How to Hire & Train Inside Sales for Roofing?

Hey, roofing company owners, what if I told you that every Wednesday I sit down with real roofing business owners and we solve the problems that are holding them back from scaling. This week I'm talking with Drake Miller. He runs Mountainside Light and he asked one of the most important questions you could ever ask as a business owner. How do I hire and train someone to sell like I do? This is exactly what Winning Wednesday is all about. Real people, real businesses, real result. If you want free coaching like this, join us live next Wednesday and bring your toughest business challenge. Let's win together.

So this is usually where people, someone in the room gets to ask a question and they get basically a full hour of free consulting. So somebody better take advantage of it. There we go. Drake, what do you got?

So, like next year, kind of one of my main goals is I'm going to hire either one or two positions remote, which will be inside sales of some sort that will basically deal with basic customer responses that I do that I think could probably be done by someone else. It's not that complex, you know, do a little change or whatever, answer some basic questions. How do I go about like articulating and putting into a way where it's repeatable what I do to sell a lights job?

I like that question. So the best thing to do do is to tell them and then show them and then do it with them. Then they do it with you watching and then they do it and teach others. First you got to teach them how you do it. Like this is how I do it. But they're not going to learn much from that. But you at least need them to know what to look for when they end up in the situation. Then you're going to show them. So that's where you like role play. You role play scenarios. And then they do it alone with grace for failure. And then they teach others. Is like the format now to try and figure out what that looks like and how to guide it. You can do something like this where you create a visual flow of your sales process. So this is the RBP sales process. These are the main things that we sell. And that's like when you're cold calling. The first thing is it starts with like mindset, right? Which is your cold calling. Roofers, they're busy, they're gonna tell you go away, they're gonna hang up on you. That's life. Make at least 150 calls a day, ideally 250 calls a day. Now first thing you wanna do is get to the decision maker. So there's some ways to do that. Then if the decision maker picks up the phone, then you have to try and find a way to get through the first 15 seconds.

So.

So here's a script for that. I've seen an immediate improvement by just practicing this word for word. Cause it'll be like, hey, Drake, how you been? It's Adam from roofing business partner. How you been doing? Hey, I know it's a Friday afternoon and no one likes a cold call, but if you gimme 30 seconds, I'll tell you why I'm calling. After that, if you're not interested, you can hang up. Does that sound fair? And the whole idea is that the inflection of your voice goes, question, question. Makes them feel like, hey, Drake, how you been? They're like, you know, kind of like, is this a friend? Because you're trying to make them move into their thinking slow brain. And then you're like, it's Adam from roofing business partner. And then does that sound fair? Is that unreasonable? Because you want to know to be a yes. So role play is huge. So you kind of visually map it out. If they say yes to this, like, you can talk for 30 seconds. Well, then now you have to get through the next 30 seconds. From there, you're going to get all the objections. Not interested. What's the cost? Send me an email. How does it work? We're working with someone. I'm not ready to make any changes. And you have to say, these are the word tracks to use. Now, they don't memorize them right away. You know what I mean? Like, you have to practice them. But until they're in this situation, they're not going to know how to get through it. So you kind of have to teach them the what do you say? And this is why. What do you say? And this is why. What do you say? And this is why. And then this is the next step. So then the same thing goes for, like, how I go. Because then after they book a call, then this is where I show up on the call and it's like, okay, how do I work with a customer? Right. Basically, it's like this. What are all the outcomes? And then immediately salespeople feel a little more empowered when they at least know, like, what could happen. And so this is a good place to start. And then it's again, you teach them this. Like, the first thing I do is this, right? I could teach them this framework. Now you sit beside me and listen to me while I call people. So then I'LL call roofers in front of them, and I'll be like, see? See how that happens? See how this happens. See why they hung. And I have to say, like, I'm Billy from roofing business partner, because I don't want to use my name. Because they'll say, oh, it's because you're Adam sand now you do it with me watching. And so then they go through it, and I'm like, nope, in the first 10 seconds, you sound like a beta male. Try again. And then they do it with grace for failure. You review what they did, and then eventually they just do it.

It would probably be reasonable, you know, just old conversations and show them what I did and why and that kind of thing, too.

Yep. Also, when it comes to calls, you can save calls to a playlist. So in my HubSpot, I go here, I go to calls. If I go here, then I can go to is, and they change where she is. There go playlists. And so we have, like, sales calls that went amazing. These are feedback calls, Michael's calls to be reviewed. Right. And so we have these, you know, transconnected calls. These are, like, ways for us to, like, leave feedback and, like, you can leave comments, but then you can come into the call and actually give feedback on how the call went.

Okay, that makes sense.

This is where we can save playlists of things that went well.

How do I choose the kind of person I want to hire? Like, do I want someone with sales experience? Do I not want someone with sales experience?

Yeah, you want someone with sales experience, but someone who's more of a farmer than a hunter. They're the person who's like, the customer is the person who said, no, I need more details. So you want someone who feels inclined to give the details. So these are the kind of people who do more send selling. Right. Where you send them things that help sell it for you. So you send, like, videos. They're usually more of a discerning buyer that wants more information. So this has to be a person who's comfortable sending them more information, but then also staying on top of their pipeline, I guess.

My next question is for inside sales. Like, how should I work that with? Like, from what I understand, I should pay some sort of KPI bonus or.

So with the inside sales role, what responds? Well, you want to take bare necessities off the table because you're not hiring a hard closer, necessarily. So you want enough to take stability off their list of concerns. So that's what your baseline pay is, is enough to take stability off their list of concerns. Then you want to give them a daily dopamine hit, right? Like if I pick up the phone and get a customer to say, yes, I get dopamine. And so that is usually worth like 1% of the value of a deal. Then you want to give them something to shoot for. So then based on previous sales data, you say, okay, in this month when I spent this much on advertising, I had this much in sales. Let's say it's 30 deals in October, right? Well then if they get to 30 deals, then they get 1% of all of the deals. So then it's like if they're 28 and it's the 26th of the month, they will claw with their fingernails and work 13 hour days to get those last two deals because they know, oh, that's worth X number of dollars.

So you're saying like a threshold bonus, essentially where they get.

Yeah.

You don't think that would incentivize them to just go after the cheaper deals because it might be easier to close.

See, that's where the perfection of the other pieces, because they do, they want to get to 30 deals. But if they get to 30 and they did it all on cheap deals, then their 1% volume bonus isn't worth anything. So that's it. Cool.

That gives me a better idea of how to structure it.