5 Ways to Make Money During Winter (in Roofing Sales)

Winter's here and many people are freaking out. How are we going to survive winter? What do we do for cash flow or sales? Well, in this video I'm going to teach you five different ways to make money throughout the winter. I'm going to be balancing two things. One is now money, things that you can start doing through the winter to generate money today. And other is a later money leveraging this time and opportunities to again fill your pipeline and set you up for success in that season. Now, it's important to balance both because if you're in the northern markets and you deal with this level of seasonality, which I recognize is not all markets. So if you're down in like Texas or Florida and you're selling year round, you have a lot of folks who are very jealous of you because the folks in the northern markets, whether it's Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, all these folks that we're serving, people as we speak inside rsra, are going through the winter woes and people are panicking. But don't panic panic, because what you do throughout the winter is what separates you through the next season. So I'm going to be sharing those five things right now. And do me a favor and do your team a favor, share this video in your group chat right now. Why? Because just one idea that you harvest from this video that you put into action can put a boatload of money in your pocket, in the pocket of everyone else on your team. I'll be covering content for owners, managers and salespeople alike. My name is Adam Bensman. Thanks again for being here and welcome if you're new now, let's get started. Roofing sales is personal development in disguise and the reward for growth is life changing. I hope my content helps you create a richer life and bank account. All right, first thing on the list is a later money opportunity. Now don't worry, I'll be getting to the now money things shortly, which is why you're going to want to watch this video all the way through. But for later money, the number one thing that so many people overlook is planning and optimizing. Okay, planning and optimizing. This involves revisiting the last year and identifying what worked, what didn't, and what are our big opportunities moving forward. Now for many of us, especially towards the end of the season, we burn the candle at both ends and we're feeling burned out. So many people have this desire to just like kick back, relax and just like let winter go by and coast. And I will tell you, coasters don't get ahead. Use this time to be your own coach. If you're a salesperson or an owner manager, the process is identical. The only thing that changes is whether you do it individually or as a team. Here's how it works. You want to look back at your last year and say, what did I do well now? Why do we start there? Because so many entrepreneurs and salespeople that have the entrepreneurial bug, we get focused on what we can do new later. Shiny object syndrome, right? But the easiest way to experience even more success is to double down on what's working. So for that reason, we reflect on what you did really well so you can do even more of it. Exhaust the list. Okay. When you think it's done, spend more time thinking. Then move on to what you can do better next time. In that list, highlight the opportunities for improvement. Whether it's sales, process, hiring, recruiting, cash flow, upselling jobs, your marketing, all of that. Document everything that you could be doing better. Now, once you compare those, you can then go to the plan. In the plan, you want to ask yourself, what is the biggest opportunity for me to go from where I am today to where I want to be by this time next year to achieve your goal? And my guess is that big opportunity is likely one, maybe two things. It will likely have to do with improving your pitch or your sales training. Getting the team to close or yourself to close at a higher percentage, or offering upgrades or financing or a combination of both. Maybe it's recruiting, maybe it's optimizing your marketing or opening up a new marketing channel, developing a canvassing team. These are all things that we discuss inside the Roofing and Solar Reform Alliance. And some of this may be relevant to you. So creating that plan to optimize using this time when other people are kicking back, will put you in a position to spend the rest of the winter getting all of your ducks in a row, which we'll talk more about in a little bit, and putting you in a place to open. Absolutely. Crush it in the next year. So just because it might be slow, don't panic. Use this time to again, accelerate your growth when the time comes and the season kicks off here in the spring. Number two, rehash. This is now money. And I'll be sprinkling now and later money throughout. Okay, now money is rehash. In far too many people overlook this. You have a pipeline, and if you're in a leadership role or you own a company and you likely spent your hard earned money generating leads for your team and you probably had one, two, maybe three or more salespeople who didn't do super great. And that means they're not with you anymore and you don't really know how it went in the house. So you put leads in their hand or they generated their own, they didn't close the lead. And then like many homeowners, they decided to do nothing. They didn't make a decision because they're going to push this project off, right? They're going to wait till next year. And when they do that, this means that that lead is still viable. So you can sit in your office and dial text and mail, email and direct mail. By the way, my pro tip hit folks with two communication mediums. Not everyone answers the phone, but they may respond to a text. So I'll call or text, or I'll text an email or I'll email and call. Alright? My preferred method is like the one to go to all the time is texting because it has the highest open rate and response rate because people are compulsive as heck or when it comes to using their phone. Okay? So spend the time to rehash your old leads. You may breathe new life into them. All right, tip number three, this is later money. And that, my friend, is training. Whether it's you, an individual sales rep, or you an owner or manager of a company, training time in the winter is vital. Do not do what everybody does. I shouldn't say everybody. That's not fair. What a lot of people do is again, they sit back, relax and coast because they're burned out. It's okay to take a little break from. For many of us, that's the Christmas to New Year's time where things kind of shut down. Enjoy it. Recharge your batteries, but come back and revisit that plan and hone in on exactly what you and or your team need to train on. In fact, in two days on Wednesday, it's Monday. As I'm filming this, I'm putting together a training for RSRA in the middle of December on why homeowners resist you and how you can make your sale irresistible. And we are investing into sales teams to help sharpen the axe. And you can and should be doing the same. So whether it's door knocking, closing more deals, overcoming objections, or maybe it's offering financing or upgrades, these are the things that you can really dial in. So you're not just training for the sake of training, but up leveling your team. Because training isn't something you did, it's something you do and that's what we do in rsra, to work together in the trenches to share our winning secrets, to help each other dominate today's fast changing and uncertain times. And a lot of that is AI, which we're focusing on sales, training, changing consumer trends, using instant quotes and all that jazz. All right, number four is now money. And that is keep selling. Now before you resist me, just please hear me out. For many people, we come up with these excuses. Excuse number one, I can't keep selling because it's cold out. Excuse number two, I can't keep selling because it gets dark at 4:30 or 5. Excuse number three, I. I can't keep selling because the roofs are covered in snow. Now let me address all three of these individually. First you got to check yourself again. Not everybody. I got to keep catching myself saying that because it's not everybody. But a lot of people don't sell through the winter because of all those reasons and more. They're burned out. They want to break. But at the same time, even though they're burned out, want to break, they're freaking out about money. So you can keep selling through the winter. It just takes discipline and the right approach. So let's hit all of these one by one. Item number one on the list. It's too cold. Guess what? Put on a jacket. All right? This is like such an internal excuse. It's that simple dress warmer. Excuse number two, it gets dark at five. Well, guess what? You can be out knocking during the day, especially in areas with stay at home, parents and or retirees. But at night, you can keep knocking, have fun with it. Wear a hat with like Christmas lights or a necklace with Christmas lights. Carry a flashlight. There are a lot of folks in RSRA that have shared that. They continually knock through the dark and there's no competition doing it. And you can even open it up smiling and energized like you might be wondering why I'm showing up at your house at night. Don't worry. And then go into your pitch because you're addressing the elephant in the room. And then number three, I can't keep selling because there's snow on the roofs. Listen, all you got to do is build urgency and it's legitimate urgency. Mr. Homeowner, I realize that your roof is covered in snow to today's not the day, but soon it will be. Whether we have a warm spell here in the winter or in the early spring, what ends up happening is all the folks that put off getting their roof done through this last season, they're in line to get done now. And then we add in all the people that had problems and leaks because of ice dams. And you know what, they want to get their roof done immediately. When the weather's nice, we build out a backlog. So the reason I'm here today is to make sure that we get you taken care of before it's too late to now you can again convert into the inspection to get permission for the inspection or if you're selling retail to do the estimate and then say, hey, do I have your permission to come back and hop on your roof and do an inspection even if you're not home? We just have limited windows of daylight in warm weather. So of course I'll knock on your door to make sure, but that'll keep the process going. I'll keep communication up every step of the way. All right. So again, in doing so you can continually sell because I know like in Colorado, for example, we'll have days in January where it's 50 or 60 degrees and in the roofs melt off. So you can keep selling and sometimes even installing, especially if you're doing siding, windows, gutters or things like that. And again, weather permitting, you may be able to get in some roof installs. Pro tip set a time to come back in the spring to do a final inspection, making sure everything seals down. That is all right. And that brings us to number five in this is Christmas tree lights, specifically the new trend in permanent Christmas tree lights. Now I talked to a gentleman recently. He actually runs a pressure washing company and he's in the northern market and he this year, which is his second year doing it, will do a half a million dollars just in Christmas permanent Christmas light installation. So these types of things. And although you think it may be late, it isn't. In fact, I just made a post moments ago inside the Roofing and Solar form alliance community offering. Folks, hey, I know that we may be late to a Christmas party, but there are people that need to remove their lights and what a better time to run a promotion to say, hey, start now and get permanent Christmas lights. We'll remove your lights for you at no additional cost and you'll never have to step foot on a ladder again. And I just posted that today. If there's enough interest in there, we're going to be working as a group and developing marketing material and sharing our winning secrets of what's working and what's not to do this sales push through the winter. So if you haven't yet done it or gotten into the permanent Christmas tree lighting world. This can be a great way to again, add some revenue. And people get a little more excited about it than getting a roof done because there's a little wow factor in an emotional sale. So there you have it. The five different ways to help you make money throughout the winter. Remember, share this video with your team because one idea can make a huge impact to everybody. Thanks for joining me here, and if you want to stick with me, I want you to jump into this very next video and see exactly what I said last year about how to make money throughout the winter. I'll be seeing you soon.