STOP Chasing Dead End Leads: When to Chase & When to Run

When to pursue a customer or when to push them away. In this video, I'm going to teach you two very simple questions to ask yourself. And the answer will be crystal clear whether or not you should pursue them or run off. Now, if you've been in sales for a little bit, that doesn't matter. By the way, if you're selling Storm or retail, you're probably running into this situation where you're working with a customer. You spent a tremendous amount of time with them. You like them a lot, they like you a lot. And there's just one hiccup. They really can't get approved for financing. And you've tried everything. You've looked at all the options and avenues, but no matter what, it's just not shaken out. So we're going to get to the bottom of it right now. First, welcome or welcome back. My name is Adam Bensman. I'm getting tripped up by my dogs here for an afternoon stroll. And everything that I do on my channel is designed to help you and your team outsell, outgrow and out compete the rest of the because I'm on a mission to stomp the scum out. So let's get started. 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. All right, let's talk lead qualification. This applies if you're selling Storm or retail. It doesn't matter if you've been doing this for a day or you've been doing this for two decades. We need to remember that not everyone is our customer. See, the limiting factor for your income in roofing sales is not your ability to sell, but rather your ability to process what you sell, which means time. Time is the number one limiting factor for your income. And sadly, a lot of new salespeople, they have this poverty mindset. And this poverty mindset is I need to turn every opportunity into a sale. But what ends up happening is people pursue these deals at all costs, but it ends up costing them a tremendous amount of both time and missed opportunity. So let's paint the background here of a situation that's incredibly common. Let's say you meet with a couple, you present, they absolutely love you. In fact, you love them too. You've probably showed up not once but twice and. And they just, they're having a hard time financially. So you go through all of your financing options with them, but they just, they're not getting approved and what can you do? So you explore all options, but nothing's gonna work, or they're the folks that just quite simply can't afford it. Now, sadly, again, sales reps with the poverty mindset continue to chase these deals. But as I'm explaining this, you're probably thinking the obvious answer like, okay, now is the time that I need to run away. So let's get to those two questions right now. What two questions can you ask yourself to find out if they're a good fit? And question number one is, do they have a problem that I can solve? And I want to spend a moment here because you might think that the question reveals an obvious answer. Do they have a problem I can solve? But the problem is that a lot of rookie salespeople and, sadly, newer companies that are still growing when they're in the poverty mindset, which I've been at, by the way. When I got into this business, I was earning under $20,000 a year. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that I was living on $4.20 a day in groceries. That's a very specific number because that was my budget and I didn't go out to eat for any reason. Okay? So when I got into it, I'll never forget, I ran into this customer, and I remember pulling into their driveway, and she says to me, adam, you know, we really want to do this, but we can't move forward because we want to secure financing to do this back patio, and we want to do the roof to match the back patio. Do you guys do patios? So naturally, being a new salesperson, I was like, of course we do. Well, guess what? We don't. We're a roofing company. So I spent all this time trying to find a home builder to come out and quote this patio for me so I could then quote the roof. And I chased this thing for hours and hours and hours like. And by the way, I'm not exaggerating when I say many hours. I had all of these visits out to the house to try to bring this deal together by helping them secure the funding and the opportunity and the bid for the patio and all of this nonsense. And guess what ended up happening? I didn't get the deal. Big surprise. But with this poverty mindset that many people have when they think, do they have a problem I can solve? They think, oh, well, I could do that. And they end up selling a gutter repair. They end up selling, like, a maintenance something or other. And, like, really low margin, low profit projects that require the same number of visits to a house as if the homeowner replaced their roof. So you end up bogging down your entire pipeline, spending all of this time, money, energy and effort into this one project that ends up having a missed opportunity cost. And I'm going to spell out what missed opportunity cost means. That is, if, let's say you had a Saturday in four hours to go sell, you could make two, maybe even three sales. But if you didn't have four hours, you don't have the time to make two or three sales. I know that for some people, depending on your market, that might be a high estimate. Even if it's one sale. The point is, is that opportunity is gone. And because time is your limiting factor in your income, you don't make any money. So ask yourself this question. Do they have a problem that I can solve, actually? And if they do, move on to question two. Question number two. Can they afford it? Okay. Can they afford it? And if the answer is no, don't waste your time. And I know that this is hard for the people that have a big heart like I do is it's very difficult to tell someone I can't work with you because you can't afford it. But I will tell you that if you let your the idea of being able to serve people, they have to fit that two criteria. They have a problem that you can solve and they can afford it. And if you waste time on people who cannot afford it, who don't get approved for financing, who just tell you outright like this isn't going to work financially, then why waste your time? You have to find someone who fits, who can answer yes to those questions. Meaning they have a problem that you can solve and they can afford it. Now the other thing that you want to consider, of course, is if they have decision making authority. I know that this may seem obvious to some, but it may not be obvious to everybody if you spend time with someone. I'll give you an example. Let's say mom and dad own the house, but the daughter's living there. And you knock on the door or talk to the daughter and the daughter can't make the decision, then you have to spend your time getting in front of the people that actually control the money and make the decisions. Alright? So that's a third little bonus factor. So now that you know this, what I want you to do is take this information and the very next appointment you run, ask yourself those very two simple questions. Do they have a problem that I can solve? And. And can they afford to fix it? And this is also going to help when you identify the right areas to get into when you're out knocking doors. And this is a big shout out to my friends in the storm restoration or the insurance world. If you're in an area with crazy, crazy high deductibles, maybe you're working a hurricane and you're in an area where, let's say the deductible is more than the roof and people aren't getting qualified to replace the roof and they have no funds. Like, stop wasting your time. Now, I hope that this is information will help you leverage your time and use it wisely so you can serve more of the right people and collect more thank you notes. And you know what I'm talking about. When you do such a great job that a homeowner literally hands you a check and says thank you for helping me through the process, well, that's my goal for you so you can collect even more thank you notes. Hey, thank you for joining me in this video. Speaking of thank yous, and if you want to learn more about which customer you should pursue and which you should run away from and a little bit more of a, I don't know, happiness scale level, then jump right into this video because I think it's going to really help you pinpoint who you want to be spending your time with and who you want to run away with from. Anyway, we'll see you in the next one.