Adam Bensman (YouTube, Aug 1, 2024) addresses roofing sales professionals whose spouses or significant others are skeptical or unsupportive. He identifies three core reasons for the disconnect: (1) partners don’t understand how the income is generated, (2) partners prefer stability while salespeople accept higher risk for higher reward, and (3) initial months often have little or delayed income due to an expensive learning curve and insurance/payment lags. He recommends three fixes: present a daily, goal‑aligned sales plan to show the process; have candid conversations about short‑term tradeoffs for long‑term earnings; and plan/finance for the front-loaded learning curve and payout delays. The video uses Reddit/YouTube comments and a staff anecdote (rep who quit before realizing ~$50k in commissions) to illustrate consequences and points viewers to additional resources (playlist, book, Roofing and Solar Reform alliance).
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Is your spouse or significant other skeptical or unsupportive of your career in roofing sales? If you're an owner, manager, hiring sales reps, have you ever watched someone quit because their spouse or significant other wasn't supportive or they said yes, I want to take the job when you were hiring just to call you in a few hours saying I can't take it because my spouse isn't on board? Well, in this video I'm going to cover the three reasons why spouses or significant others are skeptical or unsupportive and the three easy fixes to get everybody on the same page so you or your future hires can be wildly successful in roofing sales. Now this video was inspired by two comments. First was this one on the roofing sales Reddit group. I'm going to touch on the other one later in the video and it's titled Fiance has a New Roofing Sales Job says what can I expect from this job from him? I don't mean to sound pessimistic, I just generally don't know and understand the payoff from all the time he's putting in. He's very optimistic and I want to support him, but at the same time it's been a slow start and I feel nervous about how much he'll make. I want to be able to support him. Any advice and honest opinions would be great. So let's rock and roll, shall we? Roofing sales is personal development in disguise and the reward for growth is life changing. I hope my content helps you create a richer life and bank account. Now the number one reason that the spouse or significant other are not on the same page is because the spouse doesn't see how it works. Now imagine the risk taking salesperson like you, like me, we are the thrill seeker adrenaline junkie people that will build a parachute on the way down. So we got excited when we discovered this little known opportunity where you can make six figures or multi six figures in your first year. And like me, I took the job in 2011 off a Craigslist ad. Now imagine from your spouse or significant other's perspective. You come home and say honey, I just took this job and it says I can earn 100 or $200,000 a year with no experience necessary and I know that I know nothing about sales and I know nothing about roofing but they said I'll earn while I learn and all I have to do is work really hard. Now meanwhile your spouse or significant other is probably just like the fiance in that Reddit post. That is Skeptical like, well, honey, this just doesn't sound legit. How's it going to happen? That's because they are a systems thinker and a process thinker and they want to say, if you're making this claim, how does it happen? Back it up for me. And if you can't back it up, they're skeptical. Which is why everyone that goes through my sales system or who's a member of the roofing and solar form lines gets a daily plan built around their income goal. So, so what you need to do is figure out not only how many sales you need to make in a year, but how many you need to make in a selling season, which in the northern markets you're going to lose a few months due to the climate. Then how many sales per month, per week, per day? That's the easy part. Hard part is, well, how many appointments or people do you need to get in front of to get to those sales? Because that's what you can control is how many appointments you make. Then the next question is, well, what do I need to do every day to generate those appointments? How many, how many doors do I need to knock, cold calls to make, direct mail letters to send, referrals to ask for, et cetera. And that is where the daily sales plan comes into play. Because now the salesperson has a step by step plan of what to do each and every day to get there and when they come home and they show their spouse or significant other. Now it's not just this big claim, but it's this is what I need to do every day. And my company is going to be investing in me providing the training, the material that I need to self generate leads and the support each and every day. And by the way, if you're looking for even more support, that's what we do inside the Roofing and Solar Reform alliance is we join you in the trenches with the industry's top leaders like Daeshaun Bryant, John Cenac, Cody Landles, Jim Alleen, and of course yours truly to coach you through these obstacles and help you and your team be wildly successful as well as having the place to turn to ask questions in our app for the on the fly daily support. Now, number two, the reason that spouses and significant others and sales reps aren't on the same page is they want different things. The spouse or significant other is usually someone who wants stability and security, same paycheck each and every week that you can count on. Meanwhile, you, the salesperson has a higher risk tolerance and is willing to give up stability and security for high income. Now, because you guys are wired differently, it's important that you watch this video ideally together. So share it with your spouse or significant other and say, hey honey, I know you want stability and security and I want really high earning potential because high earnings potential will give us stability and security. We just need to make the sacrifice to get from here to there. And it may be feeling like it's instable and insecure, but just know that in the longer run, in a few months, this could be life changing for us. All right, which brings me to number three. The spouse or significant other doesn't understand why there's no money coming in at the very beginning. Which brings me to that other comment I was sharing with you. This came in on a YouTube short. This guy says, hey, I've been in roofing sales for just under two months and I haven't made any money yet. All my deals have either fallen through due to customers ghosting me or because insurance denied them. The rest are still in limbo waiting to hear back from insurance or we are trying to overturn the denial. I'm pretty much out of money at this point. Any advice? Does it usually take this long before you can start making money? It's a common question and it's why so many salespeople quit right before they become crazy successful. In my book, the Roofing Sales Survival Guide, I use this analogy of like, you're one shovel away from hitting pay dirt, meaning gold. But you quit because of how tired it was to find where you should dig. And all the effort you started digging like, well, I haven't made anything yet. But you're just one shovel away. And it's why this gentleman who I share this story in the book, guy that sold for me, went eight weeks with no sales, had very similar story, things falling through. His spouse was chattering in his ear, you know this isn't legit. Why is it taking so long? Are you even going to make money? And what ended up happening is in the back of his mind that that doubt from his spouse or significant other poisoned his mindset. I call it the seed of doubt has been planted and then watered. And what ended up happening is this gentleman, eight weeks, nothing. And just like that, things started to click. He had generated record breaking sales and made around $50,000 of commission. Now, they didn't all get paid out because you know how there's a lag time, but they were real materialized deals. I was so excited. I'm like, this dude's going to crush it. And that's when he quit. Even though I tried to communicate to him how much money he was going to be making, his spouse or significant other wanted the stability and security. And he literally walked away and left the $50,000 on the table. And by the way, before the keyboard commander was like, he should have been paid. Don't worry. He was paid exactly as the contract spelled out. Because in our company, X percent of the job, depending on where it was, the commissions were paid out because. But he left tens of thousands of dollars on the table. But most importantly, all the money he could have and should have made had he stuck with it. So the reason that it takes longer for money to start rolling in is there's two reasons. Reason number one is when you're new, there's a lot of mistakes that occur. You're selling often the wrong people, you're overselling in the wrong neighborhoods. If you're in the storm damage field, you are having a good time closing deals because you're selling stuff that isn't actually damaged, which is why there's so many denials, because so you get all excited that you're winning deals, but then they're falling through. So you question the industry when often it's just you didn't quite know what you were looking at, which is, okay, it's a learning curve or it's just bad luck because the roofing industry has gotten a little harder with insurance. Very commonly it is because of sales mistakes. That's why people are ghosting you or you're getting cancellations. By the way, if you want help on this, I have a playlist for you. It's called how to Use the Contingency Agreement as a Closing Tool. It'll help kind of plug the holes of why people are canceling, why people are resistant to sign the contingency agreement. So that learning curve is expensive and painful. And it's like all weighted on the front end in your first few months. And then the next reason is it just takes time to sell a job, get approved from the insurance. If you're selling insurance, if it's retail, that's obviously a quicker timeline to then produce the job and then collect all the money. And that can take sometimes a month or two months. So from day one, if you sell a job, it could take a few months just to get paid. So. So that's just a reality you need to face. And if your spouse or significant other understands this, you guys can be on the same page. So the key takeaways here is Number one, if you show your spouse or significant other a plan to get there, that's going to help owners managers make sure you're doing this in your hiring process. Number two, have the conversation with your spouse or significant other about forfeiting stability and security for long term high income or which creates obviously more security. And number three, it's just a matter of fact that expensive learning curves happen up front and you can expect it to take a few months for money to start rolling in. And do not quit before you experience success, because that's why most people are just one shovel away from pay dirt. Now if you want more help on this topic, like surviving the mental and emotional battlefield that isn't roofing sales, pick up a copy of my book, the Roofing Sales Survival Guide right now. It's stupid cheap. Then stick with me here on YouTube because I have a playlist for you. It's called how to make $100,000 in roofing sales and I have videos in there for the new person to make your very first sale, the seasoned veteran to learn the five habits of the highest earning salespeople, and a whole bunch more. So jump into that right after this and I will see you on the next.
