How to Sell Roofs Over Text (Because Homeowners Don’t Answer The Phone!)

The future of roofing sales is not taking place in conversations like this. It's happening over text. And that's why I want to make this video to share five tips to help you take your natural born charisma and energy and sales skills and convert it into being a powerful salesperson over text messages. Because selling over text and selling in person are different animals. Ask me how I know. I'm glad you did. My very first company that I started in the digital world, which by the way was a complete, utter chaotic mess. But it's a fun story. I literally in six months made zero sales outside of the people I know. Why? Because I learned that even though I was great at door to door sales and I was great at sales when I was on the phone and in conversation, I'd learned this whole new skill of selling in text. Okay. Which again, text meaning like in written words and it flopped. And it wasn't until I realized all of these things get lost. Like the ability to read, body language, physical proximity, by the way, where people are trapped talking to you, the ability to hold attention and move attention, all of your tonality and non verbals, all that goes out the window. So I had this opportunity when I started this first business after like six months of zero sales and I had a privilege of writing to someone else's email list and I literally sat down, I was like, this is make or break for my business. How can I capture all the things that I've lost with this text selling and put it in writing? And guess what? In three emails I did. And in three emails I made $100,000 in contracted sales in three emails. And this was by the way, way back when. And I was like, wow, I think I figured it out. And since then I've taken those skills. I've been hired and written text message campaigns and email campaigns and sales letters and Facebook ads and video sales letters, all this different stuff. So I'm going to just bring all this knowledge to teach it to you here today because you're probably dealing with situations like this. Well, maybe a homeowner before an appointment texts to cancel, like one of our members in rsra, it's a sales rep that posted and he posted a screenshot asking for advice because by the way, we support whole companies or maybe you've dealt with like another member of ours or a posted a screenshot in our private community saying, any advice? How would you handle this? Again, there's a picture of the text. He says, I thought this deal was in the bag. And then someone Else came in behind me and offered to do the product for $3,000 less. How do I respond? And because we've lost all these elements of the in person selling and the physical proximity to just talk our way through things and use charisma and adrenaline, it all falls apart. So that's why we got to learn to sell and text. Let's get right to it here my friend, are the five tips to help you sell even more over text. Tip number one, the goal of a text is simple. Get a reply. I repeat, get a reply. Now, when we're in the home selling, we have a lot of different elements that we can rely on and we rely on elements like this, like our body language, Like, I just want you to feel the difference. Now as you watch this video, all you can see is my head and my shoulders. What you can't see is my hands. And even something as simple as your hands and your body gives a very different feeling. As we cut cameras, even though if I'm looking here, you're able to see how much more dynamic I am, I can use my body to engage and have a transfer of energy and enthusiasm that gets lost when again when my hands are cut off. And then when we lose it all and we're only stuck with selling over text, everything is out the window. So I oftentimes when we're selling in person, we keep the end goal in mind of like my goal is to close this sale, but we need to actually shrink our goal in what I went instead of not shrink it, chunk our goal up into mini goals. Goal number one, get a reply. So I want you to like think of your sales conversation. The formula I teach, by the way, is car park, connect, assess, report, present, ask, referral and kickstart. That's my sales process that we teach the closing formula as I call it. And in the home it's a very fluid and dynamic conversation. One thing flows into the next. But when we're selling over text, all those are chapters, like a book. Like this is the chapter, that's the chapter. So when you sell over text, your goal, remember, is to get a reply. You have to break all that up to get, get a reply, keep it going, get a reply, keep it going. Get a reply, keep it going. It's almost like a dance. So there's tip number one, every message. The goal is to get a reply. Number two on the list, keep it short, please keep it short. Communicate with customers in a similar way as you would with a friend. Just professional doesn't mean you can't use humor, which we'll talk about here later on, especially in tip number five. But you gotta keep it short. What happens, and I've seen it happen, is sales reps have a tendency to send these really, really long messages because they forgot to take that whole big thing and chunk it up into little chapters. So whatever you've done in person, shrink it. Here's the other reason. If you write this really long message that requires the homeowner to scroll through their phone to read it, they're going to open it and be like, I don't have time for that. And they're going to put their phone back in their pocket. So when we keep our messages short, they're easy to read, which means they're also easy to reply to. Number three, proofread your texts, especially when using voice text, because here's what happens. I've seen it happen, by the way. In fact, I have had screenshots from sales reps shared with me being like, here's our text thread. Here's what, what I said. And it went something like this. Hey, Mr. Homeowner, I'm driving right now. Excuse the typos. I'm using voice to text. I wanted to explain to you that the other guy who said he can do it $3,000 cheaper probably is cutting a whole lot of corners and didn't give you an itemized estimate. And I would hate to have to compete with him and then have you call me later because there were problems. And then all of a sudden it's like this, this wall of word vomit. There's not one piece of punctuation in there, and it is. Grammar issues galore. Plus, you probably have had a voice to text fail that was very embarrassing in the past, haven't you? I know I have. And by the way, I'd love to hear from you. Drop a comment. What was the most embarrassing voice to text fail that you had with a homeowner? I know, I've had some silly ones. I'll probably jump in in the comments and share mine too. But like, if you're in a hurry, which again, many of us in sales are in a hurry. So you do the voice of text thing. And even if it's short and sweet, all of a sudden your phone's ringing and you just click send. Because you just got to get it done to get to the next thing. Now, that looks highly unprofessional. And let's just be real, it makes you look stupid even if you're not, which I know you're not because you're here watching these videos. So simply proofread and make sure that your communication is professional. Professional, alright. If you look at my video where I analyzed 1642 Google reviews and I looked at the most emotional words and phrases used by homeowners, guess what was top of the list? Professional. So keep it professional. Number three on the list is end every text by asking a question. Now, why do we do this? There's a few reasons. One, in the beginning of this video, I shared with you that our goal is to chunk up the conversation. Ask, reply, ask, reply, ask, reply. So if we know that the goal, which is the first part of this video series or this video, the first tip is get a reply. What's the best way to get a reply? Ask a question. Now, there's another reason we do this, and that is influence. If you watched a video I did recently on Robert Cialdini's seven principles of influence and how we apply them to roofing sales, one of those is consistency. That people are likely to behave in a consistent fashion, especially when in public or when dealing with others. So if you send again, I'm just violating all these rules here. Let's say you send a text to a homeowner that's using voice to text. It's really long and you're trying to accomplish everything up front. They open their phone and they have to scroll through the message. But they're in the middle of something, right? Because everyone, when their phone dings, you just like look at it out of curiosity and impulse. And they're like, oh, I don't have time for that. And they put their phone in their pocket. Now that message is now marked as red. They're not going to see it again. They ghosted you, you respond again. They see that they didn't respond. It's almost like the pressure was off. They're like, oh, I didn't respond before, so I'm not going to respond now. So they're more likely to be consistent in ghosting you. Whereas if you keep the messages short, the goal is a reply. You're professional in your communication. You ask a question, they reply once. What are they more likely to do? Keep repeating replying. It's beautiful. Number five on the list, and this one's my favorite, and that is to use humor. I've shared this in one or two other videos. In the comments, people get mad at me. I don't understand why, but I need to give you some context on this. You know what? I'm going to show it to you and then I'll give you the context. Use humor. And here's what I mean by using humor. I'm going to pull up an actual image and share it with you. If someone has ghosted you, you can use professional humor while staying professional. And this is my favorite one is the actual GIF that I use and I send this to homeowners with. Are you ghosting me? Question mark. Laughing emoji. That's crying and this is what it looks like. Are you ghosting me? I mean, how funny is this? That is it. You don't explain it away. Are you ghosting me? Question mark. Laughy emoji. And when you send silly messages like this or here was another one I saw that someone shared me. Are you ignoring me? On porpoise. And it was a picture of, of a dolphin. Like stupid dad jokes, they're funny. They prompt replies. Now for those of you that are like Adam, I would never do that. That's unprofessional. I pissed some people off. I have good news for you. You will always piss people off because you're in sales. So if you can get replies from a lot of people and only piss off a couple people, you're winning. If you're in door to door sales, you piss off 95% of the people to get to these number of sales. There's no way in life to to make everybody happy. Have fun with it. Life is too short to take it too seriously. Now I'm going to give you the actual proof. See, I have been hired. This is a background many people don't know about me as a direct response copywriter and sales consultant, which basically mean I was a sales hitman for hire. And I would get hired by companies to write their video sales letters, their ads, their sales pages, train their sales team, write CRM automations, and in every single situation that I've used this gift that I just shared with you, which I'll share with you again. This ghost, whether the gift is included or by just saying are you ghosting me? I have had the highest response rate of any message ever. In fact, even for a real estate company who's doing apartment rentals, I use gifts in emails to follow up and rehash people that had ghosted them. And they work. So when you put all of these elements together, these five tips, you my friend, will take your natural born sales skills and sell like a boss over text. And selling over text is just one of the changes that's happening in the future. So if you want to learn how to close more sales in 2025-2028. Jump into this very next video, because I'll show you everything you need to know. Sam.