After 27 Years in Roofing Sales, This Is STILL His Daily Routine
In this interview, Adam Bensman talks with veteran roofing salesperson Dan Walrack about the habits and systems that have enabled him to generate $18.7 million in sales and complete 595 residential jobs over a 27‑year career. Dan emphasizes a disciplined daily routine built around writing three specific goals each morning, prioritizing income‑producing activities, and spending the majority of his workday in the field knocking doors from 6:30 am to late afternoon. He critiques the “lazy” approach of many reps who limit themselves to a few hours of door‑knocking and idle time at gas stations, arguing that true success requires 40‑plus hours of focused effort each week. Dan describes his end‑to‑end ownership of the sales process—from marketing and lead generation to contract signing, color appointments, builds, and collections—while only delegating quality‑control and occasional invoicing. He shares his work‑life balance evolution, moving from late‑night paperwork to evenings with family and coaching middle‑school football, and he schedules dedicated paperwork blocks once a week. Dan also details practical efficiency tricks: a mobile office set up in his truck, using wet signatures on paper, deploying four traffic cones and a ladder as on‑site social‑proof tools, and signing customers on his tailgate to attract neighbor interest. Finally, he stresses the long‑game mindset of building lasting homeowner relationships, offering lifetime workmanship warranties, and leveraging post‑install follow‑ups for future sales. The conversation weaves personal anecdotes, concrete tactics, and philosophical viewpoints on work ethic, customer experience, and industry best practices.
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Dan, from someone who's been so accomplished in your career to be able to do $18.7 million, 595 residential jobs, you've been in the business for literally decades. Walk us through your daily routine, which I recognize is going to change whether it's a fresh storm environment, an old storm environment. You know, today's time you're driving about 3 hours to work in Madison, but let's focus on what you do as a daily routine Because your routine creates your habits, your habits create success. So what does someone like Dan Walrack do as your daily routine?
I think your daily routine will stem around goals, right? And in goals, what you should do every single morning, and I tell people this all the time, is, you know, I listen so many different times where people have yearly goals and where do you want to be in 5 years and things like that. Don't focus on your yearly, don't focus on your 5 years from now, focus on today. You know, every morning they should wake up, write 3 daily goals that they want to complete that day. And it doesn't have to be work-related. It can be personal-related, but just write 3 goals down a day. And if you can do 3 goals a day and you can accomplish those 3 goals a day, you know, and you do 6 days a week because Sundays we take the day off, you do 6 goals, that's 18 goals that you're handling a week. If you can handle your weekly goals, that'll turn into your monthly goals and that'll turn into your yearly goals. Your goals will be achieved. The other thing is, after you get the goals, then what you want to do is you want to focus on what you need to accomplish today. What are the things that have to be done? So after that, I'm at my job site or I'm at the office doing paperwork or doing a build, and I'm out there. And that's the other thing too, is so many times now you hear sales reps that are out there that, well, a homeowner's not going to be home until after 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock. So they don't get out of their house until 3 o'clock in the afternoon to go knock doors. And I tell people all the time, I coach football. There's a lot of things that I do on the personal side of my life that don't allow me to be out at 6, 7, 8 o'clock at night. But yet I'm still able to do $3, $4, $5 million a year every single year. How do I do that? It's about structuring your time where people say, well, no homeowner's home during the day. They are. You just haven't knocked on the right doors then, or you haven't approached the right people. Then you need to get out there all day long. This is your career mentality as opposed to a job mentality. Is in Minnesota or Wisconsin where I work, there's three four months of the year where we're not doing a lot of roofing and siding. I have to pack those three four months that I'm not doing into my year. So you're working forty sixty hours a week. I tell people this all the time: If you can honestly go into the bathroom in the morning and look in that mirror and tell yourself that you put forty hours of work a week in, you can't not make six digits a year. You can't. The problem is, is sales reps are lazy and they're not putting 40 hours a week into this. They're saying they are, but they're knocking doors 2, 3 hours a day. They get a couple doors slammed in their face. They're at the gas station getting a turkey sandwich, getting a Slurpee or whatever they're getting. They're back at it. And then all of a sudden you're knocking 15, 20 doors a day where you're not reaching the people that you should be reaching. I mean, I'm out there all day, every day, Monday through Friday. I'm out there from 6:30, 7 o'clock in the morning to You know, 3, 4, 5 o'clock in the afternoon working, putting the time in to do it. And that's what people don't understand is there's not a special sauce. There's not a special sauce. It's a matter of having a quality work ethic and going out there and doing the things that other people won't do.
What are the things that you see? You know, before we go there, I remember reading Brian Tracy's book. It's actually sitting on my bookshelf. I've talked about this quite a few times called Goals: How to Achieve Everything in Life Faster Than You've Ever Dreamed Possible. I have a mirror bookshelf of there on the other side. I still have all the pages earmarked and flagged. It was the book that I read right when I took my very first job in roofing sales door-to-door. And I remember it was the, also the first book I ever read that when, you know, at the end of the chapter there's like a summary and it's like, do this exercise. And then usually you just read it and move on.
Yeah.
I read it, flagged it. I still have all of the paper, like I typed it up, printed it out. of all the goals that I pursued. And Brian Tracy in that book and a series, I think I've read every book, if not almost every single book he's ever written. And I remember driving in my truck listening to hundreds of dollars worth of CDs, right? That's what was available when I got into it. And there was no podcast or anything. It was just CDs.
Yep.
He talked about income-producing activities and there are people, the reason I'm bringing this up, one is to recommend that book for others, But 2, the, there's 2 things that you hit on that I really want to get into before we kind of go through the rest of the routine. One is you said that, that like sales reps are often at the gas station having a Slurpee. They say they're working and I've, I've witnessed people who says, I'm busting my butt. And I'm like, are you? We have different measures of that. Your time might be occupied, but it is not being put to use. And Brian Tracy calls that income-producing activity. So if you have 8 hours as an example, heck, even a 4-hour stretch, how much of that time is actually being spent doing the things that produce leads or sales versus like sitting there answering an email or trying to find the best neighborhood? I'm like, you should have done that before you got out in the field.
Right.
And then the second thing that I love that you talked about was the daily goals, that rhythm. Like, man, when you say you're wired to win, When you're checking off a list, you're like, I did it, I did it. That's momentum. So, um, anyway.
Well, the key in sales is to stack your wins, right?
Yeah.
I mean, because everybody's out there, everybody's out there trying to get to that next level. Well, you need to stack your wins on what you need to get to. And the other thing that people do all the time too is knocking doors, is they're so concerned about rejection. They need to flip their mind. Instead of going out there trying to get those yeses, go out there and chase as many nos as you can get. Go see if you can get 100 nos in a day. Yeah, because if you can get 100 nos in a day, guess what's going to happen? You're going to trip over a yes or 2 here and there.
Absolutely.
And once you start doing that, and then those yeses, and you start to figure out and you understand what you're doing differently to get those yeses as opposed to those nos, those, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4 yeses you're getting out of 100 doors, all of a sudden it's going to turn into 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. All of a sudden it's going to turn into 15, 20, 20, and you're figuring out what works for you. You know, and I wasn't the one who said this, but somebody said the hardest door to open up is your car door, right?
Yeah, so true.
You know, and it's, and it's, and it's true is, you know, a lot of people have every excuse in the book of why they can't do something, as opposed to making the excuse, hey, I'm gonna make it happen, right? And how do you make it happen? Get out, get out of your truck, find your neighborhood, and start knocking doors and start working the process of actually working And not actually sitting there telling people you're working. Yeah.
So what I've heard from you, consistent wake-up time, daily goal setting, scheduling, controlling your schedule to income-producing activities and being in the field as much as possible, working build days and finding the neighborhoods where people are home instead of like, there's not a single soul that's home until exactly 5:00 PM when I choose to go out in the field. How do you end your days and where do you fit in the paperwork, like the necessary evil that us sales folks don't necessarily like to do?
Yeah. Well, and that's kind of funny, Adam, as you mentioned that is because when I first started doing this, probably first 10, 15 years of my life in this industry, my evenings, I was out every night till 8 o'clock at night, right? And I was home, had quick dinner, and I was doing paperwork till midnight. And then I was back at it at 6:30 in the morning again. I didn't know any different. That's just, that's what the job was, right? And as time progressed and as I built my network and I built my relationships and I built a process of how I do things, now my evenings, to be straight up honest with you, I spend a lot of my evenings with family.
Yeah.
You know, I do a lot of coaching. I do, I coached middle school football. I do a lot of, as much as I can be with my family as possible in the evenings. And then I just schedule one day a week or a day, a morning a week or a few hours a day. So be it in my schedule of controlling my schedule to get in the office and put that paperwork together. And it's getting harder and harder because when I first started to do this, we had to fill out one, two sheets of paper and boom, there we go. Now it's like I'm signing 15, 20 different contracts with the homeowner on disclosure forms and authorization forms and color forms and Home condition reports, and you know all these other things. And I'm getting homeowners and filing all those into a computer system with a CRM and everything like that. You know, I used to be able to put a job order in in 15-20 minutes. Now it takes me an hour and a half to do a job order, right? So, and that's another thing people laugh all the time is they sit there and say, "Man, to sell that amount of jobs, you must have a lot of people doing your stuff." I try to explain to people, "Man, I do A to Z. I market my jobs. I sign my jobs. I meet my adjusters. I do the color millings. I." color appointments. I do the builds, you know, I do the collections and I do all my ordering myself. So I do everything from A to Z on my jobs. The only thing I get assistance on is the quality control. Once in a while it'll be out there and take, you know, watch the jobs. And then if we're lucky, we'll send the invoice in and get the collections to help with that part. But other than that, I do everything for my job. Yeah.
Which is so rare cuz most companies now are segmenting that process where the sales rep's responsibility for many companies is ending right around the point of turning the job in with a signed contract. Production will pick it up to do the material order and scheduling. And then the office is doing collections. And by the way, not every company's doing that, but—
Which, to be honest with you, is great, right? Because we want our closers out there. What?
Closing.
Closing, right?
Yeah.
However, this is where, this is where the part that I see is wrong with the industry is If you've got a supreme closer, if you've got a guy like myself that are great at closing, that closer should not want somebody else to touch that. They should want to be at all their builds because the easiest, easiest time to sign a homeowner up or a neighbor up or somebody like that is at your build, is at your relationship building. Because I look at every time I meet a homeowner, I'm building a friendship. And when we talked about the referral process and things like that, every time I get a chance to stop by their house and Play with Johnny shooting a bucket that's sitting out in his driveway. I'm building that chance for a referral. Yeah. And a lot of companies want their closers. Hey, go out, sign the person up, turn the job in. Once the job's turned in, it goes to production and boom, we'll build it. We'll get it collected. Da da da. You go off to the next one. Well, in reality, is that person different than anybody else that's going to be knocking on that door? And I'm not saying good or bad.
Right.
You know, for some, it's great. You know, you get a high-volume company where you got your closers closing. They got to keep moving, moving, moving, make their money. Right.
Yeah.
Or then you got other people where if your mindset's different like mine, where is I want that homeowner to call me back in 3 years for an issue. And that's the other thing, we'll get into that. How many companies offer lifetime workmanship warranties? Right? I tell people the reason we offer a lifetime workmanship is because in 8 years from now, 10 years from now, I'm inviting that homeowner to call me back if there's a problem, issue, or concern.
Mm-hmm.
Because 9 times out of 10, if it's leaking, it's leaking within the first year. Right, or year and a half. But if they're calling back eight nine years later and say, "Hey, I got a leak or I got a problem. I got an issue." Da da da. And you go up there inspect it, and it's not a workmanship issue. I built that relationship now. Now I'm selling them on a retail something that they probably need. Yeah. I don't want them calling somebody else.
Your focus on the long game is admirable.
If we did because I'm a dinosaur, man.
So I love when you refer to yourself as a dinosaur and you've got the dinosaur on your desk. It's great. Uh, what, what efficiency tips or techniques, like I'll give you an example. I had a mobile office and I had my Ford F-150, the rear seats flipped up. So I'd keep the, the, it was like a 60/40 bench. And then the, the, the bigger bench would stay up. I'd have all my stuff stored there. I had one, I actually still have it in my, um, In my storage area, I've got this desk. It was like a TV dinner tray and it slides underneath the back seat so I could set my laptop up and I would just sit in the back because the back seats are huge and I could be in my truck or in a build and get things done. So I didn't have to wait to do all my paperwork. So I was just curious if you had any like productivity—
Now you're building my dinosaur tendencies is what you're doing here. Right. I'd like to see a show of hands when you put this out there on YouTube, how many people still have their manila envelopes in their file folder box in the backseat of the truck that still isn't organized out from inspections to color appointments to builds, the orders to collected. I still do. I mean, that's in the back of my truck right now, everything I got. Ask me how many e-signs I do on signatures online or how many times I do my presentation with a tablet. Yeah. Never have, never will. You know, I still, I'm a person that I love to look into my homeowner's eyes and talk to them and explain the process to them on a sheet of paper. And then all contracts are signed by my homeowner, right? Yeah.
Wet signature.
Other processes I have in the back of my truck, something I started doing about 15, 20 years ago is back of my truck, I've got my ladder. I've got my tool belt, I've got my 4 cones. You know, people ask, why do you have cones? Every single time I pull up to that homeowner's house, the first thing I bring out as I drop my tailgate, first thing I bring out are my 4 cones and I put it behind my truck.
Yeah.
I park in the same spot every single house I do it in. The reason those 4 cones are out there is, I tell people all the time, is every single time I'm talking to a homeowner, I'm putting on a show, I'm doing a presentation. I want— I'm inviting Neighbors to ask what is going on? What what what are they doing over there? Right. I want people to see me. So my four cones pop out, my ladder pops out, my and I talk to like I tell people all the time. Ask me how many times I sign homeowners up on the kitchen table. Ask me how many times I sign people up on my tailgate. I would say eighty on my tailgate, twenty percent at the kitchen table. They're like, why do you sign people up on your tailgate? I want other homeowners to see what we're doing. You know how many times I was signing a homeowner up on my tailgate discussing or doing the color appointments on my tailgate discussing, and a homeowner would come walking by and say, what are you guys doing? I said, oh, we're just getting Mrs. Jones ready for a brand new roof on here. She just got approved by the insurance company. I assume so did you guys. We haven't even had ours looked at. Oh, really? Well, here's my card right here. I said, I can spin down there right after I'm done with Mrs. Jones here getting a color on. We'll see if you got the same damage. See how that's kind of parallel to what I'm doing on the warm door, cold door, door knocking? Yeah, it's really an easy process to invite that conversation where you're not pushing and you're not pushing your agenda onto somebody. You're just letting them know you're here to help.
Powerful social proof. It's brilliant. It's really brilliant. Is your truck wrapped?
No, my truck is not right now. The reason my truck is not wrapped, I'm going to tell you that, is in Minnesota, there's a You know, to be a sales rep, you have to be W-2, and I'm a 1099, so I can't have mine wrapped with the company and things like that on it. However, uh, I also do a lot of, uh, I'll go beyond the hustle speaking and things like that, and I don't like to— my truck's not wrapped. So yeah.
Yeah, understandable. So how do you end your days?
Um, well, if it's a build day, I end my days at my homeowner's job site. Asking for referrals, and hopefully it ends with a couple inspections at the end of the job. But otherwise, I come home and Tiffany actually, she proposed the idea about 20 years ago, 20-plus years ago, that 8 o'clock PM is basically the phones get shut off. We don't talk work after 8 PM. It's family time after 8 PM. So that's how I end my days. And literally about 8 o'clock, Phones will go off as far as work-wise. And then I'll look at what I'm scheduled for the next day. And then, you know, a lot of times I'll sit down and I'll relax and I'll, I'll think to myself, okay, did I accomplish the goals I wanted to get accomplished today? And I would say 95% of the time, 100% of the time it's yes. And then I'm excited for the next day. I, the, the problem I have is, and I, I don't know if it's so much a problem or an issue, is 27 years of doing this, I still love doing what I'm doing. And I think that's part of the passion that— of why I'm good at what I do is because I still enjoy doing what I do. And if you don't enjoy doing what you do as far as a sales rep out there, this probably isn't the right industry for you. Because every single day I get up and every single day is different in the aspect of you don't know what's going to go on that day and it's good or bad. There's rejection, there's positives, there's ups, there's downs. Again, one of the 5 C's that I talked about as far as consistency, because not one day is consistent as far as ups and downs, but you have to make it consistent as a sales rep. And that's part of playing the long game in this industry. So.
