After 4 siding appointments on Saturday I really got to thinking about our industry. The major driving force for all of these potential customers, of which actually two have become customers was rotten and wavy siding or water damage under siding around windows. Now they all are considering new and hopefully more permenant siding. Some want to paint others want low maintenance and never want to paint again.

The part that was interesting or maybe the more appropriate term would discouraging is the lengths some sales people will go to in order to sell a job. Do you really think a company can be in business for long if they are going to do your complete job for the price that most companies can buy the material and pay good crews? If I can buy the material and pay my labor and I am still $350.00 dollars more expensive something has to be wrong. How can a company offer me 40% off savings or 10-Free windows with a siding job? Oh Yea I know Model Home Discount! If a company has access to all of these tremendous rebates etc why do they want till the end and use it as a closing technique? Does it really seem like the sales person you met with has your best interest in mind or is it possible that they are trying to keep the job cost low (so they can sell it) when they tell you that the rotten, visibly damaged siding you are trying to be replaced should stay on because it will save you money because of it's R-Value. This one was the one that took the cake for the people I met with.

Yes there are some cases where the siding can stay on, but more time than not it seems that companies have made policies that they do not tear-off old siding and the sales people have been trained to sell that policy. The R-value of some of the old siding is around 1. The savings created by rotten siding in most cases is never going to offset the potential cost if we cover some major structural problems that could be eliminated if seen before what we hope to be a more permenant siding is installed. In 7 seven years it is amazing the times that we tore siding off in areas where from looking at the wall you would think there was very little damage underneath, but it was absolutely in terrible shape with mold present. This experience is why I would say 90% of the jobs we do are a complete tear-off of old siding so that we can make sure that no future issues will arise.

I guess my point in this blabbering (Is that a word?) is that I have really come to realize just how different the home improvement project experience can be with two different companies. The major area of improvment for us is to make sure that with every customer we do a much better job of educating them on how Buresh Home Solutions is different. How do you make a customer understand the differences or potential pitfalls without some times being a little negative about a competitor?