Future of Roofing Sales? Threats & Changes in the Next 36 Months

What does the future of roofing sales hold for us? Well, in this video, I'm going to share with you my three predictions on the future of roofing sales. And I believe that these changes are going to be occurring within the next 36 months. That's right. These three big changes will impact you and me both over the next three years. Now, as I lay these out, some of the stuff might be a little scary, but I don't want you to feel afraid. And the reason is when with change, we can either jump on the wave and surf it and be in the forefront, or we can let that wave crash through us and we're left there tumbling on the bottom of the ocean, getting smacked into the into the sand or into the coral reef and watch everybody else coasting that wave, having a good old time pass us by. And by the way, being slammed on the bottom of the ocean under a wave, not very pleasant. Been there. Hey, welcome. Or welcome back. My name is Adam Bensman, the roof strategist. And everything I do here on my channel is designed to help you and your team smash your income goal and give every customer a amazing experience. And I've had the opportunity to help thousands of sales reps just like you overcome the same sales challenges that you're probably facing. So if you haven't done it, let's hook you up with a freebie and get you inside to get a free copy of my pitch. Like a pro. Roofing sales training video library organized by category. Every video I've ever done. Great for easy binging. Great for the seasoned veteran looking to sharpen the skills. Great for owners and managers looking for some content to train in your weekly sales meetings? Look no further. Go to the roofstrategist.com right now or click the link in the video description below. All right, my prediction, the few, the biggest three changes that we're going to face, and I invite you, please drop a comment, share your thoughts, whether you agree, whether you disagree, and what items that I may have missed. Now, full disclosure. I've shot this video about five times and I've trimmed it to the main three that I think are really the things that we need to be focused on. So let's skip the fluff and jump right in, shall we? All right, number one prediction. I see an emerging chart trend in private equity and corporatization coming into the roofing industry. We see people gobbling up companies, we see other companies merging with other companies. And I believe just like our utility companies are trying to create these monopolistic practices I see this coming with the roofing industry. There's all of this money coming in. And with that money, we see more massive technological advancements now. So the future of roofing sales, you're like, dude, you just wrote the word technology. So I want to break this down. What kind of technology am I talking about? I believe in the next three years we are going to see people moving into systems to try to sell a roof online. We're looking for ways to cut. They're looking for ways to cut salespeople out. How do we eliminate our, one of our biggest expenses, which is roofing salespeople that earn a commission. And I know that there are people developing in, working on methods to sell a roof online. And again, remember I said there's nothing really to be afraid of. So I want to ask, especially to all of my storm restoration contractors out there, think I want you to ask yourself this question. What percentage of the roofs that I sell does the homeowner say when you first approach them? I don't have any problem with my roof. I don't know what you're talking about. Now, for most companies, that's between 70 and 90%, which means 70 to 90% of people don't even know they have a problem. We're in direct sales. We show up at their house to help them identify the problems they weren't even aware of. And this is why I think. And it drives me nuts. I see people, they're like, adam, storm sales isn't real sales. And I'm like, oh, it's not. You mean anyone can show up at a stranger's house unannounced with no brand recognition and get an opportunity to hop up on the roof when they think the roof is fine, show them that they have a problem and then get them to take action on that problem and end up with a contract for 20 some thousand dollars? That's pretty wild in my opinion. Some restoration contractors, they have cut their teeth in one of the most challenging types of sales yet for some people, push back on me. And I always want to say, oh, it's not that hard. Then by all means, teach me the way. Show me how. They're just afraid to do it. And people I could go on and on. So my point is, yes, this will happen. There will be a new Amazon. Roofing is getting commoditized and people will be able to shop for roof. And those people that market segment on the level of awareness. If we look, my estimation of the market is that about 70% of the roofing industry in the US is driven by, by severe weather, hail, wind or hurricane. When we see pretty much everywhere from Arizona and Utah all the way up through the Midwest, through the Dakotas, in every single state up until about Pennsylvania, straight south, that main segment, majority of the market is driven by storms. We get states like California, Washington, Oregon and in the Northeast. Those places don't get storms in the same frequency but they still get some specifically severe weather being on the coast. Now the reason I say that is if we look at the market, I'm going to say that, oops, let me erase that here. I'm going to predict and by the way, this is where I'm looking for you to say agree, disagree, push back, that's all good. If we were to carve out a segment, I'm going to say that storm takes up about this much of the market here we've got retail, these are elective roof replacements and then again we've got within retail we can grab out a sliver of new construction. So in fact let's do that right now because the buy roof online people, that's not going to impact new construction. That's a whole different kettle of f. These systems are designed to sell sell roofs to people who know they need it. So we got retail and then we have. I'm just going to write new construction there. So this technology I don't believe is going to impact the storm market as much. Emerging technologies to identify damage, speed up the process, all that will impact us. But I'm not super concerned about the technology to cut the salesperson out because generally speaking these folks don't even know they have a problem with. We got the retail market, people who jump online need a new roof, new roof replacement. Yeah, this could impact retail folks more which again we still serve. But I just wanted to paint this picture of what I see in the market and why people that say Adam, do more stuff on retail. I do a lot on retail, but I'm going to be frank with you on YouTube it doesn't perform as well because most people are capitalizing on storms and the only time they're turning to retail is when there's not a lot of storms and a good company should be able to handle both. Alright, so there's my prediction on the technology side. The main thing, a bunch of money coming in, private equity coming in, technology companies growing and the capability of companies that are out there now exceeding to make the process faster and to cut the salesperson out. Alright, that's the main thing, cutting the salesperson out. How do we sell a roof online? How do we estimate on autopilot? How do we present automatically? And how do we give the homeowner control to select their options and go? And again, I do believe this will be often a race to the bottom because on a big decision for someone being in someone's home, I think there's going to be some market adaptation. Until people are even comfortable saying, I bought this roof online. I didn't talk to anyone until I literally gave a deposit for a $20,000 system 10 grand. I just. There's going to be some human element involved and I think that we've got some time to adapt. So there we have it. Number one is technology. Now, number two, and by the way, again, drop in the comments if you agree or disagree. If you think this number is totally skewed, I'd love to hear from you. This is my what I've seen from serving folks in every state. But your opinion matters, so drop it. All right, When I say drop it, I mean in the comments, not drop your opinion. All right, number two, what I see is price pressure. Now, I'm going to break this down to both storm and retail. What do I mean by price pressure? At today's current, at the time of this recording, we've got some supply chain issues, we have material availability issues, and we have the cost of roofing skyrocketing. When I got into the business in 2011, we were fighting to get 300 a square. And that same market today is selling at 650 to 675 a square. Now, that doubling, more than doubling of that price took a bit over a decade. But in today's economy, we are seeing 7 to 12% price increases on raw material per quarter, which means that the cost of roofing is compounding pretty much four times faster than the stock market. And who knows what that's going to look like. The result of this is that the price of roofing is going to double is 2x per five years. That's about the projection that I've shaken out with the math. Meaning if someone decides today, hey, I don't want to do my roof, I can get five years more out of it. You're going to see that the cost of that roof will double in five years. At today's rates, a $15,000 roof going to be about $5,000 more. If they wait a year at 7% and then at 12%, that number shoots up to almost $9,000 on a $15,000 roof. Yeah, you heard me right. And if you want more on that? Click up here and watch this video on urgency. Creating real urgency, true to life urgency and getting homeowners to take action now and not punting the roof down the road. We'll do it later. We'll do it later. Because the truth is they're going to be spending just in a year, five to $9,000 more for the exact same roof. And it's not like they're getting some fancy new phone, right? Same roof, same color options. So those price pressures I believe are going to impact the roofing space because we're going to have to get creative on our financing solutions. But then we have storms. So let's talk about that. I believe that we are going to see pressure from insurance companies both on policy coverage and deductibles. Okay. What we're already seeing, by the way, is coverage on the roof surface. We're seeing exclusions. We're seeing special deductibles for hail, wind or hurricane. And I do believe that's going to continue. Deductible. Sorry, I can't spell and talk at the same time. This price pressure is going to have to have us adapt on how we serve and what we offer, including financing, as well as option number three, which I'll be talking about here in a minute. Price pressure, retail price pressure, insurance. We got pressure on the retail side from the industry at large and then we have pressure on the insurance side due to these rising costs and rising claims. We're with coverage and deductible issues. The insurance companies are trying to cut themselves out and we're also seeing that they're trying to pay less. Right. We're seeing this a lot on carriers, the common claims and in fact, at time of this filming, we're bringing a special guest into the pitch prone movement, Drew Suttle with total scope to talk about dealing with this stuff. So yeah, it's common. I posted in the group. What do you want Drew to cover? Main thing, coverage, disputes, lack of coverage, playing games on not paying out, moving to other platforms outside of Xactimate to estimate. So if you're interested in that, by the way, and you do end up becoming a Pitch Pro movement member, there's links in the description that recording will be available for you. So that's number two is price pressure and the biggest threat, number three is it's funny, it's a threat, but it's also an opportunity. And it starts with an S. Can you guess it? Solar. All right, now I'll tell you firsthand, I was very resistant I posted, in fact, in some of the industry Facebook groups, do you believe in solar to the people who are selling it? And surprisingly to me, I was shocked. Most salespeople didn't believe in the economics of solar to do it on their own home. I sat through presentations, I'm like, I ain't into this. And it wasn't until I started to uncover a new way to do solar, to integrate solar with a roofing company for both retail and storm, that it really clicked. And through learning this, have helped a company end up doubling their revenue in 90 days, going from 1.2 million per month to about 2.5 million per month and growing by integrating the two. And in fact, we actually just had a gentleman inside the Pitch Pro Movement because we had our first solar sales training session in the Pitch Bro Movement. And I'm pulling up this, this image right now. He says to me, he goes, another 22 kilowatt system closed. That's 42 kilowatts in two days. Check this out. Homeowner getting a roof paid by insurance. After he called me out to look at it, the repair job turned into $120,000 sale. You see that? Pretty, pretty nuts. So what we see is through these financing vessels provided by solar, we're able to have a competitive edge by integrating, not roof and solar, but I want you to think of roof with solar. But the problem is the confusion. Sales reps don't know what to sell, how to sell it. Am I pitching solar or roofs? And integrating? These usually ends up where companies fail. The sales rep runs around, what do I sell today? Do I lead with roof? Do I lead with solar? And then the deals fall apart and they don't have a hook. There's no urgency. It truly is an art because this is. The solar sale is a bit more complex. It really, it's financial arbitrage. It's that simple. But you can't say to a homeowner, don't worry, I got a great arbitrage product for you. They don't get that. So we need to learn how to communicate. And I think that in the next three years, if companies aren't doing solar with their roofs, they're going to start losing deals to competitors who can offer better financing options opened up by solar. Who homeowners are going to want solar due to the new tax credits, they at 30% and due to the domestic manufacturing tax credits, that can bump that up to a 40% tax credit. If that system is, excuse me, if the raw manufacturing is done in the US So if panels are made in the US and there's all these little nuances, but again, that's a deeper discovery for later. And then you have state tax incentives on top of it, which means like in Illinois, there are some circumstances that you can get at 50 or above 50% tax deductible systems. So if your company or you are not in a position or know how to sell solar, offer solar the right way to win more business and truly double your business. I do think that you will struggle in our market because again, solar, when we can turn an insurance claim into a roof solar combo, we're really in an amazing spot for that homeowner. And I'll share more. And in fact, I have my new solar sales system being released very, very soon. Now. We've been behind the scenes ruling this out with this one company again going from 1.2 million a month to 2.5 million a month and rising. You saw what Marcos was able to do by bringing a repair into $120,000 sale for roof solar combo. And in fact, the last company we just rolled this out, they sold a $39,000 solar system on top of a $35,000 roof. And that was also an insurance claim. So there you have it. My three big predictions for what I think we're going to see putting pressure on our industry. Don't worry, we can adapt. Number one is going to be technology attempting to cut the salesperson out by automating certain processes. I do believe that we have a large part portion of the market that will be the last to adapt. And I don't think that the human element will be removed entirely. I do think that our roles might change in time, but time will tell. Number two is price pressure from the retail market. With the cost of goods skyrocketing through inflation, material availability and oil prices, these. Then on the insurance side, we got our coverage issues and we're gonna need to adapt on that front. And the final piece here is solar. We'll need to at some point jump on board and learn how to integrate this model or we're gonna get left behind as our competitors offer solutions that we simply cannot touch. And there you have it. Now, what did I miss? What predictions do you have over the next three years? How do you think our industry is gonna change and what threats do you think we face? Share your comments below so we can use this to all grow together. And that's what I love about the community here. And thank you for being such a valuable part of it and in investing your time with me today. Now, just because our time here is about to wrap up doesn't mean your and my time has to. So if you haven't yet done it, hop in right here and download a free copy of my pitch like a Pro Roofing Sales training video library. And if you didn't do it, watch this video here on Urgency to talk about those price increases to get homeowners over the edge to buy a roof now and not wait a year or more. And believe me, you're going to provide better service, have happier customers, and win more business. That's all for now, and I will see you on the next one.