S2:E48 Steve Stencil - The Software that is Transitioning Contractors in the New Normal

By Colin Sheehan, RCS Reporter.

Learn how to improve your remote selling process and about new marketing success tools from Leap.

For this episode of Roofing Road Trips, RoofersCoffeeShop® partner, Heidi J. Ellsworth talks with Steve Stencil, founder and CTO of Leap, the first complete point-of-sale application that has transformed how contractors and the home service industry sells. Listen in as Heidi and Steve discuss Steve’s inspiration for Leap and about the company’s digitized set of tools that are helping contractors learn how to sell remotely and more efficiently.

Steve was only 16 when he started as a salesman at Best Buy, which he describes as one of his favorite jobs, “That’s where I got my knack for technology. I worked for the computer department and just loved technology. I eventually got into the home improvement industry by way of sales,” said Steve.

Steve later went on to work for a company called Noodle Comb Design out of Balitmore, Maryland. After just one month of work, Steve was second in the company for total sales. Every month after that Steve continued to perform exceptionally, “I was just killing it,” he said. “It was a life changing job for me.”

On top of a high sales performance, Steve began to notice several inefficiencies that were affecting the company’s overall performance. He began to experiment with some simple ways that technology could be used to increase efficiency, like tracking his work on a spreadsheet and using it to calculating a price for a measurement or a future financing number for an interested customer.

However, it wasn’t until Steve opened an introductory computer programming book that things really began to take off. After two to three months of learning the basics, Steve was able to program a few simple apps, starting with an app to replace the functionality of his current spreadsheet on his iPad.

“I started building the app, making it better and better as I was running appointments. They used to make fun of me because they were like, ‘Oh, Steve and his app or whatever’ and the only thing I would fire back with was [being] consistently top of the sales board,” said Steve.

Eventually, Steve’s app and the efficiency it provided couldn’t be ignored. New sales representatives would train the old-fashioned way and spend more than two weeks in training learning how to do the paperwork, how to measure and price everything - all of which happened on a clipboard with a pen and paper.

“I want to be super efficient. I want to build rapport, I want to spend all my time building rapport with the homeowner, overcoming objections, figuring out what their needs are and closing the deal,” said Steve. “I don't want to have to spend time working up the price. I don't want to have to spend time writing up a contract. All that stuff can be done with technology.”

Listen to the full podcast to learn more about Steve and the company that has brought technology to the forefront of the sales process.