In this instructional video, roofing contractor Adam Bensman shares seven practical strategies for maximizing sales and profitability during storm-driven demand spikes. He begins by emphasizing time as the most critical, finite resource and introduces the Theory of Constraints to identify the single bottleneck that limits capacity. He then advises contractors to define a focused service area, quantifying drive time and opportunity cost to avoid wasteful travel. The third tip stresses the importance of learning to say no to low‑value or distant jobs, framing refusals as a way to protect higher‑margin opportunities. Fourth, Bensman urges businesses to stick to their "bread‑and‑butter" services—focusing on core competencies and cash‑flow‑friendly projects rather than chasing large, complex commercial jobs that can strain finances. Fifth, he outlines a systematic referral strategy, encouraging contractors to become the go‑to neighborhood roofer and actively solicit referrals from personal networks. Sixth, he recommends setting up a mobile office in a vehicle, equipping it with internet, a laptop, and a printer to turn otherwise idle time into productive work. Seventh, he promotes selling roofs over the phone using technology (e‑signatures, aerial measurements) to close deals quickly, especially when crews are fully booked. He concludes with a warning to never let installation quality slip and to protect cash flow, noting that neglecting these can erode reputation and profitability. Throughout, Bensman shares personal anecdotes, mistakes he’s made, and actionable steps for contractors to implement immediately.
Chapters
When a big storm hits, whether it's hail, wind, or a hurricane, it can feel like all of your competitors are getting a whole lot more than you. We end up in this reaction mode where we're like filled with this excitement. This is moneymaking time. It's going to be the best year ever. Filled with dread. I don't know where to go, where to start. My phone's ringing off the hook and I am stretched way too thin. Well, if that's you, then this video is just right because I'm going to be sharing with you my top 7 tips to help you pull the most amount of sales from each and every storm that you work, whether you're in one now or one hits soon. Uh, listen, I'm going to be sharing with you the things that, like, I've made every single one of these mistakes. In looking back, it ended up costing me a boatload of money, and that's why I want to share them with you. Welcome and welcome back. My name is Adam Bensman, and, uh, let's rock and roll right into it, shall we? All right. Now, number 1 on the list is time. Time is the most precious and finite resource when a storm hits. I've had quite a few interactions with our members lately. Hey, like, I'm in panic mode. We're busier than we've ever been. What do we do? And when we first need to recognize our constraint and realize what are the things that are going to keep me from making money, the things that keep you from making money are what we need to really, really focus our attention on. I'm a big fan of the theory of constraints, which is identifying the one bottleneck that, if solved, will open up our capacity. And in that, that mindset shift for time is going to open up the rest of the things in this list, which brings me to your drive time. That is another constraint and it is directly related to time. Duh, drive time, which means your service area. So I want you to think through every single time you are running out to service a homeowner, you are at that house multiple times. You're driving out for the initial inspection. And then, by the way, whether or not you're signing contingency, let's just say the initial inspection. Then you're going to likely meet with the adjuster, then you're going to review the paperwork with them, and then you're going to come back. Maybe, maybe, you know what, let's just say best case scenario, you meet with the adjuster, you get it approved, you sign the deal up, and then you're back for install day or final payment. So usually about 5 visits. And of course there might be more if there's a re-inspection or if you got to review the paperwork. So you got 5 visits to each house. Now, if you end up taking a project that's a 1-hour drive away in one direction from your office, That is going to be 10 hours of drive time to serve that one customer. Well, what happens if you end up with a customer an hour the other direction? Now you got 2 hours between these two and you can end up— it's not just, you know, adding the 10 hours to this customer. This is all going to start costing you money the more and more spread out that you get. So I would highly recommend that you define your service area and this service area, it's tough because you're like, well, if I say no to that, I'm giving up that opportunity. But what really advanced salespeople and entrepreneurs or business owners and even managers recognize is what's called opportunity cost. So yes, you can say yes to that project that's 2 hours away, but the opportunity cost, now that you're not at 10 hours, you're at 5, 2, 20 hours of drive time for this one customer. What could you do with 20 hours right around the neighborhood of your, your deal that's close to home? Working that neighborhood. You could open up 3, 4, 5 more deals if you just dedicated 20 times to business generating activities. Which brings me to number 2, which is to learn to say no. Gosh, I wish I learned this way earlier. It is so hard to turn down work and it is completely counterintuitive because in sales it's like, say yes, show up at opportunities and serve people. But to serve the most amount of people, we have to learn how to say no. There are opportunities that will come your way that are either one, too far away, two, outside your sweet spot. Let's say, for example, that this thing is at a repair. And by the way, I am a big fan of running repairs and turning them into full replacements. But if we look at, again, time is our constraint and we're saying yes to this little project or this little repair, that project will consume the exact amount of servicing time as a monster home installation for a re-roof. So if I say yes to that, I am again, everything you give a yes to, you're saying no to something, someone else. I say yes to that project 2 hours away. I'm essentially saying no to all the opportunities here. I say yes to the repair or the small little re-roof that's in a tiny, tiny little house. And what ends up happening is I say no to all the other likely larger opportunities. This is something that many people, until they're dealing with like a chaotic storm situation, never said no to a customer before. and I'll tell you, this is the perfect, perfect time to start to exercise that practice. All right. Number 3 on my list, stick to the bread and butter. I know that there are going to be people that disagree with me, but here's what I mean. When I say stick to the bread and butter, if you are excellent at just, let's say it's selling roofing, stick to roofing. This is the time people get so distracted and they'll chase all these monster commercial deals, which believe me, I've done commercial deals. I've done HOAs, I've done multifamily apartments, townhouses, condos. I've done churches, I've done strip centers. I have chased all of those deals and I've made really good money doing it. However, stick to your bread and butter in how you do that. I chase the deals where we have the crews and the knowledge to sell the projects, install them, and do a great job. If you start chasing these commercial properties that have product on them that are far beyond your capabilities, it's a nightmare. Plus the cash flow consideration. I just had a conversation with an owner recently. He's like, man, should I be chasing all these commercial deals? I'm like, you can. The last one that I did, the last commercial project I did had a 2-year lifecycle in a storm situation, by the way, from initial contact to actually getting done and paid. And it was a massive to-do with the insurance and approved and denials and engineers and supplementing and then staging multiple buildings. It was a massive massive project, multimillion dollar project. So the reason I say stick to your bread and butter is you need that cash flow because cash flow— this, this— there's not on this list and I'm writing it down to revisit the concept of cash flow because as an owner of a company, what will bleed you out is cash flow. You'll sign up all these projects, you'll start funding them and you run out of money. And commercial properties are a great way to, to fund these massive projects that could take 1 or 2 years to actually collect on the back end. So stick to your bread and butter, do what you're really great at, and continue to do more. All right. Brings me— number 4 on the list is referrals. Your job is to become the neighborhood roofer that everyone knows, loves, trusts, and wants to call. It does not matter if you're the biggest roofer in town. What matters is if you're the biggest roofer, not even in that neighborhood, but on that street. Start with the street, then take over the block, then take over the whole neighborhood. Or the subdivision. But when you start working referrals and we just had a member of ours post in the community and I'm giving an anecdote of the story, he was celebrating a win. They were working a, again, a fresh storm. It was a little outside their service areas. They're like, ah, let's just see what we can do. And they got some leads there. They had a 100% success rate on their first little batch of leads, which was a small batch, but that's fantastic success rate. And then this is what they reported at least. And then each one of those, the folks ended up passing along referrals. They had other properties. They knew some people, and those deals turned into more and more and more. And what you will find— this is salesperson music to your ears, I know, because it was for me too. The goal is to get so busy you can't knock doors, but you have to knock doors. I shouldn't say have to. You may wish to knock doors until you get so busy that you don't knock doors. So working referrals and asking people, you know, who do you know that I might be able to serve the same way I've served you? And jog their memory. I like to even say coworkers, friends, family, neighbors, right? Folks at your church or community involvement, wherever you are, and just give them the buckets to think through. Like, do I know people at work? Do I know people at school? Do I know people in athletics? On my kids football team? Do I know— do I have friends, neighbors? Like, I'm listing these categories to jog people's memory. It helps extract referrals. In fact, I have an entire, um, tons and tons of videos. If you just search referrals in my name, you'll find them. I got referral strategies, incentive structures, how to ask for them in a way that doesn't feel sleazy or pushy or anything, which I know is a thing that holds people back. All right. So that's number 4 is referrals. Number 5, this one's my favorite. And I learned this one late in the game and that is setting up a mobile office. What do I mean? Listen, your phone, my phone's not handy. It's over on my shelf charging. Bring your laptop and your phone. You can tether your phone internet-wise. If you need a printer, get one. I had a small little tiny mobile printer. So many of the newer vehicles, by the way, even have all the charging connections that you need. But in my old F-150, you know how the seats fold up? I was able to find this desk that like swooped around and went under, and I would literally just get in the back seat when I was waiting for an adjuster or a crew or a homeowner or whatever that I could get work done. Because remember that whole thing in the list, number 1 was time. Time is, is your constraint. So whenever you can leverage what would otherwise be known as dead time into business building time and getting all your tasks done so you're not doing it at night is huge. So if you don't have a setup in your mobile office with internet, with your computer or your tablet, get it. Starlink is a great option these days, like $50 a month, I think at the time of this recording, not affiliated by the way. You can get Starlink and have high-speed internet on your, in, in your truck, on your truck, whatever it is. So get set up as a mobile office. All right. Uh, number 6, this one is probably, I know I just said number 5 was one of my favorites, but I think number 6 is, and that is sell over the phone. One of the mentors inside our community is Cody Landels, and he developed a system to sell roofs over the phone. His entire company is selling roofs over the phone. Right? No, not Zoom, over the phone. This is a time where you get to rewrite the rules. When you are so busy and someone calls you, you can say things like, hey, it's no secret that almost every single roofing company is drowning in work. There's this big influx because of the storm. So we have a really streamlined way to save you time and get you on the books to start serving you. We know, and if it's a massive storm, if you know this is ground zero, all the homes here were wrecked, You don't need to go out and get your eyes on it. And I know I might get some pushback. Listen, I get it. But this is a time when you have so much work you can't keep up, where you can just say, this is the way it works. We know the areas. We've been on enough roofs. If you're in this area, your roof is damaged, we can get you on the books. This is our process. And we— you can sell them over the phone. And again, in your mobile office, you can send an e-sign for the agreement, whether it's contingency or a contract. You can leverage technology, whatever aerial measurements you use. To get all the data you need to be able to just say, hey, because now with the frenzy that everyone's experiencing, imagine being able to handle that referral or that introduction that came all by way of phone and fire off contract and sign deals sitting in your truck. Like, that's magic. All right. And this brings me to number 7, and that is never, ever, ever let quality slip. I cannot emphasize this enough. I have made this mistake. You get so busy, you prioritize sales because that's what you think. You're like, I'm going to take great care of people. I'm going to make a bunch of money. And then the production starts to crumble and fall apart. It is embarrassing. It's terrible. I had to go back. I remember this was years ago in a newer office and the crews did a terrible job. I got up on a roof. I'm like, does the crew even know what a chalk line is? I was embarrassed. We had to redo a roof. I ended up finding, because we were so focused on the front end, we put way too much trust in the crew. They were also busy and bringing on people we didn't. It was just a nightmare. So advice for sales reps, for managers, for owners, never let quality slip ever. And pro tip for, uh, cash is king owners, you know what I mean? Protect your cash flow. That warrants its own video. I hope these 7 tips help you capitalize on your very next storm. Jump into this very, very next video to learn how to get the most referrals, because it's going to help you drive around a whole lot less. We'll see you in the next one.
