Top Siding
Forget everything you think you know about how to sell and install vinyl siding because you are about to meet Jerry Greenspun of Gaithersburg, Md. “There are 8 zillion siding contractors out there. I try to do things different than most of them.” Says Greenspun, “I try to do things better.”

As a younger man, Greenspun built custom houses and did historic restoration. For the past 15 years, he’s concentrated on selling siding, replacement windows and roofing. Greenspun brings a craftsman’s eye to these jobs-along with a well-developed set of business skills. His customers today are the same upscale doctors, lawyers, government officials and celebrities for whom he used to build and restore houses. Most of them live in the Tony Maryland suburbs just north of Washington D.C. They demand personal service and top workmanship and are happy to pay a premium price to get what they want.

Greenspun gives his customers what they want. The result is that, at age 60, he presides over a company that does about 225 jobs a year, bills about $2 million and is a long-term success story in an industry where few firms can make that claim. His company, Colonial Contractors, Inc., describes itself as “America’s most prestigious and award winning siding contractor.”

One major siding manufacturer has named Colonial Contractors as its national contractor of the year four times in the past 10 years. Other manufacturers have meted out similar honors. The company has won several design contest awards. Perhaps most impressive of all, seven different siding manufacturers have featured Colonial’s siding jobs in promotional brochures or other advertising literature.

Artistic triumphs don’t pay the bills, of course, but Greenspun’s firm is a financial winner too. It sailed through the recent recession, doing about 12 million each year. There were no layoffs, early this year, Colonial was booked solid three-and-a-half months ahead, even before the spring buying season arrived.

So how does Colonial do it? For starters, it offers an unlimited, lifetime warranty on all siding and window jobs. “I will do whatever is needed to make a problem right for as long as a customer owns a house and my company survives,” says Greenspun. “If it’s a window I’ve installed, I’ll replace it free of charge no matter what the reason-whether it’s fogged up or whether it’s broken because a kid hit it with a baseball. Over the years, I have replaced the siding of seven houses free of charge because it was fading in ways that didn’t look right to me. Manufacturers stood behind me on some of those jobs, but not all. A couple came out of my own pocket.”

Greenspun augments his warranty with a policy of handling all service calls from past customers in a day or less. “Do you know hard it is to get anyone to your house to do anything within 24 hours? People aren’t used to that kind of service.”

Service costs money. Most contractors spend less than 1 percent of gross revenue on service calls and warranty work. Colonial spends 3.5 to 5 percent. That’s a significant investment, but judging from two other numbers, it is money well spent. Nearly 80 percent of Colonial’s new customers are referred by former customers. And of all the leads the company gets, Greenspun and Colonial’s three other salespeople convert 67 percent into jobs. The close ratio is even more impressive when you consider that the company usually charges more that its competitors.

While Colonial Contractors may be pricey, the company is pretty low-key about money. It requires neither down payments nor progress payments. “My customers pay me when they are satisfied that the job’s done the way they want it. That’s our payment schedule plain and simple. I’ve never accepted a down payment in my life.” Unusual? Sure. But the payment schedule conveys in a way that words never could that Greenspun will do whatever it takes to please his customers.

Greenspun like to press the flesh. He belongs to 14 chambers of commerce. He advertises in all the little weekly newspapers. He posts job signs. He’s usually good for a donation of money-and often time-for community parades and festivals. He’s donated trim work and siding jobs for 11 volunteer fire stations.

“All this represents an investmet5n of time and money that takes a while to start paying you back. Once it does, it pays over and over,” he says. “People notice all this stuff.” It’s good that they do, as Greenspun refuses to sell his company’s services through telemarketing, a mainstay at most siding companies. “I hate getting calls at home,” he says, “I think telemarketing is tacky.’

Installer-subs are the norm in the siding business. Greenspun never uses them. All told, Colonial Contractors has 23 field employees. Among them are painters, carpenters, roofers, even a stone mason. Many have been with the company a decade or longer, attracted by above-average wages, performance based bonuses and Greenspun’s pledge that “I never lay off anyone, not even in the winter.”

While keeping an experienced crew employed year-round is expensive, Greenspun believes it’s a good investment. “I need control over my jobs to make all the details come out right,” he explains. “The only way I can get that control is to use employees. If I am dealing with a sub, he’s the boss, it his work, his style, his standards.

“Most people look at vinyl siding as a way to cover up their houses so they don’t have to paint them,’ observes Greenspun. “That’s okay, but I want to do other stuff too. I want to get the detailing so perfect that, when I am done, the house looks like it hasn’t been covered with siding in the first place. I want our jobs to look totally natural, not artificial.”

Hyperbole? You decide:

• Most contractors face-nail the aluminum coil stock they use for covering up wood trim. The nail heads sit on top of the aluminum, looking like someone forgot to set and putty them. Colonial’s crew blind-nail all coil stock. The stock looks more like wood that way.
• Most applicators simplify exterior detailing as they form up aluminum over existing trim. Colonial’s crew, by contrast, replicate all existing details as they form us spiffit, rake, frieze, and fascia molding by hand. “Whatever’s there for wood trim we duplicate it with aluminum coil stock.”
• Most siders don’t pay much attention to the old stuff they are covering up. Colonial’s crew replaces rotten trim and siding and renail loose boards. They scrape away loose paint. They drill weep holes through existing siding. And then they spray preservatives onto all wood they will cover up.

“My aim,” says Greenspun “is to be able to go back to a job 25 years later and, if I had to take off the siding, find that everything behind the siding is as dry and stable as the day we installed it.”

“This industry doesn’t have very good reputation,” Jerry Greenspun said as we talked one day. “I think I’ve set up a business that other could emulate and I wish more of them would try. I have an unbelievable referral base. I have chosen not to be very big, but this company turns a great bottom line. I’ve tried to run this company with a philosophy that there isn’t anything a customer can do that’s wrong.

“I’d like to thing that the worst anyone will ever say about Colonial is ‘They’re the best but they cost more.’ If that’s the worst criticism anyone can thing of, I can live with it.”