I attended the GAF seminar held at the Mohegan Sun Resort Casino Conference Center yesterday 3/17/2011. They had four or five industry speakers, most from within the GAF company, but one man stole the show; Dave Harrison, A former GAF executive, now independent consultant. The presentation ran from 8:30am to 2:20 and covered topics like; green roofing, warranty information, and was concluded with a raffle.
I would choose the Mohegan Conference Center to host any seminar or convention, as the conference area is enormous, and the staff was very professional. We had about 500 attendees, and we only took up half the room, the back wall was lined with vendors.
Dave Harrison was the featured speaker for good reason, he knows business and he knows roofing. He walked us through how he would run a roofing company if he and his son’s opened one. He covered close to 60 slides and the time went buy quickly, and every word was informative and insightful. He handle question from the crowd on the fly with amazing analogies, humor and a down to earth mannor.
The topics he covered included; how to assemble a presentation book, minimum profit margins, and what questions to ask in order to discover concerns, provide solutions, and build value.
The green roofing presentation was not as much about GAF’s “cool shingle” products, but more about recycling old shingles. The Presenter of this material was Martin Grohman, I found his presentation fun and informative. He is heading up the GAF Sustainability Blog which is loaded with information. If you have any questions about green roofing, or need help to find shingle recyclers in your area, this is the guy to ask.
They concluded the event by raffling off 2500 square feet of custom high definition roofing materials, Carhartt Jackets, Roofing underlayment, umbrellas, and two model homes with detachable roofs.
This was my first year attending, and was highly impressed with the event, I am honored to be affiliated with such a helpful quality manufacturer. The whole event was really geared toward the roofers and roofing companies, it focused on differentiating us from our competition and making more money.
