The Impact of Using RENDR to Accelerate Sales
Cornerstone Remodeling is a medium sized remodeling contractor serving Howard County Maryland and the surrounding area. They have been in business for 12 years and have completed over 1,000 projects.
Cornerstone is a tech friendly firm always looking to find new technologies to improve performance for their customers and their team.
In 2023, Cornerstone implemented RENDR, the leading Sales Acceleration platform for the residential remodeling industry. Use of RENDR enabled them to increase sales calls per person by 3x, decrease time spent on producing drawings, increase their win percentage and dramatically cut the cost of lost leads all while
Cornerstone Remodeling
Cornerstone Remodeling was founded in 2011 by William (“AJ”) Ballantine and then merged with Inspiration Renovations, founded and owned at the time by Jim Killorin. AJ and Jim joined forces, combining their decades- long remodeling experience to focus on process improvements through economies of scale and use of technology.
Cornerstone currently completes $8m per year in remodeling projects. Typical projects include kitchens, baths, basements and additions.
During the COVID Pandemic, the Cornerstone team thrived by using a patchwork of technology to enable quoting of business without entering customers’ homes. They used the technology to change and improve processes which benefit them to this day.
Key Challenges
During COVID, the team at Cornerstone put together several technologies including photos, video, online forms and other tools to collect information on customers’ projects without having to enter anyone’s home. They were able to complete a great deal of business during one of the worst times in the Remodeling industry. After COVID they looked to find a technology that would accelerate their sales by creating process improvements like they had patched together during COVID. They faced the same challenges all residential remodelers do including:
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A win rate of 33% with a huge cost for lost deals.
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A limit on how fast they could grow due to the average time per appointment for each salesperson.
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A lack of trusted measurements and project details at the ready at any time from anywhere.
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Far too much time spent producing drawings for quotes.
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With the understanding that the first quote wins 78%1 of the time; far too much time from request for quote to bid.
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Loss of personal and family time, night and weekends, due to having to go into homes to collect information to quote business.
A solution is found!
Cornerstone Finds RENDR from HomeQuote
The Cornerstone team looked at the market for sales acceleration platforms specifically for the residential remodeling industry. They found a number of simple measuring tools but those were often inaccurate and none of them focused on the Residential Remodeling business – none of them understood what was needed to truly accelerate sales for remodelers; all they do is measure often inaccurately.
They found RENDR, a sales acceleration platform created by residential remodelers designed to accelerate sales in that industry.
How RENDR Delivered
Implementation of RENDR took minutes as did training. The usability design of RENDR focused on ease of use for both the Remodeler and their customers. In a matter of days Cornerstone salesperson Chris Hogsten was able to begin quoting business 75% quicker, often without a home visit required, using an iPad Pro.
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Appointments per Week
Before RENDR
Chris could complete a maximum of 5 to 6 appointments per week; each requiring an average of 3 hours blocked on his calendar. And,for each project, Chris needed to schedule time during the remainder of his week for other tasks (meetings, design, estimating). A single home visit before RENDR would take 60 to 90 minutes including Chris and a Designer plus 45 minutes, on average, drive time for both people.
After RENDR
Chris has been able to increase the number of sales leads he can take a week to 15. This is due to RENDR’s Sales Acceleration features. Typically two of the slower sales months in the residential remodeling business. A single home visit, for customers who did not self-capture their space, was reduced to less than 30 minutes and only required one person, instead of two. Chris is now also able to talk to the clients with his full attention while scanning; allowing him to establish more of a relationship with the customer. For customers who did self-capture, no home visit is needed until after the Design Agreement is signed, saving all of the time that would have been spent driving to and from the customer’s house (2 people) and onsite measuring time.
75% Increase in sales per month
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Turnaround Time
Before RENDR
Cornerstone turnaround time on design work used to take up to two weeks. This was due to the cumbersome task of bringing field drawings back to the office and manually entering them into Chief Architect or 2020 prior to beginning design. Depending on Chris’s appointment schedules, these drawings might not make it back to the office, where it needed to go for architect input, until a day or two later. Once sent into the architects’ queue, it sat still while the prior day’s drawings were processed. This meant that the designer typically wouldn’t be able to get started until 3 to 5 days after the appointment.
After RENDR
Chris can export the PDF and DXF file while at the client site or immediately after the client self-scanned and send it directly to the architect along with markups on the PDF. Once received, with a few button clicks, an as-built drawing is created ready for the designers. This generally happens within hours of Chris taking the measurements, regardless of whether he has been able to stop back at the office or not. This saves 7 to 10 days per estimate. Additionally, since RENDR captures the objects in spaces as a unique layer, the drawings received by the architect were much easier to manipulate and test potential design ideas as the architect/designer had the measurements of all objects in a room (for example: couches, chairs, tables, dishwashers, sinks, toilets, etc...)
Cornerstone has reduced their sales cycle, from design agreement to build contract, from 49 days to 36 days since implementing RENDR.
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Time Lost On Lost Deals And Home Visits
Before RENDR
Cornerstone typically had to meet clients at their home to fully understand a space prior to providing ballpark targets for design agreements. In-home visit was almost always required to grab ballpark measurements for space plan, and fully understand the layout of the floor plan. This meant a time investment by Chris, and typically one of our designers, to meet the client in their home, discuss what they wanted, and take ballpark measurements prior to putting together a design agreement.
After RENDR
Using the invite to capture feature, and other software solutions like Zoom or Loom, Cornerstone can do 100% of preliminary investigation, design work and estimating 100% remotely. This has enabled the office to begin designs even prior to the initial discovery call which provides a huge “wow” factor for potential clients. This has increased closing percentages as Cornerstone has been able to excite clients much earlier on in the process. On top of the increase in closing percentages also comes a decrease in cost. This enables Cornerstone to not only spend more time nurturing clients in the pipeline, but also gives them the flexibility to increase the pipeline by more than double due to the increased bandwidth of the sales team.
Since Cornerstone is not sending sales people or designers out to the homes of new clients until after they have signed a design agreement, they are spending roughly 4 hours less time on jobs that do not move forward.
Conclusion
The implementation of RENDR at Cornerstone has been a huge success, dramatically increasing efficiency nearly overnight. This has led to more sales from the same number of people and happier customers. Amid economic tension, tightening pipelines, and recession fears, Cornerstone is bustling with increased sales and on target to sell 25% more in 2024 without the need to hire any additional office staff, and without the burden of extra work or long hours. This means keeping overhead expenses down during an economic time when businesses typically scrutinize costs, sometimes at the detriment of their work-life balance.
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