Selling roofs is only part of the puzzle to booking a roofing job. Having a process that is actionable, trainable, reliable, and trackable is what will land customers, ensure a quality buyer experience, and keep those referrals coming in. Plus, having a sales process in place empowers your team to close more deals and move quicker, while giving you insight into what does and doesn’t work for your team.
If you’re curious about building a sales process for your roofing business, you’re in the right place.
In this article, we’re exploring:
- What sales processes are
- Benefits of set sales processes for roofers
- Building a sales process map or flowchart
- How to test and monitor your process
What is a sales process?
A sales process is a set of steps or tasks that can and should be repeated to move a prospective customer through from initial outreach to a confirmed customer. While there are some “standard” steps that are typically included in a sales process, you can customize yours for what works with your ideal customer, business, or area of service. Solar, for example, has a different sales process than asphalt shingle roofing.
Top 4 benefits of a sales process for roofing
There are a LOT of benefits to having a sales process for your team and business. These are the top 4.
Encourages consistency
This is the #1 benefit. Having one process in place takes the guesswork out of the “how” and “when” of connecting with customers and booking jobs. When you trust your process, you don’t need to trust your team; You can and should trust them, but it takes that guess work or human error out of your sales cycle.
Your sales team wants to sell. Without a clear set of processes, it’s easy for sales teams to get stuck into selling mode and fall behind on the long-game of building customer relationships: Customer follow-up can be missed, invoices sent late, estimates not go out, etc.
A sales process provides consistency by:
- Clearly stating what is expected of your sales team
- Ensures each customer has the same great experience
- Reduces the risk of skipped or missed steps
- Making sure each job has the right amount of attention
- Streamlining when and how paperwork and documentation is filled out
Ensures scalability of your business
If you want to grow your business, having a set process in place makes growing and scaling easy. Processes take the guesswork out of training, continuing that consistency as you grow. Without a set standard in place, a growing sales team could grow to become its own entity that is harder to manage, monitor, or track.
Empowers decision making & analytics
When everyone in your team follows a single process, you can easily identify gaps or areas for improvement. It creates an environment that makes testing changes, exploring new sales techniques, or identifying team members that need extra training. For example…
- If one sales member isn’t closing as fast or as many deals, then you can provide training to them.
- You can change one part of the process at a time and monitor the impact it has on deals won, reviews, etc.
- Get half your team to make changes and then compare the results to see which part of your team performs better.
These 3 examples show how you can use a process to monitor and improve your sales process for long term growth and success.
Improves customer experience
Referrals can make up 30 - 50% of your roofing leads. Even if they’re not direct referrals, customer comments, testimonials, and reviews all impact your booked jobs. So, having a trustworthy and standard process in place can make a huge impact on your customer experience and happiness.
Imagine you replaced Jane’s roof, and she loved working with you. She then goes and tells Joe about how amazing her experience was and how great you were. When he reaches out to you, Joe already had certain expectations. So, when Jane hears back from your team in 36 hours but Joe has to wait a week, he’s going to begin to question your reliability. Then, if Jane got an estimate in 2 days and Joe had to wait another week, his trust in you really falls. If your sales process isn’t consistent, then maybe the quality of your roof installs aren’t either.
Reliability and consistency go hand in hand in customer experience.
Building a sales process
Now that we know what a sales process is and some key points for why they matter, it’s time to explore how to build one.
There’s two approaches you can take to building your roofing sales process.
- Look at what you’re currently doing.
- Look at other sales processes.
We recommend a mix of the two, but you should always start off by analyzing your own process first.
Why?
Trying to change the way you function is way easier said than done. 70% of all change initiatives fail due to a lack of communication, poor leadership, misunderstanding, or nonexistent follow-through. In order to ensure that you can build a sales process that sticks, look at what you are already doing and adapt it where needed. You’ll have a higher success rate that way than starting fresh.
Here are 5 steps we recommend you take when building out your roofing sales process.
Step 1: Write down your current process
You already have a process for selling roofs. You may not think you do, but you do. Take time to write it down. Step by step, what you do to bring in leads, sell roofs, book jobs, and follow up with customers.
Step 2: Look for ways you can simplify or fill out your process.
Are you waiting too long between sending proposals and following up? Do you not send proposals? Do you follow up after the invoice for a testimonial or review? Take a really honest look at your process and see how you can make it simpler or more concise.
The key is to have it be simple without skipping a lot of steps. A simple three step process of “Prospect-Close-Invoice” leaves a LOT up for interpretation and to be missed. But a multi-step process of “Prospect-Call-Estimate-Follow Up-Contract Send-Follow Up-Sign-Book Job-Invoice-Follow Up-Review request” is way too long. No sales team is going to follow through on each of those tasks, and if they do, they won’t be tracking it. Which takes us to our third step.
Step 3: Involve your sales team
What you think your team does and what your sales team actually does can be two different things. Make sure to include your sales team in this process. Ask them what they do consistently, or what doesn’t impact sales.
BONUS IDEA: Speak to each sales team person individually and compare the processes. What does your top seller do that your lower-performing team members don’t? What can you take from one person and share with the rest?
Step 4: Do some research
It’s always a good idea to see what others in the industry have as their process. Reach out to your network and ask what their processes are. Google is another great place to look for examples, too. If what other people do doesn’t align exactly with your process, don’t stress. You don’t need to do what others do. But, you may get some good insight into what works for other businesses that you could adapt into your own.
An example roofing sales process
By the time you’ve looked at your own process, brought in your sales team, and researched other processes, you may come up with something that looks like this:
Step 1: Prospecting: sales calls, marketing, emails, cold outreach, etc.
Step 2: Send Estimate: After getting the address, order a measurement from Roofr, and send out a proposal.
Step 3: Follow up: 1-3 days later, follow up with the customer to close the deal.
Step 4: Close: Get a signed contract and book a date for the job.
Step 5: Invoice: Send out an invoice after the job is done
Putting your process into action
Once you have your process figured out and written down, it’s time to enact it. This is the most challenging part. You want to make it:
- Easy for your sales team to use
- Trackable and manageable for you to monitor progress
- Clear to read
- Simple to access
On top of this, it’s best if your sales process tracking:
- Easily integrates with your other business tools or CRM
- Updates as your jobs progress for all-in-one monitoring
You may be using a CRM–Customer Relationship Management system–to monitor sales already. If you are using a CRM, you can build out your process there. A CRM built for roofers can be the best choice because it will automatically connect with estimates, measurements, and job tracking, saving your team time jumping between tools and documents when looking for information.
Sales process automation
Depending on the tool you use to monitor and track your sales process, you may be able to lean into automation to help simplify smaller tasks.
Automation in roofing sales can help with:
- Automatic followup emails to customers
- Material ordering based on job measurements
- Sending invoices once a job is complete
- Collecting payment and sending receipts
- Relationship-building with 3-6 month email check-ins
Having these steps triggers along your process take mundane and repetitive tasks out of the hands of your sales team, giving them more time to focus on closing deals and booking jobs.
Monitoring success and making adjustments
Once you have a sales process in place, you can monitor your sales team and watch for trends.
BONUS TIP: We recommend leaving your process as is for at least a month or two to establish a baseline. If you start making changes too quickly, you won't have anything to measure changes against.
Some things you should watch for in your process are:
- Jobs getting stuck in a specific step
- Deviations off of the process
- Skipped steps or gaps
- Connection between closed deals and timeline for each step
After that first month or two, connect with your sales team, and pick out one thing to try changing. For example, if you notice that customers close more quickly if they get an estimate within 24 hours instead of 48, then change the process step to send estimates within one day instead of two. Monitor results for another month or so and compare.
If you test more than one change at a time, it will be hard to see what actually impacts sales or not.
Roofing sales processes: A surefire way to boost sales
Processes are not about micromanaging or monitoring sales performance. A sales process is about empowering your team to work smarter with steps that are proven to convert leads and build business. With this guide, we’re sure you’ll be able to build a process that helps your business be successful.
For other resources, check these out:
- Techniques to boost sales
- Online instant estimator tools that bring in high quality leads
- Branding your business to stand out from the crowd
- Using data to grow your business