D2D Pitch For Discontinued Shingles w/ John Senac

Discontinued shingles and how to approach them at the door. Welcome to today's interview with none other than John Cenac. The man, the myth, the legend, who we call in the Pitch Pro Movement. Hollywood. Hollywood. Welcome.

Wait, where's some sunglasses? Hey, Adam.

Thank you.

I appreciate you having me on.

Yeah. Today we're going to talk. We've been getting questions a lot. I've been getting questions. In fact, I just got them. When I get questions, I make lists and when they come up a bunch, I make videos. And here we are. People have been saying, Adam, you know, you know, discontinued shingles, how do I approach these sales at the door? Direct mail, all that stuff. And clearly we know each other a bit. I'm going to just do a quick intro and then hand it over to you of why I brought John in to discuss this topic. John Cenac and I met through way of an introduction of a mutual client who actually just met at an Owen's Corning event. And thank you, Brian. And he set us up to chat. We create, had a ton of synergy. I'm hanging with you. At Roofcon last year, we, when we just started get to know each other and one or two people had come up with their phone, like throwing it in your face, excited, look at this church. I just got approved using what you taught me, which was everything about how to ID discontinued shingles. So John Cenac, the man behind the name that Roofing, Siding and more Roofing Siding and more Facebook group and president of NTS id the Shingle Identification Laboratory. I shall say the new and even more robust Shingle Identification Laboratory and fellow mentor inside the Pitch Pro Movement. So you can, if you are interested, you can join John and I on live interactive sessions every single month. So without further ado, John, what did I miss on the introduction before we start talking discontinued shingles.

That's. You didn't miss anything. Let's, let's, let's talk about what people need. I appreciate that very robust introduction. I've been a busy man. This to give people a little bit of belief behind what we're getting ready to tell them. Keep in mind, I spent nine years selling in the industry and my focus became targeting discontinued products. So to give everybody a little bit of credibility behind that, I've done this and there's really a few transactional times where you are going to be faced with that. One is you're in the heart of the storm. So it's, it's battered, right? And there's storm, there's storm damage. You're you're in this swath, the hail swath, the wind swath, whatever it may be. And you, and you happen to spot one of those. Two is you're driving around scouting and you spot one. And then three is you get introduced to a claim and it happens to have it on there. Maybe you didn't know it at the start. So those are kind of the three main points. There's a few vines off of those, but those are when it's coming up. And I imagine you're getting your questions centered around those things. So let's pick one of those scenarios and let's start bantering through it.

Awesome. And last bit of context because anytime we bring folks in, many, many people do know you already. You've made quite a name for yourself. I'm going to share my screen real quick. Just to kind of give people some guidance on where to start is to hop into the name that roofing, siding and more group formerly named that shingle. John, you and I were both named on the.

Content creator of the year and we were, we were top four. We were down to the four finalists.

We were top four because of the influence that you've, that you've had with this group in the industry. So hop on there to take a look and then this is what, what we were fighting over. I just have and have any time I look at this, I think you just message. It was truly an honor. It really was. And it's been great to connect. So that aside, John knows his stuff and he has helped people literally build. I'll call weatherproof models around this to be able to support the neighborhood subdivisions that may have discontinued shingles. But the big question we're going to talk about today is how to approach that sale. We'll go through the sales process in full. Kind of how the high level touches of where we mention it, how we mention it. Because the big question is how do you approach a door? So I want to start with what I think people are asking, which is, hey, do I just show up and say, hey, you've got a discontinued shingle, you get a new roof like I want. I mean, I've got my views, we've talked about this, I want to hear yours.

This is so most of my business is just that maybe it's not a storm, maybe you're scouting, maybe you happen to slam on the brakes and swerve over because you're like, oh, I think it's that, you know, and that's what's going on. And a lot of people are Thinking, how do I approach that particular door? Um, I approach that door with a very brief information, similar to a letter that I use or I write down the address, I mail them the letter and then I go knock it. So one of the two is happening. I'm either knocking it, then they're getting the letter or I'm sending them a letter and then I'm going knock it. So that way they're getting more touches, more impressions from me. My brand, my logo, my company. That's what my objective is. But in that moment, it's not like I was outdoor knocking in a hail swath or wind, wind path and just happen to come across one. We'll talk about that one as well. But in this particular scenario, I want to let them know that their time is valuable by telling them that, that I don't have much time and then let them know that we just want to give you a complimentary inspection. You've got a unique product up there and those tend to cycle quickly. So a knock may sound something like this, right? They come to the door and you're like, hey, I only have a minute. My name's John. What's your name? I'm sure you don't have much time right now too, but I want to leave you card because I happen to notice you've got a unique product. They've recently changed that product line and it's good to start just looking at it. I'm sure everything's fine, but it's good to be proactive and I just wanted off your compliment inspection. I'm booked the next two days, but if you'd like something next week, I can set you an appointment. And I gave them a whole slew of psychology there. I'm not going to take a lot of your time. I'm going to be respectful of yours. I didn't say the word discontinued, I said the word change. Product lines change because discontinued can create some fear and I don't want to introduce that or talk about that yet. It may hook and start some conversation at that. What do you mean change? Right. It may hook some conversation and then I let them know I'm a busy restaurant full of people that people want to eat at.

Right.

I'm booked the next two days, but I can look at something on my calendar next week if you'd like to set up a complimentary inspection. That's my approach and it's very non threatening to the consumer because it's not like I'm there knocking. I can look at it now. All this kind of stuff like why were you. Why did you pull my driveway? Why were you randomly in this neighborhood? There's no storms that I'm thinking about. So I've always used that approach when approaching a spot discontinued product. Like I drove by, I know it's there. I've been eyeballing that one and I want to go get it. That's how I treat it. Thoughts on that?

Yeah, no, I love it. And as I mentioned, all videos like if it ain't broke, don't fix it anytime. Like with the sales numbers you put up, you know, multimillion in sales while. While still selling being the president of NTS Consulting speaking. We just did our first Owens Corning event together.

Right.

And. And all that. So no, the sales numbers are phenomenal. Now I do have question. I understand the psychology behind hey, I'm so busy that I can't see you for two days. And I know that many people teach that. I'm pretty against that approach because time's so precious, so can I. And by the way, again, I know it works. I know some people have built their whole livelihood on that. But if you're there is. Do you find, and this is an honest, open question, do you find that them booking it takes that they take the appointment more seriously than if you just offer to do it right then or book it?

I do. And I even have a secondary sales approach to that where I will take the same strategy but I'll add one piece at the beginning where I'll say my next appointment is in 45 minutes. I could give it a cursory look over now or I could book an appointment for you about two days out. Now I've given the homeowner the option of now knowing it's going to be brief and let him know I've got an appointment I've got to get to. So I'm willing to look at it now, but not like this. I got to look at your roof now approach with like, who just showed up my door and they want to get on my roof right now type of deal. Because I do find the that when a bunch of people are knocking, they know door knockers are knocking. But when there's been no activity to kind of trigger that sometimes they are a little bit nervous about you being at the door. Why my door, why are you here type of deal. There's no roofs going up in my neighborhood. So either one of those works. I like creating the sense of being busy and acknowledging their time. If they said to me do you would You. So you don't have anything the next two days. I can then go and say, you know, I didn't take it close to my calendar. I do have two time slots. Right. I have the ability to pull back from that. Or I can lead into it with a. I have 45 minutes to give it a cursory look now. Or we can schedule something two days out. Because I do know. But it's been very successful for me. And about 50, 50. I use that right now option versus not the right now option. Awesome.

And in some markets, if it's not a saturated neighborhood, you've got more. More flexibility. The risk you run in a really saturated neighborhood, or maybe it's after a fresher storm is by the time you wait that two days, they're going to have 75 more people there. Someone has a strong pitch. They connect like deals gone. You never even had a chance. No, no. Is it safe to say, and I don't mean to interject that pair that right approach with the.

Most of what I work is peripherals outside of storm, outside of where everybody else is knocking. If you. If that changes and you are in their neighborhood for a reason, you need to be approaching that pitch differently. And you need to know that your competitor may not be introducing that. But there's a fine line. So let's put yourself in the heart of the storm now. There's a fine line between trying to give so much knowledge that you've created your homeowner to be an expert versus giving them enough knowledge that they believe you're different than the other guy that's knocking. And I think that there's. You probably you and I both have input on that one that I think will be valuable for anybody thinking about this. So now we're in the storm, we're knocking. We've. We've knocked the last 10 doors. We come walking over this house and it's got what we clearly know is a designer discontinued product. And we're hungry for this one. Right.

And.

And we're knocking on it. Right. I typically like to use that phrase change. Right. But let's handle it. If you're one of the first ones to knock there, my pitch is going to be what my normal door pitch would be, and I may introduce the concept. Plus, it looks like you've got a product that's changed recently. And there's some added benefits in the claim process to that. And I'm kind of trying to spark some interest. If I'm not number five, I may even lean into the Concept of. And the other guys talk to you about your product change and how that's going to help with your claim. What do you mean?

Right.

I'm looking for one of those two hooks in the. In the process to just introduce. Right. Barely introduce the concept without creating an expert. And when they ask, I still don't want to just vomit a bunch of information on them. And then they're like, yeah, sounds a little too pitchy, right?

Yeah, I've. I've been guilty. I laugh because I know I've made all the sales mistakes. Right? So when I'm like, so I love. I want to do a bit of a pitch breakdown on what you just hit. Like, you one, you immediately open that conversation with, I don't have much time, so you disarm them. You didn't even give them a chance to get off my doorstep because you're like, I'm leaving soon. So that, by the way, that subtlety was really powerful. I like that. I don't have much time. And number two, you just jump straight to it. And then number three, you. You set the hook. So when I say set the hook, you didn't give them the whole pitch. You didn't. You just. You planted a tiny little seed of curiosity to want to learn more instead of saying what most people do. Hey, what's up? My name's Adam. I'm the roof shredders. I'm in the neighborhood today helping people replace their discontinued shingles. Because even though your roof is probably fine, one small thing means I can take your insurance company for the whole bit. Get you a brand new roof, you just pay your deductible. All you have to do is sign here. We'll have this thing done in six weeks. What do you say? And then all of a sudden, the homeowner's like, what the hell? Like, right? Like, way too much ping pong ball going around. Yeah, like too much. Too much. Too much. Too much. Like that. That total word vomit. Getting ahead of myself, telling them all the outcomes. We just need to kind of plant that seed. So we just hit kind of the. The approach. If you're a bit more direct now, I want to ask you, is it always wise to lead with the. With some hint of the quote unquote change or that's discontinued, or do you find that you just approach this in a normal way? And once you're up there, now you have your differentiator in the storm market.

I want to add the change or discontinued element as the differentiating piece. Okay, perfect. I do not want to lead with that because it's still a card that you have to educate or to play. However you want to look at it at any point in the transaction, right? At any point as you're going through your pitch, your process, your developmental relationship with the customer, whatever it may be, you can play that any point in the process, right? Maybe they're sitting down, they're asking you how the claim goes and that's when they're interested. They've done the inspection, you're going through your photos and like, well, what if they say no? Now I introduce it, I haven't introduced it yet, and I'm showing the photos and like, well, what if my insurance company says no? Or what if they don't agree with you? Well, Mrs. Smith, as long as they agree with something, you actually have a unique product on your roof that has recently changed. And when products change, it presents some more communication and leverage in the claim to be able to say why we can't repair it and replacement may be more relevant or necessary. So we kind of have a backup plan thanks to what's on your roof. But I want you to see and understand the damage and how that's really the leading thing that we're looking at here. And then I'm right back to where I'm at. I don't want to stay in the education of discontinued products. So you can play that card anywhere in the process. So in storm markets where you are door knocking and other people are door knocking, normal pitch, I use it as a factor to etch me above everybody else. And then when they're ready for more information, I give them more information, but only enough to keep the buy in of them believing that I know more than the other guy that knocked on your door or looked at your roof.

Love that. So you're always keeping a little bit in reserve, so to speak. So that's the big difference between young excitement and seasoned sales. Young excitement is like, look what I can do for you. I'm going to tell you all this amazing things. Oh my God, we do this and this and this and then we're going to get the roof and we're going to. And like they just, they can't help but just be like, I need to show the world how smart I am, how much information I have, how much better I am than everybody else. And you just have this calm, reserved approach to say, I'm going to bait you along. And I don't mean that in a manipulative way of like, hey, we're Only going to give you a little bit, but it's. You understand how the homeowner can consume information. So if I tried to teach my entire in five minutes that, I mean, baiting them along to get the message. And we do this in teaching, we do this in sales. We do this anytime we have a message to convey. So it. Blow them, blow their socks off, and they're like, well, that sounds too good to be true or too crazy.

Yeah. And. And for me, it comes down to this piece, right? Like, we got two of these, right? And. And one mouth, right? So when you're in the sale process, for me, I always change my mindset to we've got engagement. The pitches come out. There's communication, there's conversation, there's questions. And I now have to shift from my lead in my pitch, whatever it may be, to I am now selling with an active service. And listening to the service that they need in the moment is what closes my understanding that the thing that's important them may not be the thing that I want to say. It's what do they need to hear? And did I acknowledge that? Did I provide that service? And then can I move back to my pitch? Because if the homeowner says, well, what if they say no? Or what if they don't approve all of it, the service they need in that moment, the thing they're asking for, I got to deal with that. And I just need to deal with it enough to ease that pain point and then go back to my selling process. So you sell with an act of service, listen to each little service point the homeowner needs in the process, and you will find that your transactions are very, very smooth as you go through each step of the selling process. Love that.

Love that. Gosh. When before we started recording and I were talking direct mail, and I was showing you my direct mail letter on just shingles, and you're like, man, it is wild how close, how similar we think. And I've just done videos about that same thing. Like, they don't need the whole pitch if they say this. That's important. Your job is to play the puzzle piece. Like, oh, this part of my pitch fits right into that puzzle. And that's all I'm going to talk about. And the rest of the pieces can stay on the board because it's not important to them right now. So getting the right pieces delivered in the right order to just emotionally mesh with their needs.

Love it.

And direct mail. Shifting gears for a minute, you had mentioned again the similarities in our approach Direct mail, then knocking after or knocking direct mail, knock again. Blending that multi touch marketing approach and then using the direct mail. I include that in the battle pack. I just showed you. It showed you ours or mine. And you said we have very similarity there. So can you just talk a little bit about your direct mail strategy? I know that some people are going to want to know like, well, how do you find those addresses? How do you know it was a discontinued shingle? So maybe just kind of from ground zero, like from getting the right data to actually implementation of the direct mail plan.

Sure. So for me, obviously I've got a high skill set on identifying products. So learn, get in that Facebook group. Learn as much as you can about shingles, understand from your manufacturers, your reps, your, your supply house reps, all you can about products. So you know what you're working with and that will go a long way. Then as you're driving around, you're finding them, write down the addresses because you're going to revisit them, you're going to knock them, you're going to knock. They may not be home, you may leave a card, but send them a mailer. And what I've found to be very successful. And I'll give everybody my statistics from last year. I think I sent 141 mailers last year. Then the top 40 homes that I felt had high quality roofs products. Right. The age, the age range really point once you know the age of when most of the products discontinue, you can just drive around and look on zoom below and find the date of when homes were built and stuff like that or county information. But then I sent $45 gift cards back out to the top 40 addresses. That means they got a second mailer from me with a handwritten address and a letter in there. And those 40 people, I got almost 18% response from that. Okay. And that started my referral process. And it makes it easy. Then when they see the truck around one of the doors, I went and knocked. And when the lady opened the door, she goes, you're the guy that sent me the gift card. First phrase out of her mouth before I could even pitch anything. Because you're making marketing touches and the more you can do that, the more impactful it is. And then we had a door drop letter to add to it where we would go. And if they had wind damage, we would attach a shingle tab that was broken to the letter and we would just drop. I'm looking around my office because I could reach and grab one but we would. We would attach that and do a door drop letter talking about, you have shingles missing like this. And it would again, create the questioning process. And it was probably the. If it wasn't the second, it could have been. It could have been the. The. The fourth or fifth touch. At that point, we did the door drop, but I. I just worked those addresses and then any referrals, and I didn't have to drive all over the place. It was a very simple strategy. And I closed a lot. A lot of business doing that.

That's crazy. By the way. 140 letters is, like, not high volume. Like, that's. That's laughable. How small of a sample size and how.

I mean, 500.

Just a moment. I know, but it's. Dude, I've had people like, direct mail. Results will Vary, you know, 1 to 1 to 5% is typical response rate on direct mail. But you layer in, again, that second touch, you're going to increase it. You layer in other proven formulas for conversion or sales or influence, which is reciprocity. Here's five bucks. There's a guilt factor. They're going to use it. And when I say guilt, it's not true guilt. It's someone does something nice for me. So I wanted. I feel obligated to do something nice for them. And we know that this stuff works. That's why they give samples. And in malls, that's why food samples come out. That's why when you on a charity campaign, they'll send a free blanket and then be like, yeah, hey, do you want to donate? Or here's your customer turn address thing. So you. You layer that in.

It's like your referral method. Math, Adam. Like, how do you get referrals? Yeah, tell them, hey, if they make it through this, this. This obstacle course of getting a claim approved, we'll give you a $250 gift card. Or do you pay them for the referral in advance? Yeah, here's.

Here's a 25. Thank you for an opportunity to chat with someone, whether they bought. Whether they decide to work with me or not.

Exactly.

Like, come on.

It works way better than the dangling fruit of, like, hey, jump through all these hoops and we'll get you. No, just get me the communication. I'll handle the rest. Just get me the contact, the connection. Right?

Like, all I need is that appointment. So in the mail, we've got repetition. We've got staying in the same neighborhood. By the way, I have the discontinued shingle letter. You can write your own There's a follow up letter showing back up and integrating a gift card. So a bit more of advanced technique, but again, penetrating that and seeing that response rate increase with recognition in the neighborhood. So there you have it. Quick summary, as we call it, a wrap and then we'll direct.

I want to highlight one other thing real quick before you summarize for anybody who's going through the claim process, remember, be honest, ethical, make sure there's real damage because it's very tempting for people to want to do the wrong thing on those. But they're getting the roof because there's damage. And then you can't do repairs or replacement because of discontinued products. But that leverage, there is a timing to present it to the adjuster and I encourage anybody to worry about the adjustment first before they introduce that leverage. Do we agree that there's damage before we start talking about this product? Because otherwise you could have an adjuster that's having a bad day. You show up, you tell them this is going to be easy, this is discontinued. And he's thinking, now I got to buy this roof. And they start going through emotional things where they know their bosses on them. They, they're not supposed to approve anything and they may sell that damage is old. So pick your timing on when you convey it to an adjuster as well. Understand that within your market and if you're right after the storm or peripherals or a year after data loss, understand there is a timing point with the leverage. And explaining that to the carrier as well, I would, I personally want the commitment of damage from the carrier before I start talking about construction, repairs, discontinued, anything like that. Do we even agree there's damage? That's the last piece I wanted to highlight within this. I know that's not the sales side, but. No, that works the same way. There's a timing for the leverage for each party involved in the process.

This is. That was a perfect segue to the summary because the summary is you have a powerful deck of cards, you have an incredible hand and you can't play the hand right away. You have to learn when to play the hand. By the way, this could be a wrong analogy because I'm going to admit now I don't play poker, but from my little knowledge of poker, if you had a great hand and you were really good at calling a bluff and getting that pot growing, are you going to just blow it up front and let everyone know your hand is stacked or are you going to just milk that as long as you can to get to the Biggest pot. Right. And by the way, do you play poker enough to agree with my statement or did I just sound like a total idiot here?

It's been about 10 years, but that's, that's agreeable enough for me.

So it's agreeable enough. All right. So for anyone who is a, like professional poker player, you can pick me apart in the comment section. The point is, don't play the whole hand. Know when to play the right cards, when to use the right hands and in the right order. And the next part is when you do approach the discontinued shingle, number one, it doesn't need to be the opener at the door always. If it is, you're going to use that little. Hey, there's been a, what was the language used?

You are roofing a change in your product line.

Yeah, a change in a product line. By the way, anytime you can add, if it is recent or more recent, the last few years recent or new, new changes are more engaging to people. Hey, it's a recent change, a new change. What do I need to know? So those little words that we bake in can help a bit for folks who are going to be mirroring this and as always, in closing, like, don't be a scumbag. Greed is a powerful thing that ruins this industry. And I don't, there's no, there's no room for it. So if things aren't there, they're not there. And let's not give other, let's not take advantage of people. At the end of the day, it hurts the homeowner. And I don't even know why I'm spending airspace explaining this. Don't be a scumbag. Pretty simple.

No. Because on a discontinued product, the second best thing you can do is give them a clean bill of health and create a lifetime customer to come back and deal with it when it does have damage. The second best thing you it is going to happen at some point. You just want to be their guy, you want to be their roofer and you want to get referrals from, you get a referral from a non close customer. I do it all the time. So doing the right thing pays off exponentially compared to the risk of doing the wrong thing.

Absolutely. So if you've enjoyed this episode and you want to continue with us, I've got an invitation for you. And if you are tuning in, that's to join the Pitch Pro movement. And that would be an opportunity for you to work alongside in interactive zoom sessions with, with John, with Jim Daeshawn Me in our mentorship team in a really rich community to continually grow. I want you to think of it like NFL practice where you've got a different coach for kind of key silos of the business. Private discussion board. We have a private podcast so all the session recordings are uploaded so you can catch up while you drive and all the information is linked in the video description or podcast descript or you can go to pitchpro movement.com all the details are on that page for year long membership for you or your team. And you should hop on over if you haven't yet to to John's group, the name that roofing, siding and more group. We'll put a link to all this in the description below. And then John, what else did I miss? Feel free to share how folks can find you and if there's anything that you also provide to help folks out.

So if you do need a shingle formally identified in a report, it's it's ntsid.com you can go there and order the report. If you are looking to connect with me, do it through that Facebook group or find John the roof Pro on Facebook or Instagram and connect with me that way. But either way, I mean I just these are the questions I get all the time and I get the in depth question about well when and how and what and what was the change in the specifications. All that's available to ask on that Facebook group. So go there for knowledge and to learn our number one shingle identifier in house for NTS we found through that Facebook group and hired to that Facebook group and he learned predominantly from me and through that Facebook group and then the second tier of education. So this guy is probably one of the top five experts on shingles and he started by learning in that group. Go to the Facebook group and just soak up information. It's free.

Yeah, love it, love it. Yeah. Always, always start free. Get a taste for it. And then if it is, if it is fun and if you want to hang out with John and asking questions on a live session, that's what the pitchforward movement's for. So hey, thank you all for joining us today. John, super appreciate you. I've been wanting to get this done for man about nine months and I called you like an hour ago, I'm like, you got time to jump on zoom with me. So here we are. Thank you everybody. You guys be well. John, thanks for being here with us.

Take it easy.