I’m not going to waste your time. I won't. I promise. I'll deliver good content. So, make sure that you are ready. To start off, I want to talk a little bit about myself. I have been working for a company called Aptive Environmental, which is a pest control company. Has anyone heard of Aptive before? To put it in perspective, the size of the company… So in 2020, we did almost 400 million, 377 million in revenue. Now, that's off of a pest control contract. Which, you know, y'all the ones playing big boy margins and revenue. I’m looking at like $600 a contract. So, that is a lot of volume, an insane amount of volume. That's a lot of sales, and that is a lot of door-to-door reps.
I have about 10 years where I’ve personally knocked over 150,000 doors in that time. And I've knocked doors and managed teams all over the nation. So, you know, Long Island, Boston, all the way down the coast to Florida and everything in between. The Midwest, Texas, California, Oregon, Utah, I mean, name a market, I've probably knocked a door in that market. Which is awesome because I get a lot of different experiences. As you guys all know, markets are very, very different. They're very unique, right? And there are nuances and minutiae to the culture in every market, right?
So, right now, at Aptive currently, I personally manage 271 sales reps that are all over the nation. I help manage and empower the sales managers. I help them recruit and scale their own markets, their own sales teams. So, I wanted to put this in perspective a little bit. Some of you may think, “I have more gray hair than that guy. So, why did I get up at 8:00 AM on a Friday to listen to him?” I know what I'm talking about. I spent a lot of time. I have put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into the doors and into this industry, OK? And so, I'm here to provide as much value as I possibly can to you guys, alright?
The last two years have been a big transition into consulting, finding that the majority of everything that I do at Aptive is completely transitive into anything else that you can sell door-to-door. I have worked with the people at D2D Experts. Maybe you've heard of D2D Con? It's another knocking, door-to-door event. I worked for about a year and a half with Sam Taggart and then transitioned on to this. During that time, I spent a lot of time consulting roofing, a little bit of alarms, very little pest, ironically. But a lot of utilities, a little bit of solar, painting, windows, things like that, right? But, the majority of it was roofing. The vast majority of that consulting was focused on roofing all over the nation.
What's interesting about roofing to me is that outside of conferences like this, there's not much of a community. I don't really know why that is. I haven't really been able to identify that. But, maybe some of you who have been roofing a really long time can speak to that. And so, we have to leverage these events the best that we possibly can. We have to do everything that we can to collaborate and not operate from a scarcity mindset, right? It's like, “hey, we're all here to beat the competition, which is everyone else who is also here.” So, I get it. It's like, “hey, I want to keep my sauce. You keep your sauce and we'll both try to get ahead in our own way.” But, it doesn't need to be like that. I want to help spearhead change, where we can actually give value equally one to another.
So, now I work with Cognitive Contractor. Which is, essentially, a data company that I'll get into more in the next part. But, hopefully you all have heard about us or you have come by our booth at this show or a previous trade show. If not, be sure to come visit us at the next big show. We’ll be at the International Roofing Expo in Vegas this August.
This article is an excerpt from Part 1 of the live presentation with Jake Bennington at Win the Storm 2021. Watch the full presentation by clicking on the button below.
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