Feature Spotlight: Onsite Consulting with Reece Barnes

Tom Houghton:

You’re listening to “The Building Code.” I’m Tom Houghton.

Paul Wurth:

I’m Paul Wurth.

Tom Houghton:

And on this episode of “The Building Code”, we have a Pro Service Spotlight featuring-

Paul Wurth:

PSS.

Tom Houghton:

PSS.

Paul Wurth:

Is that right?

Tom Houghton:

Pro Services Spotlight, yes.

Paul Wurth:

There you go.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. Not like … okay, fine.

Paul Wurth:

Okay.

Tom Houghton:

I don’t know how many letter writers we have out there. Like a PS, I love you?

Paul Wurth:

Oh, I see. Not like a postscript.

Tom Houghton:

A postscript. Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Postscript.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, exactly. We’ve digressed.

Paul Wurth:

Who do we have on the podcast today?

Tom Houghton:

We are joined by Reece Barnes, additional training consultant here from Buildertrend. Welcome, Reece.

Reece Barnes:

Hey, guys, thanks for having me on the show today.

Tom Houghton:

Thanks. We’re glad you’re here.

Paul Wurth:

Reece, real radio voice there.

Reece Barnes:

Yeah, I was on a radio show back in college, so-

Paul Wurth:

You were? Where was that?

Reece Barnes:

This isn’t my first rodeo. Okay. KRNU advertising school.

Paul Wurth:

Or your first radio.

Reece Barnes:

Yeah, absolutely.

Paul Wurth:

Okay, good.

Tom Houghton:

Waking Up in the Morning with Reece. Was that the-

Reece Barnes:

It was Over Under with Bruce and Reece. It was actually … we had sports analysts call in. We had a guy from Connecticut, actually, ESPN, he called in. It was Eric Sheik, I think was his name. Schick? Basketball?

Paul Wurth:

March Madness.

Reece Barnes:

March Madness guy.

Paul Wurth:

What does Over Under refer to?

Reece Barnes:

It was a concept that I thought of regarding a shotgun, over under shotgun, because we couldn’t talk about gambling on KRNU, being a school sanctioned podcast. So yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Well, we can talk about gambling on this podcast.

Paul Wurth:

But we choose not to.

Tom Houghton:

But we choose not to. But speaking of gambling, we’re going to be in Las Vegas.

Reece Barnes:

Hey!

Paul Wurth:

Oh, that was a good segue.

Tom Houghton:

Very soon, for the International Builders’ Show. Come stop by our booth, South Hall, SU1010. See us there, see the RV there, see Reece … Are you coming Reece?

Reece Barnes:

I will be there, smiling and waving.

Tom Houghton:

See, there you go.

Paul Wurth:

The International Builders’ Show. The only show that you don’t want to Google.

Tom Houghton:

True. The IBS.

Paul Wurth:

IBS.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, it is a brutal, brutal-

Paul Wurth:

Everybody in construction’ll get that joke.

Tom Houghton:

That’s good. I actually can hear people laughing.

Paul Wurth:

If you’ve been to the … write us at our email address and let me know if you got that joke.

Paul Wurth:

Don’t do that.

Tom Houghton:

Don’t do that. Okay.

Paul Wurth:

So Reece, additional training consultant; what the heck does that mean?

Reece Barnes:

You know what, we’re still trying to figure that out, but really the nuts and bolts of it is I’m more or less … I’m business development. I’m calling current clients, basically spreading awareness of the additional training services that we offer and just seeing how we can help them out, if our unlimited customer support isn’t enough or isn’t doing it for them. And we go from there.

Tom Houghton:

That’s awesome. So we got two additional training options to talk about today on the show.

Reece Barnes:

Correct.

Tom Houghton:

One of them is Buildertrend University.

Reece Barnes:

Correct.

Tom Houghton:

Near and dear to both Paul and I’s heart.

Paul Wurth:

Correct.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. And onsite consulting.

Paul Wurth:

Now, additional means that it is in addition to the award winning-

Tom Houghton:

Unlimited.

Paul Wurth:

Unlimited training support we give, as many of our clients would refer to as their Buildertrend coach.

Tom Houghton:

Yep.

Paul Wurth:

Which means here in Omaha … all of our employees are based in Nebraska, you have basically unlimited access between defined hours. We do give them …

Tom Houghton:

We give them the night off.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

To sleep. Rest up.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, we’re nice like that.

Tom Houghton:

We do. We try to be.

Paul Wurth:

But you can schedule time for online over-the-phone training, and it’s very much custom. It’s one on one. However, some people … Reece, and can probably speak to this … prefer face to face interaction, and we call that we come to you or you come to us.

Paul Wurth:

You come to us would be Buildertrend University in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s 16 degrees right now, today. So maybe in the winter months you might want to choose the other one, which is-

Tom Houghton:

Oh, good. Good segue.

Reece Barnes:

Onsite consulting.

Tom Houghton:

Fantastic.

Paul Wurth:

And what’s that mean? That we …

Reece Barnes:

We are quite literally going to be onsite consulting you-

Paul Wurth:

There you go.

Reece Barnes:

On how to use Buildertrend better.

Tom Houghton:

At their office.

Reece Barnes:

At their location.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

So since the time that Buildertrend started, 13-plus years ago, this has been a request from our clientele. We finally feel like we’re in a place staff-wise and resource-wise to start offering this, and it’s been well received. When’d this start, Reece?

Reece Barnes:

It started in November of 2018, which is when our actual first onsite consultation happened.

Paul Wurth:

Nice.

Reece Barnes:

So we just crossed that one year threshold. It’s been great.

Paul Wurth:

Great.

Tom Houghton:

That’s really good. Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

So what does it look like when I say, “I’m Paul Wurth Custom Homes. We’re remodeling. I’d like you to come out to Sheboygan, Wisconsin.”

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Shout out to our Sheboygan clients.

Tom Houghton:

Yep.

Paul Wurth:

Or whatever it is.

Reece Barnes:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

What do I expect? What am I getting?

Reece Barnes:

So as soon as you reach out to us, I always like to keep this as, again, a consultation. And the title of the job … this isn’t really a sale. It’s more finding the avenue for our client that is best going to get them what they need. So how this process works is you reach out to us … when I say us, I mean one of my colleagues, Brooke Johannes or myself, and we just start talking about what your needs are as a company, ultimately what you’re wanting to accomplish, and that’s the big thing in how you determine is Buildertrend University or onsite the best fit.

Reece Barnes:

But ultimately, it’s going to be a very casual conversation, learn about what you want to do. I explain what the actual service is and then we start to decide on dates, whether that’s for Buildertrend University or onsite consulting, or setting up a plan to work with your coach better.

Paul Wurth:

So is it fair to say the first step is evaluating where they are with their life of Buildertrend, how much they’ve adopted, features that they haven’t gotten to that they want to? Is that like business goals as well?

Reece Barnes:

Absolutely. That is, in my opinion, the most important step, is fully understanding what it is you want to accomplish within the program. More importantly, your pain points; where you’re struggling, even if you don’t know how that translates into a feature that we offer. What are you guys wasting the most time on? Because more times than not, we can find a solution within the program to help that out.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. I think it’s safe to say for anybody listening to this podcast that is a current client, nobody’s using the full breadth and depth of functionality that Buildertrend offers, which just speaks to you how much we do cover and in some cases, how deep we go into some functionalities. So there’s always more you can start adopting. And if you feel like your team … and typically, an onsite consultation client candidate would be somebody with a larger team, would you say? Or actually you tell me, Reece.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, don’t put Reece in a corner here.

Paul Wurth:

Hold on a second-

Reece Barnes:

A lot of people think that, and that’s just simply not the case. We’ve worked with companies that have five employees or even large franchised offices. We’re getting ready to go out to an outfit in Washington, and we’re going to be speaking at their summit for all their franchises. So it really does depend what you’re looking for.

Reece Barnes:

Again, I’m going to go back to that … it doesn’t really matter how big the company is, if you guys are wanting to use Buildertrend more and you don’t necessarily have the bandwidth or the time to put towards learning the software in the strategic manner that you’re looking to do so; we’ll do it for you.

Tom Houghton:

So an onsite looks like more than just coming onsite to the office, though. There’s a lot of pre-work and post-work that happens. It’s not just a one or two day visit in the office with our team, right? Could you give us a little bit more background on that?

Reece Barnes:

You’re absolutely right. Onsite consulting really does start with you guys deciding on which date or dates you want our consultant to come out to your location, and we do that because we’re a first come, first serve calendar.

Reece Barnes:

So, say we want to get you on the books for the beginning of March. The reason we want to plan ahead of time, so A., you can work with your coach if needed, but we also allot three weeks beforehand for our discovery phase. Simple terms: it’s pre-work. And this is going to be taking place with the consultant that is designated to your account so you’re working with the same person for the entire process.

Reece Barnes:

In that three weeks, there will be weekly hour phone calls. This could be three one hour phone calls, four, two. At the end of the day, our consultants just need to get enough information to really dive into your granular, build out a framework. And in that framework there’s going to be heavy data entry, formulating templates and making sure that when they’re onsite, it can be effective and smooth so we can really dive in the granular and make sense of things.

Reece Barnes:

After those three weeks, then we have a day of onsite consulting, and that’s where they’re going to help you guys out. They’re going to sit down with team members, we build out an agenda so we can stay on track. And then once all of the discovery and actual onsite has taken place, from a deliverable standpoint you will have a silo of Buildertrend completely implemented and your team completely trained specifically on what they need to know. Then we move into our follow up.

Reece Barnes:

The follow up is really going to be a handoff from the consultant to our customer success team, and in that handoff, our consultants are going to develop a custom workflow chart, specific to what we’ve trained on and we’ve consulted on, so that now you as a company can adopt Buildertrend much more effectively, again, consistently throughout your company. But us, as Buildertrend, we can provide customer support that’s a lot more specific and fine-tuned to your business.

Tom Houghton:

Fantastic. Like from beginning to end there, we’re just with you every step of the way.

Reece Barnes:

Absolutely.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, what’s the end result? The main people who come to us for onsite consulting just want to further adopt Buildertrend, right?

Reece Barnes:

Absolutely, and we’ve had people that come through, they’re brand-new clients, they’ve literally started subscriptions with us wanting to do onsite consulting. We’ve had clients that have been with us for almost the entire duration of Buildertrend. Really, this is going to be a good service for clients that are wanting action to happen within Buildertrend.

Reece Barnes:

I say action, because we actually want to take the reins of the implementation, of the strategizing how things should flow, and hands-on training your team.

Tom Houghton:

And really customize it to that business. Obviously, we serve a lot of different businesses, and so this is really taking the time to make sure it really works with their individual business.

Reece Barnes:

That is the goal. That is the end goal.

Tom Houghton:

Fantastic.

Paul Wurth:

Have you ever been on an onsite visit?

Reece Barnes:

I have. I was luckily enough selected to go on a couple.

Paul Wurth:

Where have you been?

Reece Barnes:

We went to Nashville.

Paul Wurth:

Let’s not give out clients’ names-

Tom Houghton:

Nashville? [crosstalk 00:10:03] Nashville. Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Nashville. Fun.

Reece Barnes:

Has been actually hot. We’ve gone on a handful of trips since then, but my very first one was in Nashville and then we were out in the Boulder area; Boulder, Colorado.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. So both those characteristics, did both clients have actual offices or was it inside their homes?

Reece Barnes:

Yeah, so they both did have offices and they both looked very different. But we have had consultants that have consulted in our clients’ homes.

Paul Wurth:

Sure.

Reece Barnes:

So really, whatever you guys have.

Paul Wurth:

Sure. In both those scenarios, you’d walk in, you get to know the team and then we start … do you train by role and just kind of identify who needs to be a part of which part of the day? Is that how it works?

Reece Barnes:

That’s a part of the agenda I was talking about earlier, because we want to construct that beforehand. The idea is you don’t have to pull an entire team out of the field for the whole day; only the people that are going to be impacted by the consultations.

Reece Barnes:

So to answer your question, we’re going to have blocks of, say, your field guys. Bring them in for the first hour or two in the morning, run them over Daily Logs, To-Do’s and how to upload pictures and photos. And then we get them back out in the field.

Reece Barnes:

Then project managers in for more of the high-level stuff, accountants, if we’re going to do financials; whatever the case is.

Paul Wurth:

Mm-hmm. (affirmative)-

Tom Houghton:

I think this is a great service because it really jumpstarts somebody’s usage of Buildertrend. And you could be at any stage in your Buildertrend relationship, if you will.

Reece Barnes:

Absolutely.

Tom Houghton:

Like you mentioned.

Reece Barnes:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

So there’s an additional cost to that. We can have people contact you to find out more for how much it’s going to cost your business, but essentially, it’s one fee that includes you guys flying out, all your travel, all your lodging, and then the time that you’re with them, correct?

Reece Barnes:

Absolutely. No surprises.

Paul Wurth:

Now, do they get a discount if you just stay with the owner at their house? Just bunk up, Reece?

Reece Barnes:

We’ve had people-

Paul Wurth:

Is there a Reece bunk up discount?

Reece Barnes:

Well, if I was a consultant-

Paul Wurth:

Let me just say you don’t want to take this option.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Reece Barnes:

I think the refrigerator would take the biggest hit.

Tom Houghton:

There you go.

Reece Barnes:

But no, there is no discount. But at the end of the day, we work with our clients and we are refining how we can offer this at a reasonable price for what we deliver.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. I think if you look at the dollars and cents of it, it really is a value for money hands-down win, because you’re getting so much. You’re getting your whole team onboard right then and there. There’s a lot to be said for this service. I think it’s a really solid offering from us, and again, I think it’s absolutely worth every penny.

Paul Wurth:

How do you find more? How do you find out about onsite consulting and all the additional training offerings we have?

Reece Barnes:

531-365-6663, or you can e-mail me directly at Reece … R-E-E-C-E.Barnes, B-A-R-N-E-S at Buildertrend.com.

Reece Barnes:

I’m going to have Tom put our Calendly links, if you would, in the show notes.

Tom Houghton:

That’s right.

Reece Barnes:

Feel free to schedule meetings with us freely. That’ll be my calender and Brooke Johannes’ as well. She handles Buildertrend University, and yeah, we’ll talk your ear off about it.

Paul Wurth:

That’s the first phone number we’ve ever had read out loud.

Tom Houghton:

I know. I was hoping it would be like 867-5309, but-

Paul Wurth:

Definitely a callback to radio.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Interesting. So there’s probably a website?

Tom Houghton:

There is a website. But check the show notes, buildertrend.com/podcast. That’s where all these links are going to be at, so you can check out that if you want to find out more information about Buildertrend University or onsite consulting.

Tom Houghton:

We’ve talked a lot about Buildertrend University on the podcast, obviously, doing multiple recordings live at Buildertrend University. It’s really a great event here to get a better feel of the company culture, just how we operate, meeting the team. There’s just so much to be said for that value added for Buildertrend University.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Reece Barnes:

The way I explain the difference between Buildertrend University and onsite consulting is Buildertrend University is a great option for you to bring a couple of the key players from your business, excuse me, to our facility and get an umbrella curriculum. It’s going to show a wide variety of what we offer, onsite consulting. Emphasis is customization.

Tom Houghton:

Sure. Yeah, that’s good.

Paul Wurth:

It’s good.

Tom Houghton:

Both learning options.

Paul Wurth:

So that’s a really good summary of everything we offer for onsite consulting. More importantly, to your favorite part of the … when we bring on somebody from our staff, the quick fact segment.

Tom Houghton:

That’s right.

Paul Wurth:

Let’s get to know Reece Barnes.

Tom Houghton:

Reece Barnes, not spelled like Reese’s candy.

Paul Wurth:

It’s not?

Tom Houghton:

No. If you were listening to his e-mail address you could have got it there.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, I blacked out there.

Reece Barnes:

It’s all right.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. The numbers threw you off, the phone number.

Paul Wurth:

I’m not a math guy. I’m not a numbers guy.

Tom Houghton:

That’s okay. That’s all right. Reece, we just came through the holiday season, so I’m going to first throw out a little softball question to you, okay?

Paul Wurth:

Oh, exciting.

Tom Houghton:

Favorite Christmas movie?

Reece Barnes:

I was always an original Christmas Story guy, but I have recently been converted to the National Lampoon Christmas Vacation. It is just a classic.

Tom Houghton:

That is a classic. That’s a good reference there.

Reece Barnes:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Tom Houghton:

Good stuff. Reece, give us a little more background on how long you’ve worked at Buildertrend and maybe some previous roles that you’ve held?

Reece Barnes:

Yeah. I’ve been at Buildertrend … I think I just crossed the 18-month mark. I started as a business development representative. It was a great opportunity and I learned a ton about it. Just got moved down into the professional service seat as the additional training consultant, again, about eight months ago.

Tom Houghton:

And down is not a downgrade, it’s literally like location in in the building-

Reece Barnes:

Downstairs. Yes, downstairs.

Tom Houghton:

We don’t want people to think we demoted them there. Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

I’ll give a fun fact for Reece. Reece, your dad is in the industry, correct?

Reece Barnes:

Correct. Yes, he is.

Paul Wurth:

What’s he do?

Reece Barnes:

He is a project manager at a general contractor up in Colorado.

Paul Wurth:

They do custom residential work?

Reece Barnes:

Yep, custom residential.

Paul Wurth:

And not only has he been to Buildertrend University, but he’s here because he’s actually a Buildertrend user, right?

Reece Barnes:

Correct. He was actually the reference for me working at Buildertrend.

Paul Wurth:

Nice. So back to one of Tom’s first questions, holiday season, around the Thanksgiving table, it’s all BT all the time, right?

Reece Barnes:

All BT all the time.

Paul Wurth:

That’s right.

Reece Barnes:

A lot of talk. Lot of talk.

Tom Houghton:

Lot of turkey talk with Buildertrend.

Reece Barnes:

Yep. We usually have the holiday festivities built out into a Gantt chart, which is-

Tom Houghton:

Oh, nice. That was a solid reference there.

Reece Barnes:

Downloaded. Yeah, absolutely.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Reece, you mentioned the refrigerator earlier. What is your favorite food?

Reece Barnes:

My favorite food? I’m just going to do a little holiday spin here.

Tom Houghton:

Okay, that’s fair.

Reece Barnes:

I mean it’s got to be good stuffing, but I’m a big stuffing guy.

Tom Houghton:

Big stuffing guy.

Reece Barnes:

Yeah, big stuffing guy. You got the green bean casserole for sure, but that’s just kind of a Midwest …

Tom Houghton:

Do you like celery in your stuffing?

Reece Barnes:

I do. I’m a big celery guy, though.

Tom Houghton:

Okay.

Reece Barnes:

I do like celery. Thoughts?

Tom Houghton:

Paul, where do you land on this? This is hot debate.

Reece Barnes:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Both those things are disgusting.

Reece Barnes:

Okay.

Tom Houghton:

Okay, wow!

Paul Wurth:

Stuffing, and especially green bean casserole.

Tom Houghton:

Way to insult our guest there, Paul.

Paul Wurth:

Well, it’s just facts.

Tom Houghton:

Just hard-hitting facts.

Paul Wurth:

Can’t sugarcoat that.

Reece Barnes:

Green bean casserole; just hop on the Peloton and just pedal away.

Tom Houghton:

There you go. Is that safe to reference? I don’t know if I want to touch that brand.

Paul Wurth:

Probably not, nope.

Tom Houghton:

With a 10 foot pole right now.

Paul Wurth:

Beep that out.

Tom Houghton:

Yikes. Wow, lots of editing here.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome. Thank you, Reece, for answering those questions. If you want to get to know Reece more make sure you come by at the International Builders’ Show. We’re going to be there January 21st through the 23rd, in the Nextfeld Area booth, SU1010.

Paul Wurth:

Where … is it in Orlando this year?

Tom Houghton:

Nope, it’s in sunny Las Vegas.

Paul Wurth:

Ooh, Las Vegas.

Tom Houghton:

Which, Orlando’s probably like, we’re sunny, too. What’s up with that?

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Next year in Orlando, 2021.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. We’re jumping way far ahead. But come to the booth. You can meet Reece. Paul and I will be there and you have a chance to win gift cards and our famous Buildertrend hats; we’ll be giving those away. We’ll be doing some podcasts live from the booth, so stop by, say hi to Reece, say hi to Paul, say hi to me. We’ll have a great time.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. It’s exciting. Thanks, Reece. Appreciate you coming on and talking about our additional training wing of the business, we’re all excited about. Learn more at the IBS or check out the show notes. Appreciate you all.

Reece Barnes:

Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Appreciate you.

Paul Wurth:

Cut that.

Tom Houghton:

The end. And “El Fin”.

Tom Houghton:

Love what you heard? Don’t forget to rate and subscribe to our podcast so you can hear from more guests that will benefit your business. Also please check out our show notes page for more information on what we discussed on this episode. You can find it at Buildertrend.com/podcast. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time on “The Building Code.”

Reece Barnes:

Appreciate you.