005: Part 1 of 3 – What I Learned Talking to 586 Roofers – People and Process

You're listening to the Roofing Business Partner Podcast.

This is the show where you'll learn the Minehacks strategies and process we use every day to turn everyday roofing companies into the dominating local authority with our ultimate roofer marketing method. You'll also learn how we use Facebook ads to rapidly and affordably scale up business for roofing companies and generate leads on Autopilot, putting you in touch with the right customers who pay the right price at the right time. Here's your host, Adam sand now, so let's get after it.

Welcome to another episode of the Roofing Business Partner Podcast. And I know it has been a while and that this is a common mistake of most podcasters when they start out is they lose their consistency right away. And I guess I'm no different. I want to express to you what I feel is my excuse, as I'm sure every one of the podcasters who does this has one. But I think that my excuse might actually be of some benefit to you. Going forward between January and March, I have been promoting the launch of my yearly coaching program where I guide roofers step by step to complete a 12 month Facebook marketing implementation in their roofing company. And this is also where the bulk of my one on one clients come from because as this whole promotion goes on, many companies talk to me about me, you know, doing it for them so they can focus on their business and what they're doing. My sweet spot for one on one clients is the kind of the two to five million dollar companies. This is for a few reasons. First of all, they can afford my services because full disclosure, I generally charge between 7 and 14,000 to start building a Facebook ad campaign and doing the onboarding process for a full year and then it's 3 to 7,000amonth for that full year for me to manage their Facebook ads. So anyone smaller than a million generally can't afford that one to two. It's getting close because at that point I'm representing around 10% of their total growth. But generally in that 2 to 5 million mark I'm really good and I can really have a big, big impact. But then companies over the $5 million mark, and you should take this as a hint, they already have a and half of what I do is building that brand. So half of what I do is not needed and therefore they just need a Facebook ad manager in a lot of cases. So I really take that to heart for the rest of you who haven't focused on brand building just yet, but all my marketing is aimed at these companies in my sweet spot. And I mean, some is aimed at the people below the $1 million mark because they do make good candidates for the DIY campaign because they're really lean at this point. They're not paying for anybody else's help. They can actually catch up because they have a lot of extra money to spend on ads that they're not spending on a manage. During the promotion of that coaching course, I had thousands of roofers opt in for a variety of free downloads, teaching them one part of my method or another or a quick trick for Facebook ads. And in a lot of cases, just listening to some of my videos talking about Facebook ad marketing, I made every attempt to reach out to as many of these people as possible. So if I didn't reach out to you, I'm sorry, send me another email. My workload is a lot smaller now. I would love to chat with you. The end result is I sent almost 1,000 bombbomb videos. Now, if you don't know what that is, it's a resource that I am now 100% convinced that you, as roofers, should be using in your roofing company. We use it in mine. If you want to have the ability to have a personal connection with every lead coming into your roofing company, you got to use this bombbomb. It's this app, and it also connects to gmail and a lot of other mail programs or CRMs, but basically, in one or two clicks, you can quickly record and send a quick little video to your customer. And in the email, it has like a little thumbnail that plays like the first three seconds, like an animated gif. And it kind of makes it really clicky. Like people want to kind of see what's going on. And it plays right within the email, so it doesn't take them out to go to YouTube or some other app. So it, you know, it's really low friction to get them to play it. I actually hold up a little whiteboard with people's names, and I'd be like, hi, John, or hi, blue roof marketing. But the open rates on this were retarded. Like, everybody opened. Like, everybody clicked. I mean, we're talking 80, 90% open rates on emails which do not exist anywhere in the marketing emails. That was great for me because I would, you know, I would be trying to get people to book a call. But I put a link in the show notes, and you should use this for your roofing company. If you use my link, you're going to get a deal for signing up. You get a free trial and all that stuff. So you can check out the show notes or go to roofingbusinesspartner.com videotool this app has an immediate wow factor and a really personal touch with, you know, people really appreciate nowadays with all the text, emails and text messages and autoresponders to get. A quick little two minute video immediately jumps you to the top of the list. So we use it with our roofing estimate leads. We just quickly say hello and let them know that we're going to get in touch with them right away to book their estimate time and if they have any questions to please let us know. But they really appreciate the opportunity to earn their business. So it's great. Even if you're driving and you get that you're handling leads by yourself and you're running your whole business by yourself. But it also works great with me and my clients who have someone who's scheduling someone else to do the estimate because you can introduce that other person or that other person can introduce themselves and say, hi, I know that Tom said that Jerry would be coming. Jerry just wanted to say hello, put a face in the name. I'm going to be seeing you at five o' clock as you booked and we'll get you started on your roof program. Very, very cool program. So when I sent all these bombbomb videos to other roofers to call and book, you know, book a call on my calendar, my schedule blew up. My phone was dead every day by 11am and I had typed up notes on every single call. And after 586 calls, it can be very tough to have two ears in one mouth and not immediately jump in and run over people. Because the concerns, the complaints, complaints, the tactics that roofers are using, the misconceptions or thought processes, they come become very common. You start to see some real big trends. There were some very clear things that separate the companies and it wasn't always by revenue. I learned that you can't really think about in revenue because $2 million in one part of the states is barely making it, and then in another part of the states that's a lot of money. But it was very clear in how some of these traits would separate business owners from, say, differentiating them between owners who felt like they ran their business and people who felt their business ran them. Or there was big differences between business owners who felt they have a great company but just have no idea what's working and what wasn't and they're just kind of spinning their tires and don't really know why certain things are working or not, especially with their marketing. And then of course, the ones who did understand it. There was also one big thing that separated the companies with the confidence to move forward, either with my coaching program or my one on one services, but the confidence to pursue that. There was a big, big differentiating factor that really became glaringly apparent, something I've never come across before. And it really became clear to me going forward what I need to do in my business. But when it came to marketing, there were some big differences on how companies with different levels of stress and confidence and money, not just money and revenue, but money left over. And it was, you know, how they looked at marketing. Right. And so there's a few differentiating factors there. And I learned a very valuable lesson on how to increase the sales of my coaching program by finally understanding this one little thing that was the most common thought among roofing companies in regards to their marketing and how I need to help, you know, refocus how I presented to them and so that I could actually help them. Because the problem is I was making it so that they would get in their own way. So this is something huge that I want to talk about. So over the next three episodes, I'm going to dive into these calls and dissect them with you so that you can take what you can and use it to grow your business this year. So I want to in this episode discuss what separated the businesses that felt like they had a company that ran them instead of them running their business. The biggest thing was people and processes. They would find themselves constantly. If I asked them, you know, what is your biggest challenge? What's keeping you up at night? You know, how come you don't have time to pursue a coaching program? Right. And when we really dived into it after you kind of really bore down, they would find that they were doing the same things over and over and over again from scratch. Right. So they didn't really have a good system in place to really scale their time. So they felt that if they took the time to do the coaching program, that now they were like, you know, they felt like that guy in the circus that has a stick and the plates and they're constantly having to keep the plate spinning. And if they try to add even one more stick and one more plate, all of them will come crashing down because they just have enough time to reach each one as it's beginning to wobble on the stick, so to speak. And when I asked them why they felt that way, and why they couldn't just, you know, why don't you have people that you can delegate this to? You know, they didn't really have a clear understanding of what kind of person to hire or what those people would do and what they would get them to do if they had them or how much to even pay them. And it really became apparent to me, like, this is something that I truly believe when starting a business. And I've started quite a few businesses, I've been involved in quite a few business startups. And then through this with marketing, I've helped a lot of people kind of really start a whole new company. And I really firmly believe that in this, and so did a lot of the people I talked to who felt like their business was under total control was that you got to get the right people on the bus, Then you get the right people in the right seats, then you get the bus going in the right direction. A lot of people want to get the bus going in the right direction before they have the right people in the right seats. And they understand you can't open a company with 20 staff. But you need to recognize ahead of time when you're running into that problem. Now, the other thing is that if they have those processes, because some people do, the problem was that they felt, oh, you know, I have these, but, you know, good people are hard to find and common sense ain't so common. A lot of the stuff that I heard from business owners was that. And I talked in one of my Facebook lives about how you can start attracting more of the right people. And I believe that video is still up on my Facebook group. But the people who really had it going well, and they had the good people, they cited that they had very good and clear standards and expectations for every person in every seat on the bus, so to speak. And then to know if the bus was going off track, they would have systems and processes to quickly correct and adhere to these processes going forward. Because they had very clear standards and expectations, it was very easy for them to go in and say, okay, are you struggling to be average or failing to show improvement? Regarding people. And if someone was struggling to be average but they were showing improvement, then they kept them. But if they were average and failing to show improvement, that was a problem. And if they were struggling to be average and not showing improvement, that was also a problem. And then it was kind of a three strikes or out thing because it's either they don't know they haven't been trained or they don't care so if they've taken the time in their business to train them and give them clear standards and expectations and processes to follow, well, now they've been trained. So it's either they don't care or they just can't know. You know what I mean? They just, they're just not smart enough. And that's when you need to make a decision. And when they had that very clear kind of structure in their business, that was something that really separate the companies that were ahead of the game, you know what I mean? They were always kind of running their company. Now when it came to people, I said, well, what makes your good people like, how come you have good people? And they said one of the lessons they always had to learn. Yeah, they had different sayings, you know, people don't change. You can't change people. You got to change your people or you can't teach an old dog new tricks. My saying is a duck is a duck and it'll always be a duck, right? A duck is a duck. People teach you who they are, right? And a duck is a duck. They also said something along the lines of they don't want to motivate, right? They train. They don't like being motivators. As bosses and company owners, they want to train people. And I believe in that because that's how I run my business too, is that trained people are confident. And confident people don't need motivation from a third party because they're confident. They just wake up, kick ass and piss excellence all by themselves automatically because they know they can. And so I really liked seeing that. That made me really happy to hear, because I love hearing that about people, is that they focus on training instead of motivation because motivated, untrained people will still do a bad job for your business. And so that meant that they had to have really good communication. I actually had one of my one on one clients talking to me about using BombBomb as an internal communication system for teaching and training people. So it was really cool to kind of see their thoughts on that. But communication was key to the success of all these people who really felt in their business. And so for this reason I am definitely getting this new app called CompanyCam because I noticed that there were a lot of people using this really awesome tool for communication and it was being used more and more by more companies and a lot of people were also interested. So I don't currently have CompanyCam, but if you don't go check it out, I saw them at a couple of the expos and that Software is great and it's integrating with a lot of different CRMs as well. And your website, lots of cool stuff going on with companycam. And it's great for communicating throughout different teams. But they also have regular involvement, right? They don't just leave things to apps and programs and emails, but they have regular involvement with their people. And when I asked what makes the best people the best is they said that when they were talking to people, the best ones took notes, right? They don't commit to memory that which they can commit to paper. And I'm a huge believer in that. But the biggest thing that I like in a business is process, right? You ask anybody that has done business with me, it's process, process, process, standards and expectations. What is the process? Follow the process is that our process. Don't follow the process, follow the process. It's like it comes out of my mouth. So common. But everyone who felt like they ran their business instead of their business running them had some variation of some of my favorite sayings, right? So these people were some of my favorite ones to talk to. But one of the things that I always say, and they had some variation of it was time kills deals. They all had processes in place to make sure they could respond to leads quickly. Because remember, this conversation was about struggles in marketing. And one of the first things I would say is, well, what is your lead assignment process? What is your lead handling process? What is your lead response time? And they would say, oh no, we were respond super quickly. They would have that part nailed down, right? So when we were trying to find where the leaks were happening in their marketing, this wasn't it. But a lot of the ones who maybe were getting adequate leads but still didn't feel like their business was kind of really in control. I said, well, what is your lead response times? Like, oh man, like it's, you know, we try our best and this and that. And they didn't have a system in place to make sure that they could deliver on fast response times. And time kills deals. And that was we used to say in the car business was time kills car deals, right? So people want fast, timely, accurate, informed responses. And so especially in today's world, right? I mean, you can Google, people don't want to wait to go to the doctor. They go on WebMD and defer, you know, to kind of exchange a Google search for a medical degree and assume they have cancer. I mean, that's how bad we are, right? Is we just go to Google for everything. So people expect sponsors like that when I asked how they handled their customers, right? Maybe they were kind of having attrition with customer satisfaction, you know, how are they handling people to make sure that business was continuing to run well. And they all had some variation of this, which is that they took care of heat customers and then everything else. So problems were always handled first. If they woke up, if there was a problem that went to the top of the list, they never put off to do something tomorrow that which they could complete today. It was always, if there was heat, deal with it right away, right? Then they would focus on taking care of customers at that point, then they would take care of everything else. And so the companies that were looking at my coaching or my one on one programs were just trying to see if they had time in the everything else section. But they would not take away time from dealing with customer problems or with, you know, maintaining their active customer base. When I said, you know, how do you handle those problems? The big thing was, is that they get things handled right away, you know, if they had it. I said, well, how do you handle customer problems? Or you know, if you have a complaint, what do you do? They said, you know, we get on the phone, we don't get off until they're happy, or we touch it once and it's done right, or we do it right the first time, right? So some kind of saying like that came out quite a bit. And that's one of my sayings is touch it once and be done. If you're going to do something, touch it, finish it, be done, don't create this long to do list of things that are half done, right? You can't be half pregnant, so you can't be half done. Something just touch it once and be done. And they all focused on the details, right? If they took care of the little things, the big things took care of themselves. And that's another thing that I so often breed and with my everybody from my roofers to the salespeople, every business I've been involved in is that don't worry about these big overarching things. If you just take care of the little stuff, the big stuff usually takes care of itself. And if it doesn't, then it becomes heat and you deal with it and you just touch it once, it'd be done. And so that's why I love saying expect what you inspect. And I actually through my calls heard a new way to say this, is that people don't do what you expect, they do what you inspect. And I actually kind of like their way of saying it better because it focuses on having a strict adherence to the process in their business and they had very clear standards and expectations, whereas mine was more about a self directed thing. It's about don't expect anything to go right. I just assume everybody's around you as an incompetent ninny and I can only expect what I inspect. And it was more of a personal guidance, but that was more of a company thing, is that people don't do what you expect, they do what you inspect. So this was something that they taught their foremen, that they taught their sales managers, they taught their project managers, they taught their experience inspection people that, you know, that, that to always expect what you inspect or you know, their variation of it. And the ones who took my course, they had all these things in their business. They just didn't have it in their marketing. Right. They didn't have clear standards and expectations or processes for their marketing. Right. They didn't know how to hold their marketing people accountable. Their Google guy, their SEO guy, their Facebook guy, the social media marketing girl, the, the, you know, they didn't know how to hold the newspaper accountable. They didn't know what the Google guys adwords were doing. They didn't understand the metrics. Right. They don't have a clear an expectation for them. So then they kind of felt like it was just they were running them. That kind of led into discussions about how are they tracking their sales and marketing. And every single company that knew they were running it, every single one of them had a CRM that was set up professionally. Everyone 100% without exception. There was zero variance from here. So if you don't have a CRM, you definitely need to be looking into a program like Job, Nimbus, Accu, Lynx Contractors Cloud. There's a lot of great small solutions available. I'm working on a couple little tools myself that none of these offer that I want in my business. So I'm actually building something. I spent $8,000 last year building just one thing to try and help create a clear system and process in my business that I couldn't find in any of these other softwares that I could plug in. At the end of the day, it's about having a good system. When we start, I mean we built our company to the first million dollars in sales off of three sheets of paper. But we were militant about those three sheets of paper CRM and we combined it with our project management software and it got us to our first million, you know what I mean? And it wasn't until after that that I really knew that we had to scale. But I mean, the point is that you have to have a system and then you have to have processes of working within the system and then you have to be militant about it. I mean, this is no magic, right? This is just good business. In fact, a lot of what you hear and this you're going to find in a lot of great business books. I mean, one book that I really love in the first chapter of Good to Great, it talks about organizational discipline combined with the entrepreneurial spirit is the alchemy of Great Performance. This is a book that studies all the companies that last 100 years, multiple CEOs, several recessions. Why do these companies last through all of this? And it was the difference between good companies and great companies. And that was one of the foundations is organizational distribution combined with the entrepreneurial spirit is the alchemy of great performance. So before you worry about getting more leads, before you want to hire me or hire another guy or take one of my courses or download an ebook, you know, focus, are you maybe needing to do more with the leads you have? Because a lot of companies are letting things slip through the cracks and that's what I really want you guys to focus on. This week while you're waiting for the next episode to come out is look at your business and see if you can tighten up the processes. See if you can create some clear standards and expectations for the people in your business. And if you talk and have really good communication with your people and you see them taking notes and you know they're not struggling to be average or failing to show improvement, they really, they really want to get better and be a part of this business and they get the vision. Well then you need to work with those people to find out if you need another person in another seat on the bus and get the right person in that, get them in the right seat, make sure the people you have are in the right seats and then get your bus going in the right direction. I'll see you here next week. Thank you so much for listening. See you. I'll. I really appreciate your patience with the episodes. I am now going to be three episodes ahead and I'm going to stay at least two episodes ahead going forward. So you will never be waiting on me for great content. I so, so, so value your guys attention and I don't want to rip you guys off with not providing more episodes on a weekly schedule that you can depend on because again, consistency is key. Expect what you inspect. I have to hold myself consistent. So I have a process now for my podcast and I'll be militant about following those processes and meeting your standards and expectations. We'll see you here again next week. Thank you. Thanks for listening guys. Remember, you always stick around to the end for the free stuff and this week's episode is no different. Until March 31st, you can go to roofingbusinesspartner.com videotool to get a free 14 day trial with no credit card required of the video tool that we're using in my companies to get our customers that wow factor of a personal connection.

Early in the process.

And what do we know about customers that are amazed with your good service? They are much better customers. So check out the show notes or go to roofingbusinesspartner.com videotool and don't forget if you take a screenshot on your phone of the podcast playing tag me in it roofingbusinesspartner with the hashtag teachfirst sellsecond. Ask me any question and you'll get an answer as soon as I see it please. Plus one lucky listener each month will receive something special straight from me. I look forward to your posts and make sure you come back next week for part two of this series and have a stellar week.