LockDown LIVE: Roofing Sales Objections During COVID -19 - What About Deductibles?

Hey. Hey everybody. I hope everybody is doing well and you got my email announcing today's Lockdown Live. For those of you who might be joining in for the first time, this Lockdown Live series is something new that I'm doing just to help out with a lot of the stay at home orders. I realize business might be a little slower, might be a little different than we are used to. So I'm going to be doing these Monday through Friday. Times are going to vary and if you saw the email, I know that this room, there's a few folks waiting to come in. I'm sending out emails, I'm figuring out this YouTube live stuff. This is kind of new to me. But anyway, I'm setting the time in the rooms. You'll see them daily. If you subscribe, you can click the bell to get notified when I'm live or opt in to the root strategist insiders. And I'll be popping those emails out on the daily. Just let you know when I'll be, when I'll be here. So before we jump in, I'm gonna grab a sip of water. It's been a long day and I'm gonna start chatting about objections that might be coming up during this process. I know COVID 19 has a lot of folks. I'm in Colorado. The statewide order came in today that we need to be all staying at home. I have not had a chance. This literally happened this morning. I woke up to my phone beeping at like early early with the orders and I'm not sure where the construction, construction if that is on a list of essential activities or not for Colorado. So find that out shortly. However it may be for your state. And again, I said this last time, but make sure that you abide by your, the CDC and your local government, state, city, county, whatever it is, be safe. That's the number one thing. So here's what I have on my list. I'm going to share what we're going to be going through. Had four questions keep coming up. And by the way, this is like my favorite new tool. It's a, a tablet to write on and I love it. It's electronic. So here's the thing. What about deductibles? People are freaking out about money. That's the first question we're going to hit today. How to handle those. Right now it's not going to be much different than the past, but I want to give you a few new tools to think about. Second thing, people that don't want to schedule right now Right. You might have a job that's in the works. You might have collected a deposit and people are like, hey, I don't want to schedule now. Another one. Can we do production later? Right. So maybe they just got approved scopes in the mail. I know some markets like Texas got hit already and we got to handle that and then want to wait till this passes. So kind of all theme about. Excuse me. All same trends about timing. So I'm going to keep this one short. Last time, if you didn't watch, by the way, I did one yesterday. We went like 45 minutes. It was good stuff. There was good engagement. A lot of questions that came through and I wanted to make sure we could hit all of them. So for today, let's first hit deductibles. This will come up. Right now there's a lot of folks that are out of a job. I talked to a couple owners who are hiring. Their phones are blown up with restaurant workers looking for new work, a new place to work, obviously, through this tough time. So people are very conscious of price and deductibles. Now. It is important you will always hear me say, never give away deductibles. You just can't do it. I know that certain legislation, I forget the name, but specifically in Texas, has made it illegal to eat or absorb deductibles. And I want to give some background for folks because I go through this when I'm working with companies one on one. When you are addressing the deductible concern or someone says, so and so is willing to eat my deductible, it's really important. I know there's ways to help people out. I'm going to hit that in a minute. But when you absorb a deductible, eat a deductible, if you do it illegally, which is how it usually is done, it's fraud. Okay? You are participating in fraud as a contractor. And then the homeowner is either knowingly or not knowingly participating in fraud as well. And we all know in order to get that deductible paid for, we need to falsify the invoice, tell the insurance company we've done it it for more than it is. This is illegal. Don't do that. Okay, so what you can do, by the way, one thing to overcome that. When someone says, hey, you know, so and so company said they'd eat my deductible or pay for it, I let folks know. I say, hey, guys, I know this happens. I always use car analogies. People are Used to it, like if you got rear ended, you might set out to go find an auto body, and they, you know, the insurance company gave you 2000 bucks to get it done, making it over 1500, you walk out ahead. But. But the way that the home insurance side is different is that insurance company is your home insurance company literally has a equity stake in your home. So the oftentimes banks are on a mortgage, or, excuse me, mortgage companies are on a check. And second of all, they release the actual cash value upfront and the depreciation on the back end to make sure the work is done. So technically, if someone does not do the work, say they're. They're hard on hard times, like right now, and their roof gets damaged by hailstorm, and they say, you know what? I don't want to do it. We're going through hard times. That's a really tough spot to be in because ultimately and I have had this happen, if that roof gets damaged and they don't do anything, let's say in a week, two weeks, tornado comes through, rips the roof off, tree falls on it, it gets held on again, the roof's literally no longer insured. I have personally run adjuster appointments. I signed someone up. They were super excited to work together. And I'm like, yep, this is it. This is going to be a slam dunk deal. And the adjuster goes, adam, come over here. We walk over to his van, and he shows me pictures, and I look at the pictures and he's like, see this? Same shingles, same box, same everything they collected on a hailstorm two years ago. They never did the work. So this is a powerful thing. When people have issues about deductibles, it's important that they know this before filing the claim, because if they do not do the work, their roof is no longer insured. That's a big deal for many people, okay? And it can cause a massive, massive problem. So make sure that they know that. Okay? Second thing, for the. Again, for the deductible, for those of you that are just joining, this is overcoming the objection of deductibles, right? And people facing hardships. So if someone says so and so will eat my deductible, it's important to educate them. Say, listen, I know that this is how it might have gone through in the past, but ultimately the way that this works for the insurance company, releasing a certain portion of the funds up front. And I always use car analogies, right? Like if you were driving a brand new Honda Accord and it got Totaled, excuse me, a five year old Honda Accord. And it gets told they're going to give you the value of a five year Honda Accord, not a brand new one. Your roof is the same, so they're going to give you a percentage of the value after it's depreciated from it being new. And to get the final funds, we're going to invoice the insurance company to prove that the project was done at the rate that they paid. So if I, as a contractor, invoice for what we actually do it for, for less, they're going to release less money because you're contractually obligated with your insurance company to cover your deductible, whether that's $1,000, $2,000 a percentage, whatever it is. So the deductible, Mr. And Mrs. Homeowner, is a contractual obligation between you and the insurance company. If I invoice for doing it less, they're going to pay less because that's what you owe. So the way around that is when contractors falsify the information, I'm not willing to do that. And I'm sure you wouldn't want to get mixed up in insurance fraud either, would you? And when you pose it like that as a question, a lot of people get caught on their heels. And those that don't care say I don't give a crap or whatever it is. Like I just say that's not my customer. And guys, this is sales. Like not everyone can be your customer. There are always going to be people that aren't a good fit. So don't be afraid to walk away if someone's going to beat you up over that price. We all know how that goes. They become that one customer that you're like, man, I wish I didn't have that customer as a customer. So again, deductible, educate them that if they do not do the roof, it's no longer insured. And two, it is insurance fraud. Now, how can you help them? This is tough times, guys. We all want to help out. I've been getting emails to people that are interested in the pack and anyone that emails me, and if they're having a tough time, I'm sending them a coupon code. I want to help out how I can through this difficult time. Now, while I do that, forever, I won't be able to. But for right now I am and I encourage you guys to do the same. There's a time to just rise to the occasion and help people out. So here's what you can do. On a scope, we have RCV and ACV values right? On a line item, those actual cash value items, ACV items for roof, leaf protection, gutters, downspouts, the grill cover, anything that might not necessarily need to be done, window wraps, stuff like that, because it's cosmetic, that is 100%, so far as I have ever known, legal, ethical, and at the homeowner's discretion to use the actual cash value amounts of those items to towards their deductible. That is okay. You can't use the depreciated amount. So just the ACV amount. So let's say, by the way, this gives you a great selling point. So when you do get to that point of the contingency you're asking for the sale, you can say, hey, Mr. Mrs. Homeowner, I know we're going through some tough times. I know you've talked with some other people that have mentioned that they can eat the deductible. I've already explained to you your options. Not doing the work means it's no longer insured. And if you do go with this eat the deductible route, you're unfortunately participating in insurance fraud, whether conscious or otherwise. And people are, have been in some very serious legal trouble for doing that, which is the truth. So here's what I can do for you. My job, and by the way, I'm going to reference some topics. I hit another video called Break the emotional attachment to money. Okay? So I never use the word estimate or price. I go on assessment. So my job is to properly assess your home. So when inhaled, there's all these things that were impacted. My job's to find everything because your home is insured. Now, I'm going to show up now, right? I'm here. I'm going to do the inspection. I'm going to be here again when the adjuster's here, and then I'm going to be here through the process. And I've had it, by the way, on an aluminum siding house. I was there three times. It wasn't until the fourth time on collection. The sun was hitting this aluminum siding and it was in the evening time, and I was like, man, that wall is obliterated. We ended up getting another wall siding bought. Now, I was a rookie at that point. I should have caught it before, but I caught it later. So my point is, if you. An adjuster is going to see this one time, I'm going to be here four times, okay? I'm going to have way more attention to detail. So if you need some help on the deductible. How I can help you is by identifying and assessing every single piece of your home that might have been damaged. And in doing that, we can allocate some of those funds to offset your deductible. Now, those items, again, they may not be insured, but we're talking a gutter or a downspout. This isn't anything one super expensive and too vital to protecting your home. So thanks, Thomas. Appreciate that. That is how you can help with the deductible. Again, ethically and legally. Do not go down the road of giving him away. All right, just don't do that. So if you guys have any other questions on overcoming the deductible objections specifically in this time, let me know. So that is checked off. Now for those of you that just joined, I've got three more topics coming, three more common objections. We're going to hit them one by one. One thing too, I know I'm a little scatterbrained today, but if there's anything like these lockdown lives, this isn't just COVID 19 talk, guys. This isn't just coronavirus. If you have anything that you guys want to go over, drop it in the chat or email me adamaroofstrategist.com if you can't make it live, that's okay. You're going to see the recordings. But I do want to build these around the people who are engaging and who are here and think of this as free coaching time for you while you're, you know, maybe have a little bit more time on your hands than normal because this will pass. So let's proceed. I've been hearing this one. I don't want to schedule now. So this is coming up for homeowners that let's say you've already gotten approved before this happened or rollover from. And Daniel, I'm going to touch on your question in a second. Or rollover from the previous year. And they say, hey, hey, I don't want to schedule now. That's okay. I would encourage you to get a deposit and secure them on a production schedule. It is important for homeowners to realize this, that when the floodgates reopen and normalcy comes, guys, all of us are going to get bombarded. Do you remember what it's like at the end of a season when everybody wants the roof done before school getting back in session? It is madness. It's like the ramp up of the season. It hails all the big, high, low hanging fruit stuff comes and then it Kind of teeters off and it's pretty level. Then we get ramped up, busy on production, sales drop off, and then all of a sudden it's like the people that were waiting to do it, they didn't want to do it. In the summ, there's that surge at the end of the season, the beginning of our season with this. And as much as everyone's freaking out, it's important to calm down. We will get through this. Okay. It might be eight, 10 weeks. I don't know. I was just. I've been doing research on my own, just because I'm curious. But, you know, China was in a state of stay at home. I believe it was about eight weeks. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not a. I don't know all of these details. I'm trying to keep up best I can. So about eight weeks. So once the floodgates reopen, people are going to want to play catch up. They're wanting, going to get back to normalcy. And it's important for you to educate homeowners that this will happen. Say, everything that we've had on our books has been delayed. There are people like you that want to delay, by the way, again, if your state allows it and you're comfortable and you're practicing social distancing, keeping six feet apart, the crew continue on at your discretion on the advice of your team of people, lawyer, business owner, insurance, whatever it is. But for those that want to wait, say, listen, what we're doing is taking a deposit. Let's get the process as far as we can. And now what we'll do that way is when this is over, our production queue is going to be slammed and we just want to get you in. We're doing it priority. So get all the paperwork done, get your deposit, pick your colors, get the, get the build order set, get everything ready to go, get all of your paperwork brought up. Because there's two big shifts that are going to happen when things open up is you're going to have that time now to focus on sales, but you're also going to want to produce everything that's been in your pipeline. So make sure that those jobs are ready, paperwork's done, your CRM's updated, and you can just, boom, slam on the gas and hit it right out of the gate, knowing those are going to get built, and you can turn your attention to business generation. So that's how I recommend when people say, do you want. Oh, actually that kind of covers both of them. It says don't want to schedule now or can we do production later. So again, same concept for both of those. Get as far as you can and let folks know that there will be a build up. Now many people will say, that's okay, I'll wait till then. This is where it's important to use urgency right now. Literally right before we came live, I'm updating all the letters in the marketing battle pack. So anyone that's purchased or will purchase at any point during this, I'm just sending those out for free. So it's another version that is going to emphasize this no contact needed service plan that you can do a photo and video inspection like I talked about in my video yesterday on the lockdown live and how you can review all that doing a video chat or a phone call with your customers so you can get everything done up to a point without having to interact. Get the appointment set, say, listen, you stay in the home, just tell me when it's okay. So you know, when I show up, I'm going to show up, do my photo video and then I'll send you all the details. I can text the email and then we can either walk through over the phone or video chat. Then all the paperwork we can do electronically. Everything's great. Okay, so what, While I was writing those letters, I was writing or rewriting one of them. Excuse me, not entirely rewriting, I mean editing to make this, you know, building this stuff in is for people who've been denied or underpaid right for the reinspection. Most folks don't realize that the statute of limitations of the claim, which is six to 12 months from the insurance company saying data loss hailed on March 28, you have until March 28 next year to finish the work, get it supplemented and turned in and boom, you're done. Right? But if people, if everybody pushes this off, I don't know, I mean, most companies are becoming lenient, but insurance companies, I'm sure taking losses just like most other people. You want to make sure that that homeowner knows if you delay, you're risking your opportunity, you're risking putting this off too long where you can't get it done. And I've had this happen with customers, by the way, where they roof got total, they're ready to get it done. And they waited. They waited another season we started. They're like, hey, we had six months from data loss or 12 months and then you're out of luck. And sometimes you can file for an extension. Insurance companies want a whole Bunch of proof and they're really, really sticklers on it. So hope that helps. I'm going to turn my attention. Daniel, thank you for this. What about using EDDM for hail impact areas? What do you mean by. Do you mean epdm, like rubber membrane? Let me know, my dummy. Is this some sort of new. Yeah. All right. I'm guessing you mean epdm. Yeah. Daniel, I'm gonna let you drop some. Drop that comment. Clarify that for me so I can. Oh, every door direct mailing. Thank you. When you use every door direct mail, you'll likely see a response rate, depending on the market of a half percent to 3% for direct mail on mass scales. Usually those mailers are going to require more than one hit to get that response. Many people will hit a whole market or a whole zip code, whole area or a whole mail carrier route. For those of you that aren't familiar with this, when you do these every door direct mail, you can choose specific addresses which are the most expensive because it's labor intensive for the marketer to identify those. Or you can do per carrier route so it literally like the software integrates so it knows which mail carrier goes and they can just hit all of them. And then you can remove apartment complexes and anything that's not owner occupied. Okay. Because obviously you don't want to hit a mailer to everyone who's renting an apartment. You'd want to find the owner. So on those pieces when you target them or by zip code, the more broad, the cheaper per piece, the, the more broad, the more obviously expensive from a volume standpoint. So when you do those, if you have the budget, I think it's a good thing to do and you'll really want to emphasize some unique messaging, no contact needed service plan. You're doing this photo, video inspection, electronic documents. You don't need to meet anyone at the door. Everything can be handled over phone or video chat. Still create it being personal. I am not a huge, huge fan of every door direct mail. The reason for that is I have found an open rate and response rate and the quality of leads is much better when it's hyper focused and put in an envelope, handwritten, hand stamped. When you use the I don't have any like old junk mail litten around. But everyone knows what junk mail is, right? So you get those doormats and what we used to do is we used to try to print them out in the largest pieces possible so they'd stand out and you will find that people will hang onto those, put the call tracking number on it and then call on it later. But those can be super, super expensive and I like to stand out. So if you can, if you can find a carrier, which I have found there are direct mail organizations that will do hand address, hand stamp. It adds like 20 to 30 cents per piece, I think, depending on volume. So Daniel says I plan on hitting specific routes three to five times. Haven't done it before. Nobody in my team is experienced with it. I know the copy and design will make a difference. Yes. So I'm all for experimenting just anytime. And I get this question a lot. By the way, budget. What should I budget for this? What should I budget for this? I'm a metrics guy. I want to know if we're spending this amount of money, how much does a phone call cost, how much does a lead cost and how many of those leads are we going to close? So I know my acquisition costs. So if you have a budget to test this, I'm all for testing. Do it. What I can share with you is that envelopes tend to have a higher open rate because of that curiosity. People see things that are glossy and printed. They know it's marketing collateral, it goes in the trash right away. Whereas if it is hand addressed, hand stamped, or even if the stamps crooked, which is an option if you, if you're using 3D mailing, I think one of those companies called 3D mailers. So you can actually put stuff in the envelopes. They feel it and they're curious to open. So. But yes, try it out. If you'd like to do that. Start small. You don't want too small of a sample size. I wouldn't do it for anything. Probably less on the mass mail of like a 5,000 home neighborhood. And maybe try that with a few rounds first. So hope that helps Daniel. If not, just keep, keep those comments coming. Man. This time's for you guys. Let's see, man, those three objections. Don't want to schedule now, can we do the production later? And we want to wait till this passes. So the last thing I want to touch on when people say I want to wait till all this passes, let them know that you can get as far as you can in the process. Now using that no contact service plan, let people know that they can. That you can do that photo and video inspection, let them know that you can do a video chat or phone call to walk them through the process, get their questions answered and get the file the claims underway. Because guys, everybody, we are in for an awakening. And I have no I can't predict it. All I can do is guess. Right. When the floodgates reopen, things are going to change. Everyone's going to be rushing to the market to get a lot of stuff done to play catch up on all the things they postponed. I had an eye doctor appointment. I wear glasses. I don't wear my video because they glare out of my lights. So my prescription changed. I was about to go in. I'm like, you know what? Can we wait? It's not essential. But now everybody's waiting, so everyone's trying to get in. I work with a friend of mine who I mount bike with. She's a dental office. And all of them, they're going to get flooded because everyone's been putting things off. So I would use this as an opportunity to say, I'm just telling you now, it's not only us. Everyone's going to get busy. Especially for any roofers that are watching now. In a northern market, we are scrubbing out production time, right? Our season's getting shorter. Southern market, you guys can roof year round. You're in Wisconsin, you're in Minnesota, you're in Pennsylvania, Maryland, those markets or Ohio, Indiana, Illinois. Our season is cut really short. Everyone's going to want to cram it in. So it's important to use some realism and urgency to get people through that process up front. So I hope that helps. If there's any objections that I did not cover today on things that you guys are seeing through this COVID 19 process, email me adamroofstrategist.com Again, I'll be posting these like queued up probably an hour or two in advance each day. I made a big commitment to do these daily. Monday through Friday, Saturday, Sundays. I'm taking off as I would love for you guys to be able to do or at least some of. I know Saturday is a really, really ripe selling day, but I try not to get into this stuff on those days. So I'm going to be here doing these. Subscribe to the channel. It'll automatically notify you. And if you want to get email notifications, you can join the Roof Strategist insiders send you kept in my ebook as well. And again, anyone who's watching or catching the replay that might be getting this from my email list know that the COVID 19 letters complimentary. I just wanted to help out. I'm going to send those out to everyone. So it's a kind of a. An update for the time being for the purchase. And I'll if you do And I'll send them to you again, no pressure. So thank you all for joining me again. Oh, here we go. One more, one second. This happened last time too, right? As I said I was going to leave, all the questions came in. Read in a forum that major insurance companies are trying to cut their claim windows down to 90 days. Do you know anything about this? I don't know anything about this. I can do some research. Insurance companies all over are making this stuff more strict and they're also I think catching on because roofers are getting smarter with technology. So they're working older storms and finding damage that homeowners didn't know about and they're wanting to shrink that claim filing window. Now I would not be surprised if some carriers are going to a 90 day window. I mean it makes sense to me like if you didn't realize how important it was and 90 days or 120 days, something like that, I get it. Am I happy about it? No. Doing it's right. I don't, but I know that like I think, I don't remember what, what insurance company it was, but one of the storms that we were working, I had an older gentleman, his insurance policy went from actual cash, excuse me, replacement cash value to actual cash value at 10 years. And the storm happened at like 10 years in one week. So we filed, the claim adjuster came out, we produced the frickin roof man. We went to file for depreciation, it slipped through our attention and he says, oh, because the scope showed by the way, the RCV or excuse me, the depreciation amount. But it was in bra, I think it was in brackets or something to signify that it wasn't getting paid. So we did the roof, it was 11, 10 and a half, whatever, your roof. So it was depreciated a fair bit and we ended up, the guy didn't have the money so we ended up doing the roof for the acv. We lost money on it. Now luckily we're a good company and have integrity and realized that there was some of our responsibility to catch it. And we took that one on the chin because sometimes that's what you do in business, take care of people. And we took it on the chin and learned our lesson. So policies update, they're changing things, they're making stuff hard. So just keep an eye out and if you see anything Daniel, email me, I'd love to know about it because that'd be super, super helpful. It's gonna change the game for us if they do. But not all companies are doing that, so. All right, guys, I said I was gonna keep this one at 15 minutes. Here we are at 25 again. Thanks again for joining me. Stay tuned. Lockdown lives Monday through Friday, daily, various times. So keep an eye out on the channel. Subscribe if you haven't already and don't be shy to drop comments. Email me. Guys, I want this time to be about you. It doesn't only have to be about COVID 19. Any questions? You have anything that you need in terms of closing? Objection. Handling goal setting. Using this time to invest in yourself and reverse engineer an income plan. I'm going to do a session on that. I just don't know when yet. But I'm going to do one on planning, literally creating an income plan for yourself. So we'll hit all that and more. Thanks for joining me. Be safe out there. Enjoy time with loved ones. Be human, be good, take care of people and I will see you guys tomorrow. See ya.