Adam Sand argues roofing sales close on the first phone call, not the site visit. Train inside sales to diagnose problems and build trust before the appointment. As you scale, close rates drop unless your reps feel as competent as the founder did, so use clustered routing and short inspector videos to stay recognizable.
So you think your receptionist just needs to answer the phone and book appointments, right?
Wrong.
If your first call isn't building trust and offering real value, you're losing deals before you even get started. Here's the truth about closing more roofing sales and why it all begins before you ever set foot on a roof. Okay, let's break down exactly what an impactful first impression looks like, and I'll show you the specific moves top closing roofing companies are using right from that initial phone call to win trust and and lock in more sales than ever. Here's how you do it.
So we wanna build the relationship with the customer upfront so the customer feels I moved meaningfully towards solving my problem. Not I just called a roofer, got a receptionist and got an appointment, but I've moved in a way that makes me feel like meaningfully moved towards solving my problem. What happens is then they trust the salesperson more and they're a more committed buyer. So we educate a lot of our customers through things like infographics, which, yes, take money and time to, to create this content, but it translates into more sales. When you were a newer company and you're selling $1 million a year and you're the salesperson and you're taking the phone calls and Mary phones and she says, yep, I've got a leak on my garage. And I think it's the roof. And you're like, oh, I got a leak on your garage. That's too bad. What's your name? Oh, my name's Mary. Great. What's your address? 43 Brown Street. Oh, so you live over in the bushels area? Ah, yeah. I'm pretty familiar with the houses over there. Do you have a front attached garage? Yeah. Is it right where, like there's probably a beam or something right there? Yeah, yeah, Actually that's just running down the beam and garage. Okay. So right above that beam is a wall and there's flashing there for where the siding connects with the wall. I think that might be where the problem is. And she goes, you know what, that's interesting you mentioned that. We had the windows done. Awesome. They might not have flashed around the windows properly. It doesn't have to be this exact conversation, but you would have a little mini conversation about mini diagnosis of the issue, demonstrating competence and creating confidence that the person called the right roofer. So then you get off the phone after this little mini conversation, and then you go to the house and you sell the roof and your close rate was like 70%. But then you go, man, I got a business here, I'm going to h some salespeople. And so you hire some salespeople and a receptionist and all of a sudden the close rate goes to 25% and you're like, why did this happen? Salespeople suck. That's what you usually think. What happens is that your business lost that feeling that a customer was dealing with someone that gave them a sense of confidence and they're dealing with somebody competent. You have to get back to that. Which is why Inside sales has to be more than a receptionist. It has to be someone who can have a little conversation about roofing, which requires training. They have to be able to diagnose the problem on the call. The next step to getting sales reps to sell consistently is then being able to set clear expectations, get them help as quickly as possible. So this is from another client account where we were able to jumble together appointments. As they were exploring another market. They were able to jumble together appointments so that they could meet those homeowners where they were. And we're able to say, okay, we're going to get all of the Columbia appointments scheduled on the same day. But then that way the customer knew they were coming. It was a good route. And then we could show up on time to our appointment. We need to be able to show up on time to those appointments. And then the next step is trying to make it so that your salesperson is recognizable when they show up. Trying to get a face, a human face, in front of the customer. And that's done through things like this. So when we used to go around on site, we used to show up and record these videos for our customers. And I'll give you guys a little taste of what those look like right here.
Hi, I'm Joe, an inspector with Oberg Roofing and Remodeling. Here's what you can expect on your free roof inspection today. First, I'm going to get up and take a look at your roof, see the overall condition of the roofing system, see if there's any storm related damages or anything else you need to worry about. And yeah, should take about 15 minutes.
Okay, so now I'm going to go to the next one. I want to show you the consistency.
Should only take me about 30 to 40 minutes. As a roofing specialist, it is my job to provide you with the in depth, unbiased roof inspection.
So this same video has the same shot list. It's picture of a truck driving up. Guy gets out of the truck, close the door. Hi, I'm so and so with such and such. And let me show you what you get with your roof inspection. Then it's walking up the ladder.
I'm going to get up onto a.
Roof, check for any storm related damage and then present my findings and go over that with you. And that is standing on the roof. And they, they do some talking about how thorough inspection works. And we got all the employees to record the same video on the same day. Now this doesn't need to be fancy. You can do this with an iPhone camera, but it's so powerful that Monarch Roofing literally taught us this and gave us the shot list of every camera. So then when they have a person go with their iPhone, it's like, okay, you're a new sales rep, you've passed all the sales training.
Okay, now you gotta go do your.
Roof, your what to expect video. And they go record a what to expect video on a house. And it's the same shot list every time. Car pulling up, getting out of the car. Hi, I'm such so and so from such and such. Let me show you what you get with your free roof inspection. Then go sit on the roof, set up the ladder, record the guy coming up the ladder. I'm going to go do these things, I'm going to come down and tell you what, like what it looks like, then get on the roof, have the guy stand on the roof, read a line and then record some walking around like the whole video is the same. But the idea is that you're just getting your face or your salesperson's face in front of the customer. And it doesn't have to be professionally produced. This is just a value add. Again, value in excessive price. This is a value add that RVP did to justify having me come on site where people paid 250 grand or 200 grand or 180 grand or 160 grand for RV to come out and do this. Platform customers get for a fraction of that. This was one of the things that justified me coming on site was that I could also bring a video crew or hire a local video crew and make this video with your sales team and set this up so you had this process going forward so you could record it with your future sales rep. You want to make sure you're enforcing this process with your sales team and you get adoption that they annotate the photos because you document the damages and then the homeowner goes, it's irrefutable. My roof needs to be done. And the fact that you found all these things means that I inherently trust you for some reason to do a good job. It doesn't mean anything, but it projects a feeling of confidence and competence and gives a better sales experience.
