Forced to Text? How to Sell Over Text & Email

You got stuck in the text message loop. The customer's too busy to answer your calls or talk on the phone, so you're stuck to text message. Maybe you have that customer that you called and you can tell they ignored your call and he or she responds in a text message or the voicemail, you left a voicemail, they never call back. They shoot you a very short text. And then it gets even different, maybe a little harder, maybe a little worse. The leads you're following up with, the deals you didn't close, These are the customers that you've called, you've left voicemails, you've emailed, and now you're looking to the text message side of things, saying, please, let's get back in touch. I want to save this deal no matter what. There's a ton of different scenarios where we rely in today's day and age on text messages to sell effectively. And in fact, if you are not able to sell effectively over text messages and email, you are handicapping your sales and losing sales. Because just like when we present at the door or at the kitchen table, there's things that we do and that we say that even with good intention, come across as being pushy or desperate or not so great. And that customer just gets that queasy feeling and pushes you away. So in this video, I'm going to share with you three very simple and very powerful ways to help you sell even better and even more over text messages very quickly and very, very easily. In addition, I'm going to give you a couple little tricks that I've developed over the years. And again, you can start using those right away to re engage those stale leads that you've had to follow up with or the people you're waiting to hear back from. So before we get to it, I just want to say welcome back. And if you're new here, my name is Adam Bensman, the roof strategist. And everything I do here on this channel is designed for one simple reason. That's to help you and your team smash your income goals. And yes, watching the videos is incredibly helpful. And I'm hoping you're one of those people that binges through it, goes out, uses it, comes back, watches more, goes out, uses it. And then just like this gentleman who, by the way, sent me this email, we're going to be going through this email and the screenshots, and then he sends me these questions because who wakes up in the morning and says, oh, boy, I could really become a better text messager. That would help me Make a lot of money. No, it's things that we encounter as we grow and as we create new problems. And the Pitch Pro movement is the perfect place for getting answers to these questions on the fly for me personally and the movement, along with joining me for ongoing sales and leadership mentoring on live calls. Three times a month, actually more. Three weeks on, one week off. Three weeks on, one week off with our discussion board for sales, our discussion board for leadership, or our role play center, the one strategy away, Sprint exclusive vendor deals, and a whole lot more. So if these kind of scenarios are coming up for you or your team, they're hard to predict, they're hard to understand, but they become a really big scenario. Like this gentleman who lost the sale because of this, wants to learn from it so he can be better. And that's why I developed the pitch promotion is to provide that needed on the fly support from both me and the community to help you grow. And if you're interested, enrollment opened yesterday and now through October 15th. You can get a fourth founding member discount for life off of monthly or annual plans available for both individuals and teams. And there's a link in the description of this video and the podcast. And if you have questions, email me adamaroofstrategist.com all right, now let's start breaking down this text message piece. I want to be sharing with you three really effective ways to start text messaging. I'm only going to first read this exact text message and I want you as I read it to you. By the way, if you're driving, listening to the podcast, please don't do this. But if you're not, close your eyes and hear it. And I want you to put yourself in the shoes of your customer. This skill set, putting yourself in the shoes and most importantly, the mindset of your customer. With a complete no understanding of the industry. You're a layperson, you're a regular old human being who owns a house. Is your first issue coming up? I want you to hear it from their shoes so you can feel and what this is like. And then we're going to break down those three tips. So this is the opening text message where things start going wrong. Hope everything's been well with you and your family. I couldn't contact you after that message I sent because I was transitioning to a different company. The new company I work for is way better. I have more control over the process as a whole. And we can price our stuff lower because we don't have such a huge overhead. Let's file for A reinspect so we can get that roof bought. I'm three times the roofer I was when you met me. I was still in training. I'm ready to help you. Okay. Homeowner responds which I'll be honest, when I first read that, I didn't think that she would. And she says, I don't understand. We had an inspector that denied the claim. He said the roof has not been maintained. So I don't understand what you can do different a second time around. Then the response. Okay, well, and then I'm not going to read this. I just want you to see. By the way, if you're listening to the podcast, I'm scrolling through what is now probably five text messages that have exceeded the 160 character limit. And the sales rep who sent this to me was iced, lost the sale, no response. What went wrong? What you'll notice here at the bottom was the original email that he sent me. And I'm going to read this to you. Okay? The customer can only communicate through text because she's so busy. Sound familiar? I often wonder sometimes if I give too much information or vomit of the mouth, so to speak. Been there, I've been there. It's mainly through text message or email when I feel this way. Yes, this is very common and here's why. When we sell in person, we can control the dialogue when we watch. Watch my body language for a minute when I'm the customer, okay? Rolling up, distrust, looking around. Distrust, scrunch of the eyebrows, distrust, arms crossed. I'm guarded, the one step away. This is basically saying I'm kind of done with this, right? The inquisitive, you know, chin down, head pulled back, disbelief look. When these things happen or if they're not engaged, I can re engage them by amping up my energy by getting in their face, even making a loud noise or getting into a really light whisper. So I draw them in. Because when you whisper, people to get really curious about what you're saying and all these different things of controlling the sale and reading what's going on slip away through your fingers and you lose that 100%. I need you to remember that you lose the ability to control everything when you go to text or email because everything relies on the words, everything. You don't have your body language, you don't have your voice, you don't have your tonality. You can't read what's going on. If your customer is in the middle of reading this storybook and something else happens, they he or she may Never come back. So we lose that ability and we have to learn how to communicate effectively in text message. And I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to keep it super short. I started a business with a friend of mine. We went six months with zero sales. This was way back when. And I thought at this point I was really good at sales. I'd done the door to door sales things. I'd run a team and it was after all my roofing experience. And from that moment, six months in, we made like no sales because I was going from being able to go door to door and make sales in person to having to go to this written thing online in email. And I struggled and struggled and finally one day I sit down and I said, hey, you know what I realized? I said when I was in person I could control all these things, but I can't control them in writing. So what I did was I would just give it all like I would by essentially removing the customer's part of him or her responding. And then things got long and they may have felt pushy or whatever it was. And I struggled. Literally zero sales in six months with the exception of like one or two of the people we knew, right? So then I sit down and write these emails. Three emails go out, we send them and my phone starts ringing that month. Excuse me, that week, that week. I closed $100,000 of contracted sales that week for our business. And that's when it hit me of like what works and what doesn't when we have to take our sales skills and put it into text format. So let's get into those details, shall we? Three very simple rules to follow and some bonuses. You ready for it? Rule number one. Rule number one is to understand the goal of the text message. I'm going to slide this out of the way here. What is the goal of a text message? I want you to think right now, what's the goal? You have it. The goal is to reply. The goal is to get the recipient, your hopefully soon to be customer, to respond just like this gentleman did. And by the way, kudos, the fact that she responded. Okay, next, when we know that the goal is to respond, we start to realize, hey, this is sounding a lot like that slap formula that Adam teaches. Say hi, break the ice, let them know why we're there, ask an open ended question, present to their answer. Right? So I'm trying to keep it real brief to engage them in a conversation. That's it, right? Engage them in the conversation. So that's the purpose of the text message. So number one is to get them to reply. So when you, when you think of this, where would you highlight the main. I know there was kind of a lot of things we could dissect and that weren't ideal in this text message. But the big one on the reply is this bottom line, I'm ready to help you. That's a statement. Never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever end a text message with a statement. Which leads me to number two. Number two tip with number one is remember to get a reply. How do we do it? We slide into tip number two which is to end every text message with an open ended question. Let's break it down. Open ended question versus close ended question. And the one exception to use that closed ended question. An open ended question is a what or a how question. Okay, what did your insurance company say when they came out? How did it go after you talk with your wife? Right, Those are open ended questions. I'll give you another example. What did you eat for lunch? That's an open ended question versus did you like your lunch? Yes or no is the answer versus what did you eat? You have to think about it, right? So I want to use what or how questions to end my text message. All right, now this brings us to tip number three. What else is wrong with this? So number one, the goal is a reply. So we see that there was no intention, there wasn't really a re engagement, there was no value, there wasn't what we can do for you other than like let's file for reinspect, you know, there's stuff we can nitpick. I understand. I know you're thinking it, it's cool. I probably agree. But I want to keep this video tight so you can use it. And number two, we hit the open end question. So number three, it's what? It's too long. We want to keep it short. I've been guilty of this. So keep your text messages short. And remember, especially your first message is to keep it short. Start the conversation and get a reply short. Start a combo, get a reply. Do it by using the open end question. So recap. Goal number one, get a reply. Number two, end it with an open ended question, a what or a how question. And then number three, after you write this, go back. Keep it as short as humanly possible. People will respect you for it. All right now when we do that, how I would handle this differently is trim out all the fluff. They don't care about the company. Who's better, who's worse. We definitely don't want to say things like I really didn't know what I was doing then. Right? It's okay to like state. I don't have the answer to that when we're learning. But. But we don't want to like come forward and be like, hey, I was stupid then, but I'm smart now. It just doesn't come across the best way. So how I would do this differently is say hey. And I would always address them by name. I'm just going to call her Peggy because why not, right? So hey Peggy. I realized that we didn't have luck on the first go around, but there's something that I think we can do to get your roof approved with a RE inspection which should cost you nothing. How would you feel about chatting this week? How would you feel about chatting tomorrow? How would you feel about spending sitting down with me later on? What are your thoughts on that? Okay, you'll see that there's so many different ways I can use it. Just start the sentence with how or what it is that simple. If I open with this, then when the homeowner says I don't understand and then she states, I can say there was a few things that I realized by reviewing your file that weren't done properly and some opportunities to get your roof approved. When would be a good time for us to chat? Tomorrow or this evening? Okay, another one way to start that to again continue that conversation. You notice I'm ending everyone with a question and as she responds we respond by giving more information and enough for them to want more to talk with us and get them on the phone. All right. If they say hey, reply here then we can. But keep it short and end everything with a question and okay, now I did mention to you that there's an exception to the rule from the open ended question to the close ended question. Here's the exception and there's two of them. Exception number one is when I follow up via text and say I sent you. So when the homeowner is expecting something, I sent you the email I just got back from the adjuster regarding the supplement. Did you get it? That's yes or no. That's okay when you're when you need confirmation. So think of it this way. Yes or no only when you need confirmation. The only other time to use a yes or no is if the homeowner is forcing you into using text message and it does get long. Then you always end your statements. Does that make sense? Okay, then yes or no works. But again no matter what simple rule, we're going to recap this and then I'm going to close this out with that little bonus I promised you. Number one goal, get a reply. Number two, ask an open ended question starting with how or what? Okay. And number three, and when is another one. But that's less of an open ended question, that's more to pigeonhole them into an answer. And then number three, keep it short. So bonus at the end there are times that we are chasing leads and you know you've done it, you've sending messages and this is what your texts look like, right? And they haven't responded. You give the homeowner an out and, and it's okay because if they're not gonna, if they're like off the table, then we don't wanna be wasting our time chasing that lead. So if you are using this, the strategy is to be used when you are chasing a deal and you've been iced. Tip number one, send a GIF of a frozen person and say are you icing me? Question mark. And then a laughing face. Leave it at that. Again, an exception to the rule. I know it's a closed ended question, but the GIF and the playfulness and then the laughing emoji but will get people re engaged because they realize that you're human and you're having fun. So that's number one bonus tip. And then number two is this. Give them the out by saying, are you still interested in discussing your roof project? Reply with yes or no. I can take a hint with a winky face when you give them that out and you're just asking yes or no. If they respond, no relief. I'm not going to waste time. All good. They say yes more often than not. It will be accompanied with the longer message because they respect you, because you respected their time. In another way you can do that is to say, are you still interested in talking about your roof or do you want to put it on the back burner? Question mark. You're giving them options, the yes or the no. And again, what was the number one goal of a text message? To get a reply. So if they say yes, yes and or no, you got the reply that was the main mission. Mission accomplished. So now you can take everything you learned in this video and the very next time you end up in this text message trap, you can begin using it. And remember, if you are someone who has questions like this gentleman on the fly that come up for you or your team and you're looking for ongoing sales and leadership mentoring during our live sessions in private discussion board and a whole lot more. Then check out the Pitch Pro Movement today by clicking the link in the video description or podcast description and take advantage of that lifetime founding member discount to save big on individual and team plans for both monthly or annually. I cannot wait to see you on our next live call. And that link is in the description. I will see you in the next video.