If current customers are any indication, the demand for quality roofing exists. "It used to be that people who did roofing were scary-looking people who couldn't find anything else," says Willis Schnell, vice-president of facilities at Merchants National Bank, in Cedar Rapids. "But T&K's people seem as if they could work inside the building, not just on it. They have excellent responsiveness on leaks." Adds another longtime customer, "There's a considerable difference in quality."
But the company won't be ready for new markets or further acquisitions until mid-1991. In this fiscal year, which ends March 30, Tom predicts that sales will increase to at least $4.5 million. Profits should climb back up to about 4%, he says -- which means that the company's strongest growth still lies ahead of it. Not that T&K has by any means abandoned the kind of imaginative marketing that has characterized its past five years.
The latest promotional brainstorm, in fact, just got off the ground in April. The company's new customer-service department -- complete with its own special truck, logo, and uniform -- grew out of a need that T&K's managers identified two summers ago. It seemed that every night around 5:00 a customer called with an emergency. The mechanical engineer drilled four holes in our roof for a chiller, the caller might say, and now it's starting to rain. Working under bright lights and at overtime rates, a crew would scramble out and get it patched. But how, T&K's managers began to wonder, could they be better prepared for such service calls?
Appleget sensed opportunity. Marketing textbooks often talk about moments of truth. Such moments, the theory goes, are specific encounters, turning points during which customers form solid opinions about a company. How customers feel, the experts say, depends on how well the company manages those moments. T&K, Appleget argued, could turn these emergencies into truly magic moments. Talks with big customers, such as 3M, Weyerhaeuser, and Rockwell, confirmed that they would use a 24-hour customer-service option. "We talked about it," says Kurt, "and we realized nobody else was doing it."
They also saw fatter profits, as long as the red-shirted journeymen kept busy. Most of T&K's roofers bill out at $30 an hour, but the special customer-service rep would charge $50 and carry far less equipment. "A service person will generate two or three times the normal revenues of a production employee," says Tom.
Such calculations, of course, are largely theoretical. So far the concept has required some fine-tuning. Given their often-unpredictable schedules, the service reps -- there is at least one in each T&K office -- found themselves falling behind, irritating customers. So some now carry cellular phones. If reps arrive when the customer is not there, they use doorknob hangers to let customers know they came and looked at the roof. "We'd get calls saying, 'Your man never showed up,' " says Appleget. "I figured, These things work for hotels, so why not try them?"
Of course, Appleget isn't the only one looking for new ideas. "I'm at the age when I'm supposed to be passing on my knowledge," says Tom, "but I find I'm still learning." He used to take off four to six weeks a year, but now, he says, "there's too much going on." One day he's off to Chicago, serving as chairman of a trade group's government-relations committee; the next he's speaking to an organization of roofing consultants; then he's at a convention of plant engineers. "I learn an awful lot," he says, "and I bring those ideas back here."
Lately he has his managers working on flowcharts, trying to buy more efficient bidding software, and experimenting with a 30-second television ad, among other things. Although he hasn't collected the information yet, he figures T&K's market share has risen to 72%. "What you have to do is go out there and talk to people and keep your eyes open," says Tom. "When you start working in some profession, you do it with a lot of ignorance. You go out and put roofing on.
"But to survive in any industry, that's not enough," he continues. "You have to do more. You have to take a leadership position."
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NATURAL SELECTION
T&K's guide to low-budget market research
The managers of T&K Roofing Co. use a lot of imagination when it comes to marketing. But their ingenuity doesn't stop there.
Even internally, "we look at every process and try to figure out, How can we be different?" says Scott Appleget, marketing director. Almost always, it seems, they find a way. Take, for instance, their approach to market research. Forget flip charts and focus groups. "We have our own way of doing things around here," says Tom Tjelmeland, founder and president.
Last year the company decided that it was time to move its stagnant office in Fayetteville, Tenn., to a new location. Appleget and chief operating officer Kurt Tjelmeland narrowed the choices down to a few cities. Donning their trench coats and sunglasses, they went about their sleuthing.
On arriving in a town, the pair first stopped at the city's building department, where they scanned permits, getting a sense of who the major players were and what materials customers preferred. "One thing I learned in law school is that the best source for information is the government," says Kurt.
Next stop: the local chamber of commerce. "If there's a really good contractor, a pillar of the community, they'll tell you," he notes. Then, under cover of dusk, the tw
