New in Roofing Sales? This Video Will Save You MONTHS of Struggle

Congratulations, because you just got a new career in roofing sales and you're super excited and then completely terrified all at the same time. I've been in your shoes because I started in this industry in 2011, and my training was sitting in a chair saying, here's a three tab shingle, here's a dimensional, Here's a stack of contracts. Go get them, tiger. I got my teeth kicked in. I had to figure all of this out on my own. There was no YouTube channel. There were no people sharing their knowledge or their wisdom. But that's what's going to change for you here, because I put together all of my very best advice into one masterclass to help you, the new person in roofing sales, start earning money really quickly, bypass the learning curve, and transform your life into something absolutely incredible. Hey, and if I could do it as a broke massage therapist and also colon hydrotherapist. And yeah, if you don't know what that is, Google it. So if I can do it, so can you. My name is Adam Benzeman. I'm very glad to have you here. Congrats again. Now let's get started. So you're new in roofing sales and want to make your first sale in the industry. You're in the right place because in today's video, I'm going to be teaching you three tips to make your first roofing sale. Tip number one is you cannot let your lack of industry knowledge hold you back from getting out there. Listen, I came into this industry. My background was in natural medicine and massage therapy. So then I came into this industry and I had to develop into being a new person. A new person who reached a new level of success. So to reach a new level of success, we literally have to become a new person. We have to do things we've never done before. We have to develop new skills that we haven't developed before. So you cannot let this. Well, I don't know enough to hold you back because no one's going to hand it to you. So find what resources you need to develop the skills that you need to make more sales. All right, now let's move on to tip number two. You need to learn how to accept your hearing the word no, it's not personal. People aren't judging you for who you are. They're not judging your character. Rejection is part of sales, period. It doesn't matter how amazing you are. You could show up at someone's house with a lot of cash and there are still people who aren't going to be happy about who you are or how you're treating people. It's just how it goes. So don't take it personal. Use it as an opportunity to develop your thick skin. All right, so that brings me to step number three, which is to be relentless and hyper focused on sales every day. Sales is like developing a muscle. It gets easier with time. You won't need to sit here and muster up the courage to go knock the door to get out of your truck and talk to people. You need to just do it. Every time that we exercise the sales muscle, it will get easier. And if you get out there and say, oh, it was hard, it's tough, I don't like this. Guess what? You don't. But you can learn to. And when you are relentless and you go out there and you do these things, they get easier in time. Thanks for coming along on this. Ride along with me to help you make your first sale. In this video, I want to share with you the top three biggest rookie mistakes that I see made over and over and over again by new people or unexperienced people coming in to the roofing business. And the hardest part about these rookie mistakes is they're unintentional. They. They're completely unconscious, and they're made by what I'll call good with people. People, Folks like you and me that got brought into the roofing business with a good heart and a good soul, with true intention to be of service to others, to really help people through this process. And being a nice guy or a nice gal in sales unfortunately just doesn't win business. And these mistakes can cost you deals and will keep you from being successful. But by becoming self aware of these three mistakes will help you make really quick and easy adjust so you can be really effective in the home. To sell with confidence, to deliver a strong message, and to move people to saying yes. Which is exactly what we want to do. All right, now let's talk about the top three biggest rookie mistakes. Leading with mistake number one. That is getting way too overexcited and pitching way too fast. I know if you've watched my videos, you're probably saying, adam, that's you. You talk way too fast. And yes, I do. But when I'm in a sales appointment appointment, I dial it back. When you speak too quickly, it puts people in an uncomfortable position where they don't feel like they're in conversation. They feel like they're being shouted at, and that becomes really uncomfortable. So slow down. It's okay if it takes time. Remember, you're in a conversation. Mistake number two, this is a counterintuitive mistake. This is where good with people people as I put it, or nice guys and nice gals make this mistake a lot and that is overselling the positives. Now what do I mean by overselling the positives? We're a great company, we'll do right by you. It's be the best process in the whole world. Good, good, good. Great, great, great. And when we spend so much time selling how great we are, we set ourselves up for failure in two ways. Way number one is that in sales we need to focus on the pain or the problem or the struggle or the consequences of not taking action on their roof. In roofing sales we need to keep people in an uncomfort, get them to make a buying decision. And it's not out of manipulation. This isn't coercion and this isn't slimy tactics. It's just understanding how people process information and make decisions. Now the other problem with staying too positive is we often oversell how amazing everything will be. No matter how good a job you do, someone will always find a nail. No matter how good a job you do, things happen and we oversell how great we are. We set these expectations so high. I should choose you because you're an amazing company. Nothing will ever go wrong. And the minute something goes wrong, you're looked at like an evildoer, like you lied to their face and the company is cast in this negative light because you didn't fulfill upon that promise and it's virtually impossible to. So one little tip to fix this is to state realistic expectations to that homeowner. And then mistake number three is probably the most common. Who here has been guilty of not asking for the business? We need to guide the homeowner to yes. Whether that's a presentation that you use, that's an assumptive close, whether it's a negative agreement close, or whether you're using my system and using what we call the comfort clothes is kind of the go to. Either way you do it. Quite frankly, it doesn't matter because asking for the business or guiding someone to the business telling them what to do is going to be far more effective than just giving a great presentation and sitting back and being like well I hope they say yes because it doesn't pan out that way. So what we need to do is again ask for the business. So you have a top three rookie mistakes. In this video I'm going to be teaching you three mindset shifts that are going to help you make door knocking not suck any longer because the reality is the fear of knocking doors, the lack of confidence from not knocking doors, or the inactivity of saying, I'm afraid of it so I won't knock doors is the number one reason that people don't last in the industry. It's a high turnover, and it's the reason that they don't make as many sales as they should or as many sales as they counted on. And it's an income killer. Which leads us to mindset shift number one, and that is this. Sales is personal development in disguise. Now, what do I mean by that? When we end up in sales, our job is to become a new version of us. We are faced with new scenarios. We are faced with new obstacles, we are faced with new challenges. We are faced with learning how to communicate clearly. We are faced with rejection and all these unpleasant things. And our job is to embrace the fact that sales is truly personal development in disguise. So embrace this. I need to learn new skills, learn how to communicate clear. Even better, we need to learn how to face rejection and obstacles and uncomfortable situations in a new way that most people never have and never will need to encounter. Mindset shift number two for door knocking. I don't agree with the approach that so many people teach, like, show up, knock the door, go for an inspection. Not everyone needs an inspection. So the mindset shift that I want you to take is to go from feeling like you're selling at the door to this to starting a conversation. Say hi, break the ice, let them know why you're there. If you haven't signed anybody, I'm talking with neighbors on your street, okay? Asking the open end question, waiting for them to reply because you're starting a conversation, then presenting to their answer. So when you're shifting this, this is, this leads to the tip number three, by the way, when you're starting a conversation and you're looking at not like selling people, it removes that sleazy salesy feeling. Anyone can do this. Then it leads to this third mindset shift, which is your number one goal is to find out, can I help? Your job is to start the conversation and then decipher, can I help them or not? If they said, you know, our roof was done two months ago, move on. And if they say, hey, what are you talking about? What insurance? You know where they're at? Yeah, I can help find out if they have damage. If they said, you know what, the insurance was out, we had just a few shingles covered and we're okay. So my point is, when you start a conversation using the slap formula and you have this mindset shift, can I help? That will naturally lead into a sale. But we don't sell instantly. It's the same way that I wouldn't walk up to a girl in a bar and buy, can I buy you a drink? And then you want to jump my car and come home with me and spend the night like, whoa, man, you would like. That is beyond creepy. In sales, marketing, dating, they're kind of the same thing in many ways. And if you showed up and think to yourself, like, I'm going to knock doors, how would that work? If I just walked up to a person sitting at a bar and said that? Now, if that conversation feels icky to you, if it feels salesy or sleazy, it does to your customers. So when you shift that conversation, let it progress naturally. You might buy her a drink or him, and you might end up going home together. That's cool. That will happen in time. But it's not an exchange. Okay, so these are the three mindset shifts. What do you wear in roofing sales? Well, so we're going to talk about in this video, answer the age old question. What should you wear? What shouldn't you wear? How do you present yourself appropriately? How do you present yourself in a way that actually feels like you? And how do you do so in a way that communicates the right message to homeowners that you're professional and they can take you seriously without feeling inauthentic? Well, I get this question a lot. So in this video, I just want to rip the band aid off and dive right into what not to wear first. And then let's go through from top to bottom, from hats to what you wear up top to your pants or maybe shorts and your footwear. Let's get in right now to what not to wear. First things first, what not to wear. Branded apparel from any brand name of your choice that's spread across the chest. Don't wear that. If there's a logo on your clothes, it needs to be your company logo. Number two, ripped, tattered clothes. I know that, like it's, there's like the style with the jeans with the holes in it and the ripping and all the things I would recommend that you not wear ripped clothes to work. Bringing me to number three, any clothes that are stained, including sweat stains, including hats, which I'll talk about in a moment, get rid of them. So that's what not to wear outside that. Let's go top to bottom. Top hats, yes or no? Clean hat with a company logo acceptable in your market. Now let's move on to our top half in Colorado. This is like Colorado casual. It's a flannel. In Colorado I could get away with this. I probably couldn't in a different market. So is that my first choice? The answer is no. My first choice is company branded apparel. You've seen me in my roof strategist shirts in all my videos and this is the exact style of shirt that I was wearing when I was in roofing sales. When the button was here, I could keep my pen in my shirt, which is where I like it. And these are a great, great apparel piece when it comes to roofing sales. Tuck your shirt in. That's all I ask. Just tuck it in. Now when it came to higher end communities, higher ticket sales, multifamily sales, commercial sales, churches, things like that, multiple decision makers, I more often than not dressed up in a button up with a collar shirt. All right, let's move down to your bottom half. Jeans, khakis, chinos, shorts. Jeans, khakis, chino shorts. Which one do you do? My opinion, anything but shorts. The shorts. There's one exception to the rule. If it is truly a scorcher, if it's 110 degrees and you're out pound indoors in Texas in the middle of summer, I think you get a pass down there. More often than not. I will do everything I can to avoid shorts. All right, footwear, let's get down to the bottom half here. Footwear, what do you wear? Truth? Truth be told, pretty much any shoe with a decent sole, whether it's a trail runner, whether it's a sneaker, whether it's a tennis shoe or a running shoe are all going to have enough bite on a shingle once you get to 7 to 812 or steeper always. My, my recommendation is to have a roof specific shoe such as Cougar paws. And the reason is safety and confidence. And the last thing I want to close with is how you show up and what you look like is your choice of how you wish to broadcast yourself, whether you want to be more upscaled and dressed up, approachable and casual. Whatever you do, so long as you're clean and put together, I don't think you can go wrong. And remember, not everyone's going to agree with what you do. But you get to choose the money making schedule for new roofing sales reps because if you don't make your very first sale, this business won't work. Now what I'M going to do is ask you a question. If you're, if you're new, there's three hours a day for knocking. Roughly, right. Four to seven. What else do you have to do? That's right. Not a lot. Now, next question. What's the most important thing for you to do? Make sales. Right. So what we need to do is focus on income producing activities. Now, income producing activities. Let's make a list of what those are. First we have knocking doors. Don't worry, I'm going to stitch all this together into a plan. Then we have leaving letters at the door. No, no, no. Not door hangers. Not the glossy things that you hang. Letter. Okay. Then we have direct mail. Okay. So we can mail a letter. Then we have cold calls. By the way, there are regulations on this. Please. Only cold call if you have permission to actually call them. More on that in a little bit. And then we have your network. It's all the people you know who might need a roof. Because chances are, if you know people and you're in an area where people need roofs, that someone you know needs a roof. And the final one is referrals. Okay, so my next question is, when should you be doing this? Oh, yeah. The answer is very simple. All day long. So you might be saying, Adam, well, people aren't home, not where you found them to be. But people say you should knock four to seven. The truth is, is that there are neighborhoods that have people home. People that are maybe doing shift work, they're leaving for work later in the day, or they're home in the late afternoon. There are retirees and there are stay at home moms and dads. These people may not have every single door having someone behind it who's willing to talk to you, but they do exist. So what we need to do is just simply track it. So here's what you need to track. You track the address. I'm just writing Abby, the time you showed up. And then are they home? Yes or no? Okay, pretty much it. What I'm going to do is show up and knock the door. I'll write down the address as I'm walking up. Just look at the street number, this address, put it in your CRM. Maybe use sales Rabbit or Spotio. Then if no one's home, I click no, they're not home. Just circle the N next to home. I'm going to leave a letter at the door. Okay, now this is why that's important. Let's say I'm there at noon. No one's home. If I circle back in that same neighborhood, I'm going to knock behind these letters. Anyone that wasn't home. And now I'm making door knocking not suck. Because the hardest part of door knocking is showing up as a complete stranger and the homeowner thinks you have something to sell me. But what I do is I show up behind the letter. I say, hey, listen, my name's Adam and the reason I'm stopping by is I actually was here at noon. You guys weren't home, so I left you a personal letter at the door, a little note, no one to stop by and ask what questions you had for me about the letter I left you. Then at night when I'm back at home because it got dark, so this is all day, during daylight, I'm going to send a letter in the mail because I have the address of everyone that wasn't home. Now then I'm going to work cold calls because if I have the right data, I can call on the homeowners who weren't home. Next is our network. This is reaching out new sales reps. Reach out to your friends and your family. Everyone you know post on social media because the people you know may need a roof is an easy way to get started. And then of course, after you get your first sale, we're going to be asking for referrals again. In my free training center, I have a ton of videos on getting referrals, the right incentive structure, all that jazz is in there. So high level. What you want to be doing is ignore the best time in the ideal time. Because you my friend, have all the time in the world to be doing income producing activities. Shout out Brian Tracy, thank you for that one. And you want to do this all day? Hey, if you liked this video and found it helpful, you're going to love reading my book, the Roofing Sales Survival Guide. You'll see for yourself why it became a number one bestseller on Amazon and why companies all over the US make it require reading for their new team members. You can get a free copy using the link in the description. It's inside my free training center. Or jump on Amazon or audible and listen. I have hand selected a playlist just for you, the new roofing salesperson, to help you continue your journey of making money in your new career. Jump into this playlist and I'll see you in the next one.