Fan Q&A: Competing For Commercial Roofing Sales + Commission Structures + Referrals

Hey everybody, Adam here, the roof strategist. We're going live today to do some fan Q and A. Now, it's gonna be a shorter video. I wanted to hit on a few other really, really good questions that our fans have submitted after getting the roofing sales accelerator marketing pack. Now when I'm looking this way, I'm off looking at my other monitor. So Jile, Jile, thank you. Shout out to you, man. Jail responded with a question. I'm gonna read it to here. He says, hey, I have a pretty. Oh, here it is. So Jile background because there's a longer email. He's got some experience with commercial sales and now he's selling some bigger projects. And Jile says, I'm not winning the jobs due to roofing companies that work out of their truck with no brick and mortar or any kind of overhead, but maybe carrying the right insurance, etc. They come in and low cut the job and win due to commercial just wanting the job cheaply done. So if I could get actually get in front of the owner decision maker, I believe I could get the job at least a way better chance. Jile, great question. We see this a lot. We see especially in the commercial world, folks are way more price conscious, right? They want the cheapest project. It's different than a homeowner who wants typically the best project. And they're a little more. It's an easier sale, it's an easier conversation to have. So with Jile, when you've got folks coming in to undercut you, here's what I do and I sent Jile this response personally. I'm just gonna go over the high level stuff with everybody. First and foremost is you need to educate the difference between cost and price. Now this tip is going to be super helpful for everyone that's doing sales. When you can educate someone on the difference between what it's going to cost them upfront and the price of ownership down the long run, things start to make sense. Here's how I do it. Everybody has a car. Everyone that we're selling to has a car. So I like to use car analogies. And you can say, hey, do you know why use BMWs are so cheap? You can get them. The cost of buying a used BMW that's say 10 years old is pretty low, but the price of owning them is very high. Repairs, insurance, all that stuff is super, super expensive. So when you get the cheapest price on the roof, excuse me, the cheapest cost of the roof up front, I reverse those. My apologies. The cheapest price versus the cost of ownership. So if you're getting the cheapest price up front, what people don't realize is what that will cost them down the long run. Now for our company, our minimum repair, just to go out on site, get a crew out there, get material out there was a thousand dollar repair. And I tell them, hey, you know, that's the real cost. Now the other piece, and by the way, before I transition, addressing that cost versus price is really huge. Especially if you're competing against any roofer in general. Say hey, well he came in $1,000 cheaper. Because the difference is the other piece I wanted to just tack onto this is that not all estimates are apples to apples. So what most people don't realize is when you're getting a bid, it's like, hey, here's remove and rep replace 20 square shingle. It's not just a 20 square shingle. That's the issue because it's, are you putting down ice and water shield? How many rows of ice and water shield are you reusing the drip edge or not? What's in the valley? Is it ice and water or metal? What type of pipe boots? And I educate folks, especially those neoprene pipe boots, boots in a, in a very sunny environment, those may dry out and rot in five to 10 years even though you put on a 30 to 40 year shingle. So you're coming out to do a repair and just to replace a pipe boot, you, you know, it's not just a pipe booth tearing up all the shingles, you're, you're trampling on it. So I like to educate folks that hey, let me give you an example. He's two grand cheaper. These, this difference in installation, this material can make up that difference. Which will show you that the, the price of the, of the roof, what, what looks like you're going to pay now is different than the cost of ownership and repairs done the long run. So jile. That's how I'd answer that one. Now the other thing that you want to do too, especially when the, with the chuck in the truck type of thing, is educating folks on the liability that the, that the building is exposed to. So side note, I was working on a couple million dollar project on a retirement area retirement home and we had our ladder set up. Okay. Ladder set up over a walkway. This woman didn't see it, our crew didn't flag it appropriately. She literally walked straight into the ladder and split her forehead open. And I'm getting a call, rushed over there. She was fine nine Months later, she threatened, she blackmailed me, by the way, our company wasn't me personally. Because she wanted to break her lease at this retirement community couldn't afford. She says, well, I want you to pay for it. Otherwise my lawyer said I can sue you in the building for that head injury that I got. So anywho, we didn't want that to happen because that leans back on us. But our, our, this building we worked ended up giving us a bunch of referrals and work for their other properties. So that type of thing, if they didn't have the right insurance in place, that falls right back on the property themselves. So definitely, definitely make sure you educate both cost versus price and the liability. When you carry the proper insurance, you protect the properties and all the tenants much, much better. Now the other thing in terms of selling commercial properties, one thing to help you stand apart when you're selling these big deals is facilitating all of the notifications to the employees. Excuse me, not employees to the tenants, whether that is businesses or individuals living there. So what I would do is say, listen, I know that you have someone who has to do all the coordination with the communities to say, hey, we're staging this project, but you have to park here, putting the cones out. So I make sure that we always had someone on site to make their lives easier. If I can differentiate and say, listen, we have expertise. We've worked on numerous commercial projects and my job is to make this as easy for you as humanly possible. I'm going to flag all the doors, notify them that we're going to be doing this construction and stage it to make it easy for you so you don't have to deal with the thing that takes a ton of responsibility off where most contractors don't do that. So that is the other piece Now I want to go over. Let me pull up another email. So, Jael, hope that answers your question. Now Christian emailed and Christian. Christian said I need to work referrals better. It never works out like they show in the videos ever. So, Kristen, excuse me. Christian, super appreciate you reaching out on this. I hear this a lot. Now. I'm going to give you a quick story. Body language and delivery is so, so important. And oftentimes people think they're going through the script and they're really not. They're changing something. And I'll give you an example right now. I worked with a team out on the east coast. I flew out there, I was on site with everybody, and I actually went door to door training their team. My Whole piece when I got rejected, said, you know, if we had a conversation and got rejected, the friendly follow up. You've seen this video before. You have the pen in your shirt and you say, hey, totally understand. Do you have any objection if I take your name and number for a friendly follow up? He just said, can I take your name and number for friendly follow up? And just jumped in. And he turns to me, goes, adam, it didn't work. Said, dude, you did it wrong. And I coached him through. I said, it's how you ask. You said, can I get your name and number? Do you have any objection if I take your name and number? And instead of this confrontational, you know, head on thing, he bladed a stance. And when he bladed his stance, we did it in the next door at work. So chances are, if you're not getting the referrals, you're not asking right, Your body language isn't there and you're getting shaky. So reference the videos and follow it to a T and bring a friend. Get that critique, get that feedback from someone on your team to watch you as an outsider and role play. Role play. Role play works exceptionally well. So do it. I know it can be uncomfortable, but when I was running our sales team, I had 17 guys in the room and we do role play. I'd stand behind a door, I'd have them knock, I'd throw objections. Then we get feedback. And as uncomfortable as that is, if you can get comfortable performing, so to speak, in front of all those people, once you start to do that in an environment where it becomes second nature when you're at the door, it's actually easier when you're selling than when you're doing it in front of your peers. So hope that helps. Christian, last one I want to touch on today was from. From Aaron. So Aaron said, Aaron's an owner, by the way. So for any owners, here, this is for you. And for anyone that might be an owner one day or is wondering how to get paid or how you should be getting paid, this should, should address your question. So it says, I do have a question. I haven't seen you answer, though. How much should sales reps make for a smaller roofing company like mine? How do I structure how much I make versus the business versus the salesman? So for salesmen on here, there's a big decision for owners to make, and for owners on here is a big decision for you to make. But ultimately it needs to be a win win for everybody. And I'll tell you this, it depends on a lot of factors our company, we raise our overhead and I had to sit down with my sales team and say, hey guys, our overhead's going up. So our overhead's going to go up and it's going to change your commission. What we also found is with the company, when we were running jobs, our sales guys what limited their production capabilities was producing jobs, putting together material, order forms, going to job sites, returning material, all that junk took forever and that's valuable time that could be selling. So let's say 30% of the time was producing the sale and the additional 70% of the time was fulfilling. Okay. And what we found is that sales guys are really talented at the sales piece, but not as much. And I didn't know what a shingle was when I started, not as much on the fulfillment side. So this took all their time, the fulfillment, but it's not where they made their money. So what we did is we took a 5% commission reduction to the sales guys which allowed us to hire a production team and the production team ran everything. The sales team ended up making a ton more money because they only lost 5% commission, but they freed up 50 to 70% of their time. So my point with this is depending on if the sales, if you're in sales or if the owner is is requiring you to do production, if you're required for profitability or not, you know, are you supplementing your jobs or not? And if you are, what, what level of overhead there actually is for lead gen. So if there's leads provided, if you're not handling production, usually that that commission structure is going to be in the 10ish percent range off the top. So $20,000 sale, you get 2 grand 10% off the top. Whereas if you are handling production and or profitability, selling upgrades and supplementing directly with the insurance company, it's your job to make the job profitable. Whereas if the company has their own team, they're in charge of profitability, you're going to get incentivized to just bring in a volume of leads. So there's two, two real schools of thoughts. Gross profit and net profit. So gross profit mean percentage off the top, 10% off top. Net profit might be 40% commission of the profit. So if the salesperson's in charge of profitability, you want to compensate that way and if they're not, you want to compensate off the top. So anyway, that is fan Q and A for this week. If you have any questions, drop them in the comments. It will help me produce some more videos coming up. In the future, you'll see more lives like this. I didn't get a chance to send out an email notification for this one, but I will in the future. If you are interested, you can get the Roofing Sales Accelerator Marketing Pack. I've had a few questions on those. They are my turnkey marketing material. All my video, all my training is free. And here, everything I talk about you can get turnkey, download, plug in your name, click print. You're using my marketing material out of the gate. So that's what that is. And if you're not ready for it yet, no worries, we're here for you. You can also Download my ebook, 3 tricks to get to the Kitchen Table. I'll put a link in the description as well. That's all we got for you for this week, guys. We'll catch you.