I get asked this question all the time, Adam I'm brand new and roofing sales.
What advice do you have for me to succeed quickly?
Well, guess what?
In this video, I'm going to be sharing the advice that I wish
I got when I was brand new.
And at the end of the video, I'm going to share with you just a few tips that
other folks shared, because not long ago, I posted a video on Instagram asking.
What advice would you give to a brand new person in roofing sales?
And since we're all wired differently, we all come from different
backgrounds, different levels of experience in sales or communication
or working on our own, so to speak.
Cause I know, even though we're working for a company, we're largely,
self-employed in many respects, they don't have someone staring over our shoulder.
This industry isn't super well-known for its robust training.
I know that's getting better and better and better, but there's a lot that we need
to learn and it feels like a mountain.
And.
To me, the biggest thing was product knowledge.
I felt okay with people.
I didn't really know how to pitch.
I didn't know what I should be doing by starting to piece it together in the most
daunting thing for me was the stuff that I feel like I couldn't kind of learn on my
own, which was the product knowledge, the process knowledge, the general industry.
So I want to just break all of that down and share with you.
A simplistic approach to just crushing it and roofing sales when you're brand new.
And by the way, if you're not brand new, I imagine you're going to grab
some golden nuggets from this, but I just ask if you know, someone who could
benefit from this, share the video with them and pass along the good word.
Cause most of us who wish we had more at our fingertips when we got started.
So quick, welcome or welcome back.
My name is Adam Benjamin.
The.
And everything I do here on this channel is designed to help you and your
team smash your income goal and give every customer an amazing experience.
And in fact, my mission is to provide people that are just like me, where
you're coming into the business from really not doing too well.
I was earning 1600 bucks a month.
I had no sales experience.
I barely, I shouldn't say barely.
I had to Google like shingle rake, edge, drip edge, like basic roof knowledge.
Like I knew nothing.
I remember getting started and being like, do we need a ladder?
How do I set a ladder?
What do I look for?
How do we get on a roof?
I didn't, I'd never been on a roof before.
I was horrified of all those little mechanics.
So maybe that's you, maybe it's someone, you know, but the good news is that fear
will get pushed behind you pretty quickly.
So let's get to it.
The advice for new salespeople, number one, every minute of
every day should be focused on.
Now, what do I mean on selling?
I mean, I'm getting in front of people.
This can be done by the way from about 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM.
I know you have to learn your market, but there's retirees.
They're stay at home spouses.
You can work those neighborhoods in the morning.
This is knocking doors.
This is.
Leaving letters at the door.
If no one's home sending direct mail letters, cold calling off of,
for rent signs or for sale signs or commercial properties, anything
that you can do to get in front of people, including networking.
And if you're brand new posting on social media to share your new message
with the world and the people in your network, as well as joining.
Uh, Facebook groups for the communities in which you serve.
So when I say focus on selling, this is making contacts
getting in front of people.
The hardest thing is your very first sale.
And what it often feels like is pushing this giant, like concrete ball up a hill.
And at the top of the hill is the apex where it starts going down.
This momentum, one, getting that ball moving is the hardest part, that
first traction, and it feels like an uphill battle as we get going.
Then once we make our, our first few sales.
Five to 10 sales, that momentum begins to carry us.
And that's how you see the folks like the guys and gals I've interviewed on the.
Who struggled to get started.
And then that momentum carries them.
They don't have time to knock doors.
They're getting too many referrals.
These are problems that seems so far fetched, but they truly come to life.
They do happen.
And I know it's daunting and it seems super unrealistic, but
believe me, you gotta stick to it.
All right.
Number two is you need to bet on yourself.
Okay.
Now, what do I mean by that?
When you bet on yourself, you believe in yourself.
And I was just talking to a very dear friend of mine named Jesse.
Jesse is the gentleman that hired me, that I worked with who, who I became
his chief operating officer and Jessie and I were talking on the phone and we
said, Hey, we're both kind of crazy.
We like jumped off.
Plain and build the parachute on the way down.
And that's how I was.
I came in the business.
I'm like, Hey, roofing sales.
I'm going to make six figures now, did I know how to sell?
No.
Did I have that?
I ever done door to door?
No.
Did I know anything about roofing?
No.
Did I, was it smart that I left my stable income of $1,600 a month?
No, it was against everything in all the advice that my friends and family
said, Hey, it's commission only.
It's not safe.
It's not risky.
Or excuse me, it's risky.
Instead of heating that advice and saying, you're right.
You're right.
If I did that, it would have taken the safe, conservative route, which by the
way, that might be the best thing for you.
I don't know.
But the safe, conservative route, wasn't it for me.
I wasn't satisfied with mediocre.
I wasn't satisfied with middle of the road.
I want to do.
And with high risk comes high reward.
I went all in and I bet literally everything on myself.
And when I did that confidently, I just said, I'm just going to
do what it takes to succeed.
All right.
Number three is to study, study study in your off time study in off
time, this is where you need to find.
And by the way, Brian, Tracy, in the book goals, how to achieve,
I think the subtitles, how to achieve everything in life faster
than you ever dreamed possible.
Uh, he, he me.
Understanding what he calls your bottleneck.
And to me, that bottleneck was a lot of industry knowledge mixed with
Xactimate, understanding how to read a scope and communicate with homeowners.
So what I did in my mornings and evenings was I would study on the
stuff that I needed to feel confident.
All right.
Number four is process knowledge.
Over product knowledge.
So process knowledge is number one.
Now, what do I mean by this most homeowners, aren't going to drill
you with technical questions about shingles and installation.
They just need to know that you're competent in the process.
If you're selling storm damaged roofs, how does the claims process work?
If you're doing retail, guiding them through the install, all of the process
of what they will experience, process, meaning what the customer will experience.
That is the number of.
Most important thing.
All right.
When you get competent in that you become more confident
competence, breeds, confidence.
All right.
Now the last thing I want to say is role-play and I'll tell you,
this is the one thing I didn't do.
And I wish I did.
Now, why is this role-play whether it's with yourself in a mirror, whether
this is with the company, which has.
Or a partner.
And in fact, I have numerous salespeople that have reached out.
They're doing role-play with their significant other, their
boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife.
It doesn't matter.
But this part here is where we get those repetitions in.
And I want to drill down into this for a minute with
role-play we focus on repetition.
So example, let's say you sell, I don't know, 50 to a hundred roofs.
That means out of all the objections you might hear, you get to rehearse
them five times, 10 times, 20 times.
You're not going to get them on every single job.
So if you don't practice these, you've got 5, 10, 15, 25 repetitions.
But in role-play you could get that many down in 20 minutes, which means
you get to work out the kinks, which means that you get to feel confident
showing up at the door, knowing how to start that conversation.
All right, now those are the tactical things, but I want to leave with
a couple, leave you with a couple more, uh, internal and personal
development angles to consider.
So again, focus on selling every minute of every day.
That's all you should be doing.
Bet on yourself.
You have to go all in study in your off time.
To focus on those weaknesses.
So you feel confident, remember that process knowledge is more
important than product knowledge.
You will develop that in time and then role play, role, play, role play, get in
those repetitions people ask, you know, how do you get so quick on your feet?
It's because I've done this over and over and over again.
And that is the only way.
All right now, last things I want to share with you is that all of us face
in internal demon, this here is the most difficult part of roofing sales.
It's our internal demon.
I did a video on this called killing.
I believe it's called killing the confidence deem it's in my
three-part series called the roofing sales success formula.
There's a playlist on a YouTube channel to video number two.
And in fact, I'm gonna link to it right up here.
Roofing sales is personal development in disguise.
Meaning your income is capped at where you are for you to earn twice as
much, three times as much, by the way.
I am S yeah, I believe seven X, my income in my first 12 months.
And.
To do that.
I needed to become a new person and I needed to do that by literally
killing the, the weak link.
The part of me that second guessed myself, the part of me
that was focused on comfort.
The part of me that was scared to make people to cause tension, to show up at
people's homes and disrupt the peace.
I wanted to be a, be a peacekeeper.
So for most of us, this internal demon is the biggest threat
and case in point, there's a gentleman that reached out to me.
It's true story.
He was a Iraq war.
He was in battle in the most dangerous places on earth.
And he told me, he says, I never, once when I was in a firefight,
never once skipped a beat, he did exactly what he needed to do yet.
He gets into roofing sales.
He would drive to a neighborhood and be crippled with fear so much
so that he would not get out of his vehicle and he would drive home and
then he'd feel defeated and it would make the cycle worse and worse.
And think about this, like from the logic standpoint, this is insane.
This gentlemen faced the horrors of the worst scariest situations
that life could dish at you yet.
Somehow our own internal fears.
Cause those fears are out here.
The internal.
Manifest themselves in such a deep way, that the more we're able to lean
into this and to develop personally, to break through these obstacles,
to lean into that discomfort, the more money that we can earn.
And that my friend that is the most important thing is for you to embrace
the fact that roofing sales is personal development in discussing.
Embrace the journey.
Spend your time focused on communication organization.
Self-improvement learning how to lean into the discomfort.
And I wish I did that even earlier than I did.
I wish we did it before I got into roofing sales, roofing sales just forced me to it.
So now let's turn our attention real quick to Instagram.
If you're not following me on Instagram, it's at roof strategist and in here,
which by the way, I did this post on what's your number one advice for roofing.
And I just want to share a few of these because they're not my ideas,
but they're ideas that other folks had.
So, uh, flex Berrera said just knock and talk, stop thinking, which by the way,
Side note inspired a training and running the pitch pro movement about getting
into the flow state when pitching and stopping thinking is the biggest piece
for you to be able to do that is to get into flow is to get out of your head.
And the fundamentals are to know what you're going to say.
When you show up, that's all you need to start that dialogue.
I love that.
So thank you for that flexibility.
I'm sorry, Felix.
Barrera's then we have Greg, you said for me personally, just knocking, giving out.
Over and over, we have to face our fears.
If you're someone that's going to go hide from fear, I'm just going to
tell you now this roofing industry is not going to work out for you.
You have to be willing to look fear in the face and lean into it.
So well, well done.
And then, uh, I also, I love what this gentleman said here.
He says, be genuine and it's RST, R a B, B.
He says, be genuine.
Don't try to be a salesman.
Just be.
And this, by the way, it could not agree more.
It's one of the main reasons that I teach in my roofing sales success formula.
There's a link in the description, by the way, it is our all-in-one sales
training sales strategy and sales system, uh, is why I teach formulas,
the slap form of the aro formula carpark from it and allows you to be yourself,
but knock down the right dominoes in order, which I absolutely loved.
And then we have MCM services Inc.
With two pieces of advice.
One, if you don't know their names, Expectations or price range.
You should apologize for wasting their time.
I love it.
We have to focus on their needs.
The key thing, getting yourself in the mind of your customer.
It's probably the most in my, in my opinion, the most important
skillset to learn in sales.
And the last one is connect with your customer on a personal.
Figure out their needs, their expectations and price range.
Be honest, and don't be a shady bag.
I love that.
I got to throw that one in.
So thank you.
Don't be a shitty D D bag, but connecting on a personal level,
in my opinion is far and away.
The most important piece.
One quick story on that be you there's a gentleman inside the pitch pro movement
with 20 years sales experience, he achieved his first 100% close rate week.
Actually, I shouldn't say if it was his first, but he reported to me a hundred.
So $200,000 in top-line sales.
Okay.
In a week, these were retail and residential $200,000 one
week with a 100% closing.
By the way he is following my closing strategy that I teach in the, uh,
uh, all-in-one sales training, sales strategy and sales system that I call
the roofing sales success formula and asked him, I said, what did you change?
He says, you know, what's funny out of it is I actually changed everything
before the presentation, nothing in it.
I rewatched your training and I focused on connecting with the
homeowner and how we do that.
And that shift helped him hit this a hundred percent close rate,
which by the way, if you're in.
Let me just be crystal clear.
This is not sustainable.
I know that I'm very well aware and anyone that says they can do
a hundred percent is delusional.
It's it's false.
My point is he had great success and what he focused on was
connecting on a personal level.
So be you follow the right sequence in the right.
And you can, and you will do this.
It's not rocket science.
All it's going to take is you leaning into your own worst enemy, which is usually
right between your ears, it's yourself.
So there you have it.
And I'd love to hear from you.
If I missed anything, would you drop a comment and share with me the
number one piece of advice that you have for someone starting out and
share this video with someone that you think might be able to help?
Thanks for joining me here.
And just because our time's about to wrap.
It doesn't mean ours should.
So if you haven't done this yet, uh, you can head on over
to get a free copy of my pitch.
Like a pro roofing sales training video library over@theruestrategist.com.
There's a link in the description and you'll get access to my, all
my videos organized by category.
You can click right here to get in there.
And if you haven't yet subscribed to the channel, love to have you here.
And again, thank you for spending your valuable time with me.
I'm looking forward to seeing you on the very next day.