What Roofing Companies Will Face in 2025: My 7 Predictions

Here are my predictions for the 2025 roofing industry and what you need to do to adapt in order to stay relevant for fear of getting left behind. This video was inspired by a conversation that's going on inside the Roofing and Solar Reform alliance community. And I shared my thoughts there and I want to share them with you now because I believe that we are on the curve, the beginning curve of a very fast change that is coming to the roofing industry. And it's not just one change, it's a lot of changes. We're seeing it already and if you don't, you need to open your eyes. The insurance landscape is changing. Anyone who's in it knows that we're seeing a lot of activity in private equity similar to what's gone through the H Vac industry, which is going to create stiffer competition, especially for the little guy. And I did an entire video on this, by the way. We'll put a link to that above here, so you can go check that out. We're seeing technology coming into folks that resisted things like instant online roof quotes, which I also did a video on, and people still resist me. No, homeowners don't want that. Well, how about this story because just this morning in our leadership roundtable of rsra, we had one of our members who joined the way many people do is wanting to do more retail and pivot their business model so not so dependent on what seems to be an industry who like the writings on the wall. And he was 70% storm and 30% retail. And this gentleman used the tools, the training, the resources and the advice of the community and adopted it. In just one year he went from 70% storm 30 retail to 70% retail and 30% storm in one of those reasons for his success was adopting an instant online quoting tool which empowered his team to give quotes in the field and convert appointments at the door, even knocking for retail. And this is what I mean by things are changing. So I want you to think of this gap that's occurring now in the market similar to like the wealth gap, the haves and the have nots. And some say that that gap is growing. But well, I want you to take that concept and apply it to roofing. That through the changes that we are experiencing right now, we have the people who resist change and they say, oh, it will never go that way. Nothing's going to change. Homeowners don't want that or I don't want to change. Those who are resistant or afraid of change. And then we have people who Are early adopters, the ones who had, let's say just for an example, an instant online roof quote. They're using AI, they're leveraging technology, they're even using virtual assistants. They are adapting to more modern ways of running a roofing company. Well, this gap is going to grow at a ever increasing speed. So if you don't adapt, you will get left behind. Mark my words. And if you think I'm crazy, come back to this video in a couple years and look at where things are at then compared to now. So my name is Adam Bensman. Welcome or welcome back. Let's jump into this video. My predictions, the 2025 roofing industry, 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, in this video I'm going to be sharing with you seven key changes that I think you need to be aware of. And some of these are sudden, some of these are less sudden, but they are overall things that I think that you need to adapt your roofing industry in order, excuse me, your roofing company to, in order to survive. Number one is sales skills. I said this in another video, like the number one sales skill in 2025 and that is you're no longer in the roofing sales game. You're in the this. Our industry is evolving. We have a ton of competition. And getting homeowners to make buying decisions is harder now than ever before in the roofing space because pricing is the highest it's ever been. And we have gone through the era of zero percent interest financing, so it is more expensive. So our job in sales is to develop a unique solution to a financial problem by way of selling a roof. I go into all that detail in that video and I don't want to rehash things and make another video or do a video deep dive on something that you can go watch. Go watch that video. You'll see what I mean about adapting your sales skills and how you need to be in the finance business and not the roofing business. Number two on my list is technology and adopting early. So many people. And by the way, I'm not affiliated with any of these roof quote tools. I just, I think I resisted them for a bit. I must admit. I don't. Now homeowners want answers to their questions and they want it now. And if you're a homeowner, if you are a homeowner, which many of you are and you're shopping for, let's just Say, a new furnace. And I know that this isn't possible, but I'm just trying to get you, like, moved out of the roofing headspace. And you have like three companies that you're searching for and you're on their website and one of them says, get an instant quote or find out how much it'll cost. Like, who's going to win your business? The person who answers the number one question you have, which is cost. And on the recent webinars I ran, I ran a webinar for Limitless Group. I went, I should put a wan. I ran a webinar for Ruffle as a guest. And in both of those, I covered the topic of getting homeowners ready to buy even before you show up. And the key question when I surveyed, but there was like 116 roofing companies on one of them, and I said, how? What is the number one question people ask you? And it's what's it cost? So imagine getting that out of the way up front. By the time you meet with someone, they're way further along in their buying decision. So we live in a generation now where someone can turn to any search engine and. Or like I do, I have chatgpt on my phone. I pay for the advance, I just ask questions and I get answers. And I get it like that. And that's the era that we live in. So whatever, like tools or technology are available to you, it's up to you to be an early adopter and to understand using them. We've got a member of our community of RSRA who's using ChatGPT to analyze supplements and identify what's missing and what's not. He's using it for material orders. He's using. He's actually running a session for our community inside. So this is what I mean by being an early adopter. So whatever tools and technology are available, play with them. Dedicate time to learning how these things work, because again, all the early adopters are gonna have such a competitive advantage from those that don't from a technology standpoint that you'll be left in the dust very quickly. Now this brings me to number three, which goes into operations. I do see operations changing with the help of AI. If you follow any AI folks on YouTub, you're gonna see that software, like the writing is on the wall for the software world. They're talking about agents, AI agents having the ability to do tasks for us using data. And it's not fully here quite yet, but there are ways that you can be Using AI again, for your material orders. You can be using virtual assistants to fill the gaps from what AI can't do. But there's a lot on the operation side that can be streamlined, leveraging tools and technology that. And by the way, this doesn't just mean your installations. Like, for example, at rsra, we are using two new AI tools. One is a phone answering service which we've tested and is awesome and allows us because a lot of our phone calls, just like probably for you, are people trying to sell us stuff. So we learned how to filter through that. I use it on my own cell phone. If someone calls me, I have a tool, Gemini, I have a Google Pixel where I can click and it automatically talks to the person, like I'm screening this call, you know, who is this and what are you calling about? And it gives me a live transcription and then I can click accept or Deny. And if it's just spam, I just click Deny. And if it was someone, which it was today, whose caller ID just came up, funny, I was able to answer the phone. We also have an AI bot that is able to help with all of our messages on social media because again, a lot of them are people like trying to sell stuff. So we're just trying to be really efficient with our small and mighty team. So this is what I mean by adopting, excuse me, adapting to your operations. There are a lot of tools for different use cases. And my best advice is use ChatGPT and ask, say I'm trying to solve this problem or how can I use AI tools to solve X, Y and Z problem? And you'll get answers. All right, number four is financing. Now it's not only offering it, but learning how to sell it and learning how to offer it exceptionally well. I believe that roofing companies that aren't excellent at offering financing, understanding that you're in the financing business, you'll get left behind. Put it on your website, put it everywhere, lead with it, ask us about our affordable financing options. Put it in your email signature. Get lined up with a couple of financing options. So if folks get denied, you've got backup plans because you could convert deals that are otherwise going into the ether. Maybe you get to get someone approved for financing that the other company couldn't. So have those options in place to harvest as many deals as you possibly can. All right, number five, this warrants an entire video, but I do want to touch on it. I believe that moving forward, it may not happen as soon as 2025, but I believe it will begin. Is that roofing companies are going to learn to be digital marketing companies because no, no, no, door knocking is not dead. It's not going away for good. But for many people, they say it is getting harder. It's saturated. A lot of people since the 2020 thing are working from home. So you show up, they're really bothered by it. And digital marketing companies, they can be expensive. It is a incredible competitive advantage edge to bring it in house. Here at rsra, I run everything in house and it's not me running it, of course, it's our team. But that is something that I believe to be one of our competitive edges because we understand digital marketing, we understand the landscape, we can edit our own videos, we can run our own ads. And the only thing that I need to outsource is some, some odds and ends that our team can't do and we have a contract relationship with someone who can do that. So learning to become a digital marketer is not something that happens overnight. It is a very different skillset to learn how to sell online than it is in person. And one of our members, excuse me, one of our mentors of rsra, Cody Landles, built a roofing company, Reimagine Roofing. They were doing about $3 million per month, virtually 100% retail and almost 100% online, meaning they didn't even go to someone's house. Cody has done just such an incredible job. He recently got acquired. And we're actually doing an RSRA visit with a bunch of our members to do a company tour, learn about how they operate and learning how to build a modern roofing company using tools and technology. By the way, I can't remember the exact call time, but like the gosh, I wish I had this. I didn't expect to share it, but I'm going to. The average call time for one of their sales appointments was somewhere in the ballpark between like seven and 17 minutes versus a traditional, you know, one hour, 45 minutes, hour and a half, two hour appointment retail. So this is what I mean by learning to become a digital marketing company and learning how to sell online and learning how to teach your team soft skills like copywriting, how to sell over text. It's a very different animal. I've trained writing teams. My background, I just so happen to be a direct response copywriter and consultant. I've trained writing teams and it's amazing how many folks in the sales world are really good at talking to people, but the minute that they have to start doing some of this over text, meaning Email or text messages, they flop. So it's a skill set that I believe your team will need to learn and you're going to need to learn to have a competitive edge. And as we end up getting more and more leads via digital marketing, our customer acquisition cost will go up because Facebook and Google are bidding platforms. So imagine the competition at the doors. Now, everyone that starts spending more money online will drive prices up. Over the last year, year and a half, advertising costs on Facebook and Google have gone up across the board. And when we look at roofing specifically, when more competition comes in, you spend more money. So imagine instead of having to pay management fees, you could bring that in house, train people to do it for you and have full control. This is how you have a competitive edge. And again, early adopters, you have that learning curve pushed out of the way. When prices go up and you're, your costs are much lower than the other guy, you're going to win. Now, number six, we have two more on the list. Number six is products. I do believe we're going to need to enter an era of diversification. Dimitri did a great video on the state of Florida against asphalt roofing. What if that happens? Right. We also see pressure from insurance carriers in terms of coverage. And having a wide breadth of service offerings allows you to combat seasonality. Here are just a few. Solar. And I'm not talking solar on its own roof. With solar, like the way we teach in rsra metal roofing, like what Cody teaches in rsra roof rejuvenation, when used appropriately. We have one of our members who I spoke with today, who's crushing it in that landscape, running a guest presentation on that. Even things like we're bringing in an expert to teach how to offer holiday lighting. So this is what I mean by diverse revenue streams that can help you combat seasonality and cash flow and differentiate yourself against competitors. And again, there's a learning curve in adding new services. So if you don't do this now and you end up waiting, you will be left behind. And that brings me to number seven and probably the most important one, which is communication. So even though we're in the era of technology and AI, it's very important for you to optimize not only with it and for it, but against it, and to do that which AI can't. And communication, even though AI tools can help, it creates a feeling. And I did multiple keynotes. In fact, I spoke at the OC Platinum conference a few years ago. My keynote was on the Feeling Economy. My keynote roofing process was on a very similar concept that the how people feel when interacting with us will make or break our sale. And there's been market research done on this and I couldn't sort it off the top of my head. I have to dig it up. Maybe if you have it, you can put a link below. But the number one problem that homeowners have with contractors is number one, getting them to answer the phone, number two is getting to call them back, and number three is to find, follow through with what they say they're going to do. So communication is really the backbone of your company. And if you don't have a strong communication system in place, you're sol. I'll give you an example. My heat source right here has gone out three years in a row and I'm fortunate in the winter to have a backup heat source, my fire, which I got to put a log on. In fact, let's do that while we talk. I had to get a company out and first company don't answer the phone. Next company, they do answer the phone, but they can't come out till Friday. And now I got to come in my office pretty much every hour to throw another log on this fire. And what I want is I want this thing fixed and I want it fixed now because it was 16 degrees the other day and I don't want my pipes freezing. So this company not only answered the phone, but they got me an appointment set very quickly. I got a text this morning to remind me of the appointment. I got a text that your technician's on the way. I got a personal text from the technician and for some people they're like, that's over communication. Well, I know every step of the way. And guess what? They came out, they gave a quote and they're coming back tomorrow morning to get it taken care of. So communication, like above all else, is the easiest way to get a leg up. I tease that in roofing, the secret to making millions of dollars is to answer your phone and do what you say you're going to do and communicate along the way. And if you do that, you'll be wildly successful. Now, I'd love to hear your opinions. What do you think people need to do to adapt in 2025 before they get left behind? Leave it in the comments section below. Thanks for joining me in this video and I'll be seeing you on the next one.