Adam Bensman shows roofing companies how to build referral pipelines with builders, insurance agents, realtors, and other key contacts. Pay referrers immediately per lead, not per closed job, and offer incentives like $25 to $100. He generated roughly $700,000 in referrals in one season and earned a single $35,000 commission from a builder.
Questions this video answers
About $700,000 in sales in one season.
$35,000.
Roofing Sales Accelerator Marketing Pack.
"Three Tricks to Get to the Kitchen Table."
Chapters
Hey, guys, Adam here, the roof strategist, just got super inspired by a comment on one of the videos that I wanted to come out of my lunch break having some after lunch coffee and talk about generating a referral pipeline. Now, I did start a side little project years ago that was all about helping roofing companies get more referrals, both from their customers and developing channels of referrals through people of influence, such as a realtor or an insurance agent, or even home builders or remodelers. And I want to share a couple tips, tips with you on how I generated some referral networks for myself personally when I was selling. And one of those referral channels in one season had referred me over a half million. I think it was about $700,000 in sales in one season. And from one job alone was a $35,000 commission that I got from this referral relationship. I'll tell you about that here in just a second. So there's a gentleman, his name was Grant. Grant ran, he was a building contractor. I somehow was called to a job to bid a roof from a hailstorm. And the homeowner said, hey, Adam, I really want this to go alongside the porch remodel we're doing. So they introduced me to the builder. So I met with the builder, we talked about the project. I said, hey, this is what we do. They can take the insurance funds, we put it in the porch, thought nothing of it. I ended up never even getting that job. Four months later, Grant calls me up, says, hey, I'm in the middle of a project. The homeowner needs a new roof. I know that you talked about that hailstorm thing, and I was wondering if maybe you could come take a look and see if you could do the job. Because that way, you know, it'll free up money for that homeowner to put towards the addition that they really wanted to do. So I got the referral from Grant to do that job three months later down the road. Turns out Grant owned four. Oops, that's three. Four condo complexes with 100 units each. Guess who won the job for that one. It was a lay down deal, even against competitors, and that job paid me a $35,000 commission. Now, the reason, when you network with the right people who have the ability to send you referrals, all you need to do is take care of them and make them look like a hero. So my job, when Grant gave me a referral, I'd go up to the homeowner and say, hey, Mr. Or Mrs. Homeowner, I've worked with Grant. Grant is a great guy. He's going to take care of you and I'm going to take extra good care of you, too. And when Grant feels like he looks like a hero because of me, he wants to send me work because it makes his job easier. It makes him look great. His customers like him, his customers give him referrals. And when I did that, I continued to get. I even did Grant's personal house later that he put an addition on. Needed to redo a whole bunch of things to tie it all in, and we did the job. So when you can identify the right people, whether it's a builder, whether it's an insurance agent, which, by the way, insurance agents can be great to network with. My personal agent, I got four or five referrals from in a year because I just said, hey, this is what we do. Now, I know that you don't want to see loss ratio as an insurance agent, but my job is to go in. All I do is assess the property and I help people through the process. So if claims come in and you want someone you can rely on and trust to give you an honest opinion, you call me and let me know and set clear expectations with them. Because there are times you're going to go out, tell the homeowner, yeah, look here, here and here, you do have storm damage. Let's get that claim filed. And the adjuster is going to come up and disagree. So you just need to manage expectations that this is a subjective field. And when you have those clear expectations set and you take care of an insurance agent, and when you let them know there might be some controversial things that come up up front, you're going to have a great relationship with them and say, hey, the minute that I would get a referral, I'd email the agent right away and I'd say, hey, Jim, thanks so much for the referral. I was just out of Peggy's house. We took a look. The storm damage is moderate. If I was them, I'd file a claim. It's going to be dependent on the individual adjuster. I just want to let you know this one's kind of up in the air. So when you manage those expectations properly, people love you. They trust the authenticity. They don't think that you're out there just to make a quick buck. And the other one is realtors. Now, the one thing I'll caution you when developing relationships with real estate agents is that oftentimes they call you up when a sale is hung up and someone Wants to buy the house, but they find storm damage and they're looking for the cheapest bid. So that is the one downside with real estate agents. But two really great referral sources are home builders who don't know the process, remodelers, especially interior, who don't have the crews, and then insurance agents when you do it right. So do yourself a favor and identify those key people of influence who do you know that own. Excuse me, that works with homeowners in your area. Maybe it's a lawn care business. There are people that will develop a relationship and say, hey, you do lawn care? You do you spray trees? Maybe they do gutter cleaning. Gutter crews are great, by the way. And you say, listen, I, I have a referral network. If you know of anyone and you've seen anything that comes up, let them know about me. I'll give you 25 bucks per referral. And here's the key point. Do not offer to pay people only if you get the job. Give them 25 bucks or 50 bucks or 100 bucks for every time they set you up with a conversation. It's not up to them whether they close the deal. You just want them to get paid instantly to say, hey, Adam just gave me 100 bucks to go talk with this homeowner or the guy that manages the golf course, which, by the way, we got in on a golf course by doing that. And when they're paid right away just to lead, to give you that lead, you do what you do best. You close the sale. And if you don't, who cares? What if it took five to close one monster deal? 500 bucks, nothing. And if it's homeowners, maybe it's 50 bucks or 25 bucks. So find out who those key people are for you. Home security, lawn maintenance, gutter repair, gutter cleaning, gutter crews, real estate agents, home builders, you name it, anyone in the neighborhood. And solar companies are a big up and coming one, especially down south, especially in Colorado. Those are great companies for you to say, listen, you guys are in there, you see this stuff, you let me know. And you can develop a stronger incentive structure with companies like that if you'd like. But by doing that, you can expedite your path to not having to knock doors. So that's all I've got for this video on developing your referral network. Now, if I missed anything, please drop them in the comments below. I want to hear what you who you're networking with, where your strongest referrals are. Drop in the comments. Inspire other salespeople as well. So that's it. Thanks for joining me today. If you want to see my proven sales and marketing material that I've developed, you can click in the video description for the link. It's called the Roofing Sales Accelerator Marketing Pack. It's all my material that I've refined and I've made it dummy proof. Anyone can do it. It doesn't matter if you're with a big company, a small company, or on your own. Just download it. You fill in your name and information, you click print and and you're using it. And I got off the phone with Julio, who just purchased it. I hadn't heard from Julio. He calls me up, he goes, man, I can't believe I actually got you on the phone. I actually hung your door hangers. You know, the ones that say we're doing your neighbor's house and we want to chat about doing yours. He got four leads. Four leads. The first time he used those things, just by hanging them on the door. Didn't even have to knock doors or anything. So these things work. They'll help you make sales, so check them out below. You can also check out my eBook, three books to get. Excuse me, three tricks to get to the Kitchen Table. There's a link below, so click thumbs up. Subscribe. We'll see you guys in the next one.
