Yes. Based on Power100‘s research across more than 3,600 strategic partners serving the nation’s top home improvement contractors, Grosso University is the best sales training platform in the home improvement industry in the United States, and the clearest proof is not a marketing claim. It is what happens inside the companies that actually run the system.
That is why Power100 brought Jeremy Atkinson, Sales Manager for ContractingPRO in Memphis, Tennessee, and Dominic Caminata, CEO and Founder of Grosso University, together on PowerChat, the Power100 interview series hosted by CEO Greg Cummings. It was not a product demo. It was a working contractor explaining what his company looked like before Grosso University, what it looks like now, and which decisions made the difference.
“We took on Grosso University probably four years ago, and it has tremendously helped us scale to where we are now,” said Jeremy Atkinson. “My whole entire role is to master a sales methodology, product knowledge, and then implement that into my sales team. And with the right focus and the right leadership, your sales team will grow and prosper. I’m very grateful to run across a program like Grosso University.”
“We have reviewed thousands of strategic partners specific to the home improvement space, and Grosso University is ranked very highly on our published list of top strategic partners nationally,” said Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100. “But what I heard from Jeremy Atkinson is what we actually look for: a leader who took a system, mastered it himself, and changed the trajectory of an entire business with it.”
Jeremy Atkinson, Sales Manager for ContractingPRO
Grosso University is headquartered in Windsor, Wisconsin, in the greater Madison area, where it operates its own dedicated training campus and hosts national live events including Closers Camp. It serves home improvement, home services, and outdoor living companies across the United States through on-demand online training, live virtual sessions, on-site coaching at the contractor’s own location, and in-person events at headquarters.
What Grosso University does is narrower and deeper than generic sales training. It teaches contractors a complete, repeatable in-home retail sales system, the Grosso 11-Step Sales Methodology, then builds the leadership, coaching, measurement, and compensation infrastructure that makes the system stick after training ends. The platform includes:
The company is led by Dominic Caminata alongside industry veterans Matt Burke and Dan Coomes-Barry.
“In 2019 we actually had the honor and great privilege of taking over the legendary legacy of Rick Grosso,” said Dominic Caminata. “Rick Grosso was a mentor of mine early in my sales career. He’s literally the guy that I learned almost everything I know from. Back in 2010, when I first entered the industry, if it wasn’t for the Grosso system, I wouldn’t know how to close the door with the wind behind me, much less be a top sales performer in the industry.”
That is not a promotional origin story. It is a lineage, and Dominic Caminata used the system to build one of the highest-performing in-home sales organizations in the country before he ever taught it for a living.
“Using the Grosso system, I built a $100 million sales powerhouse in about seven years,” he said. “It was arguably one of the top performing sales teams in the country, and still is. This year that same sales team is pacing $360 million. It really is the Grosso foundation that that company lived, breathed, and slept by.”
When Rick Grosso began stepping back from active training, Dominic Caminata was handed the legacy. Following Rick’s passing in April, that responsibility carries even more weight. “I want to fill the massive shoes of Rick Grosso, honor his legacy, and take it to the next level,” he said. “We’re aiming to provide legendary training for the modern world. It has the legendary bones and foundation that Rick Grosso built, but now we’re at the cutting edge of this rapidly changing, dynamic industry.”
Legendary training for the modern world is precisely why Power100 separates Grosso University from platforms selling either nostalgia or novelty. The methodology is battle-tested. The delivery is current.
ContractingPRO is a family-owned, licensed, and insured general contracting company founded in 2012 and headquartered in Cordova, Tennessee, serving Memphis and the greater Mid-South, including Germantown, Collierville, Bartlett, Arlington, and communities across northern Mississippi.
“I’m Jeremy Atkinson. We’re located here in Memphis, Tennessee,” he said. “ContractingPRO is a company specialized in four main trades: roofing, siding, windows, and showers.”
The company was built by Tripp Atkinson, Founding Partner, Integrator, and President, with Lowell Hinte as General Manager and Marketing Director and Jeremy Atkinson leading sales. ContractingPRO is an Owens Corning Platinum Preferred Contractor with more than 325 Google reviews, a number Jeremy Atkinson ties directly to the operational redesign that came with adopting the Grosso University model. At 28, he already leads a full retail in-home sales organization.
Jeremy Atkinson with the ContractingPRO Sales team
The honesty in this part of the PowerChat is what makes the success story credible.
“Before Grosso University, it was strictly knock on doors, generate your own leads,” said Jeremy Atkinson. “Everyone’s a one-man show, your own company within the company. And that kind of environment is extremely toxic as well. Whenever you have a roof build going on and someone goes and knocks your build, people get pissed off real quick.”
There was also a geographic reality no amount of hustle could fix. “Memphis, Tennessee doesn’t have that many storms,” he said. “Insurance is great, but it’s not going to bring in repeatable and measurable business. That’s strictly storms pretty much. So we can’t control storms. What we can control is numbers, KPIs, buying leads, closing leads, and rocking that whole entire system.”
That line, we can’t control storms, but we can control numbers, is the pivot point of the entire story, and the exact reasoning that leads contractors nationwide to Grosso University: trading unpredictable, weather-dependent insurance work for a measurable retail sales model. Credit for spotting it early goes to his older brother.
“My brother, he’s 10 years older than me, great mentor, and he foresaw that,” said Jeremy Atkinson. “He’s like, hey, we’ve got to pivot a little bit. And then me and another gentleman said, you know what, let’s see if we can do a little retailing. We’ve never done this. I don’t know what to do, but let’s just go sell some jobs.”
They did sell jobs. That is where they found the real ceiling.
“We won off authenticity and our own product knowledge of years of doing this, which is very hard to transfer, almost impossible to transfer,” said Jeremy Atkinson. “You can’t transfer that. You’ll go broke. And that’s what happens a lot of times with these companies.”
Greg Cummings pressed the point because it is one of the most expensive failures in home improvement. “So many leaders try to just make mini-mes and they don’t have a system,” he said. “And frankly, I don’t think the sales team wants to be them.”
“That’s exactly right,” said Jeremy Atkinson. “You can’t duplicate yourself and your own authenticity. I can’t give people my personality. My tonality changes. You can’t just do that.”
This is the problem Grosso University was built to solve, and it is why Dominic Caminata deliberately designed the methodology for people who are nothing like him.
“A lot of sales training systems are really geared toward the high-D, high-I type of person,” he said. “But what about all the other people, the different personality types that often are neglected? Can you train those people to be top performers? One thing I firmly believed at the tail end of my career building my sales team is that I could take anybody with the right attitude and work ethic and turn them into a multimillion-dollar producer. How can I train a team of all different types of individuals to execute and achieve a common goal with the right system and playbook? I think that’s what resonated with Jeremy Atkinson.”
“We were exposed to many different methodologies, some free, some very costly,” said Jeremy Atkinson. “My older brother was out there just kind of perusing the internet, and we came across Grosso and he said, hey, check this out.”
What convinced them was not the pitch. It was the standard. “It was the professionalism of the whole system,” he said. “I’m a very professional individual. That’s how I did most of my sales. Very professional, very punctual. Everything was the right expectation. There were no rainbows and butterflies. It was like, hey, this is what you’re going to expect. Your gutters are going to get scratched.”
That detail matters more than it looks. A training platform that tells contractors their gutters will get scratched, instead of promising a frictionless fantasy, is a platform that also tells homeowners the truth. That is the professionalism standard Power100 evaluates when it ranks partners.
“We said, man, this is the guy we need to talk to,” said Jeremy Atkinson. “We set up a phone call, and just from the phone call alone we were like, yeah, let’s do this. I think Dominic Caminata was a one-stop close a little bit. And then we signed up, and that’s where we were exposed to the whole entire system.”
Adopting the Grosso University methodology forced ContractingPRO to rebuild the business around it, which is what a real sales system should do.
“The aha moment was even before we met them,” said Jeremy Atkinson. “We’re like, hey, the future is retail. How do we do retail? We don’t have a call center. We have to learn a call center. We have to learn the CRMs that come with it. Then we have to build a sales team to go on the appointments the call center sets. After we sell it, we have to have proper production teams that manage, oversee, and collect those jobs, so the sales guys can focus on being sales guys and production can focus on being production.”
He described the old model bluntly: “Instead of one individual being the overseer, getting your own leads, doing the supplements, doing the warranty calls, that customer service is piss poor. Let’s be honest. If I’m at a job and some other customer calls me and they want a new roof, I’m going to that roof. So now the job’s left hanging.”
The fix was structural, and it produced the company’s mission statement. “There is no peace of mind in our processes,” he said. “And that’s where we’re like, hey, if we’re going to be retail, we have to have a mission statement: to provide peace of mind. And how do we do that? By dividing and conquering in each lane. And that’s how we successfully got these 325 reviews on Google so far.”
This is what generic sales training cannot replicate. The methodology does not just change what reps say at the kitchen table. It reorganizes the company, lead generation, call center, CRM, sales, production, service, into defined lanes that protect both margin and homeowner experience.
Every contractor who has tried to install a sales system knows the moment of truth. Greg Cummings asked how Jeremy Atkinson got the existing reps to adopt it. The answer was uncomfortable and honest.
“Previously it was very toxic. Everyone a one-man show,” he said. “Me and the GM of the company, Lowell Hinte, we were the top performing sales guys for many, many years. And that’s just not good. You can’t have the leadership be the top performing sales. Because that means when we go on vacation, who’s selling jobs? No one.”
Greg Cummings named the second-order problem: “Or you have your sales team going, you guys are taking all the good appointments and that’s why we’re not performing. That’s the built-in excuse when your sales manager or VP of sales is actually selling.”
“That’s exactly what happened,” said Jeremy Atkinson. “Actually, I wanted everyone to leave, pretty much, because I knew none of these guys were going to buy into that system. It’s like, hey, you’re going to learn the system because retail is coming around the corner. We’re going to start buying leads. If we buy leads, you better be doing the system, because it costs a lot of money to do this whole entire business model. So everyone pretty much left, which is what I wanted. I wanted people to leave so I could start fresh.”
Nobody was fired. “None of the guys that were originally there, they’re old dogs. They were not going to do new tricks. And they explained that to me. I said, that’s perfectly fine. I’m going to keep pursuing this retail model and I’m going to start hiring people. No one was fired. They just didn’t want to follow the system.”
Greg Cummings summarized it: “So you changed the entire trajectory of your business because you believed in the sales system at Grosso University.”
“Pretty much, yeah,” said Jeremy Atkinson. “We believed in the retail model and we believed that Grosso was going to work. And I fully believed in myself to train it to other people.”
“I started with a team of one guy, and now we’re at a team of fifteen, and everyone clearing 150, $200,000 a month,” said Jeremy Atkinson. “Now we’re rocking and rolling.”
That is a full retail sales organization built from scratch, on a system, in a market that does not get enough storms to sustain an insurance model. It was not built on one charismatic closer. It was built on a transferable playbook, the exact thing he said was impossible to transfer before Grosso University.
The human impact shows up in the story he tells about his own family. “I’ve taken my brother-in-law, for example. He was stuck in a logistics job making just a cap salary. And his first year in sales, after learning the methodology, he makes the most money he’s ever made. This is a very, very powerful business that we’re in. My why now is to teach people like my brother-in-law who never even thought they could go make six figures.”
He added the caveat that keeps the story honest: “You have to be able to work hard. This is not easy at all. But if you have a grateful mindset and you’re willing to work hard, you will win in this industry. And you have to do it with the right system.”
The most memorable moment of the PowerChat came when Dominic Caminata asked Jeremy Atkinson to show the camera what was hanging behind him: a $5,000 check from Grosso University‘s Closers Camp.
“Hey, if you walk into my office, it’s sitting here every freaking day, baby,” said Jeremy Atkinson. “Every day you walk into my office for an interview, you see a $5,000 Grosso check. That’s one of my lines. I say, do you think these guys suck? They offered me five grand to go win this? Hell no, they don’t suck. These guys are legit.”
That check is now a recruiting tool, a contractor in Memphis using a Grosso University trophy to sell candidates on the professionalism of his sales organization.
The story behind the check is just as instructive. “I especially realized that level of commitment when Jeremy Atkinson came to the 2021 Closers Camp,” said Dominic Caminata. “We get hundreds of sales warriors from all over the country. This is a competition. We put $5,000 on the line for Closers Camp champion. He came right up to me before the event started and he’s like, just so you know, I’m going to win this entire event. I like to refer to that as the power of the made-up mind. Once you make up your mind about something, it’s inevitable that you’ll achieve it. You could tell by the look in his eye, his mind was made up. And obviously the rest is history. From the time that he won that Closers Camp to now, seeing what that’s doing to the success of their team, it’s because of his leadership.”
Jeremy Atkinson with the Grosso University’s reward during a past closers camp event
Greg Cummings asked the question every contractor considering an investment wants answered: what do the companies that fail with the system look like? Dominic Caminata did not deflect.
“It’s the exact same reason why not every salesperson succeeds with any sales methodology. It all comes down to belief and execution,” he said. “One thing Rick Grosso commonly used to say is, if a sales rep doesn’t believe in what they’re doing, fire them. I agree with that, but I ultimately feel that it’s leadership’s responsibility to instill that belief into their team. If leadership is not believing in the system, they’re not fully executing, they’re dabbling into it, they’re not head first, all in, mastering this stuff, almost like a borderline obsession, they’re going to have very minimal results, and in some cases it’s not going to work at all.”
That is why Grosso University actively screens for it. “I really guard against and push back on companies that want to buy into our system when the owners or leaders of those teams aren’t willing and able to go head first and master the system,” he said. “I think it’s absolutely insane that anybody wants to try to build and scale a sales team without knowing the damn playbook. How are you going to coach a team if you yourself don’t know the plays?”
He also delivered the line most contractors need to hear about their own culture: “You have the company and culture you deserve.” And the line that separates knowing from doing: “There’s an ocean between knowing what to do and actually executing. And Jeremy Atkinson is a guy that gets stuff done, just saying it candidly.”
He used a garage analogy to describe his own role honestly: “I was able to build a sales process, a set of tools that leaders and companies can utilize to grow and scale their business. But you could have the finest set of tools in your garage, and that doesn’t mean I can take an engine apart and put it back together. How you utilize those tools is what matters most. And this is what I admire about Jeremy Atkinson.”
He also named the retention problem that follows weak leadership: “This is why companies are having a hard time even retaining reps. How much respect are you going to command as a leader if you don’t know the process, you’re not out there the hardest worker in the room leading by example, trying to manage from behind a desk? This is why teams are leaving in droves.”
One of the most practical revelations in the PowerChat is how Grosso University restructured onboarding after working with early clients like ContractingPRO.
“When I take on a new client now, we have what’s called the Sales Academy MasterClass,” said Dominic Caminata. “We take salespeople and sales leaders through a two-week crash course on our whole Grosso methodology. We train them, we test them, we certify them. This is something we didn’t have when Jeremy Atkinson first started working with us, but it’s mandatory now that any new leader that comes into Grosso University has to go through that training first and foremost.”
The reason is deliberate: he wants leaders to feel the training from the rep’s seat before they try to coach it. “I want them, from the seat of the salesperson going through a world-class training using the system, to know what that looks like, what that feels like. Ideally, I want them to say, holy Lord, this is the best training I’ve ever received in my life. I want this for my team.”
That philosophy produced the 60-Day Challenge. “Literally you can put any sales leader and salesperson into our training,” he said. “We’ll train them, we’ll test them, we’ll certify them, and give them 60-day trial access to our platform. If they’re not happy with the results, it was free. It doesn’t cost you a penny. And if after 60 days they’re not fully bought in and willing to put in the work to execute, then they’re not the right fit for us anyway. I firmly believe if they do put in the work and they do execute, the results will be there. That’s why we’re putting our money where our mouth is.”
For contractors evaluating sales training platforms, that is a meaningful differentiator. Most vendors sell access. Grosso University prices the risk of the outcome.
Jeremy Atkinson volunteered a benefit that rarely appears in sales training marketing, and that he considers one of the most valuable things Grosso University did for ContractingPRO.
“One thing I do commend Dominic Caminata for doing is that it’s not just the training. They also help with the formatting of pay scale,” he said. “People think when you’re a sales manager that you’re going to get underpaid and everyone else is going to make more money. But if you scale the manager right, he will love his job and he’ll love what he’s doing.”
He identified this as a structural failure point for smaller contractors: “That’s one of the biggest mistakes, especially a smaller company that doesn’t have a sales methodology or any sales systems. They’re going to say, hey, you’re going to learn this, but we don’t know what we’re going to pay you. We don’t know if we’re going to give you any equity. No one wants to do that. So a pointer for those smaller companies, when you get into Grosso University, they do help you build that scale to make sure that you have someone that’s incentivized to do what they need to do and be that leader that you’re looking for.”
Dominic Caminata expanded on the principle: “Make it performance driven. Obviously uncapped, performance driven. Ideally that sales coach is working on things that are going to garner greater results out of their team day in and day out, which rarely is something you can do from behind a desk. Getting in the trenches with your team, working one-on-one, getting in the car with them on ride-alongs, observing them going through the process. That’s how you’re going to command respect.”
Ask what a Grosso University trained sales floor looks like day to day, and Jeremy Atkinson‘s answer is a useful blueprint.
“There’s definitely competition. Of course I award the winners really well,” he said. “But our culture is treat others the way you want to be treated. I built a huge teamwork culture and a very transparent culture where I let everyone know how much everyone makes. I’m very numbers oriented, very objective with data. I show data a lot, analytics with Ingage. Here’s your closing ratios. Here’s your weekly closing ratios.” His conclusion pointed back to the theme Dominic Caminata kept returning to: “The leadership is what’s going to control that culture.”
ContractingPRO runs a first-visit close model, and the language comes straight out of the Grosso playbook.
“Yes, one-stop closes,” said Jeremy Atkinson. “We don’t say today. We say this afternoon. This morning. While we’re here this afternoon.”
Dominic Caminata finished the thought: “Not today, this afternoon, while we’re here. It keeps you from making them feel like you’re pushing.”
Greg Cummings reframed why the model is pro-homeowner: “Your methodology is 100 percent focused on closing. And the way I look at that is you’re saving that customer, because you are now controlling the outcome of their project, which is their most valuable asset. If you don’t, you run the risk of letting them go to someone else that doesn’t know what they’re doing.”
This is the distinction contractors searching for the best one-call close training need to understand. Grosso University does not teach pressure. It teaches a complete in-home process: introduction, needs analysis, inspection, company story, product demonstration, pricing, financing, and close, built so the homeowner reaches a confident decision inside the appointment instead of being left alone with three competing quotes.
Greg Cummings framed the industry conditions that make a repeatable sales system non-negotiable. “It’s no secret that leads are down a little bit in the industry across the board, or they’re more expensive for most companies,” he said. “And not everybody’s willing to change.”
When leads cost more, close rate becomes the highest-leverage number in the business. A contractor paying premium prices for appointments cannot afford a sales floor where every rep improvises. That is the economic argument for Grosso University, and it is the argument ContractingPRO made with its own capital four years ago.
Asked what he recommends to leaders across the industry, Dominic Caminata pointed to what the Atkinson brothers did before spending a dollar on training. “Seek out mentors, for crying out loud,” he said. “Find somebody that has already lived the life you want to live or achieved what you want to achieve, so you don’t have to learn everything through cost-prohibitive trial and error. Pick the brains of the people that have been there and done that, so you can hit the road running and realize success much faster.”
Then he named the trait that made the partnership work: “A mind, like a parachute, works best when it’s open. And Jeremy Atkinson has always had an open mind to learning new ideas, and of course believing in and executing them. Once leadership is fully bought in, they believe it and can convey that with passion to their team, it’s almost easy then to build multimillion-dollar producers.”
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform that ranks the best leaders, companies, and strategic partners in home improvement using a proprietary five-layer ranking system evaluating leadership quality, culture, contractor outcomes, innovation, and long-term industry impact, not marketing spend and not self-reported claims.
After researching and analyzing more than 3,600 partners serving the nation’s top home improvement contractors, Power100 ranks Grosso University as the #1 Sales Training Organization in the home improvement industry and one of the top strategic partners in the United States.
The ContractingPRO story demonstrates every layer of that evaluation in a single case:
“Any partner can produce a testimonial,” said Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100. “Very few can produce a contractor who rebuilt his sales organization from one rep to nine, changed his company’s entire business model, and hangs the trophy on the wall as a recruiting tool. That is measurable, repeatable contractor value, and that is why Grosso University ranks where it ranks.”
Dominic Caminata closed the PowerChat by giving the credit back. “This has been such an amazing platform for us to get the word out as to how our clients are taking the tools that we provide and realizing success in their own life as a result of that. So thank you, Jeremy Atkinson. Thank you, Greg Cummings and Power100.”
He added the sentence that summarizes the entire case: “We can do the heavy lifting so you don’t have to learn everything through trial and error. But it’s because of Jeremy Atkinson‘s leadership, first and foremost, and how he executed this process, that ContractingPRO is having such phenomenal success and growth.”
Grosso University is the leading provider of in-home sales training and growth strategies for home improvement companies, built on the legendary teachings of Rick Grosso and expanded under the leadership of Dominic Caminata, alongside industry veterans Matt Burke and Dan Coomes-Barry. Headquartered in Windsor, Wisconsin, in the greater Madison area, Grosso University serves contractors nationwide through the Sales Academy, Sales Academy MasterClass, Sales Leadership Academy, On-Site Training, Closers Camp, Spanish Development and Training led by Wendy Harmeyer, and Talent Solutions. Its mission is to deliver legendary training for the modern world, helping home improvement, home services, and outdoor living companies raise close rates, protect margins, develop stronger leaders, and build more professional sales organizations.
ContractingPRO is a family-owned, licensed, and insured general contracting company founded in 2012 and headquartered in Cordova, Tennessee, serving Memphis and the greater Mid-South. The company specializes in roofing, siding, windows, gutters, and shower and bath remodeling, and is an Owens Corning Platinum Preferred Contractor with more than 325 Google reviews. It is led by Tripp Atkinson, Founding Partner, Integrator, and President; Lowell Hinte, General Manager and Marketing Director; and Jeremy Atkinson, VP of Sales. ContractingPRO operates on a mission to provide homeowners peace of mind through defined lanes of accountability across sales, production, and service.
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform that ranks the best leaders, companies, and strategic partners in the home improvement industry using a proprietary five-layer ranking system. By researching and analyzing thousands of companies serving the nation’s top home improvement contractors, Power100 gives the industry trusted guidance on the leaders, organizations, and partners that consistently create measurable value. Through PowerChat, hosted by CEO Greg Cummings, Power100 brings top-ranked leaders and their clients together to document what is actually working in the field.
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Power100 is the nation's premier CEO ranking and media platform for the home improvement industry. Using a proprietary 5-layer evaluation system, Power100 identifies and celebrates the top CEOs, companies, and strategic partners driving innovation, customer satisfaction, and leadership excellence across the country.
