The Future of Roofing Sales

Author’s Note: This piece was ghostwritten by Melis. The published version is located here.

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The roofing industry has been notoriously slow to adapt to new sales and marketing methods, primarily because the traditional methods have worked for so long. However, now it takes more support, insights and strategies to win valuable contracts and gain profit margins than it did in previous decades. Saturated markets, shifting customer expectations, burdensome regulations, increasing overhead and shrinking margins have led forward-thinking companies to search for new solutions. As these industry leaders become savvier in their selling techniques, the gap between them and the "regular guys" continues to grow, making it harder than ever to catch up.

Today's leading companies know they must leverage technology and modern marketing techniques to earn a position at the top. It's more crucial than ever to provide sales teams with the best technologies, training and strategies to sell better and faster and close bigger deals. 

Get to Know Your Customers

One of the best ways to determine who your future customers should be is to know who your ideal customers are now. Use the historical data from your CRM system to create profiles of the clients that add the most value to your company. Consider their lifetime value, not just the contract amount. Sometimes, your best customer will only provide moderate revenue upfront but will become an excellent source for long-term income through referrals, reviews and testimonials that convert future customers.

Expert Tip: If you don't have the in-house expertise to complete this analysis, hire a reputable data analytics company that specializes in the roofing industry. Ideally, this team will use a combination of artificial intelligence, machine learning, algorithms and advanced analytics tools to gain deeper insights into your customers. The company should also provide high-quality data to fill any information gaps and create complete and accurate customer profiles. The roofing industry is unique, so make sure you find a company that understands your sales process, audience, and any regulations you need to follow.

Predict Your Next Customer

With your top-performing customer profiles in hand, analyze your market to determine which leads look the most like your best customers. These property owners are the most likely to convert into sales. By prioritizing those leads, sales reps can close bigger deals more quickly and stop wasting time with people who are uninterested or won't add enough value to hit your revenue goals.

This type of analysis requires quality data about properties and property owners. Most roofing companies are familiar with purchasing lead lists from various sources. However, it's critical to remember that the quality of the data can make or break the success of a campaign. So, ensure you choose a reputable data company to partner with. Insufficient or inaccurate data is one of the leading reasons why sales and marketing efforts fail.

Expert Tip: Since purchased lists are commonly shared, you're using the same information as other companies in your market. Thus, the likelihood that you'll get a leg up on your competition is low. To outperform other companies in your market, you'll need to get better data or more innovative strategies.

An investment in custom-built data will give your business the advantage. With advanced, personalized analytics, sales reps can stop chasing after the same leads as everyone else. Instead, you can accurately predict your next customers and send your sales team to the property owners who are most likely to convert and bring in significant value.

Support Your Sales Team 24/7

Even the best sales teams can become more productive with additional support through training, technologies, strategies and marketing efforts. To break through the limitations of work hours and the size of your sales team, make sure you have processes in place to convert your ideal leads even when your sales team isn't working.

Your marketing efforts should support your sales team 24/7, providing pre-set appointments so they don't have to knock or call to get every prospective customer. The data you collect will also help your marketing team determine how and where to communicate with your ideal leads. Which pitch they use, the offers they promote, and the channels they advertise on can all be customized based on the data you collect to boost conversion rates and drastically improve ROI.

Expert Tip: Most companies have some marketing efforts in place. The most common are email campaigns, social media, advertisements, sponsorships and direct mailers. However, it's crucial to streamline and automate as much as possible for marketing efforts to be truly effective. Successful marketing will actively enable your sales team to perform at its peak.

Invest in Technology to Increase ROI

Investing in the right combination of technology and marketing tools should be a priority for all companies. The ideal suite of tools will automate and synchronize your marketing and sales efforts, so your team sells to warm leads, gets pre-set appointments and achieves better close rates on more high-value contracts. The upfront investment of money and time will be worth the ongoing lift in sales and the brand recognition you get from always staying in front of your audience and following up on time. Quality data combined with intelligent, integrated marketing tools is the secret to making your sales engine operate smoothly and maximizing results.

Expert Tip: Once you have your insights and technology suite in place, consider revisiting particular strategies that fell short in the past due to a lack of information. The right combination of data and technology is a game-changer for companies previously disappointed by various marketing efforts. You can leverage these new insights and integrated systems to book pre-set appointments and attain high appointment-to-contract conversion rates while saving significant money and time.

For example, some companies that adopted a data-driven strategy previously gave up on direct mail efforts, believing the costs were too high and ROI was too low. However, with the right insights, they cut costs significantly by only targeting property owners with a high probability of becoming customers. They also tailored special offers to recipients' unique interests, enticing them to convert. As a result, data-driven direct mailing has become a vital part of marketing strategies for many of today's leading roofing companies.

Continuously Seek Opportunities

Sticking with the same-old approaches to selling will stifle your growth, especially as more companies embrace innovative sales and marketing methods. Data unlocks the key to significant opportunities, and technology helps get you to the next stage of your company's development. But it's up to each business leader to see the potential, invest in their future, and set their sales team up for success.

The ability to adapt and respond to changing business climates, leverage new technologies, grasp opportunities, and invest in the future is what distinguishes leaders from followers. As the Harvard Business Review notes, "Senior leaders of companies that follow these steps will be far more likely to differentiate themselves from their more cautious competitors. They will distinguish themselves as innovators who will shape the future of their industries . . ." Now that the time has come for the roofing industry, the question is, will you lead the pack or struggle to catch up?

Winter is Coming: Is Your Roofing Business Marketing Through the Off-Season?

Author’s Note: This piece was ghostwritten by Melis. The link to the published version is here.

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Many roofing companies find themselves subjected to seasonal fluxes in business, which may also impact their investments in other business activities, like marketing and recruiting. While it may seem logical to shut off marketing expenses in the off-season, companies that do miss out on significant opportunities to engage with customers, earn trust, and build leads for the spring. Just because the seasons come and go doesn’t mean that your marketing should. Instead, roofing contractors should consider how they can alter their marketing messages, offers, and tactics to make the most of the off-season.

Why is Off-Season Marketing Important?

If your business wants to retain loyal customers and source new ones, it's crucial to maintain a consistent marketing strategy. Here are some reasons why off-season marketing is vital to your bottom line.

Break Through the Noise

Leading roofing companies take full advantage of year-round marketing and get creative with their lead engagement. Any contractor knows that the major seasons also bring serious competition. Property owners are often overwhelmed by ads, leave-behinds, emails, calls, and door-knocking. As a result, they are more difficult to sell to and convert. However, clever contractors can use the seasonal quiet time to break through to customers while their competition sleeps on the opportunities.

Jump Ahead of the Competition

Imagine having your spring appointments booked before your competitors turn their marketing efforts back on. Off-season marketing is the key to jumping ahead in the spring. By continuing marketing efforts through the winter, you can build relationships with new leads and nurture previous customers. This is the time to educate property owners on ways to protect their roofs now and provide special incentives to encourage them to sign up for inspections after the snow melts.

When peak season rolls around, your sales team will be servicing new appointments rather than waiting for the results of sales and marketing efforts to kick in. Remember, it’s likely that some of your savvy competitors have a winter marketing strategy in place. So, don’t be the company that is jump-starting the sales engine while the other teams are getting deals signed.

Create and Sustain Brand Awareness

Every business owner knows that starting from zero is a huge hassle and expense. Keeping leads warm through the off-season will help your business remain memorable. Top-of-mind awareness (TOMA) is the key to positioning your company for success. When your leads or customers need something, you’ll be the first name that pops into their head, meaning your company receives the call before anyone else.

Getting positive responses and closing deals is much easier when people are familiar with your company and trust what you have to say. Compare that experience with trying to reconnect with a lead after they haven’t heard from you in four months. Don’t let your leads and customers forget about you and why you’re the brand they trust.

Lower Marketing Costs

Cost is an important lever to consider when trying to achieve your financial goals. Maintaining year-round marketing can help you lower your rates for various marketing activities and increase the value that you gain from your investments in several ways:

1. Take advantage of advertising space that is often cheaper in the off-seasons.

2. Negotiate lower costs for year-round subscriptions and services.

3. Plan ahead to avoid rush fees, which mount during the peak season when companies are fighting for a spot on production schedules (e.g., advertising, design/marketing services, printers)

4. Maintain an actively engaged audience that you can leverage to save a ton on advertising costs by using free or low-cost channels like social media and email to get your message across

Maintain Accurate Data for More Effective Strategies

Every contractor should be using a data-driven approach to sales and marketing to make the most of their time, resources, and budgets. If your company is leveraging data, it’s important to keep that data updated and accurate. Campaign results are a vital part of a healthy data strategy because they tell you which techniques are working and which are not so you can continuously improve your marketing and sales efforts. Starting and stopping campaigns can lead to insufficient or inaccurate data, which can then lead to misguided strategies.

Pro Tips: Off-Season Strategies to Gain More Leads

Here are some pro tips for strategies that you can follow to gain more leads during the off-season.

1. Reconnect with your customer base: There is no such thing as a perfect marketing plan. Even those companies with the best intentions fall behind sometimes—likely while business was booming in the peak season. The off-season is a great time to pick up where you left off and try to re-engage your customer base. Consider promoting a referral program or asking for a positive online review so you can leverage your stellar reputation come spring.

2. Sustain your social media engagement: Social media is where your audience lives. If you want to be seen and remembered, you must be present on many social media platforms. The off-season is the perfect time to ramp up your social media presence while you have the time. Use Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to promote the aspects of your business that set you apart. You can send regular updates, advertise early bird promotions, promote charitable activities, or even host a competition and reward people for sharing posts or commenting.

3. Check out your reviews: The Internet has made customer reviews more accessible and relatable to potential buyers. Reviews are part of the sales funnel, and your business needs to maintain great reviews to attract new business. In peak season, customers will leave reviews that you can gather and promote during the off-season. Use the time to create promotional material with reviews to boost your business’s profile and perception to the public.  

4. Partner with other businesses: Joining forces with another business during the off-season will expand your marketing potential. You can collaborate with a complementary company to yours and mutually benefit from each other’s customer base. Combine the power of your marketing analytics and discover where you can use each other's strengths to engage with more customers. Some strategies you can implement:

   • Create affiliate marketing partnerships

   • Collaborate on a charity project

   • Co-host public events

   • Bundle services together for promotional use

   • Participate in each other’s social media accounts

5. Work on your email marketing: Email marketing is a sure way to keep loyal or past customers up-to-date with special deals and promotions. During peak season, make an effort to get as many customers to join your email list. Use the off-season to build brand awareness and promote discounts for early bird appointment sign-ups. Also, you can conduct surveys to improve your service delivery and ask to offer rewards for referrals.

Too many businesses take it easy during the quiet months and don’t capitalize on their past productivity. It’s important to remember that taking a break during the off-season has repercussions that extend well into your peak season, resulting in delayed revenue, missed opportunities, and rework costs. Use the slower times to break through the noise that is typical throughout the rest of the year.

Focus on making a real connection with your customers and leads and building trust that will encourage them to choose you above other contractors when needs arise. By following the above marketing strategies and ideas, you can maintain engagement, generate new leads, and keep your business growing year-round. Always-on marketing helps your company take the lead.

Leveraging Technology to Recruit & Retain the Best Sales Reps

Author’s Note: The published article is available to view here on ConstructioNext

Sales reps are the lifeblood of contractor businesses. They are the ones who bring in new leads and help close deals, yet they are also the hardest to recruit and retain—especially now that demand is skyrocketing.

Melis Steiner

Besides bigger contracts and better incentives, what is your company doing to attract and keep the best talent?

Sales technology is emerging as an unexpected selling point for recruits, especially as contractor companies target younger reps. The next generation of sales reps is tech-savvy and easily understands how sales technology can simplify their jobs and help them reach their income goals faster. From mobile-friendly CRM systems to data analytics and routing technology, contractor companies have many options for taking their sales strategies to the next level.

User-friendly CRM Systems

One of the most important sales tools for any business is a CRM system. A CRM system helps sales reps manage their leads, contacts, and deals all in one place. It may also provide valuable insights into customer behavior and sales trends, enabling reps and teams to view their performance compared to each other. A well-structured CRM tool can support a little healthy competition and company incentive programs.

Some valuable features include the ability for sales reps to receive lead assignments, manage appointments, record customer notes and ground truth data, and efficiently plan routes. While there are many options, the best ones must have these qualities to be beneficial to busy reps: user-friendly mobile app, quick access to priority features, simple to maintain and reliability in the field. A CRM system that works sets your sales reps up for success and gives them a better sales experience daily—happy sales teams don't need to look for better jobs.

Data-Driven Strategies

In 2022, there is no excuse for creating strategies without a sound foundation in data. Contractor industries are dealing with one of the best problems—high demand. Sales reps are bombarded with opportunities, which means they need all the help to identify the best leads. One of the most defeating feelings for sales reps is wasting time on many bad leads in a row.

With a data-driven sales approach, your company can use insights about homeowners and properties to identify the best leads. Then, you can prioritize your sales reps' routes to hit the high-value leads with the best chances of closing first. There's no better feeling than closing major deals back-to-back. Strong sales and a supportive company that invests in its reps' success are the magic potion to keeping talent, attracting new team members, and boosting your revenue.

Marketing Automation

Though sales and marketing are often seen as separate, companies that succeed at marketing and sales efforts treat them as vital components of a single process. Marketing provides the sales team with a steady stream of leads, while sales reps take those leads and turn them into customers. One way to make this process more efficient is by using marketing automation tools that run without your team lifting a finger. This technology can automate repetitive tasks like emailing leads, setting appointments, sending follow-up texts, and even sending contracts for signature.

Successful marketing automation enables your company to present prospective sales reps with an exciting sales experience that isn't hindered by paper-pushing. By relieving sales teams of administrative duties, they can focus on selling and building relationships with customers—two things they're excellent at—while your process flows smoothly. Compared to most companies that are weighed down by manual methods, redundant tasks and disjointed or incomplete marketing and sales workflows, your company has the opportunity to stand out by creating a simpler and more enjoyable selling experience.

Reporting

Any technology worth the investment will generate the reports you need to track your sales team’s marketing return on investment and net sales per lead. This is one of the most valuable tools in your arsenal. The reports give managers visibility into which marketing campaigns are working and which ones aren't so that they can make changes. They also enable quick action by highlighting gaps between marketing and sales efforts to help diagnose issues. Reports will also help track which teams excel and support your incentive programs. Ultimately, with the correct information, you can continue optimizing strategies and improving results, which will keep your team motivated to sell.

Using sales technology, you can set your company apart as an employer of choice in the contractor industry. From user-friendly CRM systems to data analytics, routing technology and marketing automation, you have many options for taking your sales strategies to the next level. The goal is to help sales reps be more successful and spend time on interested, qualified leads. The more they can focus on their specialty area, the more significant revenue they can generate for themselves and the company. The better you can support sales reps in their job, the easier it will be to retain your top talent and recruit new ones. After all, when sales reps are truly happy, they become your ultimate recruitment tool.