In this internal TAMCO video, Adam Bensman and John discuss how roofing contractors can structure tiered product packages—Best, Better, Good, and an Economy option—across hail, wind, and retail markets. They explain why offering an economy package (low‑cost shingle with minimal warranty) is a strategic entry point that lets salespeople demonstrate the risks of low‑quality roofs, tell real‑world failure stories, and then guide homeowners toward the middle or top tiers. The conversation covers key differentiators such as shingle wind ratings, nail line width, warranty length (including workmanship coverage), and premium accessories (e.g., Luminels, coated nails, ventilation). They note market trends: homeowners are staying longer in their homes, caring more about ROI and certainty, and are willing to spend more per roof even as overall volume drops. Low consumer confidence drives cross‑shopping and price comparison, making certainty—through longer warranties and quality installations—a powerful sales lever. The duo also introduces “sales coins,” small high‑value features that can be added to lower packages to create perceived value and close deals. Throughout, they use analogies (truck buying, restaurant recommendations) to illustrate how presenting the downside of the economy option builds trust and positions the contractor as a consultant. The session ends with actionable next steps: review or create tiered packages for each market, develop an economy offering paired with financing, and use the discussed storytelling and sales‑coin tactics to upsell.
Chapters
Putting together these best, better, good packages for our contractors. We've got best, better, good, and then we've— within each of those, we've got hail market, wind market, retail market, because those are the three.
Correct.
And you brought up this idea of an economy package and how your team was using them as a, as a vessel. Well, just share, share with me like how you were using these economy-grade packages.
Well, something, something we realized years ago that especially in the hail market, uh, we were doing a lot of insurance work. Everybody was basically offering and selling the same thing. And what that was, was a shingle with no warranty other than just the limited lifetime warranty, um, with, um, aftermarket or off-brand accessories, right? Not aftermarket, off-brand. So that wrong. Um, we realized everybody was doing the same thing. So the only attack we had to bring value, or the main attack we used, was that economy package. And help people understand, number one, I think you have to kind of offer that because all your competitors are. So you can kind of give the homeowner a baseline of the offering.
Yeah.
And then we would use that economy package basically to tell homeowners it's not what they want.
Right.
So we would, we would use it and tell stories alongside it, you know, like of real instances of things we had seen with, with warranties or jobs gone bad. A few years down the road and kind of show them how, you know, if something happens 10 years from now, you're going to spend way more than you just paid for your roof now if you have that package with a failure. So we would throw those things out and it would always push people like legitimately 90% of the time to a, a, your middle package. So a little bit of movement on price, but extreme value compared to what you were getting in an economy package.
Yeah. So what you're getting at is with, 'cause you, you and John Brose both have this fundamental belief of good, better, best economy. And not everybody's done that. I actually didn't do it that way. And now looking back, I'm like, it's brilliant. Why wouldn't I? But I really like what John Brose has said in RSA and of course in his own training, Day 41 Drive, that you don't negotiate on price, you negotiate on product or package. So when you have an economy Great. And I want to just make sure my thinking on this is right, because I've heard, I've heard you talk about it and I've heard you train the team because I know how much like for, for you warranties and that peace of mind, like longevity and ROI, which has been a really significant trend as of the last year. And then the forecast, at least my prediction in the next few years, homeowners are staying in their houses longer. They're valuing ROI more than they have in the past because they're many people feel stuck in their home with interest rates that have gone up. So for them to sell their home and then buy something new could for some people like nearly double their mortgage because they, you know, the 2-3% mortgage days are behind us.
And from— I began to observe patterns that— and this is from my own research— that the average roof ticket seems to be increasing.
Yes.
Even as the volume currently is decreasing.
Correct. Inflation.
Correct. And what that means is people are spending more on per roof, which means that consumers are valuing longer lasting products and packages more than before.
So they don't want to do it again.
Exactly. And now they're going to be there longer. So talk to me about like how you would, how you would share with a homeowner without like dissing a brand or your own company on who the economy product is for and why they wouldn't want it when there's better options that are not much more expensive.
I don't think it's just the economy product as much as it is— I mean, around the product, I would say if you're using economy product for having economy package, it's going to be one with a very small nail line. So you're going to educate the homeowner on a, you know, why they would want to upgrade to a wider nail line that protects them, you know, better for even the crews nailing shingles down. Added wind protection, right? That's a big thing. You go to an economy shingle, usually you're a 110-mile-per-hour wind-rated warranty, and then you step up to like just the Titan's 160.
Yeah.
So that's one of the things you can really educate between economy and between a, a, your, your middle of the line or your top, your top package. The next thing is absolutely on warranties. You know, like the analogy I always use is every homeowner understands this, every roofer understands it, right? What happens as soon as you drive across the curb of the car lot? We talked about that, right? You, you lose value. So it's the same way on a roof. Even roofers don't understand that from manufacturing standpoint. The second that you, you leave the property, if there is a manufacturer defect in that product, the manufacturer's not liable for tear-off or disposal. And that's at day 1. A lot of people don't know that on a limited lifetime warranty. At day 10, you start the proration period with manufacturing, right? You start to prorate drastically from year 10 on. So when you can move up, when you understand as a homeowner, then you can also give some stories if you have them of what's happened to different homeowners that had that package you've got to, to serve.
Right, right.
And it kind of creates doubt in what the competitors are offering if they're all offering the same thing.
Right.
And then you could talk about, you know, the fact that you can move them up to a 50-year warranty and then maybe your next package up includes workmanship. You can do the warranty to 50 years with workmanship. And explain what workmanship is, how that's valuable to the homeowner. Right. I guarantee you, if you've been in a home very long, you had a roof leak. And a lot of times I would guarantee whoever put the roof on probably didn't come back and fix it.
So the other thing too is like right now, and I did another video on this, consumer confidence is so low.
Yep.
And when consumer confidence is low, people have a tendency to cross-shop more, price compare more, and delay things because what they really want is certainty. And for those that are— and I know there are people out there that are like anti-offering warranties, especially a manufacturer warranty. And for the purpose of this discussion, I'd say it doesn't really matter where, what shape that takes. I think the takeaway is that homeowners care more now because it provides a level of certainty. So quality and certainty, if you can remove future risk and have certainty on a great product, a great installation, and no potential for out-of-pocket expenses down the road, you know, do, do— of course, I can't make a claim on something happening to the roof, hail, wind, or hurricane. But either, either way, certainty is important. So with this, I— you mentioned, I know we were talking before about— you called them sales coins. What's a sales coin?
Would you be something you would add like to maybe even a more premium offer? Like maybe you have your top offer, but it's like it's something you would talk about in the home. So one of the things I brought up, we were talking earlier, was Luminels. And one of the— that intrigued me a while back, I seen, you know, there's all these benefits and values, valuable benefits to it, you know. So you could say, depending on how long you've been in business, hey, we've been in business for 10 years. And one thing we've noticed is in the keyway, the shingle water leaks in, gets in behind the nails before it leaches out. And we've seen nails rust out. That kind of shows your experience, how long you've been in the business.
And nail pops.
And nail pops, right? And so it causes leaks or causes nail pops. With this, this particular nail, it's coated. It's not going to rust, it's not going to leak. It's ring shank. So we can, you know, guard against nail pops. And you talk those products up. And then when they see the initial price of this high-end premium package, right, and you see the ugh on their face, you're like, hey, you know what? I know that seems expensive. What if I could throw this aluminum into this next package down? We could get this done right now.
Yeah.
So you're staging the deal, right?
Yeah.
But you can use different products for that. You could use a type of ventilation like solar vents or something like that. I've seen a lot of guys use and it works really well to leverage the conversation. Well, hey, you can find out what they really like, you know, have 2 or 3 sales points, figure out which one really resonates with the homeowner and use that as leverage to throw it into a lower package.
You know, I've got my deck. This whole video began because We're literally sitting here at an internal TAMCO event, correct? We are having a conversation. I got my laptop up. We're literally building out best, better, good and economy packages for hail markets, wind markets and retail markets to provide more resources for our contractors to make it easy, easier for them to succeed in the home. And as we're going through this, I'm like, man, I just— we really should just capture this conversation because it's so rich. Like, if someone could just be sitting here observing, like they could be taking notes and building this stuff. But I wanted to bring back on the package because we also, you and I went through a presentation we're doing together in Marietta, Georgia coming up, or by the time this goes is probably in the past, is next week. But anywho, on packages, the best, better, good, there's 4 elements of a roof package: your shingles, your accessories, your install practices, and your warranty. And you can mix and match in any way you want. So even though we're providing guidance, people can and should customize them the way they want to. But I really love how an economy grade package, which like I said before, is not something I had done. It kind of breaks the idea of the best, better, good. You can present that, but you have a downsell offer if it's too much. And the option, like, you know, Alex parked his truck. I can see it right here. Him and I were talking trucks. I was cross-shopping the same truck he got. I ended up getting something different.
But, um, he just put a motor in that one, by the way.
Did he actually?
100%. Just got it back.
Ah, by the way, just for fun now, I was looking at that GMC Sierra with the V8 and I was like, I heard about the 6.2s having issues. But anyway, and now Valet's taking it away. The economy grade, like when you go shopping for a truck, for example, you don't, no one goes in there excited about the lowest power option. No. Right? The economy option. They hold their value the least, they're the least fun.
Unless you're buying a truck for a sales rep.
I had to buy a fleet and you're being mindful about your operating expenses as a company, which is so true. But, but this economy, like if I was a, if I was a vehicle salesman and someone came for the, for the truck, be like, here's the base option. I'll tell you why you don't want this. If you drive in the mountains, I live in Colorado. I know we're in Kansas City right now, but if you drive in the mountains and you want to go uphill, you don't want this. Right? And you don't want to naturally aspirate it because you lose horsepower by the time you go up in altitude because the engine's sucking for gas. So this economy package gives you such a starting point of like, again, option one, best, better, good, too much. Here's economy grade. Or even saying we have an economy grade, you don't want it for just so much more money. You get a much better package even in the good.
It turns you into a consultant. We were just, we just discussed earlier, you were talking about the restaurant. If you walk in a restaurant and you ask, a lot of people will ask, my wife's one of them, what's good on the menu? And I've heard it a few times where they're like, well, I'll tell you what not to get. Yeah. Immediately it builds trust. It's like, okay, you're already telling me how bad this and this at your own restaurant is.
Yeah.
It starts to build trust right then. Now I'm listening.
Yeah.
And then she will always pick something they recommend. So it kind of works the same way.
Yeah. I love it. So your tomorrow morning action items are to review your best, better, good options or create them if you don't. Best, better, good for hail, retail, or wind market depending on where you are. And then introducing an economy market or economy package, which will be like a more of an entry-level affordable economy shingle with whatever accessories and no warranty and, and start bringing those to life as options in the home and of course pair them with financing. John, this was great, dude. Thank you.
