Advice for NEW Roofing Sales Reps

I get asked this question all the time, Adam, I'm brand new in roofing sales. What advice do you have for me to succeed quickly? Well, guess what? In this video, I'm going to be sharing the advice that I wish I got when I was brand new. And at the end of the video, I'm going to share with you just a few tips that other folks shared. Because not long ago I posted a video on Instagram asking people, what advice would you give to a brand new person in roofing sales? And since we're all wired differently, we all come from different backgrounds, different levels of experience in sales or communication or working on our own, so to speak. Because I know even though we're working for a company, we're largely self employed in many respects. We don't have someone staring over our shoulder. This industry isn't super well known for its robust training. I know that's getting better and better and better, but there's a lot that we need to learn and it feels like a mountain. And I know to me, the biggest thing was product knowledge. I felt okay with people. I didn't really know how to pitch, I didn't know what I should be doing. But I started to piece it together and the most daunting thing for me was the stuff that I feel like I couldn't kind of learn on my own, which was the product knowledge, the process knowledge, the general industry. So I want to just break all of that down and share with you a simplistic approach to just crushing it and roofing sales when you're brand new. And by the way, if you're not brand new, I imagine you're going to grab some golden nuggets from this. But I just ask if you know someone who could benefit from this, share the video with them and pass along the good word. Because most of us wish we had more at our fingertips when we got started. So quick. Welcome or welcome back. My name is Adam Bensman, the roof strategist. And everything I do here on this channel is designed to help you and your team smash your income goal and give every customer an amazing experience. And in fact, my mission is to provide people that are just like me where you're coming into the business from. Really not doing too well. I was earning 1600 bucks a month. I had no sales experience. I barely, I shouldn't say barely. I had to Google, like shingle, rake edge, drip edge, like basic roof knowledge. Like, I knew nothing. I remember getting started and being like, do I need a ladder? How do I set a Ladder up. What do I look for? How do I get on a roof? I'd never been on a roof before. I was horrified of all those little mechanics. So maybe that's you, maybe it's someone you know. But the, the good news is that fear will get pushed behind you pretty quickly. So let's get to it. The advice for new salespeople, number one, every minute of every day should be focused on selling. Now what do I mean on selling? I mean on getting in front of people. This can be done, by the way, from about 10am to 7pm I know you have to learn your market, but there's retirees, there's stay at home spouses, you can work those neighborhoods in the morning. This is knocking doors, this is leaving letters at the door if no one's home. Sending direct mail letters, cold calling off of for rent signs or for sale signs or commercial properties. Anything that you can do to get in front of people, including networking. And if you're brand new, posting on social media to share your new message with the world and the people in your network as well as joining local Facebook groups for the communities in which you serve. So when I say focus on selling, this is making contacts, getting in front of people, the hardest thing is your very first sale. And what it often feels like is pushing this giant like concrete ball up a hill. And at the top of the hill is the apex where it starts going down, this momentum one. Getting that ball moving is the hardest part, that first traction. And it feels like an uphill battle as we get going. Then once we make our first few sales, our first five to 10 sales, that momentum begins to carry us. And that's how you see the folks like the guys and gals I've interviewed on the channel who struggled to get started. And then that momentum carries them. They don't have time to knock doors, they're getting too many referrals. These are problems that seem so far fetched, but they truly come to life. They do happen. And I know it's daunting and it seems super unrealistic, but believe me, you got to stick to it. Alright? Number two is you need to bet on yourself. Okay, now what do I mean by that? When you bet on yourself, you believe in yourself. And I was just talking to a very dear friend of mine named Jesse. Jesse's the gentleman that hired me, that I worked with, who I became his chief operating officer. And Jesse and I were talking the phone and we said, hey, we're both kind of crazy. We like jump out of the airplane and build the parachute on the way down. And that's how I was. I came in the business. I'm like, hey, roofing sales, I'm going to make six figures now. Did I know how to sell? No. Have I ever done door to door? No. Did I know anything about roofing? No. Did I? Was it smart that I left my stable income of $1,600 a month? No. It was against everything and all the advice that my friends and family said, hey, it's commission only. It's not safe, it's not risk or, excuse me, it's risky. And instead of heeding that advice and saying, you're right, you're right, you're right, if I did that, I would have taken the safe, conservative route, which, by the way, that might be the best thing for you. I don't know. But the safe, conservative route wasn't it for me. I wasn't satisfied with mediocre. I wasn't satisfied with middle of the road. I wanted more. And with high risk comes high reward. I went all in and I bet literally everything on myself. And when I did that confidently, I just said, I'm just going to do what it takes to succeed. All right, number three and is to study, study, study in your off time, study in off time. This is where you need to find. And by the way, Brian Tracy, in the book goals how to achieve, I think the subtitle is how to achieve everything in life faster than you ever dreamed possible, he talks about understanding what he calls your bottleneck. And to me, that bottleneck was a lot of industry knowledge mixed with xactimate, understanding how to read a scope and communicate with homeowners. So what I did in my mornings and evenings was I would study on the stuff that I needed to feel confident. All right, Number four is process knowledge over product knowledge. So process knowledge is number one. Now what do I mean by this? Most homeowners aren't going to drill you with technical questions about shingles and installation. They just need to know that you're competent in the process. If you're selling storm damage roofs, how does the claims process work? If you're doing retail, guiding them through the installation, all of the process of what they will experience, process meaning what the customer will experience, that is the number one most important thing. All right? When you get competent in that, you become more confident. Competence breeds confidence. All right? Now last thing I want to say is role play. And I'll tell you, this is the one thing I didn't do and I wish I Did. Now, why is this role play, whether it's with yourself in a mirror, whether this is with the company, which is ideal, or a partner. And in fact, I have numerous salespeople that have reached out that are doing role play with their significant other, their boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, it doesn't matter. But this part here is where we get those repetitions in. And I want to drill down into this for a minute. With role play, we focus on repetition. So example, let's say you sell, I don't know, 50 to 100 roofs in a year. That means out of all the objections you might hear, you get to rehearse them five times, 10 times, 20 times. You're not going to get them on every single job. So if you don't practice These, you've got 5, 10, 15, 25 repetitions in a year. But in role play, you can get that many down in 20 minutes, which means you get to work out the kinks, which means that you get to feel confident showing up at the door knowing how to start that conversation. All right, now those are the tactical things, but I want to leave you with a couple more internal and personal development angles to consider. So again, focus on selling every minute of every day. That's all you should be doing. Bet on yourself. You have to go all in, study in your off time to focus on those weaknesses so you feel confident. Remember that process knowledge is more important than product knowledge. You will develop that in time. And then role play, role play, role play, get in those repetitions. People ask, you know, how do you get so quick on your feet? It's because I've done this over and over and over again and that is the only way to do it. Alright, now, last things I want to share with you is that all of us face an internal demon. This here is the most difficult part of roofing sales. It's our internal demon. I did a video on this called Killing. I believe it's called Killing the Confidence Demon. It's in my three part series called the Roofing Sales Success Formula. There's a playlist on it on the YouTube channel. It's video number two. And in fact I'm going to link to it right up here. Roofing sales is personal development in disguise, meaning your income is capped at where you are. For you to earn twice as much, three times as much, by the way, I am, Yeah, I believe 7x my income in my first 12 months. And to do that I needed to become a new person and I needed to do that by literally killing the weak link the part of me that second guessed myself, the part of me that was focused on comfort, the part of me that was scared to make people, to cause tension, to show up at people's homes and disrupt the peace. I wanted to be a peacekeeper. So for most of us, this internal demon is the biggest threat. And case in point, there's a gentleman that reached out to me. It's a true story. He was an Iraq War veteran. He was in battle in the most dangerous places on earth. And he told me, he says, I never once, when I was in a firefight, never once skipped a beat. He did exactly what he needed to do. Yet he gets into roofing sales. He would drive to a neighborhood and be crippled with fear. So much so that he would not get out of his vehicle and he would drive home. And then he'd feel defeated and it would make this cycle worse and worse. And think about this, like, from the logic standpoint, this is insane. This gentleman faced the horrors of the worst, scariest situations that life could dish at you. Yet somehow our own internal fears, because those fears are out here, the internal fears manifest themselves in such a deep way that the more we're able to lean into this and to develop personally, to break through these obstacles, to lean into that discomfort, the more money that we can earn. And that, my friend, is the most important thing is for you to embrace the fact that roofing sales is personal development in disguise. Embrace the journey. Spend your time focused on communication, organization, self improvement, learning how to lean into the discomfort. And I wish I did that even earlier than I did. I wish I did it before I got into roofing sales. Roofing sales just forced me to it. So now let's turn our attention real quick to Instagram. If you're not following me on Instagram, it's oofstrategist. And in here, which by the way, I did this post on what's your number one advice for roofing sales? And I just want to share a few of these because they're not my ideas, but they're ideas that other folks had. So Flex Barrera said, just knock and talk, stop thinking. Which, by the way, side note, inspired a training I'm running in the pitch pro movement about getting into the flow state when pitching and stopping thinking is the biggest piece for you. To be able to do that is to get into flow, is to get out of your head and the fundamentals are to know what you're going to say when you show up. That's all you need to start that dialogue I love that. So thank you for that. Felix Barreras. Then we have Greg. He said for me personally, just knocking, getting out and doing it over and over, we have to face our fears. If you're someone that's going to go hide from fear, I'm just going to tell you now, this roofing industry is not going to work out for you. You have to be willing to look fear in the face and lean into it so well. Well done. And then I also, I love what this gentleman said here. He says be genuine and it's rstrab. He says, be genuine. Don't try to be a salesman, just be yourself. And this by the way, could not agree more. It's one of the main reasons that I teach in my roofing sales success formula. There's a link in the description, by the way, which is our all in one sales training, sales strategy and sales system is why I teach formulas. The SLAP formula, the ARO formula, the car park formula. It allows you to be yourself but knock down the right dominoes in order, which I absolutely loved. And then we have MCM Services Inc. With two pieces of advice. One, if you don't know their needs, expectations or price range, you should apologize for wasting their time. I love it. We have to focus on their needs. The key thing, getting yourself in the mind of your customer. It's probably the most, in my opinion, the most important skill set to learn in sales. And the last one is connect with your customer on a personal level. Figure out their needs, their expectations and price range. Be honest and don't be a shady D bag. I love that I got to throw that one in. So thank you. Don't be a shady D bag. But connecting on a personal level, in my opinion is far and away the most important piece. One quick story on that. Be you. There's a gentleman inside the Pitch Pro movement. With 20 year sales experience. He achieved his first 100% close rate week. Actually, I shouldn't say if it was his first, but he reported to me a 200k. So $200,000 in top line sales. Okay. In a week. These were retail and residential. $200,000 one week with a 100% close rate. By the way, he is following my closing strategy that I teach in the all in one sales training, sales strategy and sales system that I called the roofing sales success formula. And I asked him, I said, what did you change? He says, you know what's funny, Adam, is I actually changed everything before the presentation. Nothing in it. I rewatched your training and I focused on connecting with the homeowner and how we do that. And that shift helped him hit this 100% close rate. Which, by the way, if you're in sales, let me just be crystal clear, this is not sustainable. I know that. I'm very well aware. And anyone that says they can do 100% is delusional. It's false. My point is he had great success and what he focused on was connecting on a personal level. So be you follow the right sequence in the right order and you can and you will do this. It's not rocket science. All it's going to take is you leaning into your own worst enemy, which is usually right between your ears. It's yourself. So there you have it, and I'd love to hear from you. If I missed anything, would you drop a comment and share with me the number one piece of advice that you have for someone starting out and share this video with someone that you think might be able to help? Thanks for joining me here. And just because our time's about to wrap up doesn't mean ours should. So if you haven't done this yet, you can head on over to get a free copy of my pitch Like a pro roofing sales training video library over@the roofstrategist.com there's a link in the description and you'll get access to all my videos organized by category. You can click right here to get in there and if you haven't yet, subscribe to the channel. Love to have you here. And again, thank you for spending your valuable time with me. I'm looking forward to seeing you on the very next video.