Fastest Way to Train a New Roofing Sales Rep in 7 Steps

What's the fastest and best way to train a new roofing sales rep? Or if you are a new roofing sales rep, what's the fastest and best way for you to train yourself if your company isn't providing as much support as you might want, or most importantly, need? Well, that's what I'm going to be covering in today's video. In fact, I'm going to be laying out seven steps that you can follow right now to get yourself trained up or if you're an owner, manager training new reps. Follow these steps in what I found it to be the fastest and most successful way to train people. So you, my friend, can smash your income goal and give every customer an amazing experience. Now, in addition to everything I'm going to teach you right now, if you haven't yet done it, jump into my free training center. It's a great resource for the new person or for the owner or manager with a team. Share these resources with your team, click the link in the description and let's rock and roll. All right, welcome or welcome back. Adam Bensman here and I cannot wait to share with you this path because I know when I first started training sales reps, I struggled on figuring out what to do first, what to do second. And then when I was helping other company train sales reps, I started to see at scale not only the logistically practical way to train people, like what should happen in the right order, but I started to tap into what is really holding things salespeople back. So I'll give you an example. One of the most common things that I hear from new salespeople is that, hey, I got into roofing sales but I don't feel comfortable selling yet because I don't know enough about blank product knowledge, insurance claims, how roof installs work. I haven't sat on an install. I don't know this, this and that. I don't know the details of this shingle or manufacturer, whatever it is. And this lack of product knowledge or technical knowledge holds us back, which is why I've structured this particular training in this order. So without further ado, let's jump in to number one on the list of the seven things that you need to be training on. First, owners, managers, you need to be training on company culture. It might sound crazy to some. They're like, how do you train on culture? You indoctrinate people into who you are and your ethos, why you do what you do. When I bring people on board, I let them know that we are not just Selling roofs. We're here to change lives. Roofing sales is personal development in disguise. And we're creating an opportunity for our people that enables them to become the best version of themselves, challenge themselves to grow, become even better at skill sets they weren't great at, like maybe conflict resolution or time management. And as a byproduct of doing that, we're able to then serve more people and be the best company in our market to provide roofing services to the homeowners in need. And then we do this. We collect thank you notes. When a homeowner pays you and says thank you so much for your services, I indoctrinate them into what we like to do. Our core values, our vision, touring them through the office. But getting the team bought in is mission critical. And step number one, step number two, I want to highlight for the sales rep the process overview. I do say that process knowledge is more important than product knowledge. Ideally you have both. So I'm not saying that both aren't important, but I will say that someone with process knowledge but no product knowledge, what they're able to do is actually be efficient at sales and the product knowledge comes with it. Vice versa. If they have product knowledge and know everything about shingles and roofing, but don't understand the process of serving the homeowner, they're not going to make those sales. They get stuck in the weeds and the technical details. So process overview. For example, the four stages of the claims process. Watch that video on YouTube. I'll put a link to it up here. If you haven't yet done it, jump into my other video on YouTube, the hail claim process from start to finish. If you're in retail, make sure to spend the time walking people through how the installation goes. By the way, you can watch another video I did called the three hidden closing opportunities inside your presentation, sharing with homeowners how that process unfolds. This is what I mean by understanding the process. Now to share a little bit more on that. I made my very first sale in the business on a cold call, by the way, off of for rent sign in Madison, Wisconsin. When I was leaving the gym, it was called Ford's Gym and I ended up doing this strip center there. That was my first roof install. And when I called this guy up and I ended up getting up at the roof of the inspection, I didn't know anything. I didn't know what a plastic cap was. I didn't. I hadn't met with an insurance adjuster on my own. I could barely identify hail damage I didn't know what happened next. I didn't even know about filing for depreciation. All I knew was an overall process that I meet with a homeowner, help them identify a problem which he had. He had three leaks and he also had damage. Therefore we get the roof done under the claim and fix it all at once. And I knew that I could do that with the help of my company and my team in the office to guide me through that. So I was just again one step ahead and I had that process knowledge. Next number three on the list is going through your technical and product knowledge. This is. We just need a high level overview to get started. There's so much we can learn, but overall you just need to understand the basic components and systems of a roof. Is what I mean by your technical and product knowledge. So many people ask me hey, do you offer this? This stuff is everywhere by the way. You can any shingle manufacturer that you work with and obviously I'm Owens Corning's visual sales training partner. One of and Owens Corning University for example has all of these resources. There's another one building Experts Institute. They've got a great training on all the technical things you might need to know. And if you're in the storm damage space, they have the hail and wind identification program. That's another great resource for you. So again there's a bunch on the free side, if you Google even like how a roof is installed, you'll find it. You can go to your supplier, your distributor and ask them for the installation manuals. You can find those online. It's kind of mind numbing and boring, at least to me. I'm a sales guy, I'm not a technical guy. But that will give you everything you need to know on that product knowledge side. At least comfortable enough to get going. And then of course just sit on some installations. By watching them you're going to feel really comfortable really quickly. Alright, next on the list, number four, sales training. Duh. Sales training. Now you're going to do that hopefully by using a complete system. Now many people come to YouTube which by the way is great. My mission is to make you money with every video that you watch that you can learn something, implement and it will help fast track your path to success. My sales system you can get through in just two half days. It's usually done in just two mornings. Back to back, lightning fast, nine and a half hours. By the way, I had one sales rep in Houston, it was Eric's sales rep down in Houston on day One signed eight deals. Eight deals. Crazy. He's still holding the record by the way, of most deals. On day one, right after going through training, I have another client in Dallas, Texas, put a guy through training, did a little bit of role play, and then literally day one, knocked five doors, got on two roofs, made his first sale, and in that one month had generated himself $40,000 worth of commission. When you understand training and give everybody the training in the right order from start to finish, which is by the way, what my system does, you can either use your own, use mine. It should show you this is what you do every day. You show up in this neighborhood, you knock a door, you say this. When they say this, you say that. Okay, now we're on the roof. Okay, now we're in the house. Then you're going to go through this every step of the way. Okay, now you're going to present. Here's how you present. Here's how we bring up the contractor contingency, here's how we go through it, yada yada, here's how we ask for referrals, sign the deal, kickstart that relationship and then how do we take over that neighborhood? The system that I use, the neighborhood domination system. Help Bill S. By the way, sign 60 out of 73 homes in one subdivision. There's 2.1 million in sales pulled out of one subdivision at age 60 with no roofing experience. So we do our sales training next. Alright, the reason we do the sales training after these things is the technical and product knowledge is kind of that roadblock. So we want to get past that first and making sure they understand the process overview and the company culture it builds upon itself. Which brings us to step number five, which is role play. So many people ask me, Adam, does your sales system have tests or quizzes? No, absolutely not. Why? Because when was the last time your customer gave you a multiple choice question? Doesn't happen. I don't care about tests or quizzes. I include a roleplay training. You can also watch. I've done multiple videos on YouTube. If you, if you search role play YouTube, excuse me, roleplay the rooster. Add us on YouTube, you'll find it. By the way, I'll put a link up here to one of my videos teaching you roleplay and kind of how I do that. But I teach a very different approach to role play. One that for most that in fact everyone I've done it with live. No one has said that's how we do it. So it is a system designed to focus on the Key behavioral activities to fast track your ability to hardwire the memory of how we perform and to give you positive feedback, which can also be positive criticism as well. Duh. But to help you grow really quickly. So when we do role play, I don't care if you know, like, technically. Oh, yeah. The answer is a. I should use the slap formula. No, no, no. I want to see you use the slap formula in the office. So we want to do role play until two things happen. The sales rep is comfortable and the manager at the office who's. Who's running the role play is comfortable with the performance of the rep. Which brings me to the final two steps, starting with number six, which is shadowing. So now that that sales rep has gone through company culture, process overview, technical or product knowledge, sales training, and role play, they now are going to go in the field and watch somebody. They're going to be the little helper in the house who's silent. And they're just going to get that opportunity to let everything sink in in the real world. Okay, so let them shadow. After that, we are going to have the sales rep who was shadowing be the one who was shadowed. That way they get to go into the house, they get to do everything with someone observing them. Do not step in. If you're the one coaching and observing, let them fail and struggle. It's part of the learning process very hard because you're going to want to swoop in and save the deal. Don't they have to mess up to learn? And. And then you're going to break it down once you're back in the truck after the appointment and be able to coach that sales rep through the mistakes he or she made at the door or at the kitchen table. And then we go again. And when you follow these seven steps, you're going to not only be training really quickly, you're going to be training effectively, but you are going to be providing training that sticks and that gets results. So you can smash your income goal and give every customer an amazing experience. So where do you go from here? There's two different paths that you can take. One, if you haven't yet done it, jump into my free training center right now. Click the link in the description or text in the word free to 303-222-7133. I have a bunch of goodies in there, including exclusive content you won't find anywhere else. Next, the next thing you want to do is look at my sales system if you're interested. All right. You can click the link in the description or text the word demo to 3032227133 and I will take you through all the sales training and the role play that you need, along with your management training and a whole bunch more. Now thank you so much for joining me in today's video. Stick with me here. I got some videos lined up for you that are going to help carry this conversation into you succeeding wildly, successfully. I got a playlist selected just for the new salesperson. Okay, so jump into there and I will see you on the next one.