Roofing Sales Objections: Deductible? Estimate too high? Do This...
Adam Bensman teaches roofing salespeople how to handle money objections by separating price from lifetime cost. He uses car analogies to show why cheap estimates often mean poor quality, and explains when to walk away from unprofitable deals and focus on customers who actually value the work.
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Hey guys, Adam here, the roof strategist. We are continuing what I just decided is going to be part two of the Overcoming money objections. There's a variety of different objections that we face when selling roofs that come to money. And what I want to talk about today to frame this in your mind is cost versus price. So let's list some of these money objections out. We've got the deductible, okay? We have upgrades. We don't want to pay for upgrades. Someone included it for free. Maybe you're doing that, maybe it's common to some extent. It's okay. But we don't want to give away your profit margins, right? We have the deductible, we have compared estimates. Now, I am not a big fan of doing estimates, as you well know, because I want to work on the assessment and focus on that to break the emotional attachment to the money. By the way, go watch that video. It's called Breaking the Emotional Attachment to Money. I think it's one of my first videos, still one of the most powerful in my opinion because it's all about shifting the mindset about assessing the hail damage and getting that assessment objectively itemized on the scope of loss and how when you do it the right way, Xactimate populates the price. So there's not a bidding war. It's a matter of black and white. This is damage, this is what it costs. It's based on a third party estimating software. Alright, so you can watch that video. That was a quick snapshot. So when we get these objections of I don't want to pay my deductible, we say, crap, do I give it away now? I just saw someone, man, I wish there was their name. The channel's been blowing up lately with comments. Thank you to you guys. And he said, I keep giving away deductibles. This Last one was $5,000. It was the only way to win a business because I'd done all this work, I got it approved. Then the homeowner comes back. By the way, the guy didn't have a contingency agreement, signed bad news, done that, and he had to give away a $5,000 deductible. That 5,000 is a lot of money. Profit for the company, commission that it's earned. Bad news, right? Then there's upgrades and then there's compared estimates. So here's where I want to teach you a new tool to help sell and overcome these objections about money. And it's all about helping homeowners identify the difference between cost and price. So what's the difference? They both kind of sound like the same thing. Right? So the cost is the overall lifetime investment. Okay, so I'm going to give you an example here of that in a minute. So that's the cost. The price is what you pay today. Now, homeowners are focused on this number. Would you agree? Yeah, they're like, oh, it's $18,000. That, that's what's going on today. But the cost of ownership is the overall lifetime amount. Now, if you're on this channel, you're interested in making some money because you're in sales. So you might be interested in cars. Guess what? So are your homeowners, because if they own a house, they own a car. So using the analogy of cost versus price is a big deal. And use that analogy when you speak to them. So, Mr. Or Mrs. Homeowner, I want to talk with you about something because what you highlighted as a question of yours is spot on. My price to do this project, despite the fact that the insurance company is paying for 97% of it and what you owe is actually already been agreed upon through your contractual obligation to the insurance company to cover that percentage or that flat rate amount for the loss. So if we ignore those facts and we look at this on a dollar for dollar item, I want to bring a few things to your attention. Mine may appear larger than this guy, but when we dive into it, it's really not. And I'm going to show you how and why. See, this guy comes in who has the lower appealing price to win your business out of navity? It's his easy way to earn your business, get the roof done and be gone. But we differentiate ourselves because we are here for the long run with your best interest at heart. So I want you to think about cars. For example, have you seen how inexpensive you can get an older BMW, maybe a 5 Series or 7 Series, you can get them for pretty cheap. So the price of that BMW that you pay today might only be 10 to $15,000. But when it's got 100,000 miles on it and you keep it for seven years and anything goes wrong, the cost of parts and the cost of labor are very, very expensive. Would you agree? Yes. So what you pay today to get into your luxury vehicle, your nice Mercedes, your nice BMW, might be very expensive, but the cost of ownership over those five years gets very costly. Now, I'd like to turn our attention, by the way, to mine and how we do things. And again, by the way, if you're Watching this part two, reference part one, because I break down how to how the most common objection is, you know, x dollars amount for 40 square is the estimate and that's it. So that whole piece of not having a line item estimate is really important to catch up to speed for this one. So. And again, that's in the previous video. Then we move into ours, which is the cost of ownership. So that's the overall lifetime amount. So today, supposedly again reminding them that they're only out of pocket, expense is the deductible alongside your price lock guarantee, which when you do things item by item, along with the scope and you choose the highest quality products, you're replacing the edge metal, you're putting on proper pipe boots. The cost of ownership through that roof, through the life of the roof, which could be 30, 40, 50 years, is going to be substantially lower. Now, I had a couple of people object to this on the channel in the past, and I'd like to address their questions and concerns head on. Because for our company, our repair minimum was a $1,000 minimum. Now for any of you guys out there who installers or maybe you're running your own company and you say that's crazy, I'm going to challenge you because what this means to me is you haven't had the experience I did yet. And what that experience is is where you go out to a house and you try to help somebody out because we do want to help people, and you're replacing another roofer's mistake. So let's say you went out and you replaced a square, you placed a pipe boot. It was $500 repair. You come back, you find out it's actually still leaking. It wasn't that area, it was someone else. Now you touched it last. Now you're the one doing the ceiling repair, repainting the ceiling, doing all the interior work. Whoever touched it last owns the liability. We had a thousand dollar minimum because we were busy installing roof projects. So for us to go out for a small project wasn't profitable. Sales guys got to get commission out of this, the crew's got to get paid, there's got to be labor costs, and it has to make sense for us to warranty the repair. So for us, $1,000 was a minimum. So when you have this low bid, if they cut any corners, whether it's a pipe boot, whether it's a shingle material, whether it's Ridge Cab, whether it's a ventilation product, whether it's reusing edge metal, if they're reusing material that is rated to only last 5, 10, 15, 20 years on a 30, 40, 50 year roof. Now, whenever something comes up, one repair alone has a minimum $1,000. So comparing warranty to warranty, the quality of installation and the line item accountability when compared to the guy that says, I'll do 40 square for this amount, one repair and maybe it's a $5,000 deductible. Minimum thousand dollars. What about the interior damage? Well, that goes up, right? It's not just fixing the drywall, it's repainting an entire ceiling and all the walls to match. So when we can help someone overcome the difference between cost and price, using the analogy of a BMW, for example, versus, let's say a Honda Civic, which are notoriously very reliable vehicles that also have very inexpensive parts and are cheap to fix, or maybe a Chevy, an old Chevy or a Ford. These types of vehicles are very different when you compare the cost of ownership to the price. So when you buddy up this first video and we talk about apples to apples comparisons on the estimates or scope of loss and then we educate the difference of the cost of ownership and the price of the roof, now we have the, the thoughts really firing for our homeowners. Start making a good decision because they say, hey, well, I spend the extra $2,000 today, but what I get could save me $10,000 in the future. Now I know what you're thinking right now. You're saying, well, Adam, what if they won't budge? We've all had that and I hear this all the time. I tried your technique, it didn't work. I got news for you guys. It's not going to work 100% of the time. And anyone who tells you that it will, you need to run away from their sales training because that's not how people work. Not everyone is our customer. And it is okay, I'm going to write this down. It is okay to say no and to walk away. Alright? So if you take anything away from this video, I want you to think of this. If you have educated your homeowners, if you've delivered nothing but value, if you help them understand the process and they're still not willing to pay the price, walk away. I had this happen with a gentleman, by the way. He, he called me up, I got his roof approved. It was one of the new things where I didn't want him to sign the contingency agreement up front because I was nervous, I didn't want to ask. So I went through the whole process with my fingers crossed, hoping he'd sign with me. He did. Then he didn't want to pay his deductible. He called me up, he screamed at me on the phone, hung up. I said, alright, call back. Why did I do business? I said no, even though it was a giant project, but I knew he'd be a nightmare. And think about it guys. If you give that away, that $5,000 deductible, the time it's going to take you to fulfill this job, you're better off going to sell a different one with the right margin and earn more commission and get referrals because people are like their friends. So if you sign up this deductible demanding crazy homeowner, what are their friends going to be like? They're going to be cheapskakes. They don't want to pay you and they're probably not going to give you a referral. So say no. Walk away. Educate folks who see the value and who believe in you. Go spend your time with them because they will have friends and family who share similar beliefs and thought processes. They'll send you referrals because they feel good about paying you to do the right job for them and their friends will feel like that too. So don't be shy to say no. You need to value your own time as much as you do your customers and value your own services. And if you have a minute, whatever your commission structure is, whether it's a gross profit percentage or straight off the top commission, start calculating when you give away that 1, 2, 3 to $5,000 commission or, excuse me, deductible. If you did that 10 times, 10 times giving that away. It's a lot of money guys. You're literally taking out of your pocket and flushing down the toilet. Say no. Say no to drugs, kids. No. Say no to the wrong customers and work with people who believe in you and believe in the value that you are providing. Alright, so I hope this video was both inspirational and provided you a new set of tools to overcome money objections. When we break down cost versus price. If you haven't done so already, there's a few links in the video description below. There's a 30 day sales challenge that you can join. There's an e book that I put together called the three Tricks to Get to the Kitchen Table. And most importantly, there's the Roofing Sales Accelerator Marketing Pack. That's my proven sales and marketing material that you can download, printout and start using instantly. Those links are all below for you to check out. Free Thumbs up this video subscribe Drop any comments below, anything that you join from me. You'll start receiving emails from upcoming lives, announcements, new videos, and I'll even email you guys for suggestions. So if you want to get into that, join the challenge, download the ebook. Either way, you'll enter my world and I'll be helping you make more money. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you on the next one. Thanks.
