Adam Sand says new roofing companies don't need expensive software. Track customers on three sheets of paper with name, phone, address, email, estimate date, status, and job price. Skip paid CRMs until you hit $200k to $500k in revenue and focus instead on selling, negotiating with suppliers, and staying hands-on with every job.
What software should I get first for me starting a roofing company? It's a really great question. If you are truly just starting a roofing company right now, software is not your problem. You can run everything off 3 sheets of paper. I literally ran to $1.8 million off of 3 sheets of paper in my roofing company. I've taken my 3 sheets of paper and turned it into a paper CRM because I don't want you to get yourself in trouble with technology that just confuses you and doesn't move you forward because you don't have enough jobs to worry about the CRM. So very simple. This was what we did with 3 sheets of paper. It's just who are they? What's their phone number? What's their address? What's their email? Some notes, the date of the estimate, the time of the estimate, when it's complete. Now you put them on follow-up. So then it's name, phone, email, job price, notes. Put this together. Preferred communication, last activity notes, you connected with them. When it's sold, you put them on, you book 'em and you put 'em on here. And these are your booked installs. This is 3 Sheets of Paper CRM. I'm gonna make a copy of this file. Make a copy. If you're truly just starting a roofing company, this is the answer. Don't listen to everybody that's gonna try and sell you a $300 a month CRM where you're gonna spend more time trying to figure out how to do it. You gotta learn how to sell a roof. You gotta learn how to negotiate with a supplier. You gotta get good communication with your subs. Like, you're gonna be doing one job every 4 days. Please don't get yourself lost in the CRM. I am the guy who loves to sell you a CRM. Please do not get yourself too locked into that until you've made a couple hundred thousand you know, half a million at least, don't worry about the CRM. It is not the thing that's stopping you from growing. It's just you. You'll remember everything. You'll remember everybody's first names. You just need something to put together a proposal. SumoQuote, RoofR, RoofGraph, whatever you want. You're going to be selling to people because you're the new kid on the block. You're going to be working with the people in your immediate network. You're not going to be getting a bunch of leads. You're not going to be super competitive door knocking for insurance because if anybody's buying insurance in your market, are they going to bet on this new guy or are they gonna work with the company that's 45 trucks and a $300,000 website and 1,000 Google reviews? Like, they're paying $2,000 to somebody, they might as well take the safe bet and work with the company with 1,000 Google reviews. So you gotta focus on what your strengths are, which is that you are gonna be the same guy that writes the proposal, books the job, checks the job, collects the check. That's you. That's your unique selling proposition is they get to deal with you and you are gonna be their personal concierge through the roofing process. And you get to milk that until it's not the truth anymore.
