply providing a quote for the project.

This modern approach to lead generation speaks volumes without the need for your sales team to use any high-pressure sales tactics.

In Online and Offline Advertisements

Make sure to incorporate the 3D model in your print and online ads as well as your other marketing materials. By highlighting the fact that your potential customers will see exactly what their finished project will look like before the contract is signed, you can pique the interest of even the most skeptical buyer. Homeowners enjoy the reassurance of being able to visualize and manipulate their home’s layout before it’s time to make a final decision. This in combination with the possibility of doing so in their own homes, without the need to come into a showroom or take time off work, will put your contracting business ahead of the competition.

On Your Website

On your website, showcasing video clips of interactive 3D models in motion, with the various changes and choices that can be visualized with a few keystrokes, is another persuasive way to generate more leads. The ability to show a customer a 3D model of what their home could look like is a great way to keep a customer excited about the project, while also helping build their trust from the very beginning. Which homeowner wouldn’t enjoy being able to show friends and family what their home improvement project will look like, long before construction is underway? They will feel completely comfortable in their material choices. Offering a 3D model of their house during the estimating process is a priceless perk that will help your business stand out against the competition.

Running customer testimonials about how useful 3D models are throughout the home improvement process is another powerful way of showcasing the value of the 3D modeling feature. Prospects value the opinions expressed in reviews and testimonials. By placing other clients’ words front and center in your marketing efforts, you let your reputation speak for itself. Further, testimonials make fantastic social media content and can be used to prompt interaction with others online, creating buzz about your company and its services.

Throughout the Sales Process

Using the full capacity of a 3D model from the first point of contact all the way through contract closeout will surely streamline and simplify any job that your team needs to work on, leading to greater productivity and more satisfied clients. An added benefit of 3D models is that the homeowner is excited that they are able to see their project. This often leads to the customer sharing the project with their friends, families, and neighbors – which can ultimately help bring your business new leads (nothing more powerful than word of mouth).

Source: HOVER

By Joanne Rodriguez, GreenStructure

Every day the news has stories on plastic pollution in our oceans, bag taxes or elimination of straws.  As our population has increased so has our consumption.  Because many of us recognize these as issues within our control we can make choices that start to impact the amount of waste we generate.  But what about our industry: roofing?  Should we be looking to ways to reduce the burden of our footprint?

Manufacturers have started to consider utilizing recycled materials or bio-based products within their materials, while others have worked to upgrade durability or develop products that can be restored multiple times to contribute to longevity.  Within the shingle market, there are some advances in recycling roofing tear-off and reusing within paving projects.  But as an industry we have yet to develop a means to divert the majority of our 60-100 million tons of annual tear off debris from landfill.

With municipalities looking hard at the need to close landfills, incenting recycling of debris, or increasing fees and taxes on hard to recycle products—like roofing—there is need to consider how to handle our roofing waste more sustainably.  My partner, Liz Hart Morris and I have set out to take this challenge on.  We’ve been focused on landfill diversion strategies within the roofing industry for over 6 years now.  We’ve got archived presentations to NRCA members (May 2016) as well as a feature article in “Professional Roofing” magazine by Liz (November 2017) taking this topic on.  And as this dialogue evolved for us, we realized that the solution set might be growing right under our feet.

We have been innovating a new process called Mycocycle, which is a patent-pending engineered ecosystem intended to bioremediate asphalt roofing waste along with other roofing products.  These are some unusual terms for many of us in the industry, but essentially we are developing a means to biologically break down roofing tear-off waste utilizing fungi (mycelium) and plant species.  The by-product should be two-fold: a clean biomass and mushrooms.  We believe that both by-products can re-enter the manufacturing stream to develop a new bio-based product within the roofing industry: from the roof to the roof.

Currently we are in the initial testing phase of bioremediating roofing products.  We are pursuing asphalt-based products first since there is established success of a similar process breaking down asphalt (see Liz’s article in November). But it has never been applied to roofing and we are excited to be pioneering this innovation along side mycologist Peter McCoy (Radical Mycology).  Everyday we are encouraged by the growth of the product and the break down of the roofing material.  There should be photos and updates on our websites as we advance through the weeks.  We will be able to hone in on how long it takes to break down the roofing products and the most efficient ecosystem to take on the task.

If you want to learn more about the process, you might visit the RT3 Tech Talk I just completed.

Joanne Rodriguez is a founder of GreenStructure. Follow her on Twitter @greengirlnow.