https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4-xACPWnFw

If you're running your company blind, you don't know who's working, you don't know what your sales reps are saying in the house. And everything feels like a constant fire that you're putting out. And your new role is like professional firefighter, then this video is for you. Because running a company blind, whether you're an owner, manager, general manager, sales manager, doesn't matter. It doesn't work. So here is how you take control of your company again. In this video, I'm going to lay out five different ways, very easy for you, practical, implementable ways for you right now to take control of your company back. Increase visibility, have transparency of what's going on, get back control so you can scale with a level of predictability. I'm so excited to have you here. Adam Benzeman, welcome or welcome back. Let's get started Now. I've had the privilege of working with thousands of roofing companies. In fact, as of today in this recording, I'm working with roofing companies in 42 different states and Canada. And each and every day we're engaging in conversation the community, we're joining each other at small workshops, coming out to the annual event, having leadership roundtables, talking through different challenges. There's a discussion board for owners. I have seen a lot. So what I'm going to be breaking down are these five different ways for you to get back. Control is in theory, it's what I've used when I was running a company as chief operating officer and I'm helping roofing companies do this right now in the trenches. So let's get things started with number one on the list and that is number one getting visibility on how your leads are being handled. It is amazing what will happen if you right now pick up the phone and call your office and better yet, go on your website and fill out a form to request an estimate. You will be likely unpleasantly surprised unless you've done this in the past. Now the reason I make that claim is because when we do our small workshops together at rsra, it's very common for me to put the phone on speakerphone in secret shop or a company. And it's amazing how many owners have no idea what's being said on the phone by the office, receptionist, admin or inside sales. They have no idea where the lead form goes or what the homeowner who just requested an estimate sees on the next page and what happens in the email and text automations. And if you have no idea what's going on, you're Literally running your company blind. So my first tip for you is to get visibility out on how your leads are being handled in the easiest way is to secret shopper your company. And by doing that, you're likely going to make some fixes on low hanging fruit that's going to help you convert more opportunities into set appointments, which is of course going to result in more sales. And by the way, this is the first thing I would do. If you're someone that thinks you want more leads, I would fix what I call your core funnel first, which is how leads are processed within your company before you start spending more money on leads. Number two on the list is what your sales team is saying. If I were to ask you this, how does your team ask for the business? Would you have an answer to that or what are they saying in the house and is it consistent among all salespeople? And my prediction is that if you're hearing this, you're probably saying, I have no idea what they're saying in the house. It's not consistent. I have no idea how they're asking for their business. But I am hoping with both fingers crossed that they're doing a good job in following the training that I provided them. And that's just the truth for most people. So in order to get visibility of what's being said, we can rely on technology, a tool like Ciro AI as an example. And with that tool, which will record the conversations that are happening in the home, you will get visibility. And what happens is we have these lagging indicators. You go like a month or two months, you're like, why is Tom just not closing any deals? And we have no idea what's going on with Tom. But as soon as we get into the recording, we're like, wait a minute, what he's saying. We can compress time and instead of having like 60 days of wondering and mystery, we can condense that into a series of even days, heck, even a couple of appointments. You can spot a problem and fix it really quickly. So this allows for coaching ride alongs without having to like be in the vehicle, so to speak, like the old way of doing things. And it allows you to provide coaching feedback. So without knowing what your salespeople are doing, you're out of luck. All right, number three, this is a big one. Who's working and who's not working. Many companies, especially those that are either operating as 1099 and or those companies whose sales reps, they just don't have the level of accountability where they're going Straight from home to the field to appointments. You don't really know like who's out knocking doors, who's running appointments when they're done. So one of the ways that you can fix this, excuse me, is by having group accountability by way of a centralized communication platform. In fact, to help on that, I'm going to link to a video at the end of this that's going to break down how all this works in more intricate detail. But I'm going to give you a little bit now. One of the things that has really helped me and helped me help other people is a group chat. I learned this from one of our mentors in rsra. His name's Cody Landals. And Cody built and sold his roofing company very quickly does sales in a super innovative way, literally over the phone, like they don't run appointments. And Cody with a, with a large team taught me something really powerful which was about group accountability. So everybody posts in the group chat in the morning. He called it the wig. I have since modified it to be mit. The most important thing that people are doing for that day, so we know on that morning check in, like, hey, it's 7 in the morning. My most important thing today is to finally close this massive home. I've specked a metal roof, I'm waiting and blah blah, blah. Like that might be the most important thing, maybe for the next person. The most important thing is getting a deposit check from this customer that they've been in this like follow up sequence with or closing a deal. So anyway, that accountability of knowing like what they're doing, how they're starting their day, what their intention is for the day, you'll very quickly know who's working and who's not. And at the same time, at the end of the day reporting, which we do, even at my company, the end of the day report from the team posting. For your example, since I don't run a roofing company right now, I run. This would be your salespeople's sales for the day. Maybe it's the doors knocked and the number of inspections generated. And if you're in the retail space, it could be the number of appointments run that day, the number of deals closed and then the dollar value of those sales. And that way we have, I call it book ending. The morning in the evening. And if the whole team is doing this together, there's group accountability. You clearly know who's working and who's not. Especially if you see the big old goose eggs posting day after day. All right, number four, I cannot even tell you how many roofing companies are running their marketing entirely blind. It's like they're walking up to a slot machine, trying to find money, put it in the slot, and then pull on it and just listen in, hope and pray that it hit a jackpot. And that's how they're running their marketing. And if I asked you where your leads are coming from, how much are they costing? What's your customer acquisition cost? There's so many people that will be like, I don't know, it's working or it's not working. I just need more leads. And that is running your marketing blind. And the first step to getting control of your marketing and is getting visibility via a dashboard. This is something I'm working with our members on. I have a system I've developed called the marketing control system. The very first thing is the marketing control dashboard. Now, when you get into managing your marketing, you can't like the way I have it. I have. I literally couldn't tell you off the top of my head how many pages it is. I think it's in excess of 12 pages. Each page has multiple sets of data charts, graphs, everything you can imagine and then more. And if I were to tell you to start like that, you'd freak out in for good reason, because I didn't start like that. I started measuring the simplest of things. So I'll give you a few things to measure. How many leads you got, how many leads were qualified, how many leads turned into an appointment, how many leads closed, and what each customer cost you. That's your customer acquisition cost. And if you simply start with those numbers in mind, the rest and there's more to track. But just knowing that alone and then asking yourself a simple question of are my leads predictable from each source, are they reliable? Is my acquisition cost within reasonable range, and are they trackable? And then if they're not, then maybe you shouldn't be spending money there. And I'm talking lead gen. I know branding might be in a separate budget. So getting visibility on your marketing, just on a performance standpoint, if you can't measure it, how are you going to manage it? And that brings me to number five, and this goes back to measuring things. Where is your money today? Where is your money? If you don't have a clear snapshot of your financials and you don't understand your numbers, it is very difficult to run, scale and fund a roofing company. Now, we did in RSRA a beautiful session, by the way. Everything that happens in RSRA is confidential. We are application only. And I'm sharing. I'm sharing this. You understand why I'm filtering the information. I'm sharing it so we don't jeopardize anyone in the community. But we had an owner's roundtable not too long ago where we brought together someone who has built, sold, purchased, and now the president of a platform of private equity companies to review PNLs from fellow members. Everything was privatized, so we kept privacy even within our community to have an open discussion about what the financials look like so everyone could come together and. And say, okay, this is normal for me. Not normal. How do I stack up? Where am I too heavy? Is my overall profit in line? What about my receivables? Is that too much? What percentage should I be spending on marketing all these things? The amount of financial clarity that came from that one session was just mind blowing. But with clarity, we can make educated decisions as opposed to guesses. And if you don't have control of these five things, you're continually running your company blind by way of the guessing game. So I hope that this video helps you gain clarity and get control of your company. And if you want even more help getting the right systems in place, stupid, simple systems, including the best communication channels for your whole company, jump right into this video and I'll teach you what you need to know. We'll see you in the next one, Sam.