In this YouTube conversation, Adam Bensman and sales coach Da'Shaun dissect why sales reps’ follow‑ups often fall flat and provide a step‑by‑step framework to turn them from annoying to attentive. They begin by reframing the mindset: follow‑ups are a helpful reminder, not a nuisance, and homeowners actually expect multiple touches. They cite industry‑wide statistics that prospects typically need five follow‑ups before they disengage, yet most reps quit after one. The core tactical framework includes the BAMFAM principle (Book A Meeting From A Meeting) to secure the next appointment at the end of every interaction, and the ARO formula or three‑times rule for handling objections. They stress a multi‑channel cadence—email, text, and calls—paired with a 1‑3‑day immediate follow‑up, then spaced touches every 2‑5 days, extending up to a two‑week window. Content should add value by educating homeowners about their specific issues (e.g., roof damage, storm season) rather than merely asking for a decision. Humor, especially a “ghost” GIF, is recommended as a “Hail Mary” after several silent attempts, with guidance on timing (only after multiple missed replies). They also outline a graceful exit message to re‑engage prospects who seem to have dropped off. Finally, they list the top three follow‑up mistakes to avoid: being repetitive instead of persistent, lacking a structured follow‑up plan/checklist, and a limiting mindset that treats follow‑ups as annoying. Throughout, they promote free resources—a follow‑up checklist in the RSA app and the RSA training portal—while encouraging viewers to join the Roofing Strong Alliance for ongoing coaching.
Chapters
Daeshawn, sales reps get really annoying sometimes with the follow-up. Homeowners can't stand it. They don't respond. Sales reps feel like they're spinning their wheels. They end up sending these long text messages that are like a storybook. It drives me crazy. And I watched this video on your Instagram, From Annoying to Attentive, and I was like, dude, we got to get— we got to unpack that. Like the golden nuggets that were just in that one, one video. So what advice do you give to salespeople to go from being annoying to attentive and actually getting follow-ups?
Follow-ups and closing deals and making money? Yeah, right. So First of all, let's just be very practical. Most reps don't love the game enough to even study what it is to do quality follow-ups, right? They don't invest that time and energy to figure out how to do it strategically. And following up is something you do for people, not to people.
Yeah.
First mindset that we tell everybody when it comes to following up with homeowners is a follow-up isn't annoying. It isn't bothering. It isn't Man, following up is a healthy reminder for homeowners just because life starts lifey, right? I got kids. Yeah, life going life, right? Something going to happen. They got softball, they got all of these things. So believe it or not, if you follow up the right way, homeowners actually enjoy the follow-up. They thank you for the follow-up. Think about how many deals sales reps lose because they don't follow up. Oh, we went with somebody else, right? Because you thought it was going to be annoying. So annoyed. So how do we go from annoying to attentive? Right? So let's say you run an appointment, whatever it may be, it don't work out that day. Retail, insurance, don't matter. We always recommend a 1 to 3 day window of touching your homeowners. First of all, understand follow-up statistics, right? You can go do your own research, but they say most homeowners expect 5 follow-ups before you give up on a deal. 5. They say, let's just say majority of sales reps, let's take the statistics out of that. Majority of sales reps give up after 1 follow-up.
Yeah, I don't even— some of them don't even do it.
Some of them don't even follow up at all.
The other thing though, because I do, I think it's important to hit this, and I'm sorry, I know I recognize I'm interrupting you, but one thing I'd like to address for both of us is that ideally you don't have to follow up. There's an acronym, BAMFAM. Book a meeting from a meeting. From a meeting. I know you know BAMFAM. I was repeating that for those who are unfamiliar. So when you're in the home and it's a no deal, you book the follow-up. That's my— that's my— the way I've always done it. And you address the concern, you try to overcome the objection. I teach the ARO formula. I know you got a different process. I have the 3 times rule. So 3 times trying to overcome it at the very minimum, just to create that habit of friction. Because I know a lot of sales reps shift into what I call nice guy mode. And they're like, oh great, we got to think about it. Like, oh, that's totally good. You know, here's my business card. I pride myself on the great service and I love people and I don't want to bug you. So here's my card. Call me anytime. And then they skip home and they're like, they're going to call me. They love me. I really connected with the husband over fishing and blah, blah, blah. And then you get no call. No call. So lean into the objection first, then BAMFAM, book the meeting from a meeting. So I think follow-ups, because let's just take one step back. I kind of have 2 categories of follow-ups. I want your opinion. Category number one is let's say you're working a lead to get an appointment set. If, uh, a lead came into the office, it was assigned to you, maybe the, uh, the appointment time, like they canceled as an example, or needed to reschedule and you, you lost touch. Maybe you knocked a door, you got some contact info, um, you don't have the appointment. You're— that's, that's a follow-up. Yeah. The next one is I ran the appointment and I didn't close the deal. You should have the appointment set. If you don't have the appointment set, start fixing it by booking the appointment. But if you Run that, get a no-show, cancellation, whatever, then you're following up. What other areas do you see even needing to follow up? Because I want to fix the core issue and then I really want to unpack this.
Yeah, well, everything you just said is very valuable because if you initially meet a homeowner, do an inspection, retail, whatever, and it don't go well that first time, you should book a meeting from a meeting. That's first of all, it's the number one— number 2, because number one is when you lose control of a sales process. Number one is you don't even know it's your responsibility. To control it. You think it's your homeowner's job to stay in the sales cycle?
Yeah.
The second mistake that sales reps is they don't book a meeting from a meeting.
Right.
So let's just say you booked a meeting from a meeting. No-show, had an excuse, something came up. Now I'm always going to try to book a meeting from a meeting again. Well, you know, we just got a lot going on. We do like you guys. We want to reach out right now. This is when we start doing a very attentive but soft follow-up, right? So first, I'm going to send you an email. Talk about the appointment that we had, address everything that went well, right? And still try to book a meeting from that meeting. Then I'm also going to text you. So I'm going to send you an email, send you a text.
I have to pause and dive into this for people. People think it's too much. It is not. No, I'm so— I kid you not. I wrote down as saying on the email, like, let's talk about 2 communication mediums at every touchpoint. Yeah, because text messages, And again, depending on who you— some people like it has 90% read rate. That's what it is. But ding, oh, it's here, right? The email gives you more space to unpack, but that text can refer to the email. So anytime in a follow-up, call, text, call, email, text. Actually, I like text as my always line. And then like, are you emailing and texting, calling, calling and texting? So anyway, I just wanted to like reemphasize that point. Carry on.
So you email and you text them. That's that initial. Yeah. Hey, the appointment went well. This was the product, the price, everything we talked about. Bam, bam, bam. Now I'm going to follow up in another 2 to 3 days.
So that's immediate though, right?
That's the immediate follow-up after that appointment. First one. Now I'm going to follow up again. Same thing. Text message and an email. But now I'm starting to educate my homeowner on action that they need to take due to things we found during the inspection. So if I found, got up in the house and they had bad wood or the roof was deteriorating or the flashing was bad, now my follow-up will consist of education to show them why they need to take action instead of just saying, hey, just seeing if you got my last email. It's going to be showing them some love. Hey, just want to send you some education on things that can happen if you don't take care of this in a timely manner. This is what your flashing look like. This is just some information to provide with that. Right. So now I'm giving them education. I'm even bringing awareness to them in the follow-ups, like, hey, storm season approaching. Yeah. This is the best way to start taking care of your property. And if you're not getting a response within a, let's say, a 7-day window, honestly, we tell people to follow up within a healthy 2-week window until you get a definite answer of a yes or a no. But when you following up this way, it's more attentive than annoying instead of saying, hey, just following up seeing if you're ready to move forward. But it's like you're bringing value Consistent value. Now, if you're getting leverage in the text messages, now something I learned from you, and thank you for that, but I've been teaching it heavy, is now we start adding humor into the text messages, into the follow-ups. Do you know since we did that at the first Pitch Pro meeting, I've been teaching that to the people that I coach, countless of guys that have rebooked appointments and closed deals from sending the ghosts. The ghost is undefeated.
Yeah. So thank you, by the way. Thank you for bringing that up. For those who are unfamiliar, the Pitch Pro Movement was like the initial concept before it became RSRA, and that was our first event kind of as a group before that was formed. And then now part of the Tamco family after Tamco acquired the assets of the Roofing and Solar Reform Alliance, and we relaunched as the Roofing Strong Alliance by Tamco. But anyway, that ghost GIF, for those who are unfamiliar, To reignite a conversation, people like humor. It breaks up the noise and the monotony of are you ready to like you just said are you ready to buy from me? I just follow it up so that the the text is the ghost emoji and I don't even know if I can't pull it up quick on this phone. I won't do it, but the
all you do is go to text me and just type in ghost and it'll pop up. Go to the gift thing and type ghost.
I have this iPhone thing now, and I'll tell you it is. I know I'm going to get some flack in the comments, but I really miss my Android because
you found it.
There we go.
Yes, that's when I pop up every time.
So I'm just going to send it to you and then I can share my screen. So this is us actually having our conversation. This is the ghost GIF right there. Okay. And we would send that GIF. Are you ghosting me? Are you ghosting me? Question mark. And then like the laughy emoji with tears coming out of its eyes. And so many people have a tendency to want to— they want to spruce it up.
They want to put a, hey, how you doing, Deshaun? You ghosting me? Right. Or they want to— Soft touch.
No, just send it. Are you ghosting me? Just follow. It's like, no, just send that. So I ran this. I spoke at this event. I don't remember. It was like 100 people there or something. I had everybody send this. I'm like, go to the last person that ghosted you. I can't remember the exact number, but we had a lot of hands in the room that by lunch had appointments booked.
At the first event we did, we watched 16 people book appointments.
That's the only one you remember. Yes.
Oh yeah, I'm asking you.
Yeah, we had everyone do it on the spot.
Everybody did it on the spot. And we watched 16 people just book appointments. I was just in the moment. And I was like, that's amazing. So I add that to the follow-up process. We go humor. Because if the emails aren't responding, I'm like, hey, now we go text. Now we go humor. Another one you could do with the humor one is you could do the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation one. Yep. Breathing life back into this conversation. Sometimes we've been playing with it with sending the Forrest Gump emoji. You running away from me?
Yeah.
And people are like, no, I ain't running. No, I just been busy. And then we'll book an appointment with BAMFAMILY. Now we done booked the appointment from that follow-up gift. Now we done got back into the sales process. And as you following up, like I said, what I tell guys to do is you want to space it out. You go from 1 to 3 days to about, you know, 2 to 5 days. Well, 1 to 3 originally, and then you'll jump to that like every 4 days, right? Because you don't want to— once again, don't be annoying. You just want to be attentive. Yeah. Let them know like, hey, you're on my radar. I'm paying attention to you. I want to make sure you haven't made a decision or you have made a decision when it comes to your roofing project. And then the last and final way when it comes to the follow-up is we encourage guys to do what we call a graceful exit. It seems like you've given up on this project. It was a pleasure getting to know you. Da da da da da. You send that final one, and sometimes that's the one that gets you back into the sales process. I haven't given up. Life just been. So did this this change? No. Well, let me know when we can get on the schedule, and we've had guys follow that process, and they stay in the sales process consistently.
I love it. I put together a follow-up checklist. It's actually available for free in my free training resources in the RSA app. There's a link in the description. It's rsa.pro/free. And which I love hearing your perspective on this too, because there's no— I think people will be crazy to think like there's only one way to do this and you have to do this first and then humor and then this, like play with it. And I remember I had played with my CRM and it had the ability to track our text messages. So I'd look at the analytics and the most responded to message is, are you ghosting me?
It's the ghost.
Most responded to. And then beyond that, even, you know, how you sprinkle that in, you can say, have you given up on this project? And then this is my last attempt or this is my final outreach. And you'll see that people will have a propensity to reach out at different times, or excuse me, respond at different times. But, what's really fascinating going back to the humor, which book recommendation for those, Humor, Seriously. I remember I recommended it to you. I can't remember the author's name. It's also on my recommended reading list. It's a lady. It is. It's co-authored.
Yeah.
But, that book is on my recommended reading list, which is also in the free training center. There's a link in the description. Phenomenal book. But, it's amazing how many people respond to the joke with the serious like, oh, I'm so sorry. I've been wanting to do this. I've been traveling for work. I've been occupied with the kids. The kids went back to school. And all it is is just humor. And it just brings some levity to this whole thing.
And just to add that, or to add to that, you don't send the ghost emoji after your first follow-up. I just want to clear that up. Anybody who's watching this, like, not after the first follow-up, right? Yeah.
It's when you've been ghosted.
Literally. You've been following up, following up, no reply. I like football reference. I say that's your Hail Mary. That's my Hail Mary. Game over. Let me just throw it to the end zone. Right. And this is why you ghosted me. And it usually gets people back into the sales process, gets you where you need to be. So I want to clear that up because somebody gonna knock a door on Monday and send the ghost emoji on Tuesday.
Yeah, don't take people to that. That's pressure. That's like, no, who are you?
That's needy. So, and I think as a sales rep, remember this before we move on from this. The follow-up is expected. It's not— you're not a burden. You're not annoying people. You're not doing too much. It's actually expected. Like I said in the beginning, homeowners are expecting 5 touches before you give up on them.
Yeah.
Not even before they give up on you. Before they think that you—
I've never seen that research, by the way. And I think logically it makes sense because, yeah, people, It's almost worse not to because I'm like, oh, do they even care? They want to earn my business. I never heard anything back from them. And how many times— and I'm asking this as a rhetorical question for everyone listening or watching right now— how many times have you heard a homeowner say, this other roofer, blank, blank, blank, never heard back? Promised an estimate, never heard back. Ran the appointment, never heard back.
Did an inspection, never followed up.
Yeah.
Not the no found damage. Never told me what was next. Yes. You'd be surprised.
It's amazing. It's amazing. Da'Shaun, what would you say are the top 3 follow-up mistakes that people can avoid?
Top 3 follow-up mistakes that people can avoid. Be persistent, but not consistent. So let me explain that. Don't consistently say the same thing, but be persistent in your follow-up.
I'm so glad you explained that because I'm like, what in the world does this mean? But I love that.
Yeah, because most people say the same thing. I'm being consistent. I keep saying the same thing.
Yeah.
No, no, no. Switch it up. So be persistent, but be unique in the way that you follow up.
Keep it fresh.
Yeah. Keep it fresh. Make it fun. Make it— make it like you said, make them laugh, make them bang. Right. Second one is the second mistake that they can avoid. Correct?
Yeah.
Second mistake in follow-up is have a plan.
I like that.
Have a plan. Have a follow-up plan. Don't just follow up when you feel like it.
Yeah.
Have a follow-up system.
Yeah, process. Again, my follow-up checklist can help with that.
Yeah, you get the follow-up checklist. It's free. Right? So have a follow-up plan. And I would say the third mistake they can avoid or should avoid when it comes to following up is, it's a mindset one. It's not necessarily tactical, but just never forget that life gone life and you're following up. You're not Annoying people, you're just a fresh reminder for people. And I think half of follow-up is mindset. It's not the things you do to follow up. Yeah, it's the thoughts that's in your head that make you prevent from following up. Because that's why most people don't follow up. You would you think you're annoying? You think you bother people? You think this? You think that? You think this? So you don't do it. Yeah, even though you know what to do. Man, what if?
Because now we're selling through text. So if you want to learn how to sell better over text message, jump into this next video. And if you want to join today, Sean and I in RSA for ongoing training, little tips, tricks, and nuggets and full-on deep dives on a regular basis, you can join us in RSA. There's a link in the description. You can go to rsa.pro right now. Thanks, man.
Let's see it.
