OBJECTION "My friend is a roofer" | How to Overcome This Roofing Sales Objection

So you're either at the door, you're at the kitchen table and the homeowner drops this objection on you. The classic well, my friend's a roofer or the different variations that kind of all mean the same thing. Things like my brother's a contractor or my cousin's a roofer or I already had a roofer look at it or my builder is going to do it. And these objections seem to catch us on our heels because how in the world can we establish a need for for them to choose us over a family member, a friend or a relative that they already know like and trust and especially if we are going door to door. Well, you're in the right place because in this video I'm going to be teaching you these three things, what these objections truly mean, because there's far more to it than meets the eye. Why you need to establish a need for your help as opposed to them using their friend, brother, family member, coworker, cousin, whatever it is, and how to overcome these objections. And I'll be giving you a real life examples on the fly at the end of this video. So do stick around. Now, if you are new here, I want to welcome you to the channel. My name is Adam Bensman, the roof strategist and everything I do here and in a podcast and in my training dashboard with the roofing sales success formula is designed to help you or your sales team develop a personal sales strategy to smash their income goal. And we do that by learning the three elements the be the, do the say of the roofing sales success formula, getting the right people on board and and if you are that sales rep, getting the right mindset and heart and drive, chasing your goals, doing the right sales activities every day. Just like a workout plan, you want to get to this fitness goal, there's a plan to get there. Eat this, do this, go done right and then saying all the right things and any missing link in this and especially objections is going to keep us from hitting that goal. So I'm glad to have you here. And one last thing, I have a free offer for you if you haven't already taken me up on it. I want to get you a free copy. My pitch like a pro Roofing Sales Training Video library. There's a link up here on the video and if you're on the podcast, click the description. Head on over to the roofstrategist.com right now and you can just enter your email. You'll get instant access to all my videos organized by category for quick, easy reference. Covering all the topics from canvassing, objections, pitchings, closing, following up, you name it, it is all there. And it is great for new salespeople, seasoned pros looking to continue learning, and owners pay attention. I've got a lot of teams using this as part of their training, so that's there for you for free over@the roofstrategist.com. now let's begin. Today's video is all about these kind of objections that all really mean the same thing. My friend's a roofer, my brother's a contractor. I already had a roofer look at it. My builder is going to do it. And the cause is this. The homeowner, the real thing. What they mean is they don't think they need you. Why? Because they have a friend that does it. So why do they need you? So your number one goal, by the way, when you hear this objection, is to kind of rewire that customer's mind to get them to need your help. If you cannot establish this need, you will go nowhere. Okay. So it's more than just a one liner. There's some education that's going to take place. I'll be walking you through that right now. So we need to answer the question, why did they need you? Instead of using their friend, their brother or their cousin or their co worker, someone that they know, how do we do it? We reconstruct the little story in their mind of where they're at. Right. Well, I need a new roof, potentially. Well, I got a friend that's going to do it. So I'll deal with this on my own and have my friend do the roof. Uh, doesn't work like that. Here's how we need to reconfigure the difference between being, quote, unquote, just a roofer versus a storm restoration contractor. There is a difference and there's a strong difference to embrace. And I used to do a lot of training on this and focusing on helping you with your own identity. We're not just a roofer. A roofer is someone who just shows up, does a roof. But you're so much more than that. If you're watching this and you're working on insurance claims, we're. Whether it's your full business as insurance only or part of it, you are positioned as a storm restoration contractor. Someone who understands the insurance process, who understands xactimate, who understands how this whole thing works. Because a general roofer who's just installed roofs his or her whole life and is thrown in a claim, they don't know how to Serve the customer. You do. Here's how. I'm going to give you five reasons to back this up. Number one is the difference on assessment versus price. This is a big deal and I get a lot of really good feedback on this when I'm going through this in private trainings. The difference between an assessment and a price is this. A price is an estimate. I look up the roof. Yeah, you're looking about $20,000, right? That's a price. I am not interested, nor are you when dealing with a claim. Let me ask you this. This is how we deconstruct this. Do you ever negotiate with an insurance company on price? No, never. The price is the byproduct of what line items in Xactimate. That is what an assessment is. There's X feet of this, X feet of that, X linear fee, plug it into Xactimate, RFG 300, the code, blah, blah, blah, all the lists. And then what comes from the assessment is the price. So that's why we need to reconstruct in the homeowner's mind that it is not about a dollar amount. The dollar amount is a byproduct of Xactimate, the third party estimating platform that is updated by month, by zip code to accommodate for fluctuations in material and labor costs which are especially relevant right now with lumber prices through the roof, material shortages, price increases. What's relevant is making sure that that homeowner's property is assessed properly. This feat, this feat, this feat. And to accommodate for building code and manufacturer specs. Therefore, if they are choosing a roofer who is giving them a price, they are doing themselves a disservice because a cut rate price results in cut rate installation and practices. And, and there's no accountability. So we are not focused on this. Plus, this reconfigures their emotional attachment to the money. And they're focused on the assessment because the reality is whether the claim is 2 million or 2,000 or deductible is their deductible. That's what they owe. All right, next. Only a trained eye can truly help. Now here's the funny thing. This is true. This is really true. I remember the first roof I got on, it was like inch and a half hail. And excuse me, it was an inch and a half hail. It was probably smaller than that. I get on the roof and I'm like looking around. I was with, you know, I was getting trained up, so I'm with another guy from the company and I'm like, well, roof seems fine. What's the Deal. And then we're, you know, we're doing the classic, you know, bend on your knees, look for hail. And by the way, you guys down south, they get monster hail. It was different. It was in Wisconsin. I was like, why is the roof getting replaced? It seems fine. A little ding on a shingles, a black dot doesn't mean anything to the average person. A slight crease doesn't mean it'll be fine. Right, but we understand what that that roof has been compromised. The lifespan has been shortened. The integrity of the shingle has been compromised. I have been up on a roof that a roofer looked at. Roofer says, oh, you're fine. I've been on a roof a builder looked at, by the way, stories are powerful. All right, tell the stories of your experience. Builder goes up there, says, your roof's fine, you don't need to do it. We knock the door, show up, do our inspection. Homeowner says, the builder was already up here. I overcame it. I said, let's just get up there for a second opinion. Roof was totaled, filed the claim, got it done. All right. People that don't know what they're looking for aren't going to find it. That's why there's even discrepancies among adjusters and engineers. All right, number three, what about expensive financial surprises? You might have heard me share this story, because I keep my story bank of really compelling experiences I've had that showcase the outcome of having your friend do it. And it was an experience I had where I approached a job that was. That was retail. I was new, I made some mistakes. Bid the project, get the retail deal. We tear into it, we turn out it's three layers hidden like you wouldn't believe. Even the crew was surprised. There was drip edge over it. But not only three layers. It was two layers of shingles with one layer of shake. So it needed a redeck. And then the material, the wood goes in one in this area, asphalt in the other. Full redeck, doubled the price of the roof. I have to call the homeowner. And I'm like, hey, you know that fine print? This went from a $7,000 project to almost 14,000 or 15,000. Whatever the number was, it doubled. Homeowner says to me, adam, is it insurance claim? Does that change anything? Said, you bet it does. Changes everything. I should have known, right? It was a fringe area and I was new. My point is, anything that comes up mid process, if you don't understand how it works, if you don't understand what could be covered or why it's covered if that roofer or contractor or builder friend doesn't have the ability to communicate directly with the insurance company through their language on Xactimate, that can leave that expensive financial surprise. Mr. Homeowner, on you and I have faced these. All right, now, last thing, xactimate. I already touched on Xactimate and the assessment versus price. But it's important for you to explain that it is a third party program of how it works. It is not a price deal. It is a line item deal based on an assessment. They're not putting together an estimate. It's not a rough price per square foot. It is based on what is actually up there. And it is the industry standard acceptable program. And if the other folks aren't using it, putting them at a disadvantage. And the last thing is that you have experience working with their insurance company, which you do if you've done claims. We've all done numerous claims with numerous insurance companies. All right, so that's how we kind of show the need for our services. All right, now here's how to overcome these objections. We're going to use my ARO objection handling formula. If you haven't heard me talk about this, quick background. I developed this program through a lot of different influence from Stephen Covey's book, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Seek first to understand before being understood. That's why I don't believe in like the perfect rebuttal. Punch back. If I said. If you said to me, adam, your program's too expensive. And I said, what are you talking about? You'd make your money back on your very next sale. Which is true. You will make your money back on your very next sale. But when I'm doing that, we're now arguing. You said something. I punch back. This is an argument instead. We want to acknowledge what they've said, okay? Reassure and overcome. And I have bet I've put this to use in the trenches dealing with the most challenging customer situations and legal affairs for the company. And it all boiled down to de escalating a situation. If it worked in these grave circumstances, when I've got people threatening lawsuits and screaming at you and some of it is just freak accidents, some of it isn't warranted. But my point is this formula I've used to handle even customer conflict and it's talked people off the edge and guided them into their own solution that I really wanted them to be at anyway. And it works for any objection you face in the field and in the. Excuse me, in the field meeting, canvassing and at the kitchen table. So let's go through it. Acknowledge, reassure, overcome. Acknowledge is essentially repeating back to them so they know that you heard it. Reassuring them is letting them know that it's normal and that you've seen it before. And then overcoming is giving them a new perspective. It's so they see your perspective on their own. Not like. But wait, I want you to see my point of view. No, no, no. That's childish. That's not how it works in the real world. Okay. It's g. A new perspective on their own situation. Here's how it comes together. So let's just go with the classic, my friend is a roofer and I want to show you how that pieces together with this up. So I'm going to acknowledge them. Hey, totally understand your friend's a roofer. Acknowledge. Okay, Reassure. You probably want your friend to do it because we all want to support our friends. I don't blame you for that. Okay. Reassuring. In fact, I've worked with numerous people who've had friends that are roofers or their builder, that they have a good relationship. Their cousin's a contractor. So we're just going to reassure them that you've seen this before. Then we're going to overcome now the reality as Mr. Homeowner, even though your friends are roofer, there's no disrespect to them, they're probably a really great roofer. But when you're dealing with an insurance claim, there's things that are going to be coming up for you that are far and above and beyond the experience of a traditional roofer. See, we are an insurance restoration contractor and we work on behalf of homeowners, just like you right now, dealing with a claim. And there's a lot of nuances, a lot of things that are very unique about this process that are unlikely. Like a car claim, for example. You don't just get a lump sum check and figure out how to do it. There's a process and that process works like this. The insurance is going to come out. We need a trained eye. By the way, I've been on numerous roofs. In fact, one last week where the homeowner's friend that was a roofer showed up, said it was fine, I showed up, it was damaged. We called in the claim, it was a full replacement. Now, that's not to say the roofer's stupid at all. It just takes a trained eye to spot what's covered in, what compromises a shingle. We've been trained up on this, we've done thousands of these projects. That's the first thing. Second thing, when we're dealing with this estimate, it's not truly an estimate, it's actually line item by line item, meaning the adjuster is going to come up objectively from the, from the insurance company. They're going to say there's X feet of this and X fee to that, and they're going to enter these codes into a third party software called Xactimate that is going to generate a dollar amount based on material and labor rates for that zip code updated by month. So with all these fluctuations in material and labor due to everything that's going on, that price isn't something I'm actually concerned about. What I'm concerned about is getting the home addressed properly. Because what happens is homeowners think, oh well, I can save money. They're doing themselves a disservice because they're shortchanging what should have been covered and they're trying to get the roof done with less, which usually results in a cut rate installer cutting rates on products and trying to squeeze out some things. And then there's problems down the road. So whether you work with me or someone else, I highly recommend two things. One is a second opinion and two is whether, again, whether it's me or someone else using an insurance restoration contractor. Because there are things that might even come up in the process, like financial surprises that could catch you on your heels. And I've seen this happen where we get into a roof and then all the little fine print, there's all these things that come up. And I'll be frank, as a roofer, I don't care who pays me your check clears, if it's there, we got to do it right then. As you know with construction, takes twice as long, costs twice as much, these things come up. But as an insurance restoration contractor, we not only have xactimate, we have the means and the experience of working directly with your insurance carrier and going through this. But we can protect you from those financial surprises by making sure that anything that may come up in the process is covered by the insurance, with the rare exception of rotted plywood or any elective upgrades. So while I'm here, do you have any objection to a complimentary second opinion? I'll hop up there, take some photos and videos and I'll show you what I find. See that? Now, I gave you, and I always say this in my, in my private trainings, I give you the very long winded version so you can See how I've touched on all these different pieces. Not everyone needs to hear it all, but I wanted to weave all of these in these five. The assessment versus price. Right? I said, hey, it's line item by line item. It's not on price. I talked about how a trained eye is going to spot things that the other roofer won't. But I also made sure to be respectful of the relationship. I talked about those surprises that could come up, right. Supplements that we see and experience. There's things that should be on there that are code items, for example, and then again using Xactimate to make the process seamless for them. And I talked about my experience working with their insurance company. Now there's all these other different things that we can build into this by, you know, talking about the deductible and all that. So there's many different ways that we can approach this. And by the way, I've done numerous videos on the deductible and the laws of the deductible and how that all works. But I wanted you to see how we stitch this in by focusing on the core issue of establishing the need for you, the insurance restoration contractor, by using again, this ARO formula. And it all stitches together, you know, for the brother as a contractor, it's the same approach. The only thing that's different is acknowledging, hey, I understand your brother's a contractor. I understand you want, want him to do the work. You trust him, right? And I've worked with many folks who have family members, friends who are CEO, then it becomes the same through the rest. So ultimately, oops, ultimately, all of these objections we tackle the same way. So that long winded version you can digest and slice up how you see fit to work for you and for the customer that you're standing in front of. Now, listen, I told you in the beginning, I read and respond to all the comments, all the constructive comments, of course, right. That lead to all of us learning from each other. And I learn from you. I was just text messaging with Joe too, who that's his YouTube name, and he recommended a book that I'm reading. I just reached out and said, dude, thank you. This book's been life changing. By the way, that book is Psycho Cybernetics. Fantastic read. So I want to know what objections you're facing. Drop a comment right now because I read, I listen to these. That's what inspired this video. And I want to do a quick summary and then stick around. There's a few more things coming. What's really important is that you listen to what the objection truly means versus the words that are said. My friend's a roofer, my brother's a roofer, my cousin's a roofer. The builder's going to do it. The real thing is they have a relationship they want to use, but they don't think they need you. So what we need to do is realize, okay, they think they don't need us. Now I need to establish the need for them to want my services by re educating them, giving them a new perspective on the situation at hand using those five tips that I showed you and then we're going to overcome using the ARO formula. Got it? All right, listen, if you want more, I haven't talked much about this lately. I kind of quietly introduced this to the training dashboard as part of my roofing sales success formula. The be the do the same. Everything that you need or your team needs. Smash your income goal. I have programs available for individual reps or teams. If you're getting my emails, this will be hyperlinked. You'll be getting this or you can click this card right here for information on and again you'll just click whether you're an individual rep or an owner with a team. And my objection strategy in the ARO formula is all in there along with a whole bunch more. So that is a wrap. A few recommended resources for those that are interested and want to continue your journey with me. More videos on overcoming objections. There's a playlist I'll be linking to here at the end. There's also a book that heavily inspired this along with that YouTube comment, which is the seven habits of highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. And the last thing I just showed you was if you want all my strategies, the roofing sales success formula has access to all of it and I bundled that up for a no brainer price. You'll truly make your money back in your very next sale, whether you're an owner getting it for the team or whether you're an individual sales rep. So it includes the battle pack, the sales strategy, the canvassing strategy, which is new. I've been doing it one on one, now it's on the dashboard. The objection strategy, which is new, same thing, been doing it one on one, now it's on the dashboard. My closing strategy, how to run a sales appointment and then for owners, how to build your dream team. My recruiting process along with the team plan rollout center to introduce these strategies to your team, get them trained up as well as future hires. So thank you for joining me today and our time here does not need to end. If you want to continue learning about how to overcome all these objections, click here into this playlist. And then if you want to learn more about the roofing sales success formula for you or your team, click here for more details and I will see you around.