Savvy Business Owners at SNHHBRA Prepare Their Businesses for the New Realities of the EPA RRP Rule
Posted by Shawn McCadden on Sat, Apr 03, 2010 @ 10:57 AM
SNHHBRA Sponsors a Full-Day Intensive Program for Serious Business Owners, Managers and Sales Personnel
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This event was held on Thursday, April 1st, 2010
Special thanks to Maggie Verani and Prudential Verani Realty for hosting the event at their Londonderry office. A great example of members helping members!
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"I think Shawn did an excellent job with the overall lead requirements, covering the field all the way to sales and administration"
Will your business and employees be ready on April 22nd, 2010? How will you know for sure?
This full day class was attended by members and guests of the Southern NH Builders and Remodelers Association. The purpose of the class and its content was to help business owners, management staff and sales staff better understand how their businesses and their roles within their businesses would need to be rethought due to the realities of the new EPA RRP Rule. Attendees had lots of questions. I could tell right away as we started the day that this was a very intuitive group. Their questions proved they had already been working hard to understand how the new rules would not only impact their current business practices, but also how their businesses could benefit by becoming early leaders in their marketplace. These attendees were looking for ways to separate themselves from non-informed businesses or those businesses that will choose not to comply with the law.
After discussing the purpose of the seminar with the attendees, they were asked what else they wanted to be sure would be covered during our time together. Here is their list:
- Understanding blood testing and related considerations for the consumer and the remodeler
- Clarification about how the EPA would be handling enforcement of the rule, for both those who were attempting to comply as well as those who choose not to.
- What liabilities they needed to be aware of and how to best manage them.
- How they could use what they would learn to differentiate their businesses.
- Clarity on the documentation requirements and strategies for ensuring proper documentation by their employees.
Attendees quickly grasped that they could control business overhead as well as production costs by better understanding and creating job specific critical paths for projects that would fall under the requirements of the new rule. We discussed using a "forced" approach to not only the activities each team member at their business would be responsible for, but also why certain activities should be done before or after other activities. For example, strategically planning how and when demolition of certain job components could be scheduled to limit and control the creation of dust and ultimately the related costs for cleanup and cleaning verification. Another example discussed was causing and verifying through documentation that homeowners and tenants received proper notification of the work as well as the required Renovate Right brochure prior to commencement of any work.
One concern that was raised several times during the day was how to discuss and sell the additional costs to prospects. I offered several options for "pre-educating" prospects about the rule. We discussed how doing so could also save a lot of time for the salesperson on each sales call. As one example, we viewed a sample video that could be posted on a remodeler's website for viewing by a prospect in advance of a sales call. Such an approach could give the prospect time to do more research, discuss the new realities with others and think through their reactions to the new information before sitting down with a salesperson.
The day was certainly a win for me. One attendee shared, and then the group agreed, that compliance with the new rule wasn't as challenging as they had imaged it could be now that they were better informed about it and could connect the dots in a logical way. I want to thank Jan Jacome of Crossroads Contracting for helping make this event happen. Also, Lisa Bowman, Executive Officer at the association, did a great job organizing and facilitating the event that day. The folks at Prudential Verani Realty in Londonderry made their conference room available and were very helpful, making sure everything went well with the room setup and related AV equipment for my presentation.
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Attendees received and reviewed sample documentation forms created by Shawn to help them comply with the Rule. |
This is the list of critical definitions we reviewed during the seminar. The EPA often has different definitions for words than what might be assumed by remodelers or would be found in Webster's dictionary |
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Comments From Some of the Attendees
"Step by step, you walked us through the process. Great job!"
Jan Jacome, Crossroads Contracting
"He does a good job staying on topic and making sure we received all the info"
Johnny Hawkes, J. Hawkes Builders.
"Shawn was a fantastic presenter and made the information interesting. It was the next logical step to apply what was tought at the RRP certification class. This closed the loop. The Power Point worked well"
Timothy S. Williams, Blackdog Builders