In this coaching‑style video, Adam Bensman argues that a roofing company’s biggest competitive advantage is speed—how quickly it moves a lead from first contact to cash. He breaks the concept into three measurable time windows: (1) Set Time, the days from a lead’s first contact (e.g., web form) to a scheduled appointment; (2) Sales Cycle, the days from that appointment to contract close; and (3) Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), the days from invoicing (or certificate of completion) to payment. Bensman explains why each metric matters for lead conversion and cash flow, shows how typical roofing firms waste time, and offers concrete tactics to compress each window—instant AI‑driven dialers/texts, on‑site estimates, financing options, and on‑site final‑payment collection. He urges viewers to measure their current numbers, identify outliers, and implement small process changes that can dramatically improve lead flow and cash flow, ultimately keeping the business alive. The video ends with a call‑to‑action to join the Roofing Strong Alliance for deeper support.
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The competitive advantage in roofing that most roofers aren't even talking about. Well, I'm going to help you unlock it right now in 3 parts. This is easy to follow, easy to implement, and it could solve a lot of the challenges that many roofing companies struggle with, the very ones that put them out of business, like lead flow and cash flow. And I call it the art of speed. And I'm going to help you master the art of speed in this 3-part series. Before we go any further, welcome and welcome back. My name is Adam Bensman. Whether you just tuned in or you've been following along for a little bit or all the way back to 2015, you maybe have noticed the evolution. That's the one constant on my channel, whether it's the long hair days, the buzzcut days, the Roof Strategist, and now the Roofing Strong Alliance. And what started my channel was this vision to be the number one most followed roofing sales training on YouTube. And I did it. So now I need some more drive and I want to give even more to you. And that is creating a new mission to be the number one go-to resource in the roofing industry for business advice because your company is only as strong as you are. And I want to pour into your overall business sales and marketing and operations education. So this is one of many videos to come, but let's rock and roll. Now, I just want to address before we get to these 3 things, one more thing. A common— I hate to say mistake, but I'm going to. I'm going to call it a mistake that roofers make is they'll often look outside for their next big windfall, their next big growth push. It usually starts in the, what I'll call the common sense things, right? I want more leads, or maybe I want more salespeople, or maybe I'm gonna expand locations and add a new office. But instead, the real magic is actually turning inward and finding what I'll call like the metaphor of a magic lever. And that lever in your business is, is almost hiding in plain sight. And as soon as you know where to look, you can spot it, and what to do gives you the power to pull it. And once you pull that lever, it'll help you unlock this competitive advantage of speed. So let's break down these 3 parts. Now, remember, what gets measured gets managed. And, you know, people talk like run by the numbers, by the way, totally agree with. It's not what I'll be addressing today. There are numbers involved, but it's different than your traditional financial dashboard that people talk about, which, believe me, we'll be doing more videos on that because that is equally as important. So number 1 on the list is what I call your set time. Now, your set time is the time window from a first contact to an appointment. And I know there's variables sometimes beyond your control on availability, but this gives you an instant indicator on the health of your lead handling process. Example, if a web form comes in through your website because you've been pouring tens of thousands of dollars, most likely over the time, and some even hundreds of thousands of dollars. You paid a lot of money to get that lead through your website. It wasn't free 'cause it was organic. Believe me, you spent a lot of money on it. And what happens, and I've done this in live events, have people go to their website, fill out the form, put the phone on full blast and set it down. And in a room of 100 people, you'll wait and you're like, where is it? Ding, there's a ding. There's one more. And it's silent for a while. You hear another ding in a few minutes and like one phone rings. And remember, like this person has already vetted you online, chosen. They say, hey, you know what? I've already done my homework. I vetted them. I looked at their reviews most likely. And I said, I want an estimate from you. And there's a lot of that buying decision that's already been made. So for us to not pounce on that is really missed opportunity. In fact, some companies have reported that they have a higher likelihood of closing the deal when they are the first person to give the estimate. So when you can manage and track what I call, again, your set time from contact to appointment, what this gives you insight into is getting faster to get in the home to service people. We're in the wow business. We're in home services. When you can wow a customer by saying, hey, you have a problem or you want some help, we're here for you and we're here fast. Your actions speak louder than words. So what do we do with this? We now know, let's say your set time is an average. And some companies, by the way, will have these outliers because they have all these leads coming in that they're not converting. And they could be phone calls that are being missed after hours. They could be internet leads. They could be third-party lead aggregators. But if they're not actually turning into appointments, you might find that your, your time window, your set time is like 10 days. Well, maybe 14 days. But what if we could compress it? How do we do that? Let's work on our systems and our processes. Maybe leveraging an AI dialer or instant text messages or email. So that's part number 1 is your set time. Be able to measure how many days it takes from contact to appointment. Okay. Number 2, sales cycle. This is your appointment to close. All right. So you ran the appointment and whether you're dealing with insurance or not, or if it's retail to closing the deal, you can count this in the number of days. This is your sales cycle. What's amazing is some companies— I remember I talked to someone, they're like, I'm like, how long is your sales cycle? And they're like, oh yeah, it's got to be probably like 13 days. And they ran it and it was like 30-some days. So imagine if you're trying to run projections on the ability to grow your company and you know that on average it takes you 7 days to turn an inbound inquiry into an appointment and then another 30 days to get from an appointment to a close. You're now at 37 days out. Well, that'll bring us to the next one, but not quite yet, because we got to talk about how you can improve your sales cycle. And that usually is an evolution of sales training, being able to earn business quicker, which is usually due to operational efficiencies, providing the information needed to the homeowner, like, quick. It's amazing how many companies aren't even giving estimates on the first visit and they're like, oh, we'll email it to you. Which, by the way, if you ever have to get back in the house there's another step, your close rates will naturally drop. So we're talking about efficiencies. We're talking about sales training, objection handling, and the ability to earn business more quickly by answering homeowners' questions and giving a great experience. It's all together and it will not happen by way of force. It happens by way of excellence. So again, that is your sales cycle. And again, that's going to bring us to part 3 of this process, which is known as DSO, which is day Days Sales Outstanding. I know that's a mouthful. Days Sales Outstanding. What we mean is when the invoice is sent to getting paid. Okay. In roofing, whether or not— and the reason I'm giving you this in this, in the DSO acronym, Days Sales Outstanding, is that some companies will collect deposits, others won't. However, there's a balance due at the end. It doesn't matter if the insurance is helping out. And you're at work and on a, on helping a homeowner through, through some storm damage. Or number 2, if it's retail or if you're offering financing, there's a time window of when that final nail goes in the roof and the job is done to getting paid. This is your day sales outstanding. Now, surprisingly, most company— I shouldn't say most. Nah, I can't say most. Most companies I've talked to anecdotally have reported that they don't even know what that number is. By the way, there's a lot of different names for this. Some people call it AR timeline, which is your accounts receivable. I just wanted to simplify it because that's my gift is simplifying the complex to make it easy for you to go execute. Now, days sales outstanding, again, can be improved with systems. You can use different techniques to shorten that window. A few of those have been by offering financing, because again, the payments happen more quickly often than on dealing with an insurance carrier if we're waiting for them to release additional funds and things like that. There's operational improvements that can be made, again, pending local state laws in terms of how you structure the payment cycle on your contracts or agreements. These are all options to operationally improve. I've even heard from some companies that will say, hey, you know, payment's due when we do the certificate of completion. So when the job is done, they'll have their crew foreman walk the roof with the homeowner and say, all right, we're going to go through the certificate of completion, check we got the right color, everything's been cleaned up, everything's to your satisfaction. And that allows the crew to do any touch-ups while we're there and then to collect final payment while you're on site as opposed to mailing an invoice. And then the homeowner doesn't get it and we're mailing another invoice. So there's again, a lot of operational adjustments that can be made. And when you understand that your competitive advantage And we look at all the three of these numbers together, your set time, your sales cycle, and your days sales outstanding. This will allow you to have a full snapshot on the health of your sales cycle or your deal flow. And if you can serve customers even faster, improve your process to earn their business even faster, and shorten the time window to collect from those customers faster, what does that give you? Basically more leads, even though you may not be bringing in more, you're converting more. It allows you again to cycle through more customers more efficiently and collect cash, which again solves some of the two, some of the two, the two most common challenges that can drive roofing companies out of business, which is lead flow and cash flow. So tomorrow morning's action items are to sit down in your office and identify my set time. Okay. Your sales cycle, day sales outstanding. You have a starting point to improve on. Little changes make big differences. Thanks for being here with me. If you want to help take your business to the next level, I invite you to join me in the Roofing Strong Alliance. Click the link in the description to learn more or apply to join. I'll be seeing you on the next one.
