From Storm to Retail: The Roadmap to Roofing Sales Freedom

This is the roadmap to go from storm to retail so you can build a sales model that will thrive in any environment. And if you're not staying up to date on what's happening, I need to shake you to wake up. Because not only are we feeling the pressure from the economy, but we're feeling pressure in the insurance world as well. No, this isn't hearsay. No, I'm not here to drum up drama and create fear. I'm sharing the facts. I just got off the phone with someone which actually inspired this presentation earlier today. They're going to remain unnamed for privacy reasons, but I will say this, they have been on the phone physically with the top insurance carriers, finding out the trends for policy renewals and future policies. What we're seeing is way higher deductibles and limitations in coverages on hail, wind or hurricane claims. I'm going to save the rest of those details for video and hoping to to be able to bring him on or at least share the research that he's done. But we're seeing it with the roof surface payment plans and a whole lot more ACV policies, special deductibles for hail and wind. And a lot of companies are feeling this pressure because they just don't know how to take a homeowner who's only getting a few thousand dollars for their roof because they're losing it to a company who's better prepared to sell with a more traditional retail model. So in this video, I'm going to break it all down to give you this roadmap where so you truly can survive in the future world of roofing. My opinion is those companies that are not willing to make this adaptation are going to fold. This is why we need a hybrid model. But I know that some of the concerns, especially again, if you're a retail company, you're not watching this from storm companies. They're concerned about retraining their team and how to get leads. So all of that I'm going to break down and more and I cannot wait to get started. So let's do it. Roofing sales is personal development in disguise and the reward for growth is life changing. I hope my content helps you create a richer life and bank account. Hey, welcome or welcome back. Adam Benzeman here and I'm so excited to be joining you. Listen, I am on a new, even bigger mission to help great roofing companies make a bigger impact together. Part of doing that is putting out content like this where I help provide you with the education, information and motivation that you and your team need to outsell, outgrow, and outcompete the rest so we can stomp the scum out. Now let's get started. In today's presentation, I dug out some photos I've been looking for. I've been waiting to share these on my channel. And here I am in 2011, working a massive tornado that came through our market. You can see the size of this tree and the roots that were pulled out. By the way, this tree crushed a house. We had structural damage in addition to, obviously the roof was completely obliterated. Now, this year led to damage, widespread damage, because it wasn't just the hurricane. It was the high winds and the hail. This is the kind of thing that we saw. I was so busy that I literally for the first time, put an office together in my truck. I had this little folding table. It's my old F150 in the backseat. These seats folded up. Got my case of water, a spare shirt because you know how you sweat through them in the summer. And by the way, I wore dress shirts for when I was working commercial property. So when I showed up, could match the executive rapport. A little higher level than showing up in my traditional shirt that you saw before. Now we were so busy and this year was amazing. We were raking in the money. This was our record year in business. But then the next year followed and that momentum died because until that point, you know how it goes. A storm hits, everything else goes by the wayside. Now at this point, we were predominantly a storm company. We did some retail, but it was a dry spell and we did everything we could. We busted out all the tricks in the book. You know, we're looking through our hail maps and looking at all historical maps, layering them onto one, trying to find those opportun that we could just open up a new neighborhood. And then I said, you know what, how about this? Let's white label a window line because why not go to retail windows and have a sales path that would carry us through in between storm season. Because we already did roofs really well, so why can't we do windows? And then I launched this commercial, windows by arc. Why invest in arc windows? It's simple. All windows by ARC come with a lifetime warranty against glass breakage and screen replacement. Ever had a neighborhood kid hit a foul ball? Whoops. How much is that going to cost? Nothing. It's free. With arc replacement windows, simply open the window, pop out the old sash, call arc, new glass will arrive, pops right in, close up and good to go. No headaches, no hassles, and no scheduling issues. And guess what? It failed. It was a complete flop. I made a mistake that many people make. So you might be wondering, dude, why does it flop? Here's why it flopped. I had this thought, like, we're doing so great in roofs. We obviously need to find a vessel to help carry us through when there's not storms. The reason we launched that window line is that storm obliterated like so much of our core market in our, that was in our home office, by the way, our central office. We had multiple offices. But like, we're going to launch it in this market. I made so many mistakes. I overlooked the fact that I needed new marketing channels. And if you are not familiar with the window sales world, the cost for an appointment with a homeowner is like five times that of roofing. It's super competitive and we had wasted leads because we didn't really have a sales model that was proven or in place yet. So we spent all this money. Technical training was very, very difficult because the team needed to get retrained from roofing to windows. By the way, we had crazy mistakes. We, in fact, through doing this, we ended up with like a small section of the warehouse that was filled with what we called window oopsies. A couple guys on our team literally built ice shanties out of our oopsie windows. Like there were so many of them, we didn't have a sales system and we were winging it. Like a lot of our sales guys on the roofing side, you know, they could get off script, so to speak, and just wing it. But you can't do that in the retail space or especially retail windows. And it was a very, very expensive learning mistake. So I got to thinking and I said, you know, sales is solving problems. And problems paired with our level of awareness of those problems make the biggest difference between storm and retail. Because in storm, many people, even if they're one the low hanging fruit, like if your roof is torn off like the pictures, they have a very high level of awareness of that problem. But in the storm world, a lot of us, like 90, sometimes 95% of the time, the homeowner is completely unaware that they have a problem. And we're doing direct sales, we're showing up at their house. But retail is a completely different animal. And for most people, the homeowners have a higher level of awareness of the problem. So if we look at the psychology of this, we need to look at the problem itself. What caused the problem, the impact of that problem emotionally as well as the solution. So I put together this chart and you may want to pause it here and zoom in or rewind. But you can break down the problems raising from leaks to staining to granulos to an old roof that's worn out, to an insurance renewal denial, we are seeing more and more of those. Or just plain old ugly, which is a thing. The cause of that, the impact that it has, which, by the way, you'll notice a few of these, is that people feel ashamed or embarrassed. And if you haven't seen this yet, homeowners will outright say, I'm ashamed or embarrassed every time I pull up in the driveway. If they have that old ugly roof that's stained. Or maybe it's missing shingles. And I know some people, if it's missing shingles, to claim not always. Okay, anyway, there's a big impact there. Then the solution isn't just, we're going to replace the roof, it's how we're going to do that. All right, so you can again break that down. So what we need to do is understanding this, the problem. Cause, impact and solution create an irresistible offer for someone to spend time with you. And we do this in a way that is so valuable that they can't see. Say no. So here's an example of the elements that go into that irresistible offer. Again, you know, you might be familiar with knocking doors and saying, we'll do a free inspection or something. We need to offer even more. And here's the little checklist to follow. You have to provide instant gratification. Why? Because people want things now, right? They don't want to wait. Like, for example, you can get all my free training. Get instant access@adamsfreestuff.com it's fast, it's instant. Okay, so that's instant gratification. Next. There's no cost, by the way. It's free. It's risk free. There's no pressure, by the way. There's no catch. It provides value. It gives you something I want. Maybe like recruiting checklist, sales checklist, pay plan checklist, door knocking checklist, a bunch of training, my recommended reading list and more. So again, it provides value. It's like, hey, I want all these things. I'm going to go grab it. It'll answer questions, by the way, when I say closes the curiosity gap, I'll give you an example of a question this will lead into. The next thing you see is like, how soon do I need to replace my roof? So that would answer that question. It closes the curiosity gap. Do I need to do this today or can I get three, five more years out of it? Okay. And then urgency a reason for them to act now before they miss out. These are the elements that need to go into the offer to get someone to want to spend time with you. Not like, hey, let me take a look at your roof and then try to sell you something, you know, or a free consultation. It needs to be sexier. So here's an example of a way to present a super high value offer to get your free inspection or free estimate to stand by leagues above the other guy or your competitor. So again, a free life expectancy estimate, which is $197 value. I think all of us would be able to go up on a roof and say, hey, this is what we think it's going to last. If you're able to offer leak and moisture detection and you have the equipment to do that, that's a $397 value. By the way. It's a powerful sales deal. What about a free ventilation assessment? This is again, such an under leverage component of so many people in roofing sales. And, and you can get the calculators available through your manufacturers and through Airvent and a whole bunch more. So anyway, free ventilation assessment, not to get too crazy here, but there's other things that can come in handy for whether it's selling upgrades or better ventilation, maybe insulation and more. Then a free maintenance assessment, which is, hey, you know, we'd recommend, if you aren't going to replace the roof, to do X, Y and Z, a free attic inspection, $250 of free routine maintenance included. By the way, this is optional, but depending on workers comp or the classification of the sales team, if you have the team run out there with caulk on, you're being of service and valuable. And that $250 of free routine maintenance, that's a trip charge. And hopping up on the roof, taking a look and resealing some things again for someone to call the office, you're generally not going to run out there for less than 250 bucks. All right, $1,000 off, which the offer ends this month. So there's the discount if they want to do something. And again, retail and storm are different animals. We're not eating deductibles. This is a discount. Free premium shingle upgrade, zero down low. Financing expires at the end of the month. And Again, that's a $1,235 value. That is free. And the offer Ends this week. Okay. Or whatever it is. So there's your urgency. So here's an example of like, hey, get a free 17 point roof inspection and photo report, by the way. You can include however many points you can grab as much or little this as you want. You showcase the value and you'll notice we're closing the curiosity gap. How long will my roof last? Do I actually have any active leaks or problems that could lead to future issues with moisture that is mold? Okay, so there's an example again of an irresistible offer that is just more than Call today for a free estimate. Okay, call today for a free estimate and we'll do all of this for you at no cost. But hurry, this deal ends. Alright, now then, what we need is our deal getting plan or our lead getting plan. There's a variety of different ways to get leads and one of the most common questions that comes up inside the Roofing and Solar Reform Alliance. We have a private app and community discussion board. We have one for leaders, one for owners, one for everybody. The leadership one is like, where's the best place to get leads? And that answer varies, by the way, but here's some popular places. Number one, door to door or canvassing. Developing a canvassing team, which we did have some members by the way, peel back the curtains and run a session on how they built canvassing teams in house, their pay plans, how they hire, what they're responsible for, everything. Then we have telemarketing. We also had a session, by the way, in building a call center in house. You don't have to go outsourcing it, including who to hire, who to manage, how to pay, how to get the phone numbers, the call scripting, etc. Then we have Facebook leads, which this is an obvious one, Google leads, which are going to be some. And I know Google. We have pay per click and then we have local service ads. This is a very, very, very effective place for retail leads because again, we talk about level of awareness. People that are turning to Google or pay per click, they know they have a problem and they reach out. Whereas Facebook, you're catching them on a scroll, right? They're not necessarily thinking like, oh shoot, I have a roof problem, who should I call? They go to Facebook. They're very dialed into the problem that they're going to reach out. But then we have organic leads that might come through SEO, which is a long game play. We have lead aggregators. Those don't need to be named. We know who they are. Those are folks that like a homeowner says, I need a roof quote and then 70 roofers call them at once. They can be effective. They can also be a total flop. There are some folks that like do really well with them, some that don't. It's very market dependent and making sure that you can call really quickly and you've got a good inside sales team. Then we have referrals and networking. Now my best advice by the way, is like, where do I go first? Pick one or two and figure out how much money you'd be willing to flush down the toilet. Now why? Because you want to test and you throw some money in the test. You track everything, where the phone calls come from, how many turned into an appointment. So you can figure out your cost per appointment. Then how many of them close. You can figure out your cost per acquisition or your customer acquisition cost. Cac. Cac. Once you know your customer acquisition cost on Google Leads because you put $5,000 there, you'll be able to say, hey, every time I put $5,000 into Google leads, I will get X number of appointments and my average cost is this. And now it's a cash machine. And if it's too high, you can look at optimizing your process. Maybe it's how the calls are being handled, maybe it's your landing page, maybe it's your offer, but you'll have some more information to run with. By the way, these are the kind of conversations that we have inside rsra. Now let's turn our attention to the sales essentials. Of course, we need a new source of leads that are often exclusive to retail offers. The retail leads are going to be very different search intent than sales storm. I do see companies advertising both, but the more specific you can match your marketing language to your potential buyer, the better. Okay, then we need an inside sales process to qualify the leads. I need to just that plus convert the appointment instantly. These are two things that we need to really focus on because what often happens is someone will call the office and say, hey, I'd like to book an appointment. And then the admin will say like, hey, great, let me get your name and number. And someone will call you back within a day. Oh my gosh, you can't do that. You can't because your lead conversion will drop from here down to here. Like what would happen if you called for a haircut and you're like, hey Barbara, I want a haircut. And he goes, hey, I'm in the middle of a cut. I'm going to call you back today. And we'll book an appointment. If you're anything like me and most people, you'd hang up and call the next guy because you're like, dude, I just want to check this off my list. So the inside sales people, whether that's your office admin or a dedicated team, need a call script to qualify that prospect and book them in as quickly as possible. Inside RSRA for our members, I have an entire process called the inbound leads, the phone sales strategy that provides the scripting and process for your team. I've even done some secret shopping for our members, calling their own offices and then provided feedback to the members that was shared with everybody. They have the call recordings and everything. So my point, you got to have this and pro tip for the owners and managers. Call your office and act as a shopper. You're going to probably scare yourself. It's a good thing because that's the only way to make it better. All right, next is pre selling the process. By the way, I'm going to put myself in the hot seat here because for example, with our team at rsra, we were having outbound calls and to speed up our process, we have a voicemail drop. So if someone doesn't answer, instead of having to leave the same message, our sales amazing sales folks, Kennedy and Matt, they record a voicemail and then they can just click drop it. And after doing this for a year, we tested it and guess what we found out that if they press drop it before the beep, it starts playing and then by the time it beeps, they only get the last half of the message, which made us, me and our team look like idiots. So our team chat, which was this was happening last Thursday, was like test everything. Test everything. Okay, so my point is when you call your own office and you start testing this, I'm not like a saint. Like that's a small detail that we didn't even think we had a test. But you find this stuff out by calling your own company. Alright, then we need a pre sell process. Members of RSRA are using ours. We're actually in the middle of finalizing the entire pre sell process on a presentation that the homeowner reviews as a warm up, which differentiates them and helps overcome all the big objections. So it is a educational process that when you show up at the house, the homeowner, the table is set for the salespeople to kick butt. So you need an educational process to warm up that homeowner. You create it as a way to say, hey, do this before the appointment. Review this information and you make sure that that is drilled to the homeowner so when the salesperson shows up, they have the best chance of serving the homeowner and winning the business. And then the final piece is the estimate has to be prepared on site or before the visit for a one call close. It doesn't need to be a high pressure situation. But the point is if you're the guy that has to show up and then leave and then come back, your close rate will drop, period. Every time you leave the house, the chances of making that deal go through, reduce. The homeowner called you out for a question. It is your responsibility to deliver that information of how much it's going to cost on the spot. Okay, now, sales process next. The sales process needs to be an in home process and a presentation that everybody follows for consistency. Similar to like a lot of the storm sales world, sales reps can kind of go off the rails and just wing it and talk their way through it. But that doesn't work in retail. We need to deliver the right information in the right order and hit the right questions and proactively overcome the objections and talk through the process. For RSRA members, we built a done for you presentation. It's available on Engage. By the way, sign up with Engage. You get it. Here's just a screen, screenshot of one of those, like why homeowners choose us and then by the way, you're going to insert your company name. So it's like why homeowners choose your company and I've filmed videos. Or you can use your own of like what is our SRA and what makes us different. So we're providing that credibility for you. But the reason that we use this presentation or a presentation because you can do your own, is to accomplish two things. First, to control salespeople is a constant reminder. Hit this information in the right order. Without it, they go off the rails. They don't know what they hit or what they didn't hit. So this creates consistency in the home. But number two is it allows the homeowner to stay engaged. Because just like I'm using this, chances are your eyes are cycling between me and reading or looking at what's happening here. So it engages both senses and it makes it easier for people to understand the core message. And my job is for you to understand the core message. Your salespeople's job is to make sure the homeowner understands the core message. Also allows is we've all had the homeowner, haven't you? Who just boom Drills you with questions, and you're bouncing from here to there to there. And then like an hour goes by and you're like, I didn't even get to go through anything because they took control. So with a presentation, we're able to say, hey, Mr. Homeowner, that's a great question. I'm going to get to that in just a minute. And then you can go through it. Be like, hey, remember when you asked me this? This is where it shows up. So again, you need, in my opinion, a presentation. I don't care how it's done. I'll tell you why. I built ours on Engage. In the past, we used Flipbooks, okay, three ring binders. But then we'd make an update and have to like, hey, at the sales meeting, bring in your books. And then we have to give them to our office manager and like, swap this page for this one or put this one here. And then we switched to doing them on Google Slides. And then there was like, connection issues and who had the latest version or the old version. And with Engage, like, it's all there. Everyone has offline access. You have the analytics of who's going through it. So that's why I personally really enjoy Engage. Why we use it for rsra. When you have an application call, we'll show you our program through it. And that's why we recommend it for our folks. So anyway, if you're interested, there's QR code. You can go to RSRA.org join to learn more about membership at RSRA. We are application only, by the way. All right. Our final and arguably most important. I know it's really not the most important, but without this, you're kind of dead out of water. It's financing and storm companies whether you want to build retail or not. My opinion, you need this. Especially with the rising costs for homeowners for hail, wind, or hurricane claims. Financing, our job is to make the money make sense. You may or may not have heard me say this, but I'll bring you up to speed. My sales philosophy, I call 3Ds or 3 Domino Selling. We have to develop unshakable trust, create an insatiable need for them to both replace the roof and have you do it and then make the money make sense. And if we knock down these three dominoes in order, we get the sale. But for many people that are new at this point, they fail to knock down the money domino because they don't either one, offer financing or two, offer it in a smart way, because sometimes it's counterintuitive. And I'll give you an example right now. A dear family friend of mine is not well off financially and has terrible credit. Their vehicle. The transmission exploded in their vehicle, and it was more to replace the transmission than it was to get a new car. So they go new car shopping, and they say, hey, I don't have a lot of money. They my credit's terrible. 20,000 is my budget. So they shop naturally for newer used. What do you think? Well used, right? Because it's cheaper. Duh. So they go, they find the $20,000 vehicle, and they sit down at financing. And because it's a used vehicle, financing rates are higher because they have terrible interest rates. They were sky high. She saw that monthly payment. She's like, no way can I afford this. Well, the salesperson was smart because he knew how to make the money make sense. They had a $20,000 budget. He walks her over to a $30,000 car. She says, Whoa, whoa, whoa, it's 30,000. He goes, no, you don't understand. This will qualify for Ford credit. New vehicle financing is lower, and Ford credit is lower. And guess what? That monthly payment made sense. So the salesperson was able to literally sell a ticket price 50% more from 20,000 to $30,000. Okay. And made the money make sense because the monthly payment was lower. So our job is to understand financing. A lot of companies get so, so overwhelmed by this in a plug, like Christopher Scovel with Improveify, one of the most fantastic trainers on financing. In fact, he just built a financing training for members of rsra. So that's on demand in our platform. But Kris is active on social, and he's got his own program. He's awesome. But the idea here is we need to make it easy for them to pay you. And some people are like, well, I don't want to do it because there's credit card fee. It's 3%. Build it into your price and offer 0%, same as cash for 12 months, or, you know, X percent for X months. And the reason I have little X's in place is because with our current economy, interest rates are changing. I know the Fed's at the time of this recording supposed to drop interest rates, which obviously will impact us in a positive way theoretically here. But the idea is just to find low dealer fee options and be like, okay, you said yes to us. All we need to get is yes to us. And then here's how you can pay. And there's a lot of ways to pay, and I can make it as easy and affordable as possible. Now, I'm not going to get into financing training in this particular video, but my point is you need to offer it and your team needs to know how to effectively use it so you can make the money make sense. Now, moving forward, if you want even more training like this, jump into my free training center. You'll get my entire bundle. This is, by the way, only some of it go to adamsfreestuff.com right now. There's a link at the end. And I've also hand selected this video that I want you to jump into because it's going to show you how to close these retail leads using a very simple three question framework. Thanks for joining me and I'll see you on the next one.