Inside + Outside Sales Tips for Roofers: From Lone Wolf to Winning Team

You want to be involved in training and developing your inside sales teammate, no different than they're going to help develop you. You have a teammate now who's going to be helping you with sales. We don't view the inside sales and the outside sales as a team. And we look at them as like these two independent people that are working on the same thing together. This means being on a team is something new for salespeople. You previously, as an outside salesperson, you're a lone wolf, right? You keep what you kill. You're on your own. You don't have to work with someone else to get to the same outcome. You may need to invest in some personal and professional development so that you can with a teammate. There are different ways to handle a negative outcome. There's some kind of negative outcome that happens with you and your inside sales teammate, and your answer is to walk into their office and pour their coffee on their head and tell them they're an idiot. That's probably not going to get you a great outcome, right? That's not great leadership. Now, there's ways that you could do it better, and in doing that, you will likely have a better outcome. You'll have to invest in some of your personal, professional development if you're going to be on a team. I've worked with some extremely talented people in finance and M and A. They're so, so, so, so smart, but no eq. Their favorite are tennis and golf. You know what I mean? Solo sports. And then there's people whose favorite sports was like football or basketball and they were actually good at playing on a team. This is a big part of what makes this work. And so part of that is to treat every deal the same, right? You got to run the play, right? When you're on a team sport, you got to run the play. You don't get to call your own audibles on the field all the time. And that means you're going to assume the sale and document the site conditions as if you're going to get the sale and not just like, oh, that was a repair. Oh, these people with that last name. Never buy. I was just a trailer park house. Like, all those little excuses. No, we want to document the site conditions as if we're going to sell, sell the job. Use that to empower the customer to make a decision. The byproduct of doing this is that you do this and then you're going to present value in excessive price, which is going to make the customer feel like they're getting more for Their money, then we have to get consistent. Asking for the sale and being effing good at it. This is some basic stuff in terms of sales. Like, oh yeah, of course we got to ask for the sale, Adam, but are you good at it? Like that's something that you owe it to your teammate to do. And then communicating with your inside sales after every demo, this is key. This is the first thing that falls is the communicating with your inside sales after every demo. So this is the thing I instruct CEOs to watch for. And then you want to know the objection and know the hot buttons because when you walk out, you want to be able to communicate that to the inside sales. So if those are our responsibilities, what skills do we need? Well, there's leadership and I don't just mean me leadership. There's two levels of leadership. Me leadership is your ability to control the outcomes of you. We leadership is the ability to control the outcomes of others. You have to develop some of that we leadership. If it wasn't obvious, this is sales. So you're going to have sales skills. And part of that is being time aware, understanding that your inside sales is counting on you to keep your sales process tight and concise and predictable. So that means you have to be able to follow a process and then use a cell phone to take pictures. And I can't force you, but recording a video on a cell phone is another thing. You have to be able to climb a roof or fly a drone or somehow do an inspection so you can assess the roof damage, diagnose leaks, think three dimensionally, right? Like the water runs downhill. I used to own a roofing company. I started not as a roofer. I had a best friend who was a roofer and I was just in business and sales. When I learn how to diagnose leaks, he just taught me like, think three dimensionally. Think like, you know, water runs downhill. So where's water going to go? How's water going to get in? And then the best part of sales, at least in my opinion, is objection handling overturning objections. I love that part of the sales process. So now there's five steps to your success in this. One is you're going to push an on the way button in a rivy. So if you're on the RBP system, you're going to have a tool called arrive. It creates this uber lake experience. The key detail here, and this is what I mean when I say like follow the process. There's a key detail. We don't push the on the Way button and then drive to Starbucks and grab a coffee and then go into the gas station, fill up the gas and then drive to the property. Because when we push an on the way button, it tells the homeowner we're on the way. And then they think you're gonna be there in 15 minutes. Even if your appointment is at three o' clock and you pushed on the way at three and you're 15 minutes away. So of course you make it three 15 minutes. But because you stop at the gas station and grab a coffee, you're gonna show up at 3:30. Like you're gonna show up at the appropriate time, but the system told your customer you're gonna be there earlier. So it's like little details that matter here. And then you're gonna homeowners and you're going to push a couple more buttons in arriving. Then you're going to document the site conditions in company cam via a checklist, annotate the photos. And I can't force you to it, but record a video walkthrough. We force the company to annotate 70% of the photos. Then you're going to build and present your findings and your proposal. Then you're going to ask for the business, overcome objections and get the deal. Finally, you're going to connect with your inside sales when you get back in your vehicle, before you put the vehicle in drive, you're going to call the inside salesperson. Then you're going to put the navigation in and then you're going to put the truck in reverse. And the reason we say it this way is because I've talked to enough outside salespeople 20 months straight. I went to a different roofing company one month after another month after another month at 20 different roofing companies rolling this out in person. And I've talked to enough outside salespeople to know that this is what happens. You get out of the house, you get into your truck and you feel awkward that you're in the driveway. There's this need to like get out of the driveway. I've asked hundreds of salespeople and I've never heard an example where this happened, where you knew you had this customer, you talked about the spoon collection, you talked about their kids, you felt like you're their grandson, these people love you. And then you get into the truck and you say, you know what? I'm going to be a good little sales guy and I'm going to put my notes in the CRM. So you pull open your laptop and you start Typing. Then the homeowner walks out the door and says, you know what, Billy? We wanted to buy from you, but, man, the fact that you're in our driveway for three minutes is just weird. Not even three minutes. There's never been an example where a homeowner walked out and canceled the deal or said they wouldn't buy from you because you spent a minute in the driveway. But for whatever reason, you feel compelled to get out of the driveway as quickly as possible. So if you don't call before you do that, then what happens? You drive out of the driveway, and now you're going through. You've got suburbia nightmare. You know, you're trying to figure out, little ball runs out the middle of the road, kid jumps out. Like all these things start happening once you're driving. That causes you to not phone. Then you forget. So to prevent it 100%, if we were treating this like we had to prevent it, like our life depended on it, how we do it? Well, we would just say simply, you get out of the house, you take your ladder, you tie it down so it doesn't hit a school bus, you get in your truck, you call the inside sales, you push the navigation, then you put the truck and drive. Because then you can download all the experience of the sale to the inside salesperson, and then you can put on Joe Rogan and do whatever you want after. So that's the commitment we have to make.