The Inside Outside Sales Framework That Rules $100M Roofing Companies
Adam Sand breaks down a sales framework for roofing companies scaling to $100M+. The core: split inside and outside roles so field reps focus on inspections while office staff handle quotes and follow-up. Using CompanyCam to annotate photos lifts close rates by 20% and gross profit by several points with just 13 hours of monthly work.
Chapters
The purpose of this class, Outside Sales Introduction to the Framework Excellence, it goes into some of the stuff that was in the Inside Sales, like in the more, I would say, modern or new Inside-Outside Sales courses. So one of the traits that make a great salesperson is that you emotionally invest into your prospects. You go there and you give them your best. Pitch, your best proposal, your best, uh, presentation, and you get rejection more often than you get success. Why would you continue to do that? Well, you have this innate ability to forget, right? To just water off the duck's back, forget a failure, that failure, right? Forget that rejection. Now, the inverse of that problem is that you're also terrible at putting notes in the CRM and you're terrible at staying organized. And I don't mean this about you specifically watching this. I mean, as a general rule, salespeople are not great at pipeline management and CRM and notes because it's all in your head. You connected emotionally with the prospect. It's too much notes to put in. Like, you don't necessarily keep great documentation about that kind of stuff, and it leads to opportunities to forget important details.. And anybody who's been responsible for producing the work of a salesperson has seen firsthand how salespeople forget to mention the porch in the back or the shed that we agreed that we were going to put, you know, we were going to install the leftover bundles on the shed, or that we're going to paint that windowsill at the top or whatever. These little details that, you know, are just the things that come up in your conversation. So we had to solve that problem. And so the best way I found to explain is to play a game. If I was to give you one of two doors to go through, and one of those doors is you get a guy in a chair who's going to help you sell, but you're going to cut your commissions in half. So we're going to take the commission rate from 8% to 4%, or from 5% to 2.5%, or from 10% to 5%, whatever your company does. But you're going to get a guy in a chair who's going to help you and your sales, and you're going to cut the commission in half. Now, just for the record, I'm not advocating for this. I'm just saying, if you were to do that and you're going to cut the commissions in half and you're going to split the remaining half, so you go from 8 to 4 and split the 4 so you each get 2. So that's one door. Or the second door, keep doing exactly what you're doing today, which is where you do all the sales by yourself. What do you think most salespeople choose? This is a little test that I like to go through to make my point. Which is the ABC 123 Challenge. The first thing I want you to do is to time yourself counting from 1 to 10 as fast as you can out loud. And the reason it's out loud is because your mouth can only move so fast, right? You're limited by the speed in which you can say things because you got to enunciate each number. Like, you can't be like, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10." It's got to be saying each number. And I want to— you're going to go as fast as you can in 3, 2, 1, go. Now, most people, it's about 2 seconds, right? 2.1 seconds. I've done this test a zillion times and it's all, it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, something like that. If you've done this, you can, you've qualified to do the next one. You just got to know your ABCs, but I want you to go from A to J as fast as you can. And if English is a second language, do it in your native language, do it in whatever that you're used to speaking because it's the same result. He's saying each letter out loud. In 3, 2, 1, go. Now, most people do the letters a little quicker because when they realize this is a time thing and, you know, sales guys are usually pretty competitive bunch, they're going to do that about 1.8 seconds. So now I just want you to do the same thing you just did. The only rule is you can't quit because you're doing the same thing but together. So you're going to go A1, B2. And we're gonna switch the screens and you're gonna go. 3, 2, 1, go. All right. If it took you this long, it usually means you made a lot of mistakes because the fastest guys ever did it in 14 seconds and they made mistakes. I bet you it's safe to say that whoever did it went A1, B2, C3, D4, E5, and then poof, their brain vacated the building. You can put a 1 in the chat if that was your experience, where whoever was doing it in your room, they went A1, B2, C3, D4, E5, and then stopped being able to think. And then they had to go F6, 7, and G. 7, H, 8, I, 9, J, 10. Like, that's probably how the room went because I, again, I've done this live hundreds of times and there's a reason for this and there's a reason why there's a sales lesson at the end of it because it highlights the problem in sales, which is that the letters are like, or sorry, the numbers are like the inside jobs, the things that can only be done from inside the office, right? They are things where it's like you have a microphone, you have a headset, you have a keyboard, you have fast internet, you maybe have two screens. Boys can do it, girls can do it, people in wheelchairs can do it. It doesn't matter, right? But then there are jobs that are invariably outside jobs. These are jobs you have to do outside. You have to get on a roof and measure the pipe boots to those kinds of things. So those are like the letters and this experience that you've had as a salesperson. And again, I can't see any of you, but you guys can discuss amongst yourselves if this is real life. All right. So you're up on a roof, you're on step 14 of a 30-point inspection or whatever your company says your inspection is, and you're going through, you get a phone call, right? So you're up on the roof and you get this phone call and you recognize the phone number. And you feel like you got to answer it. You feel like you know that this is somebody that you've done business with or you got an estimate out to. So you pick up the phone. It's Gertrude. Gertrude's the roof you quoted last week. And Gertrude tells you that, "Oh, Adam, I'm really excited to hear from you. I wanted to talk to you about my roof." I don't know why I'm doing the funny voice today. It's always harder when I can't see the people in the room. But Gertrude wants to know if you can answer a few questions because she's thinking she's about to make a decision on her roof. And you, of course, now feel this bird in the hand versus bird in the bush problem. You're on a roof, you know, you're with a customer, you know, you're at the tip, the time clock is ticking and your customer is going to get annoyed if you take too long. But Gertrude's right there and she's ready to buy a roof and you already quoted a roof and she didn't make a decision when you were there. And I really, really want to get the deal. And so you have this like little, this little dilemma you have to deal with, right? And so you decide to keep going with Gertrude and she says, well, she wants to change the color. You were originally quoting her brown, she wants gray. So now you got to quickly scramble Get into your CRM, change the color. And then you're like, okay, is that good? She's like, well, actually also I have this rose bush on the back of my house and that rose bush was given to me by my grandmother. And that grandmother got the rose bush from Elvis. And if you kill that rose bush, it'll be like killing my grandmother. You gotta protect this rose bush. This is a true story from a company called My Contracting Pro in Memphis, Tennessee, where Graceland is, where Elvis grew up. And you're like, okay. And so you jump into company cam, you're trying to hope you took the pictures of the rose bush and you build a box around it. It or something like that. And so you're trying to put something in CompanyCam to say to protect it. You go, okay, is that everything you need, Gertrude? She goes, no, this other guy was at $17,174 and you're at $17,500. Is there any way you could do this for $17,000? And you jump back in and you're like scrolling in SumoQuote or whatever your quoting tool and you're trying to adjust the margin slider. You're trying to see if you can do that deal. And you think, ah, I think I could get it. Would you sign if I did? Yep. Okay. So she agrees to sign. You send her off to signature. Now you're like, oh, you're back on this roof in real life. And all of a sudden now, where were you in the inspection? What step were you on? And this is something that happens to people when they're trying to manage their pipeline out in the field. Most of the salespeople in the room probably wouldn't have done all that stuff with Gertrude on the phone. They probably would've said the famous last words of every salesperson ever, which is, I'll get that to you as soon as I get back in the office. I'm just on a roof right now, Gertrude, but I'll get back back to you, and then you forget, right? I was a salesperson for a roofing company too. I owned it, and I did the same thing. You'd be ordering material, and you'd be— you're like, you're doing it all on your own at first, right? And you're trying to do all the things, and it gets you— it gets you into trouble. So what's the sales lesson? Like, all these cute little math tricks and stuff— what's the sales lesson in all of this? Is that these are problems that exist in the roofing industry. We just left it be. And so I kind of This new inside-outside sales model I call the new hotness, and the old way where salespeople do everything is the old and busted model because it is. It dates back to a time when there was no Google Maps, there was no Eagle View, there was no Street View. Like, you couldn't look at the house from Street View and get an idea as to what this house looked like. You had to draw it on, uh, graph paper. Like, you had to draw the roof out and draw this 17 feet of rake and this 32 feet of drip and the cap's 32 feet as well, and there's this pie on the front and that triangle is this much and triangles this much and 40 feet of valley, and you'd have to draw it out and then calculate the squares manually. And then people started making spreadsheets that evolved from there into spreadsheets. But then you still couldn't see the Google Street View. You couldn't order an EagleView. You had to trust that when your sales guy went out to a house and told somebody it was $15,000, you had to hope that they were right because you couldn't look at it from the ground or from, from the, from the satellite and make some determination. You didn't even have Google Maps to get there. So then if you— if this house is in the middle of nowhere with like bad directions and you had to go past the big red tree and go past the red farm door and then turn right at the rabbit, you know, or some stupid directions like that. Trying to teach multiple people how to get to that house, it was a nuisance. Everything was on a paper folder that went on a folder holder on the wall and went across the wall in the production office. It became more and more expensive to run a company the bigger it grew. And when I was working for these companies in the States that were, bigger companies, they were trying to find a way to make the company run more affordably, the bigger and bigger it grew. So we had to re— recognize that we were doing things the way we'd always done them because that's the way we always did them. And so it was an old and busted model and we needed a new way. So after we kind of figured this out, we kind of did some math to try and figure how would we explain this to people when we come into a roofing company? And so we said, well, if you had 60 seconds to close as many deals, and you're doing it the old way, right, where you're doing everything and you're having the context switching. That's why you fail at E5 and struggle to think, is because at E5 your brain is switching between number context and letter context. That's the plight of a salesperson, right, is these, these little things happen throughout the salesperson's day that switch them off of their context. And there's this book called The One Thing written by Gary Halpert And he talks about how it takes you like a third of the time that it takes you to do a task to re-switch back to the context, which the math works out when you do the ABC123 thing, because those two things take you 4 seconds when they're separate, right? ABCDEFGHIJ, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. The minute you have to combine them, it takes 14 seconds. It takes more than 3 times as long because your context switching. So when you do this, if you have 60 seconds to get as many deals, just like you have a month to get as many deals, a full cycle salesperson gets 14 seconds per deal, right? To go A1, B2 all the way. You end up with 6, 4 deals. So here you, with 2 salespeople, you end up with 8 deals in a month. So then we have to think, well, how much is a roof? Because in this example, if you're just doing 1 to 10 and A to J, 2 seconds, 2 seconds, 2 seconds, 2 seconds, they're going to get 30 deals. So if I ask you how much a roof is, most people say $16,000. Because here, if you have 8 deals times $16,000 each, that's $128,000 in sales. If you're doing 10% commission for the easy math, that's a $12,800 split between both reps, right? Because they each sold the exact same, same number of deals. Now, in the new hotness model, You have 30 deals times $16,000 each, which is $480,000 in sales. Now, again, I'm not advocating for this, but if they cut the commissions in half and they split them, well, it would be 5% commission for the inside and the outside. That would be splitting $24,000 in commissions. So again, I'm not advocating for it, But this is math that we've proven that when this system is adopted and people believe in it and they see the vision of it and they work within it and they choose to work as a team, like how the Navy SEALs work as a team, not because the boss said you're a team, but because you treat yourselves like sales Team Six out there to crush, crush as many bad guys that don't want to buy roofs as possible. When you treat it like that level of a team, this happens and everybody makes more money and the company can shave off a point or two, not because the owner wants to buy a new boat, but because owner wants to buy more leads because he sees this, he sees the writing on the wall that the game is getting more difficult. The customer, there's people who are willing to invest more money to get a customer and they have to find a way to fund customer acquisition and brand building. And the other piece of this is that it just makes sense because you get that teammate. If you remember this show, Spider-Man, there's a scene where Ned, right, his friend finds out that he's Spider-Man. He's like, hey, can I be your guy in the chair? Spider-Man's like, what do you mean, guy? Well, you're the hero, but like, you know, that person's like on the computer and telling you like where the bad guys are going on the tracking device that's on the map. Like, can I be your guy in the chair? And he's like, yeah, sure. And the reason it has this cute scene where he gets to be that guy in a chair But we realize that every hero has one. Batman had Lucius Fox, and before that he had Alfred. Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, he had Luther Stuckle. And as the whole world got older and Tom Cruise stayed the same age, he also got Benji. He had two. And then even Tony Stark has Jarvis, right? So then what does an outside sales rep still do? They drive to their appointments, they use Arrivee or a field service management to process, to create an Uber-like experience. They follow the inspection process to the letter to set up the sale and build a foundation of a great production experience through the pictures that they take and the setting of expectations with the customers. And they communicate with inside sales after their appointment. They do a post-inspection debrief after every single appointment. And what this allows us to do is focus on closing deals. And so for anybody who's getting introduced to this framework or being being reintroduced to this framework, I have to ask you a question. Is it possible or probable that if you had a guy or girl in a chair working 8 hours a day to skillfully follow up on your appointments, a clone of yourself, like skillfully, the definition, if it's open for interpretation, skillfully means as good as you at follow-up. If they were doing that 8 hours a day with a shared incentive to close deals, would you make more money? Is it possible or is it probable? But in the end, it doesn't matter because we have the data. I've had numerous examples, but the example I like to share the most is one of our customers last year. He had an outside sales rep, sold like $2.8 million or something like that. And near the end of the year, he did the same thing that a lot of outside salespeople do. They went from 10% to 8% commission and they were paying the inside sales, the inside sales program.. And at the end of the year, the outside sales rep looked at all the sales he had and then multiplied it by 2% to think of all the money he didn't get. And then he said, I don't want this inside sales rep anymore. Look at how much money I gave them. We went in and showed that outside sales rep, here's the time where your inside sales rep spent 18 minutes on the phone with Joe Biden's cousin, some 82-year-old man that needed 18 minutes to figure out how to sign a Sumo quote. Here's the call that after you did the finance application in the house and the ladies personal information had been flagged because she had had identity theft in the past. She actually had to be guided through this whole process to actually be able to submit her finance application. Took like 2 more phone calls and 20 minutes of talking on the phone. Here's a lead that came in at 6:45 in the morning before you even got out of bed that she was already responding to and booking an appointment. Here's how you got on 4 appointments per day. And while you were at that appointment is when that Joe Biden-like dude called in asking for the, for the 18 minutes of help on the quote, but you were on a roof when that guy phoned, because here's the CompanyCam picture you took at that exact time. Nope. Still doesn't believe he needed it. I would've called him back. Quits. And just a few weeks later, he comes back. And I've seen this play out several times. I've seen one company lose 15 sales reps. Because they didn't want to do this, and they hired back 8 and doubled their sales. So what happens to the commission, the dollars in the bank account, when 8 people replace 15, sales double, and the commission's only 20% less? 200% more sales, 20% less commission. It's a lot more money for the salespeople. Because we're just modernizing. And so that's the, again, the introduction for the framework. And it's mostly for the sake of the outside salespeople. We're into Outside Sales Class 2. And so bottom line in front, what are we talking about? We're talking about how to sell like a doctor. We're talking about tools that you have to have a process for. And I'm gonna give you a process and you have to adopt it because adoption's everything. We're gonna talk about annotation, edit mode. And then if a picture's worth 1,000 words, a video's worth 1 million. I got a few little bonus points points that I'm going to add into this. So today's class is about how do you close more deals when you're in an environment where you're selling the same shingles installed the same way by the same people using the same tools in the same amount of time for more or less the same price. If I go to a roofing company and say, hey, what's better about your experience? They don't have mood lighting. They don't decide to do it at night. They don't put cheerleaders and, you know, topless ripped dudes up on the roof. So there's no nothing that changes there. Like the shingles that you're installing, anybody can buy them. Like you can buy them at a Home Depot. In fact, Lowe's owns one of the building supply houses. Like it's not the product, the way you install it. Like there's always this argument like we install quality, but let's be honest here, okay? You don't control the manufacturing of the product that you buy and you don't control the install of the product that you put on because your installers are probably right. If you're worried about the current political climate now, people are getting, you know, ICE is running around getting people. I got a guy the other day willing to sell his roofing company for less than he was before because he's scared because he knows 5 crews that got hit up by ICE at a restaurant because their roofing trucks were in the parking lot. So if you're worried about that, it's because your crews you don't own. In fact, they don't even have the right to be here in some cases. Like, I'm not getting political about it. I'm saying that they could be deported at any given point in time. Much of the crews that exist out there in the roofing industry, and you don't control who they hire, you don't control how they train, you don't control what their, you know, what their employment practices are. You don't control what the wages they pay. You subcontract. So you're not controlling the install. And at best, you say it has to be installed to manufacturer specification, pass an inspection. So after the work is done, you have to make an arbitrary decision as to whether you want to tell the homeowner you're ripping the roof off again because it wasn't done right, or if you're like, it's waterproof, And so for the most part, you're installing it the same way and they're using the same tools, right? As of right now, nobody owns a robot that does the roof. Everybody's using a Metabo nail gun or a Bostitch nail gun, or it's like most of them are using the same tools. It takes the same amount of time. Nobody's doing it 1/10 the time. Nobody's doing it, taking 10 times as long and justifying it. And nobody can charge 10 times the price for an asphalt shingle roof and get away with it for very long. And nobody can get it done for 1/10 the price. Like, there is no Louis Vuitton and Walmart of GAF shingles. Like, yeah, you can buy a metal roof, but then same thing. Anybody can buy the metal. Same people are installing it using the same tools and more or less the same amount of time for more or less the same price. So how do you possibly expect to close more deals when you're selling same, same, same, same, same? The only thing you have is a better sales experience. That's it. That's all you have. And if that's the only thing you have that is truly differentiating you is your better sales experience. There's the company story too, but you can't control the company story 'cause you didn't create it if you're in sales. So the only thing you have working in your favor is a better sales experience. That's all. Therefore, everything should be about how do you optimize the customer experience, everything. And one of those things that still works today and will probably work for the foreseeable future is learning how to sell like a doctor, because the only other sales experience that matters is speed. People buying it online. And if they can buy it online, it's proof that we don't need salespeople. And that's not good for salespeople. So I'm here advocating for salespeople, but I'm also holding your feet to the fire because the strongest steel is cast in the hottest fire. And it means that you have to prove that sales is necessary. If sales is required to sell a roof, then you should be the best salesperson in the market selling roofs. And the measure of that is the experience, which is that sales is seduction, not rape. It's a dance, not a wrestling match. You have to provide value in excess of price, and you have to help people buy a roof, not make people buy from you. If you can truly embody that, you will be wildly successful. And so this is where I like to bring up a volunteer. If I don't get anybody, it's gonna be really weird to explain this. So Trevor, you work at True Grit, and so the story that we're gonna kind of have to live in for for a minute is that you as a salesperson don't get healthcare coverage, but you've made some money and you decide to go to Hawaii and go on a surfing trip, okay? And you fell down and you hurt your knee. And so you have to go into the doctor. The doctor's going to do an X-ray, all right? And so then you walk in and this is what the doctor shows you. Says, "Okay, Trevor, as you can see here on the left, you hurt your knee. So what happened was you tore your ACL." And your ACL is now causing your knee to be out of alignment, which is causing that pain you're feeling in the middle of your knee. And so what we need to do is small surgery and we're going to repair the ACL. Now it's going to take some time to heal. So you're going to do 6 weeks of physio where they're going to get your knee back in shape. And about 6 weeks, you should be right as rain. Now, I understand you don't have any healthcare, so I have to let you know that the price is $10,000. Now, I also have to tell you that you do have a right to get a second opinion. I just want to know, would you like to book in for the surgery, or do you think you need to think about it, get a second opinion? Probably get a second opinion, right? Most people do decide that. Well, hey, we'll follow up with you in a couple of days. So Trevor, you're going to go to another doctor. I'm not saying they all look the same, but in Hawaii they do. And so you go to your next doctor and he says, okay Trevor, as you can see here, you tore your ACL and that's why your knee hurts, is because what happened is that when that tore, you have this pinching, and that's the pain that you're feeling and the pressure that you have because this is grinding on the knee. And so what we need to do is we need to make two small incision points and we're going to pull the ACL back down and reattach it. That's not going to heal perfectly. It'll be a simple one-day surgery, but then you're going to have to do 6 weeks of physio because we have to gradually strengthen that up again. And so our support team here in the office is going to call the local physio place next near where you live. They're going to book you in for physio twice a week, and that's where you're going to just gradually restrengthen this knee. In about 6 weeks, if you follow your program, uh, you should be able to be right back surfing, doing whatever you want. Now, I understand you don't have healthcare, so I have to let you know the price for this surgery is $12,000, and I know that I'm your second opinion. So do you think you'd like to book in for the surgery, or do you think you want to go back to your other doctor? Uh, probably book in for the surgery. Why? Because, uh, you're a lot more descriptive and knowledgeable than the other doctor. Right. Now, good chance that both doctors are knowledgeable. They're doctors. So it really has to do with how I explained it, right? Yeah, correct. Now here's the funny thing. I'm a liar and this is a perfectly good knee. All right. When I want to create this environment of selling like a doctor, when I want to explain this, what I did was I Googled a perfectly good knee X-ray. And this is actually an image of a tennis player who played tennis for 20 years, and they're amazed that his knees were still perfect. So when I do this test, Trevor, one of two things happens. Sometimes the sales guy wants to put me in his shoes a little bit and he goes, oh, I do that. And then my customer says they want to go with the cheaper guy. There's a little temptation to do that. Maybe a little bit, right? And so when I said your injury was here, as you can see here on the left, Was it your left or the doctor's left? Oh, it should be my left, right? But it's actually the doctor's left. When you said— let's say you did do that and you said, I'm going to go, I'm going to, I'm going to play like my customers and I'm going to say I'm going to go with the cheaper guy. When the cheaper doctor said that you're going to go for 6 weeks of physio, was it where you lived or where did you have to stay paying $400 a day for a hotel in Hawaii? I didn't ask. Yeah, you didn't ask. You didn't know. Was it 6 weeks of physio twice a week or once a week? I didn't ask. You didn't ask. You didn't know. And so this only stands as a way to prove that the sales experience matters. Because if you had the $12,000, yeah, you probably would go with this doctor because you actually know what's going to happen. And he answered all the questions. So that same thing comes into how we sell roofs. So thank you very much, Trevor. I appreciate you being here. So Annotated photos are what tell a story about the roof. You know what this is. Your production manager knows what this is, but homeowners don't know what this is. And the goal that you should have when you go into a sales experience is when you're taking your pictures with CompanyCam, I want you to think about this one thing. I want to get my customer to say, huh, I never would have thought of that. That's your goal. When you're taking pictures, you want to make a customer say out loud, huh, I never would've thought of that. Because when they do, what you just did was you made it so they took their hat off and they abdicated their power to you. You are now helping them buy a roof. You are not making them buy a roof. You are now seducing them, not the other thing. You are dancing with them. You're not wrestling with them. The goal of your Company Cam photo-taking activity is to get them to say, huh, I never would've thought of that. And if we know that the only thing that separates you from everybody else is the sales experience, then you should want as many opportunities to do that and to be as effective as possible. And annotations are the most effective way to make sure that even if a knee is perfect, you could tell somebody that it's broken if you put some circles and lines on it. And so this is an example of what that looks like. So when you take a picture of the front of the house, a homeowner doesn't know what you're taking a picture of. Is it the driveway looking for cracks? Is it these cornice returns that take time? Is it this weird flashing in here? They don't know. When you take a picture of this, what do you think you want the homeowner to see? Because sometimes people think it's the wall flashing up here, and I'm like, that wouldn't be a very good place to take a picture of that. We're probably talking about this rain diverter, right? And the absence of gutters. Maybe this is a way to upsell gutters by talking about, hey, is this little pan here— is this because like every time you walk out the back when the rain's coming down, you just didn't— you wanted like a hole to walk through? Like, is that why that little pan is there? Because you should probably have gutters. Like, there's probably a reason why that thing is there, and we should talk about it. If there was no annotations on this one, right, like, what do you think we're talking about here? Could it be the gutters? Could it be this wacky flashing diverter thing that was built by somebody at some point? Or was it this blistering or this, this granule loss on the shingles right here? Homeowners don't know what you're taking a picture of. It could be that this cap is loose. It could be— well, it looks like there's drip edge there. Same thing with this picture. Are we talking about the flashing? Are we talking about protecting the windows? Are we talking about covering the bushes? What about this one? When you take this picture in CompanyCam, what are you talking about? Same thing with this one. Why are you taking a picture of this? Is it preexisting damage or are you inferring that there's hail damage to the screen? What about this one? What do you think the customer wonders when you start talking about pulling 4,000 pounds of shingles off the roof? Do you think they maybe wonder how you're going to protect the pool if you don't have a plan to protect the pool and the pool gets full of granules and nails? Is the best answer you got? What Trevor said? Well, he didn't ask. He didn't know that he had to stay in Hawaii for 6 weeks and do his physio. And that's what he paid $10,000 for. And it was once a week. Hell, he didn't even know it was on his left knee. What about this one? What if the homeowner is worried about how that's going to come down? If you said, hey, we're actually going to protect this while we're up here, we're going to put a piece of plywood up here and we're going to protect this. We're going to make sure that when we're tearing, I'm going to put a note here that says, be careful when tearing above this area. This is like my visual work order that I tell to my— we give to all of our crews so they understand the expectations that I've set for them, which is that when they're above this area, I want them to be careful because of all these plastic pipes. We don't want to break them to break. And then the homeowner goes, huh, I never would have thought of that. But yeah, those plastic pipes are pretty delicate. And if you broke those, I'd be pretty upset. Air conditioners. Here's another one. What are we talking about? We talk about the dents and then we're going to comb those and we're going to get that fixed. In the insurance. Some people don't want to deal with that problem. They don't go for the recoverable on that. They use it to get the roof bought. Well, they didn't ask, so we didn't fix their air conditioner from the hail dents. Or what are we going to do to protect the air conditioner? I love this one. I draw a little box over top of this and say, protect air conditioner. And, and then that way the homeowner's like, oh yeah, I never would have thought of that. And the best part, I'll tell you this, I don't think this picture is in this list. Yeah, it's not. But the best part is when you can take a picture from on top of the roof looking down, because when you look at an air conditioner here, it looks like pretty tough. But when you take a picture from the roof and you can show shingles, gutter, and then inside an air conditioner in the same photo, pretty easy to show a customer how stuff falling down from the roof on that delicate little pipe inside and the fan and that little grill, that they probably don't want that thing to get wrecked as a byproduct of you doing the roof. So that's how you get the customer to say, huh, I never would have thought of that. Because if you're selling the same shingles installed the same way by the same people using the same tools in more or less the same amount of time, for the same price. The only thing that matters is the sales experience. And this is where you tell customers how you're going to protect their property more. Last one. What do we think we're taking a picture of here? What is our plan? What are we going to do about it? Is it rot? Is it bad install? Because for this, this is actually how the wasps were getting into a person's attic. That's what this picture was. And so they had a plan that they were going to do to fix this, to make it so that this trim was cleaned up so the wasps would stop getting in the attic. So customers don't know why you're taking a picture. And the idea is that you want to do this in a choreographed way. You want to take the pictures in the same order. So you can reduce the friction of, of producing the same order by using a checklist. So you follow, you take your pictures in the same order, and then you can make it so you add your annotations by turning on edit mode. So in CompanyCam, there's a feature in your camera settings, a little screenshot here. That shows you how to do it. So you scroll down and you flip on edit mode. And what that does is every time you take a photo, it prompts you to do an edit. So when you as a salesperson, you might be doing this. I'm not saying you, but maybe the person next to you goes up on the roof, climbs up to the peak, stands at the peak, opens up their camera and goes in a circle because the boss said take 80 pictures. So take 80 pictures while you're up there. Lots of pictures. You, Every time someone breaks a lamp and they're, they're sure that that light was already broken or that gutter was already broken or that other thing, the first thing they do is walk into the sales office and say, guys, take more pictures, take more pictures. Right? Because they just want a chance to prove that it wasn't them. But does just take more pictures improve the sales experience? No. So it's not as enlightened of a thought. Right? We want this to be a choreographed sales process. And what I mean by choreographed is that when you are in sales training, you want it so that while you are doing the sales process, it looks polished. Every word has an intentional reason for being there so that when you are talking, you are reading them. And you're going faster and slower and including them as you go. And the way that I like to explain this is that when we were trained to be salespeople in the car industry, which when I partnered up with my friend to start a roofing company, I was amazed at how easy it was to sell roofs. Because when you sell cars for a living, people will walk into a dealership, look into their dream vehicle, to see what features it has. It's the exact truck they want. And you will— they drove there, they drove there in the winter, they parked their truck in the snow, they got out of their truck, they walked into the dealership. Their truck is old and busted. They're looking at the new hotness. And you walk up and you say, hey, can I help you find anything? No, just looking. If we want something, we'll tell you. Like, they treat you like dirt in car sales. So when I went to my first roof sale and she invited us in and she asked us if we wanted soup and cookies while we were presenting the roof, I was like, what? Like, people want to ask you questions. They want your help, and you get to come to them and you sit in their house. Like, I was blown away at how easy it was. So in car sales, you can't waste a word, right? Like, every word has to have a reason. And so everything has to be practiced and scripted. And so some of the sales training that we went through, and remember, like, you were literally selling the exact same car. Like, you can buy a 2024 Dodge Ram 1500 Sport with the hood scoops and the leather seats. You can literally buy the exact same car 12 minutes away in every direction from another dealership. You're literally selling the same thing. Like, there isn't even like a quality of install play because it's like, it's a manufactured vehicle with a warranty. It's literally the exact same thing. So we had to be good. And so we were beaten like dogs, okay, to the point where it was so practiced that when you got to the point when you're done a test drive and you came in, you would sit them down at the desk, right? And then you'd go and you pull out a piece of paper and you'd say, okay, so typically nowadays most of my customers are buying a vehicle on a monthly payment because, I mean, who has $90,000 laying around a mattress, right? Hahaha. Now, typically on a Ram like that, you're looking at around $1,000 a month. Is that what you guys had planned? Pen down. Shut up. Oh, $800 a month. Okay. $800 a month. And you write $800 and then you say, so usually when we're financing the vehicle, the bank is looking for some form of a deposit or down payment, usually around 10%. That'd be usually around $8,000 that we had saved. Pen down, shut up. Oh, zero down. Well, I don't know if I could even do that, but if I could, is there any other, any reason why you wouldn't take the vehicle home today? No. Okay. If, with, will. It's like, if $800 a month, with zero down, will buy. Like, and then you draw a line and an X and you'd be like, sign here because I don't even know if I can do this, but I got to get my manager to approve a deal like this because We're going to have to figure out something to make it work. So if you just— can you just sign that so I know I got kind of a committed buyer? Because there's a bunch of guys in line and I want to make sure that I can kind of like, hey, I got a customer who's ready to buy because they're usually like wanting the car dealership experience to go faster. So this is like your motivation, right? And then next thing you say is, so while we're doing the financing, we have to put a small hold on the vehicle, usually about $500. We should be doing that on a Visa debit card or MasterCard. Hand out, wait till there's a card in it. And so we practice this typically nowadays. Most of my vehicle customers buying a vehicle are doing sort of monthly payment because who has $80,000 lying in a mattress? Hahaha. And so then they put a card in your hand and then you leave with your if, with, if, with, will and your commitment. And you walk in and now as a sales manager, I would have 4 sales guys being like, which car do I get my customer? Which is like, get out. This guy's got a committed sale. And that guy was walking out with a customer. But if you walked in and said, well, they just want to know how much it costs, I'd be like, did you get commitment? Go out and get commitment. They said if it's $400 a month and zero down, the what? You know, that's not even remotely possible. Did you get a credit card? No. Get out, get a credit card. And so we had to practice everything. And the number one problem that I see in roofing companies is a lack of dedicated training. So there's two things you have to train on: presentation and objection handling. Presentation. So a note on that, where I learned the bar, the standard of presentation was that we wouldn't even do presentations on actual cars. We would do presentations on two chairs in the lunchroom. We had 1,000 cars, but we're doing a presentation on a car. Why? Because you had to be able to present your vehicle, any vehicle that was chosen at the drop of a hat without the vehicle present, because what you're trying to do is you're trying to make them solution aware. And I highly encourage you to start recording videos on the roof, because if a picture's worth a thousand words, a video's worth a million. The best people in the industry that sell roofs today record videos. The best people in the country, not the best in your state, not the best in your city, not the best in your company. The best salespeople in the country The ones who go to the conferences and get up on these awards for selling $7 or $10 or $12 million a year, those guys record videos on every roof. And so the thing that I owe you before you leave, because the one objection that you might be thinking right now, but the number one objection that I get to this is it takes too long to take the pictures and annotate them. So I want to run a little math experiment with you guys. $16,000 is the price of a roof. So we're going to go times 0.08. All right. So put that at 8% commission. So that's what a roof is. That's what a roof is worth. All right. Now, let's say you're doing a very modest 2 appointments per day times 20 days in a month, 5 days a week, 2 appointments per day. This is like a part-time job. So that's 40 inspections a month. Let's say you're closing at 27%. Let's go— we give you credit. Let's give it 30% times 0.3. All right. So you're closing 12 deals a month. So 12 deals a month times— what did we say that was? $1,280 a roof. Yep. So 12 deals a month times $1,280 a roof, $15,000 a month. Not a bad job. Okay. Not a bad income. Here's the thing. If I open CompanyCam right now, okay, and I'm going to take some pictures, so I'm going to go new project. I'm going to go take a photo here. Some, but some clients can have company cam pictures. All right. So there's a picture. My edit mode's on. Okay. So I'm going to draw a box. Protect air conditioner with board. All right. And then I'm going to slide that box up, make it a little bigger for my air conditioner. And then I'm going to draw a little arrow. Go like this, say like, because again, this is my visual work order, lay out tarps. Okay, save. I'm going to my next thing, take a picture, and we're going to say exposed nail head will leak soon. Okay, save. Take another picture. All right. And then we're going to go, what else we want to do? Okay. We're going to say, will install Metal Valley here. Autocorrect is taking care of me today. Okay. So how long did that take? So first one was at 9:46:08. 9:46:37, 9:46:52. So to annotate 3 photos took me less than a minute. Okay, so let's say you have to take 40, uh, 40 photos. Okay, are the— we've done the data, so we've done the research, we analyzed, I believe, about $300 million worth of roof estimates. And we checked for 3 things. Did you get in the attic? Measured by pictures in the attic. Did you record a video walk around on the roof? Measured by is there a video in the company cam? And did you annotate 70% of the photos? And we had the inside salespeople checking these 3 boxes. 70% meant if you took 44, 40 photos, was there like 28 to 30 photos that had annotations on them? When we did that and the close rates went up about 20%. The easy math is like 7%. So like 25 goes to 32, 30 goes to 37. We have a client and we have 3 clients in the same market within an hour's drive of each other. We have one client who followed the process perfectly last year. They had a 52% close rate at a 45% gross profit. And the one thing they told my other 2 clients in the market was like, hey guys, could you guys raise your prices? Like, we're all in the RBP ecosystem here. Can you guys just raise your prices? Because the only time we have to discount is when we're going up against you. And you're literally in the same ecosystem. You're leaving money on the table. You know what I mean? So if you take 40 photos, right, you have to annotate 0.7. That's 28 photos. It took me less than a minute to annotate 3. So divide by 3. That's how many minutes it would take you to annotate the photos. 10 minutes. Let's double it. Okay. So you do 40 estimates a month. Remember, because we said 2 a day times 20 days. Okay. There's 40 estimates a month. Times 20 minutes to annotate your photos. That's 800 minutes a month divided by 60. That's 13 hours of work a month. So now we said you were selling it at 30% close rate. We're going to go under. We're going to say instead of 7% increase for you, special person, only 5%. So you do 40 appointments a month and you go to 0.35% close rate. So now you're selling 14 deals a month. 14 deals a month times $18,000— or no, we said $16,000. $16,000 times 0.08. That's $17,920. Now, what did we say before? It was $15,360. So minus $15,360. So an additional $2,500 a month. How many hours did we say it was going to take? An extra 13.33 hours. So $2,560 divided by 13.33 hours, that's $192 an hour. I think the question that you're asking is, what about if it's an insurance roof? Should I still do this? Yes. Yes, you should do it on an insurance roof, because if the only thing you're doing is getting off a roof and going, damage, sign this, You're going to get crushed by a company like Monarch Roofing that goes, here's our inspection report, here's photo, 40 photos, here's all of our annotations, here's a 12-page deck on why if you choose to file a claim, you would probably want to work with us and what it's going to be like filing a claim. By the way, if you'd like to work with us, this is how you do it. Sign this. You're going to get crushed by those people. But this is $192 an hour that this works out to. I could find anyone Any salesperson, I could train them to say the same words, a presentation, right? Typically nowadays, most of my customers, right? The walk around on the car, right? Like just train them really well, right? And then train them to take 40 photos and annotate 28 of them really like to the standard that I showed where it makes the customer go, ah, I never would've thought of that. And I guarantee you they'll beat guys that have 2 years, 3 years experience. And if we do this, I promise you, you will be wildly successful. That's my promise to the owners and the sales leaders in the room. Because this, what I've given you, is a process. You have to be the leader that can get adoption. I've given you all the ammo in which to do it. I've got, I've got the data to prove it works. I've given you several examples. The only reason you would not do this is because you're dumb or you don't care about making money as a sales rep, which is dumb because you could probably make money doing lots of other jobs. Where you get guaranteed money, you don't have to get commission, or you're lazy, maybe lazy, dumb, or don't like making money, which isn't usually a great career path for salespeople. If anybody has a better objection, like, I'm all for it and I want your legitimate objections. So salespeople have like another reason why they wouldn't do this. I'm happy to hear it. But now we've worked with over $1 billion in roofing revenue and I can predict a company's revenue by looking at their pictures. The last thing I'll say, the thing that I want all outside salespeople doing when you leave a house is I want you to be able to answer 5 questions to your inside sales rep definitively, which is that you gotta be able to answer, how much money can we make? So what's this deal worth? You presented 3 options. What's the most likely option? The $15,000 replacement, the $2,800 repair, the $27,000 metal roof? Which is the most likely sale? When does the customer intend to make a decision? When does the customer intend to make a decision? What's the close date? When do you predict this customer is going to buy? What is the objection? Okay, what was the objection? And I hate these objections, waiting until spring, because it's bullshit. What's the real objection? Why are they waiting until spring? We had to update the contract and resend it. That's not an objection. So what is the objection? It's either It's either circumstances, other people, or themselves. Circumstances are time, money, fit. Others are my wife, my husband, my dad, my kid, my friend in Sheboygan who's a contractor who's influencing my decision. Why are they using an others objection? What is it? Or it's self. I don't know how to make a decision because something in the past, something currently happening in the present, or something I think might happen in the future. So it's time, money, or fit. Time, I don't have time. This isn't the right time. I'm waiting till spring is time. It's money. It's too much for that. It's too much for you. It's too much for the product. It's too much for the solution. Could be a combination. Too much right now. That's financing, by the way. Right? Or it's time, money, or yeah, time, money, or fit. Fit is I don't think your solution is the right solution. You screwed up the presentation and the company cam photos. So time, money, fit, others, self. Those are the only objections. What is the objection? The true objection. Why couldn't you get the sale? Need to think about it is not an objection. What do they need to think about? What information didn't you give them? What question did you left unanswered? What are they considering? What are they hoping to get from the other guy? And then what is the best next step? If you were doing the follow-up, what would you do next to meaningfully move towards the sale? Call February 21st and say what? Alex to check in this week and say what? What is the next step and when should they do it? How much can I make? When can I make it? Why don't I have it yet? What should we do about it and when should we do it? You want to be able to get on a call when you walk out the front door, answer these 5 questions definitively. Because if you don't know the objection, you haven't done your job. And if you don't, if you can't tell the inside sales what they should do next, You can't expect them to do any better than that, than they would. Like, they're sorry, that you can't expect them to do any better than you would. That's the job of the outside sales. And I promise you that all of these little things, practicing your presentation so that no word is wasted, doing the company cam photos, annotating 70%, thinking about it like you're selling like a doctor, you know, trying to get the customer to say, oh, I never would have thought of that, presenting value in excess of price. Telling them it's a visual work order, knowing the 5 questions when you walk out. None of these are silver bullets. It's like 12 golden BBs. If you do this, I promise you, you will likely double your close rate. You'll go from 25 to 50. Maybe you don't double your close rate, you go from 25 to 40% close rate, but you go from 38% gross profit to 45% or 42% gross profit. And you cut your sales cycle down. So instead of having 3 weeks of follow-up, you sell more of them at the door. So like you'll double the value of your time as a sales rep. Bottom line up front, what are we talking about today? We're going to make a case for door knocking because some salespeople love it, some people don't. And I'm going to tell you guys about some tools that you can use for setting up a canvassing department if you don't have one, or a couple of different options. But again, the tool doesn't matter as much as the process in which you use it. And the process doesn't matter as much as getting adoption. Adoption is absolutely everything when it comes to business, right? You have to do the thing. We're also going to talk about how to get the best objection overcomes in training. And we're going to talk about how to build a canvassing department. But again, it's a slightly different way of thinking. There'll be things that the salespeople like, there'll be things that the salespeople don't like. There'll be things that the ownership and leadership likes, and there'll be things that leadership doesn't like. That's why it's really important to have a discussion. My intention for teaching this is to make sure that we frame or reframe the concept of canvassing as a marketing motion for roofing companies and have a strategy for implementation in a way that lasts and gets done regardless of the people who work at the roofing company today, tomorrow, next year. The important piece of that is if this is dependent on the unique humans that work there today and you don't have a strategy for making this work a year down the road, canvassing is one of those things like, ah, sometimes we're good at it and sometimes we're not. And, you know, we used to do canvassing, but then we kind of got away from it and it becomes this like sometimes think. This is exactly who this webinar is for, is the people who, once we see canvassing for what I think it is, and if we can agree on that, then we can have a strategy for implementing it for the long term. I want to get into how we make a case for door knocking from someone who hates door knocking. I do not like when people knock on my door. I got a 150-pound dog that barks the minute you knock on my door. I view it as an interruption to my day, but I understand why somebody might do it. I know some people who absolutely love knocking doors. When you're good at it, people love it. If you can knock a door, first of all, there's very few people who can. And this is the same for like cold calling or anything else. But if you can, then the entire world's your oyster, you know, like you can just literally walk out into the world, knock on a door, and if you've mastered the first 15 seconds of that conversation, you have the ability to turn on income for yourself at any time. Doesn't even matter what you sell. It doesn't matter if you sell numbered curb painting or home security or roofing, or even if like you're in my business, if you can cold call, you can cold call for credit cards, you can cold call for selling roofing, CRMs and consulting. You could cold call for selling debit machines to businesses. It doesn't matter if you can master the art of interrupting someone and getting them to stick on the phone with you long enough to convey the value in your product and book another appointment to talk about it later. You have the ability to turn on income at will because door knocking and any kind of cold outreach, it tastes awful, but it works. We have to understand what is canvassing because some people think it's just what we do in roofing, but it happens everywhere. And the thing that is apparent is that not every outside sales can or should be a canvasser. We have to kind of open our minds to the idea that canvassing and Sales are different. We have to understand what is the value of a great salesperson, a great closer, a person who can turn a prospect into dollars and a commitment to do services. The skill of that person is wasted doing this, where they just walk along the street and they knock on some doors and some people open the doors and they're renters and they don't want to talk to you. And you knock on some more doors and some people are interested, but they can't talk right now. Then boom, maybe you get someone who actually talks to you and lets you on the roof. And that is actually probably a conservative number. I think there's like 20 boxes here. Sometimes you knock 100 doors, you get 1 or 2 or 3 people that will talk to you. For the record, I'm not the person who's gonna teach you how to canvas. There's so much free content out there from people like Becca Switzer and Deshaun Bryant and Sam Taggart from DDD Experts. There's no shortage of free educational content out there. If you wanna be great canvasser, the education is out there and it's free. You can learn how to do it. But to put a closer on the task of walking from door to door to door seems like a waste of their abilities because 99 or 97 or 95% of the work that they're doing in knocking on doors, like the emotional burden of knocking on doors is not necessarily the best use of their ability. It's just rejection. It's like they're not even getting a chance to actually do their job. And meanwhile, there are people out there who are great at canvassing, but suck at sales. And so it's important to know the difference between the two. Canvassers exist to purely perform in a canvassing career. Like there are people out there who are great canvassers. There's a whole career around canvassing and they sell other things like they, like political canvassing during the election. It was hard to get canvassers. Because you can make a lot of money political canvassing. I mean, they raise billions of dollars to get out the vote and da da da da da, right? So political canvassing pays really, really well to canvassers, right? When they're comparing things like lawn care, solar, security, and roofing, canvassers look at it and go, where can I make the most money with the least amount of work? And if you compare roofing where it's like, well, they can make more money because most business owners will say, you get X number of X percent commission on business leads, and then you get an additional X percentage if you self-gen, right? And the problem is it's actually more expensive for the roofing company to pay that than to just go get leads. And, but then the salespeople like the self-gen because it's more money, but they hate the canvassing. So meanwhile, canvassers could go work in security or lawn care where it's like, hey, do you want to get your lawn mowed? Great. It's $150 a month. And they do that and they get paid like $200 and the lawn care takes care of itself. They don't have to worry about the lawn care. And if they get a couple extra checkboxes like for the lawn aerating and the weed spray and the, the nitrogen that makes the grass grow, then it's like a $700 fee upfront and then $150 a month after that. And they make like $500 and the whole experience takes like 30 minutes tops, right? Like there's no adjuster meeting, there's no getting approved, there's no getting the roof bought, there's no supplementing, there's no, you know, dealing with the crews, none of that, right? Same thing in security. Another really fast canvassing sales. So this is a career that exists in and of itself that doesn't require everything that the roofing canvasser that kind of blend like a canvasser who looks at roofing, they're like, wait, So I also have to be like a project manager and a salesperson. I have to like go back several times. Like, that doesn't feel like canvassing. That feels like sales. So canvassing is really a marketing motion in the roofing industry. It is the acquisition of opportunities. It is not necessarily sales itself. We blend the two, but if you're trying to create a sustainable, long-lasting canvassing motion in the business, it helps to entertain the possibility that canvassing is marketing, not sales. Because when you pay a higher percentage of sales to self-gen, you're also overpaying for leads. Like, you're, you're paying more money. Like, I'll give you an example. If you're $18,000 average job, I'll just like zoom in a bit here. Let's say you're paying like 7%, say 7% commission, right? Well, then that average job is paying out commission of this. Now, if I go here and I say, you know what, we pay out an additional 2% for self-gen, well, it equals this times this. Well, now you're paying $360 to the sales rep to do that. Now, if you can generate leads for $280, Well, you're overpaying. You're overpaying for that opportunity. Plus, this guy who could be making these $1,260, he could get more of those because he's not going through the emotional burden of canvassing. But because we don't know how to generate leads for $280, we continue to pay more. And then we also have to hope that we find these very unique people because Johnny can do this., and you can hire 10 Johnnies pretty easily, but only Mike can do this. And it's really hard to find another Mike. And so it's worth figuring out how to get leads for 2 reasons. One, it's easier to hire 10 Johnnies than it is to hire one Mike. And it's less money to generate leads once you figure out how to do it. Leads get cheaper to get over time. But salespeople can control their own income. The challenge is that when you ask salespeople, do you like canvassing? They're gonna say no. And they say, do you like 2% more money when you sell a job? They're gonna say yes. So you're just, you're just pitting them against themselves in a way. And so it makes sense to try and generate leads for cheaper because the thing is homeowners do Google this stuff, you know, roofers near me, the search results are incredibly hot. Like there's tons of people searching for that. So the alternative to canvas or to, canvassing exists in that business, whereas like in some cases there are other businesses where the alternative to canvassing doesn't exist. Your business, it does. So it's worth looking into. And the best canvassers aren't always the best at demonstrating the value of working with your roofing company because now they got to know product knowledge, they got to know install process, they got to be able to scope a repair, they got to be able to understand the insurance and adjuster process and be able to explain, you know, the actual cash value versus the recoverable depreciation. They got to explain explain those two things. That's way more sales training than a canvasser usually has. Like, a canvasser is just like, hey, they have a lawn, it's three sizes: small, medium, and large. If it's small, medium, large, you can sell lawn care, uh, or lawn mowing, and then the upgrades are this. We pay way more money on the upgrades than we do on the lawn mowing. So worst case scenario, get the lawn mowing, you'll get paid something, but you make the best money when you sell the, the aerorating, the bug spray, and the, and the, the make the grass grow better, right? If you sell those 3 things, it's, it's way more money. So, you know, try and get the upgrades, right? What's lawn aerating? They put holes in the ground, makes the grass grow. What's the bug spray? Kills away, kills all the bugs, make sure the mosquitoes don't show up. Like, they do that. What's the lawn growing thing? They spray nitrogen on the ground and makes the grass grow. It's like there's not much training to it. Like, you don't have to worry about trying to explain it. Um, and so the, the The canvassing motion is easier there, whereas in roofing it's really difficult to get a great demonstrator of value to also like canvassing in the same way that you can get a really great canvasser who doesn't necessarily have to be great at sales, but can be really good at acquiring customers. And because the best closers aren't always the best at overcoming the door objection, because great closers, the best salespeople out there, if you were in my class yesterday, The best closers are the people who review it as this is seduction, not rape. This is wrestling, or this is a dancing. It's not wrestling. You have to care more about the prospect than they care about themselves. You have to help them buy a roof, not force them to buy. You have to convey value in excess of price. You have to make them feel confident in their own competence so that they will make a decision. Like all those things I said yesterday, the sales experience, that is a lot of emotional outlay, right? Because sales is just a transfer of emotion across a bridge of trust, right? You have to build that trust. This door knocking thing, like they can give and convey more emotion than canvassing requires. So they tend to do it and then they put too much time into the door knocking and they take the rejection harder than a canvasser who's just like, oh, you don't wanna talk to me? Okay, onto the next one. Then it becomes, well, how much do you pay, right? How much do you pay? So there's several different steps that they have to go through. A lead is just someone you can contact. A marketing qualified lead is someone that you can contact who's qualified to buy, who's interested in your services. A sales qualified lead is someone who allows you to perform the work, right? Who's interested in allowing you to perform the work that would lead to a sale. And then opportunity is when they sign a contingency and file the claim. So if a canvasser is basically a salesperson and has to get all the way to here, right, it's more money. But if you split the role, right, and they just get to the point where they book an appointment, right, well, then it's worth a little bit less. So then depending on what you do, right, if they do inspection, qualify that there's damage, and then they hand off the lead, it's a little bit more. So how far does it go and what does RVP like? Well, RVP likes these two, right, where a canvasser gets them into inside sales who books the appointment and then they share it. I like this one because this allows for the lowest cost canvassing and the highest volume of leads at the lowest price because these people are basically saying, hey, do you call— like, this is just like a site supervisor. A site supervisor knocks the doors of the neighbors. They go, I'm not a salesperson, I'm just taking care of the job next door. Just want to let you know I'm here, by the way. Here's my card. You know, if the noise is too loud or something blows into your yard, just give us a call. Take care of it. Don't leave a bad Google review. Oh, by the way, they got the roof covered by insurance. They were hit by that storm. Did you get hit by that storm too? Wait, I'm not a salesperson, but you should probably get your roof checked. If you want to scan this QR code or I can take down your info, someone reach out and book an appointment. $150, right? If that appointment shows up. Well, they're just sending it straight to inside sales who's booking an outside sales to come out at a time that's convenient for the customer when they can have, you know, the husband and wife home. It's potentially even a higher quality lead for the outside salesperson. And the inside sales is in the loop and every, all the data is in the CRM and we're making sure that we're getting them into email marketing and that, you know, we're treating this like a way that we can actually get it. The other alternative is where there's a bit of an overlap and they do the intro, the inspection, get the customer to file a claim. So they're just getting the contingency signed. And then inside sales is involved at the inspection stage before filing the claim. So we make sure that the opportunity makes it into the CRM. And we can use tools to make sure that's easy because these tools like DemandIQ or SalesRabbit or Spotio can integrate into your CRM, right? So if your HubSpot is connected to these things, essentially they knock a door, knock a door, knock a door, knock a door, knock a door. The door opens, they put it, it turns like yellow. They knock a door, knock a door, knock a door. They, they knock on one door. They, they, then the customer is like qualified and they get on the roof. They do an inspection. The customer agrees to file a claim, sign a contingency. Well, when they agreed to open the door, they can shoot that information into HubSpot. HubSpot can create the company cam and create the deal. And now we've got data, right, that moves from the canvassing world to the sales world, right? It just requires some elegance and how it's set up and some clarity about how we're going to run the department. That's the conversation that I want to open you to. Now there's positives and negatives. To this. There's some owners who are like, ugh, you're pitting my sales guys against me and you're making them think that I shouldn't have them go canvassing. But right now that's like the biggest source of leads. And like, that's how they make their money. And you're breaking this, like you're breaking down this wall that they have to do this. And that's the way that they be successful. I built my business around door knocking. Adam, shut up. I totally get that. That's that feeling. At the same time, I'm also saying, hey, business owners, you're overpaying for guys to do that and they shouldn't be paid to self-gen or they shouldn't be paid as much as they are because you could get that lead for less. And the sales guys are saying, they'd be like, Adam, I like door knocking. This helps me make more money. I like being able to control my income and just be able to knock on doors and make money. You're telling my business owner that he could just go and get a marketing agency and pay me less commissions because now he's no longer held hostage to my ability to door knock. Shut up. Right? Like there's both of these conversations that are happening inside the heads at the same time. And so how much more money could everybody make if we just treated it like Facebook ads or like Google ads or like Angie's ads or like, you know, SEO? And we just said like, no, we canvass full-time and we've got sales appointments coming into the salespeople nonstop. And the sales guys don't get to decide when they want to stop because there's more canvassing leads being generated every day by the canvassing team. The best company that I've seen do this is exactly that. They had a canvassing manager named Jimmy, and Jimmy taught me a lot because I was, I was on site with this company for 5 weeks. He taught me a lot about canvassing, and I realized that canvassing is a career for some people. They enjoy it and they do it full time, and they like the idea that they don't have to see everything through, but they're just there to generate opportunities for the business. And then they get kind of like the quick the quick cash without even caring if necessarily insurance company buys the roof, um, because their whole goal is to just generate opportunities for the sales team, um, get claims filed, or generate opportunities for the sales team and get inside sales involved, like whichever of the two models I showed you. Because of that, they realized that the going rate for a qualified appointment is like $150, and the going rate for a claim filed is like $250, and They have ways to print $150 and $250 bills. And Jimmy ran a team of canvassers and the salespeople were constantly getting appointments booked. And the compromise that happens in your head is like, oh, but if the canvasser knocks on the door and the customer agrees to an appointment, so then they reach inside outside sales, they book the appointment. There's a chance that they could change their mind and cancel. There's also a chance that another canvasser could come along and sign them up. Then for every one of those people that are running around as sales guys, running around signing people up, like doing the conventional, like what the roofing industry sees as canvassing, which is the sales guy knocks the door, signs the, signs the claim, kind of owns the project. So many times I hear from salespeople that, oh, I got these people signed on contingency and then they said they wanted to think about it, or they're switching, going with another contractor, and we lost the deal because The other guy said he was going to pay the deductible. Probably that's what they did. Yeah. You know, that makes us feel better because we're good and they're bad, right? And for the record, that is bad. But it's like we lose deals because we don't sign them up and we lose deals even if we sign them up. Is the point I'm trying to make is there's an attrition, there's a conversion rate deprecation that happens both ways. Which one allows you to get the most volume? The one that allows you to get the most volume is the one where there's canvassers constantly canvassing that don't slow down the customer acquisition effort because now they've got a couple of deals underway. That's the point I'm trying to make, is which one allows you to forever do it? Because that company that has Jimmy the canvassing manager and his army of canvassers, they just track canvassing as a marketing effort. Right alongside Facebook, Google, TikTok ads, Bing, you know, Google pay-per-click, SEO, billboards, like everything else. They just look at it that way. Another interesting way to look at it is we have another client, big client, right? $100 million company. They're buying dead leads from Angie's List. And now that like these lead aggregators, these are leads that Angie's List couldn't sell or, you know, whatever they're like. Junk leads. They're basically buying junk leads for $3 to $5 apiece, and they have a call center that calls. And their whole thing is, if we call 100 of these junk leads and we book 2 appointments, that's $150 a lead, right? 100 leads at $3 a lead. You call 100, you get 2 leads, it's $150 an appointment. Now they have to have a bunch of callers. But what happens if when those callers, if they are also treated like salespeople and they called And they got an appointment and then now they don't call all day because now they're emotionally tied up in the sale. No, the call center just keeps calling. They get an appointment, they go and they keep calling. So my argument today is that canvassing is a marketing motion, not a sales motion. And canvassing is a career and a department that generates opportunities for salespeople. Then y'all can join me in fighting about it. So that kind of concludes today's lesson about canvassing. And again, I don't have to be right. I don't have to be right. I'm here to just tell you what I've seen and how that's impacted people that we've worked with in the past and potentially solve a problem in your business. And at the end of the day, make a decision. Make a decision what you want to do. You can keep doing it the old way, and I'm not going to yell at you for that. You are free to run your business in any way that you want. And salespeople, right? If you want to keep getting those self-gen commissions and you like door knocking your business, the business owner that runs the company is probably very happy that you do and feels extremely fortunate to have you. And as long as you'll stay there for the rest of your life and keep selling roofs, then I mean, then that's a great business model. And owners, if you like doing it that way because you like the ability to— you're really good at teaching and training and making people feel confident in their ability to knock a door and you've got systems in place to orchestrate it, then keep doing it. But if you find that canvassing is this arduous, painful thing that constantly requires you to just get out there and whip the guys to go knock doors and salespeople, if you're constantly trapped there, then maybe it's worthwhile looking holistically at the business, collaborating with the leadership team, the sales leadership team, and you as salespeople to say, how can we all make sure that the company wins together by doing what is, what is going to lead to the predictive validity of the highest possible outcome in terms of customer acquisition and market share?
