Neil Sciacca was in clothing manufacturing before he ever sold a window, although he’s been in sales his whole life. But when clothing manufacturing went overseas, Sciacca diversified his career and became part owner of a home improvement company. That helped give him the knowledge needed to start his own home improvement company a few years later.

He promptly partnered with James Anastasio to run the production end of the business because, Sciacca says, “his crew was our top installation crew at the time and we needed a production manager. [Anastasio] knew how to hire crews. He grew up in this business. I knew I needed someone like him to help get this company up and going.”

Many home improvement companies are great at generating leads and at converting those leads to sales. What they’re sometimes not so good at is getting jobs installed at levels of consistent quality. With Sciacca as president overall and managing marketing and sales, and Anastasio attending to production, New Jersey Siding & Window became a smooth-running machine.

At New Jersey Siding & Windows, the idea is to bring out what it is about a particular house that makes it noteworthy. “We customize people’s homes, we don’t sterilize them,” Sciacca says. “We do crown headers, door surrounds, dental molding, window boxes. We do a lot of color on color, not just white with trim.”

Anticipating an uptick in business, New Jersey Siding & Windows is planning a bite-the-bullet move and will transfer its operation to a larger location this year. “You have to believe in your product and your company,” Sciacca says. “That’s how I got into this business.”

Takeaways

  • A typical demo rate—the percentage of all appointments in which a product gets shown and a contract is laid on the table—can run 70% to 85% at most companies, and often isn’t higher because customers don’t show.  New Jersey Siding & Window believes in handing its salespeople quality leads—prospects who will actually be expecting the salesperson. The company calls persistently to confirm appointments. If there’s no confirmation, there’s no appointment. As a result, the company’s demo rate tops 90%.