Roofr Basics: Organizing Your Job Board & Navigating Your Dashboard

Pete: [00:00:00] All right, and we're back with another Roofr Masterclass. Welcome everybody. I'm your host Pete with my co-host Nic back off of his wedding hiatus. There. It's been a little bit since we've had the band together here.  

Nic: Exactly. It's good to be back.  

Pete: Yeah. Back to be at it. Together here. Batman and Robin back together. Yeah, back together. A reunion here. yeah, excited for this one. Obviously, job board and process stuff is one of my favorite topics, so excited to kinda talk through some of this stuff and share some stuff with you guys.

i'm sure we have some housekeeping stuff, right Nic, to jump into really quick first and then we'll, let's rock and roll. Get into it here. [00:01:00] Perfect.  

Nic: There we go. Awesome. So as Pete mentioned, your host, Pete, the Batman to, my Robin is if you guys need anything, you could always email us.

We have the two easiest emails in the world, Pete at Roofr dot com and Nic at Roofr dot com.  

Pete: Yeah. Yes. All of our masterclasses are recorded, available on Roofr YouTube and on Roofr dot com.

In the resources section, lots of great stuff in there. We have the Roofr Academy stuff. We have blog articles, that Joel in the background has been working on fine tuning. I know. we've got, the podcast in there. If you haven't seen the Roofr of the Month series, those are in there.

and then obviously  

Nic: sessions too.  

Pete: Yes. Yeah. So we've got a lot of stuff going on in there. If you guys have not checked that out. If you have feedback on any of this stuff. Specifically about the masterclass, we're always looking to get better. There will be a survey at the end of this.

You can jump on and take that survey for us. That's much appreciated. Or you can, email Joel directly, joel's been in the chat for us. Hit up Joel and let him know if you've [00:02:00] got some specific feedback on how the masterclass is set up or if you just like Nic's hair today and just wanna make a comment on it, whatever it is.

Nic: Sometimes you get good hair days, sometimes you have bad. This one I'm in the middle with. I'll deal with it.  

Pete: Yeah, I'll take it.  

Nic: You just always got a good flow, Pete. It's just, yeah. What was it?  

Pete: The high and tight haircut.  

Nic: For those who are in the know, you'll know, but if you haven't, there was a masterclass where we did, and somebody commented that he liked pete's haircut always high and tight. But, awesome. And, just some updates here. If you wanna register to join our next masterclass on August 5th, where we're gonna be talking about texting and emailing through Roofr, why it's a game changer for your process. Spoiler. It is a game changer. I'll, drop two stats right off the bat.

Emailing and texting is going to, like text open rates are closer to 90% where email open and read rates are closer to that 50%, 50 to 60% mark there. So that's a huge point [00:03:00] there. And being able to email and text right off the bat to increase that speed to lead conversion is going to increase your closing percentage, especially off of fresh leads that come through your system by seven times.

If you haven't seen our top takeaways from our industry report take three minutes to learn what strategies get you more business and which don't, that's all in there as well.

As Pete mentioned, we have a Roofr of the month. Our next one is coming up very soon as we're coming up to the end of July, but Julys was an amazing one, a great podcast with the awesome Jacob Larue of Honeydew Roofing. He uses over 57 plus. Custom automations to keep leads moving, improving customer comms and streamlining his operations.

So best believe he's using that email and texting as well. As Pete mentioned, we have Roofr Academy for on-demand Learning. We usually have one, new, lesson coming out every quarter. Be on the lookout for the next one coming up soon.  

Pete: Yeah, that was an awesome conversation with Jacob.

Just a lot of good insight into how he's running that [00:04:00] business. yeah, that was, a very good effective, if you're haven't listened to it, lots to learn in that conversation with Jacob. So definitely jump on, that if you haven't seen it.

Nic: Super good insight. He's such a sharp guy and he's just running his team super effectively. It's cool watching like the next generation come into roofing and just start to make a difference and utilize tech to their advantage. It's really refreshing to see.  

Pete: Yeah. What's really interesting, as I've done these Roofr of the months, we talked to a lot of roofers who are fairly new, in their first couple years of business.

And what I find really, intriguing is how lean everyone is running, right? Like how everyone is able to run companies, that are producing more revenue probably than what a company would've five or 10 years ago with minimal people, right? Like we just a very bare bone staff more or less, right?

And a huge part of that is, what we're gonna talk about today, which is, their organization, how they're streamlining things, how [00:05:00] they're utilizing their tech and, how they're set up for success, I think is allowing them to just run. So many more jobs, more efficiently, with a lot less people involved,  

Nic: like we always say, running things efficiently is important, but at the end of the day, no matter what you want to do for your company, you're looking to make it more profitable. If down the road you're looking to get it acquired through a private equity channel, or you're looking to hand it down, or you're just looking to grow it and have less stress, that tech aspect is going to be a key thing.

That's gonna bring you along that process. And the leaner you can be, like Pete's saying, is not only just how much more effective you are at growing, but. As a business operator and an owner or investor, whatever the case is, you're gonna be more profitable, you'll have a higher EBITA. Those things are super important at the end of the day for more money in your pocket, more money that your company's worth and your overall valuation.

So utilizing this stuff is great getting to the point where you can replace like some of [00:06:00] those jobs that you would and. Invest into that tech rather than investing in that person is going to be a big thing to help you take that next step as a company and grow fast.  

Pete: Yeah, and I did a podcast with the chief revenue officer of a company called Live Switch.

A live streaming company recently. And one of the things that he said in there that I thought was really super smart and really, interesting was he said, when he goes into a new company, the first thing that he does is figure out how quickly can I replicate myself? So how can I standardize my processes?

How can I build a process, a system in place to where someone can easily come in and do exactly what I'm doing and I can essentially work myself out of that? From a standpoint of a manager and something that we often talk about with roofers is like, Hey.

so many guys, especially these guys that are starting companies up, are still very much involved in the day-to-day operation. our good friend Ben at Roof Tiger is a perfect example of that. What is he in year five? [00:07:00] And you look at how much Ben has been able to. Pull back from the day-to-day operations because of the system that he built, the people that he's put into that system, the company's essentially, he replicated himself and he is able to just move on to other things, focus on other areas of the business, spend more time with his family, do all these things.

Because he's already got that freedom, and the company set up to run, more or less in his absence, right? it's really, cool to see and, really interesting to see how people are leveraging tech now to do that. I know when I first came onto the tech side of the world, like that was like unheard of, right?

Yeah. no one really worked themself out of their own business. And so it is very interesting to see these guys doing it in such a short amount of time now.

Nic: That it, that's a great point. Before I get into this, the point that I wanna make, which is jumping off what you were saying, I'm upset and I wanna put out into the ether out in the universe.

I'm launching a formal complaint against Ben Tiger. Two days ago. [00:08:00] I'm after work. Cooking, just having a good time chatting with my wife, and the only thing running through my head over and over again was this damn theme song. That he has for his new commercial. He has commercial, and I'm gonna, yeah.

And it's so catchy and it was stuck for so long and, to ruin everyone else's day, I'm gonna sing it to you. It's Roof tiger. Put a tiger on your Roof and that's it. That's his entire commercial. And it stuck in my head for an hour and a half till I looked at my wife and said, I'm going to kill Ben Tiger.

And she's what the hell is happening? Where did that come from? I have had this song stuck in my head for hours and it won't come out. So good job Ben. Formal complaint, it works way. I'm gonna post a comment on your Google, but to your previous point about Ben replicating himself, there's something I learned at a young age from my dad and, building out Roofr and starting here when I did [00:09:00] hiring people and scaling the company and stuff.

And you see this a lot in roofing companies as well, is. Ultimately you have to get through your head as an either early person in the company or a owner is. Nobody's gonna care as much about the company as you. They might care a lot. They might get pretty good darn close, but they're not gonna care as much as you.

So putting that extra effort in that time in and stuff like that, it's going to be impossible for you to find that and get somebody to do that. like you said, you wanna replicate yourself as best as possible. When you're starting a company, I've talked to so many different business owners who say,

what would be the thing to take you to the next step? Just like a clone of me. Of course. 'cause you care that much. This is your baby, this is what you're doing. It's just like your child you're bringing up, but you're not gonna find that out there. The faster you realize that, the more the faster you're gonna be able to grow.

'cause you're not gonna be looking for the thing that you can't find the intangible. But the best way to do something like that [00:10:00] is and replicate them, is use, utilize your tech, like Pete's saying, utilize SOPs, utilize checklists, utilize automations to make sure that things are getting done the way you need them to get done.

Pete and I, mostly Pete, have done these talks in front of a bunch of conferences, and one of the things that Pete always said is don't make your job board too granular or too broad. Because ultimately, if it's too granular, you're gonna get too in the weeds and you're gonna have a hard time replicating that.

And if it's too broad, you're gonna be missing steps. So that sweet spot, Pete, what was that like? Eight to 10 stages? Yeah, probably about eight to 10. Yep. Eight to 10 stages. And then build in checklists along the way to make sure that things are getting done. Don't make it overly granular, but you can have that done.

We'll go through that a little bit, how you can do that in Roofr today. And also we have a new feature release, in one of that stuff too. So spoiler alert, stick around for that. based on the task automation. But that's a big thing. You wanna replicate yourself. you can't just find that person, so why don't you foolproof it [00:11:00] and make sure you have checks and balances along the way to make sure that the things that can then get someone as close as you as possible get done so that you can scale effectively and you can stop focusing in your business.

You could focus on your business instead and take it to the next step, like Ben Tiger opening up solar Panther and Gutter Lion, and he's got a whole kind of three companies into one because he was able to replicate himself through automations and processes to take that next step.  

Pete: Yeah, and I think a huge piece of that too is getting the buy-in, right?

Like you want to get the buy-in from your team and the only way you're gonna get the buy-in, into the culture, into the process is to really have a process that's easy to understand, that's easily replicated. And also they allows them to give input, right? Like one of the things, I think that a mistake that's often made is okay, I have a process and we put it in.

Essentially create a workflow, let's say, and we don't ever look at it again, right? And, and I think that one of the [00:12:00] pieces that's missed is you should always be fine tuning that process. And there's no better group of people to help you do that than your own team, right? They're living that process every day, So find out where their headaches are, find out where their roadblocks are in that process, figure out where you can potentially, maybe. Insert a little bit more tech, automation, something like that. Maybe it's, just tweaking the way things flow. There's all these things that you can do to just continue to fine tune that, but relying on your team for that input is huge.

And it gives them more buy-in because now they've got skin in the game, they've got input. They're essentially building their own process, right? And then now it makes it easier for everyone to be hands-on and be involved and be, more on board, with replicating that process for the next person.

Nic: and that was a great thing about that podcast you did with Jacob LaRue. Again, guys roofr.com/podcast. The last Roofr of the Month is Jacob LaRue. Really good conversation about. Going back and revisiting your processes. And I [00:13:00] think your exact question was how often do you revisit it? And he said constantly.

And the other thing that he named too is and this is super important, is when a mistake is made, it doesn't mean that was done purposefully. It means that there was a break in the process somewhere. We need to add in another check, another balance, another situation or anything like that to make sure that stuff doesn't happen again.

So it's I can't remember what movie it was, but it's like happy mistakes. that's what people call that. It's okay, we effed up. That sucks. What are we gonna do from it? Are we gonna be upset? Sure. But more importantly, how are we gonna fix that? What is that next step there? And that's super important.

And then going back to your replicability, that's so important when you're looking to scale, because I talked to a co company, I think it was last month, and they went from. Zero to three locations, and I think it was like 30 or 40 employees within a couple years and was killing it. And when he thought he was ready to kinda take that step back, spend more time, things went [00:14:00] bad.

And he went all the way back down to one location real quick, bad, and installs bad stuff. And then it gets into the reputation and stuff. And one thing he said was that I scaled too fast without being able to replicate it. And if you think about that, making sure that you have your job board organized and navigating throughout that, those automation set up, everything that we're about to go through is super important.

But you've gotta make sure that it's replicable, not just because you want to be able to speed up that hiring process, but ultimately you want those people to be there. Long term retention is a huge problem in our industry, especially among sales reps. So let's find out a way that you can scale somebody quickly.

Make them comfortable, make them good so that they start selling more roofs so they're happy, they're getting paid and you're getting paid. And that circle goes round and round. And that's super important to build out and you're not gonna be able to do that without process changes. And over looking back on those and updating those processes as you go along.

And what it also allows you to do is avoid hiring [00:15:00] those that have bad habits. There's a lot of like seasoned salespeople in here that are just stuck in their ways. And Pete's always mentioned like. Maybe your best person is someone who you can teach roofing to, but has the innate customer experience and the customer, expertise nailed down like Chick-fil-A employees, they're always great, but how do we get somebody replicated and hired, into Roofr very quickly so that they can start selling jobs?

You have to have that process in place, and this is a great way to start here.  

Pete: Yeah, I had a guy come by the other day that was knocking on doors selling, spraying for bugs, right? Like he was a pest control salesman, door to door salesman, but just handled himself, if I owned a roofing company, I probably would've stole him on the spot from the pest control company.

'cause he just was, he was very good. He handled himself really well. He interacted with my kids, very well. Like my son wanted to be his best friend. Instantly he's like showing them pictures of his dirt bikes on his phone and stuff like that, yeah, he would've been a great hire, perfect person that, [00:16:00] yeah, obviously a little bit of sales experience, younger guy, obviously a go-getter, he is out Knocking doors would've been a perfect pickup, for a roofing contractor who had a good process and could just plug him in, he would've probably found it.

Success right away, That's he, that's the first thing that actually came to my mind having a conversation with him. It's this guy in a good process would absolutely kill it.  

Nic: it's so cool seeing those people. I get like SDR calls all the time from companies looking for, to get Roofr to use their product, whether it's a partnership or it's like a tech platform for call recording, whatever. And every once in a while you get like a really good one. And I'll always go Hey, is this line recorded? And they're like, what? No. I'm like, it's not going to gong or anything. He's just no.

I was like, cool. You got a good process, you got a good flow. There's some reps up at Roofr dot com. So if you're, I don't know how you're being treated there, but we have the processes in place to help you shine, man.  

So do the same thing with your roofing company. You find that out. a great example of that.

and shout out to Mark who just [00:17:00] started his own company, but, mark and Martin from Monarch Roofing. Mark just started his own company as well. Mark was Martin's right hand man for Geez, the majority of their growth. And their partners and their sales training platform as well.

And Martin found Mark at his favorite sushi restaurant, he was the GM as his favorite restaurant. And he just always got the best customer experience, the best conversations, the attention to detail and everything. And he's like I want this guy. So don't be afraid to find somebody who's outside of the roofing industry.

'cause you can teach them roofing as long as they have those skills and build in that process as well.  

Pete: Yeah. All right, let's jump into it here and dive into the job board a bit and talk through some of these things that we've been talking about and how you can leverage Roofr to really organize yourself a little bit better.

Nic: Yeah, so with the job board here, just a little pro tip guys, if you find that you're on a smaller screen, usually I'm on like my monitor, but today I'm just on my laptop. But if you ever [00:18:00] need a little bit more room, the little toggle button here helps you so much. I love just bringing it down small and it opens up that door.

But Pete said. When you get Roofr, you're going to get a, as whether you sign on as a pay, as you go, a user or one of the subscriptions, you're gonna have standard, job cards, built in. I always think about the job cards as your digital whiteboard. This is your swim lanes for where your company will go.

And depending on the plan, you're going to be able to edit these. So if you're on premium or elite, you're gonna be able to edit the names. And or add new ones and, create multiple workflows. But the way to look at this, again, going back to what Pete was saying, is you want around that eight to 10 different stages there.

Now we're gonna take away in this process the stages for loss and unqualified 'cause that's just the end state there. But if you look at this, is just like a basic one that I've created. You got new lead appointments scheduled proposal sent [00:19:00] and presented. Proposal signed, production, post-production payments, and job completed.

That's nine stages right there. And be able to take them across is super important. And Pete, you've always said, if you don't have a process on paper right now, do yourself a favor. Whether you're starting out or you've been in business a long time, write your process out on paper,  

Pete: yeah, when I was back in customer success, one of the first things you would do when you were helping customers set up their CRM is you say, walk me through your process.

lead comes in. Okay, great. What happens next? Okay, you schedule an appointment. Okay, great. What happens next? Just think through one step at a time, and that's essentially you're building, you have a process, I think Ty Backer said, maybe your process is figure it the hell out.

It's still a process, not a good one, obviously, but it is a process, right? So there's, everyone has some sort of process. Maybe you just haven't put it on paper yet. [00:20:00] If you haven't, I always challenge you to do Even if you are using Roofr right now and you have a workflow in here, sit down with the team one day and let's go through it and just say okay, hey, what happens next?

Whose responsibility is this? What are we, what's important information for you to get from the person before you? All these things are gonna help you to not only build out a really strong workflow, but then potentially to build all the sub resources like checklists and tasks and all of these other things that you are gonna need, to really hone this process in a bit.

And they all supplement the job board, right?  

Nic: And that's a big part there. Sorry, I realized I switched screen. Yeah, you're all good. it's a big part of that job process and, I like that how you're saying sit down with your team, like what happens next? And again, we're looking at this again.

If you have a digital whiteboard, I know so many roofing companies that I talked to in the background of their call, if they're in the office, there's a giant whiteboard with just straight lines across. Titles on the [00:21:00] top, and a lot of times you see those sticky notes pulled over. Yeah. And if you're new to something like this, is called a Kanban board.

What the job board is, this is essentially a digital whiteboard, like I'm saying, with swim lanes across and take that job cart. And drag it to the next stage. So always look at that. The way you're saying I love that is talk with your team. okay, new lead comes in. What happens after that? Okay, appointment is scheduled.

After the appointment is scheduled, what do we do? We do an inspection, we do a proposal, we do all that stuff. And if you start to talk and go back and forth on. What are the little things involved with it, but you're not sure if that should be a stage. Keep that in mind. Write that down and that could be a task.

As you can see, I have tasks built out underneath this, and it opens up each section. We'll get into those tasks and how they can build those out in a second. But think about those big, large swim lanes that you're looking at, the big milestones and you're trying to be around eight to 10, and anything that's ancillary inside that appointment scheduled.

I need them to do an inspection, take photos. Measure [00:22:00] the roof, all that stuff doesn't need to be its own swim lane in itself, but it could be a tasks that are built in to make sure that they're done later. So I love building that stuff out. And if you're on the elite plan at Roofr, by the way, you could have up to three different pipelines, which is great.

In our case, we call them workflows. You can have a retail insurance commercial. You can have per location. You can have a bunch of different things that you can build up there. Maybe there's a repair option in there. What's nice is if you go into the settings, you can create those three workflows.

You can create a default one, which is nice to have, and then when you go into these and hit manage, you can see how we can add different things in. Now I'm showing you guys again from an elite point of view, but different. Workflows such as retail insurance and commercial will have different stages. Some might be more granular, some will be more broad.

But it's important to know that things can be different and this is how you can build it up. So if you're on in insurance, for example, you might be waiting on some paperwork there and then [00:23:00] you have all the information here. Then you have appointment scheduled adjuster meetings. Definitely for this only proposal presented is gonna be the similar one here.

You have the proposal follow up, you can see how you can add things in, change them. You could change the flow of them by, updating it. And if you need to add something in congratulate Pete. Wow, that sounds close. Okay, there it is. That was actually really close. You could add that in. And there you have a new stage and you could put it in where you need it to be, so you're able to really build that stuff out.

Keep in mind. If there's a couple stages that you can't eliminate, like new lead. Complete job, lost jobs and unqualified. Those are good for data that we need to pull in for a performance dashboard, but you can build these up the way that you need them to be a little bit more nimble and a little bit more out of the box.

Ultimately, there were some CRMs out there, and when you sign up, they have five stages and those are the five that you're gonna have to use. [00:24:00] We know that there's multiple things that are built into those five stages, so we allow a little bit more customization on that front.  

Pete: I think there's a sweet spot, right?

Like I think five stages is a bit high level for my taste. But I think what you'll find a lot of times too, if you sit down with a team and you start to work through it, and like Nic said, maybe there's some things that,  as you work through there, you start to realize hey, there's some things that need to be done at this specific point in the process, but maybe they're not.

As crucial as needing a high level workflow item for them. You know what you'll find a lot of times is that one of two things happens. You either realize that you have some of those things already added in to your workflow, and now your workflow is probably overly granular. Or you are missing stuff, right?

like one stage that I probably would add to this, Nic, honestly, is a follow up stage after we present a proposal, right? like something like that. But, and, but you don't know, like it is all based on how your team [00:25:00] does business and, what makes sense for them and. Where specifically as we dive into this more, you'll see Nic's gonna add some automations, right?

And like, where do we want our automations to live? What stages do we want to trigger those on? those are important things to keep in mind as we look at this. And like Nic and I said at the top, you always want to be looking at this, revisiting it, tweaking it, things change, right?

You may change your process around. I see a lot of contractors right now changing their process around how they're dealing with incoming phone calls, how their leads are flowing in through Calendly bookings and stuff like that so that's changing things on the front end as to speed to lead and how they're getting to the customer.

So that's gonna probably tweak their process a bit and maybe add a stage or remove a stage from their workflow, as technology evolves, we constantly want to be able to take a look and see what we can potentially do different.

Nic: It is a big point there. And as you can see, things change, like Pete was saying. And if you want to take a look at everything compared, you could [00:26:00] turn on all the workflows and it's gonna break down where each one of them are. So from the start, you'll see which ones are like, what stage does this live, what workflow does this stage live in?

So for example, new leads in retail insurance and commercial, but waiting on paperwork, just insurance appointment scheduled for retail and insurance. You can see where it all ties in and in each job card you can see where they live primarily. So this one's an insurance. This one, oh, that's a, sorry. This one is retail.

This one's insurance. You can see which ones are built in throughout the commercial and everything and how this can build out to help you on your day-to-day. So super important things to build that in, including that proposal follow up, which you can have built in directly here, and you can have automations move those stage movement as well, which I highly recommend because a clean CRM is gonna allow you to attack those jobs way quicker. Make sure that your customer comms are built into that. You can make sure that you're closing these jobs faster and you can increase that [00:27:00] customer experience. And we know from all of our past masterclass and all the people we talk to, that customer experience is one of the biggest points for you getting referrals and you getting those reviews built in.

So this is a great way to add that and tie that all together.  

Pete: Yeah, it ultimately should be the driving force behind most of the decisions that you make. Yeah. Around how your process flows, what technology you're using, in the back of your mind, the foundational piece should always be that customer experience.

'cause it's gonna drive, if you drive the customer experience, it's gonna drive a better process. More streamlined setup for your team. Like Nic's gonna show like the automations involved and things like that. One thing I want to note here too is if you notice at the top, you can see a number and a dollar value, right?

And I, those are important, right? Because as we, at a high level, right? If I'm a manager. An owner, whatever that case may be. Having that visibility of how many jobs are in that stage on any given day when I open this, but more importantly, the dollar value [00:28:00] associated with those jobs, I can start to recognize where I have bottlenecks.

If I've got a lot of jobs building up in one stage of my workflow, odds are there's a reason why, right? Something is happening that's not allowing those jobs, whether it's, let's say, a sales to production handoff or permitting if you're depending on where you're at, right? Like all these things that could potentially come into play that are causing a log jam, and we can actually see that.

Visibly here by just looking and saying okay, why are there 200 appointments scheduled? are these just not being dispositioned correctly? is someone not going in and moving 'em to job lost or to proposal signed or whatever? Do we need to put an automation in play? And how much money is tied up in our workflow on any given day.

Yeah. I think it holds more weight, right? Specifically if you're sitting in a Monday morning sales meeting and you're looking at these numbers with the team and you can say, Hey, there's $250,000 sitting in follow up. What can we do better? Team? we're not following [00:29:00] up. I always tell the story about how when I started in the CRM side of things, I remember looking at a customer's workflow and he had a follow up stage and there was like hundreds of jobs and follow ups, and there was almost three quarters of a million dollars.

Yeah. Sitting in follow up. And when I asked him about it, he's oh, they're just jobs that we never followed up on. That essentially now are pretty much lost.  

Nic: Yeah.  

Pete: So old, they're not even worth revisiting. which probably wasn't the case. who knows if whether those customers were even sold or not.

Yeah, But it was the mindset of that's where jobs went to die, right? if they weren't signed immediately, they were just moving 'em to follow up and forgetting about them. And that's something that we looked at and we were like, Hey, maybe there's a way for you guys to better address these.

His comment to me was, that's my sales team who just, once they drop a proposal off, they move on to the next appointment and they aren't really good at following up. Maybe that's something we help with, maybe that's something that we need a better process around.

But having the [00:30:00] visibility here helps us to, identify those areas of opportunity as we like to call them. And iterate on that process. And be able to fine tune, that's how we fine tune, we look at where the numbers are building up, where there's a hole in the process.

There's a big difference between process issues and performance issues. And I think sometimes we. Blur the lines of oh, my guys just suck. They don't follow up, sometimes it's not the guys, Sometimes it's the process. And and sometimes  

Nic: you need to like help out with the process with automations.

Correct. If you guys aren't following up, there's a stat that you had one time that was on average, it takes six to eight follow-ups. Yeah. For someone to close six to eight different touches for someone to close. We all want those kitchen table cells. We all want those one called close. But especially in the reality and the macro that we're living in nowadays, you're probably not gonna get that.

So how do you make sure that you're on top of things and how to make sure you're following up well, maybe automate that, maybe not leave it up to human error. [00:31:00] 'cause I always know, even as a salesperson and I need to get better at this too, but sometimes I call someone to follow up just for the sake that I need to follow up.

it's just, I'm going through the motions and it's just I'm not providing value in that. Whereas if I automate this process, if I can build this into my job cards so that if it's staying in a stage for X amount of hours or days or weeks, I can send out this message. And if it's another two weeks here, I can send out a different message.

Nurture that client. Make sure that you're always following up so that your team can focus on the stuff that you want them to do. Drum up more business, go knock on some more doors, all that stuff. And if somebody responds and raises their hands, that's a sign for you to circle back and get them. But never leave something up to, the thing that I hear all the time and you've, you just hit it right on the head, Pete is my guy's this, my guy's that.

you're the owner, aren't you? how do we figure this out? We're not reviewing the [00:32:00] problems, we're not reviewing the things that can optimize. And that's where like Roofr really comes in. The ability to see, visualize and optimize, but you also have that team behind you with the implementation specialists and your ams that are your Roofr experts that are going to be here to help you out with all those optimizations.

Pete: and I think the one thing that the technology does for you is it gives you the ability to be proactive and not reactive. Like why are we waiting until that customer calls and says, Hey, did you forget about us when we could have probably contacted that customer? A few times with an automation or a text or something like that, and kept them completely in the loop, of where their job was at, what the status of things were.

Maybe followed up with them. Maybe they've been waiting on us to answer a question before they sign a contract. Something like that, And I think so many times. Traditionally we're reactive, right? Like we're trying to just wait for them to make a move and then reacting to it. And that's where we lose a lot of business, right?

Because, if [00:33:00] we push the envelope, like I, there's a, perfect example. I talked to a customer, he was showing me his, door knocking app, where his guys won a job after the 13th time. They knocked the same door. and that's persistence, right? But that's being proactive.

Hey, they're going back. They know this woman's got damage. They're gonna go back. They're gonna keep knocking her door and saying Hey, we're here again. We're across the street. What do you think about an inspection this time? Oh, no thanks. We're not in the market for it.

Okay, great. we'll see you in a couple months, right? We'll come back and try again. And it worked. 13 times. She finally gave in and said yes, and they won. But it was because they were proactive. I think utilizing these tools and think through that process, right? what can you do in your process to be, we often talk about speed to lead.

in the podcast I did the other day. He brought up one that I'd never heard before, race to face, which I thought was genius, right? It is not only are we the first person to communicate, but how quickly is our process allowing [00:34:00] us to get a face in front of that person? Because let's be honest, the number one way to close jobs in the roofing space, it's do that inspection and be there face to face, like Nic said, that kitchen table meeting, right? And being able to walk through, develop that trust factor, and close that sale. how quickly are we able to do that? What is our process warrant to be proactive about getting out there and being the first person to show our face on the property?

Nic: And then having that process, like you said, to make sure that you don't have to do a hard close. People will get turned off by the Rodney Webb style of just I'm sitting with you for six hours until you make a decision.  

Pete: I'm not leaving until you say yes.  

Nic: Look, I respect that, and if anybody has been in the chat or watching later have been one of my customers, you probably got a sense of that from me as well, because I'm gonna call you until I get an answer yes, no, or later. But when you're looking at big ticket items like a roof, like you're looking at five figures or more, you want that ability to try to [00:35:00] close on the spot.

If they're not ready, just be like, not a problem. I'm gonna email this out to you. And then, you know what, I'll follow up in a couple days. And as you can see while we're talking there, I built out two quick automations to follow up with them on opposite days. So I have a email for after five days, six days of it being in sent and not signed.

I have a proposal, follow up email, and then in eight days, so two days after that I have a follow up text and you can bounce 'em back and forth and just let them know that you're always there, change up the messaging, anything else that you want linked to the proposals, all that stuff to really open up that conversation there.

But being able to have that process built in and knowing that it's built in on those stages for those proposals sent the proposal, follow up, the new lead, the production and all that stuff is gonna be invaluable to you as a company to make sure that you can run leaner,  

Pete: one of the things that I really like that a couple of our customers are doing is they're following up, they're supplementing the email with a text.  

Noise: Yeah.  

Pete: Essentially just shooting a text saying Hey, make sure to check your [00:36:00] email. We just sent you an email. And I think it's super smart, right?

Because it's, you're able to convey the information more detailed. Probably in an email. But you're directing them there with that text message, right? So you are, reinforcing it, with the piece of information that's gonna probably get opened more so than the text, than the email, I think it's like a 90% open rate.  

Noise: Yeah.  

Pete: on the text message. And if it leads them to that email with all the information, then it just. Served its purpose. And I think that it's a super smart way to leverage the two of them complimentary of each other.

We're seeing more and more of our contractors doing that, which I think is a really effective move. It's just an interesting use of the product. But they're setting up an automation to do it, right?  

Nic: Yeah.  

This is a great example of it for anybody who's new to Roofr automations or unsure on how robust our automations are.

They're super robust. Listen to that, podcast with Jacob LaRue. He's got almost 60 different podcasts built into a system there. [00:37:00] So one thing is that you're gonna be looking that if and then statements, and sometimes there's an and So if a proposal status changes to sent, meaning that you're sending that email out anyways, through that process.

And the workflow is retail. We have three different workflows. Remember retail, insurance and commercial. Then I want to send a text. To the customer. And here is the text copy directly linked in there. I can delay it for business hours, which I would highly recommend, just so you don't piss off anybody or, delay it for a couple hours, weeks and everything else.

And that's as easy as it is to build out those automations and open that stuff up and you can. Open that to make sure that everything is set up, for texting. By the way, delaying it for business hours is, a legal necessity as well as, it is illegal against the FTC, to text outside of business hours unless it's a one-to-one text.

So any automations has to be through that so you can see how that can be built out really easily and create that process that [00:38:00] you want. And the way that I have these processes built in is that if you book something in the calendar, it automatically moves it to appointment schedules and sends out an email and text for communication.

If I book a calendar appointment for a material drop, it's gonna move it to pre-production automatically and set an email saying, Hey, here's the things to look out. This is the date and time and everything that I'm going to be, dropping off the material safety precautions, things to work out and everything else.

If I send out a roof install on the calendar, it's going to send out that automation as well. But also for those proposal follow ups, those new lead follow-ups, if they're not moving on a new lead after two days, I'm sending them an email and text to be like, Hey, let's book an appointment in. You wanna entice and communicate with the customer along that way, and a good way of making sure that you're building that stuff out are these tasks.

As you can see, the amount that it's done on these job cards. You can see what's going on in these job cards as well. The last time it was updated, the how long they've been in the stages, who was assigned to all that stuff [00:39:00] here. And when you open up a job card, I can go directly into tasks.

Oops. Here you can see these automated tasks built in where your team can click them off and you're saying to replicate you as a, clone you as a person, you could add these stuff in and you could have them in here where they're just going through them nice and easy.

Or if you're building them out. One of the cool things you can do now is stage blocking. So if we're gonna make sure we call and leave a message for the customer, whatever the thing is, I can make sure that it's assigned to one of my reps. I can make sure I have a due date on it and I can block stage transition.

And when that means is I, whether I do it through the automations or whether I do it here, I can now not move my stages unless this is checked off well. I gotta add that task here. As you can see, it's a blocking task, and now I cannot move those automations until I have that complete. If I try to manually move this, [00:40:00] it's going to make sure that I can't move the job unless I have that tracked.

So what this is gonna do is really bring in that I need to clone myself and I'm worried that my guys are gonna frivolously just check all these things off just to get to the next stage. And how do I know things are getting done? if they check this off, it better be done because you've built blocking state tasks to make sure that it's all dialed in here and ensures that you have a good process built in throughout it.

And like you said, saw, you can build them one-on-one, directly in there, or I can build it in the automations process here and create, appointment. Schedule automations or tasks? Geez, this is a masterclass in disappointing spelling. You must be appalled.

Pete: Thank God for quick spell check.  

Nic: That's what it's there for. Sometimes it doesn't know what I'm trying to say. But you can see how you can have different stages for, if this job stage, in this [00:41:00] case, by the way, if you have the signature document status, proposal status, or event, the event one is super cool 'cause it really opens up a lot of opportunities here.

But if the job stage changes to a new stage, like appointment schedule in this case, then I wanna create these tasks. When I'm creating these tasks, I can go, confirm time with customer, I could, number one, make sure that it's always assigned to the job assignee. So automatic assignee, stage blocking.

So it's gonna be notified and it's gonna block that stuff there. And I can go on to the next one. Pick weather shield up, whatever you need in there. Again, making sure it's for the assignee and drop that task in. I could save this automation to make sure that everything is dialed in appropriately so that these things are set up each and every time I have a new stage and those stage blocking.

Something that a lot of you guys have been asking for a long time and we agreed, we're like, this is a really valuable part. We just wanted to make sure that [00:42:00] we built it in properly. So now. You have those tasks that block stage automations that are gonna be there to set you up for success.  

Pete: Yeah. I love this 'cause one, it keeps things from slipping through the cracks, right?

If it's blocking the stage, obviously, like Nic said, it can't accidentally get checked off. Someone has to physically go there and make the conscious decision to check it off and it adds a level of accountability. So if you, have new salespeople to the process, or like Nic said, you've got some old folks that are stuck in their ways and want to do things a specific way.

This is a great way to be able to hold people accountable and say, Hey, you check this off. I don't see it. You made the conscious decision to check the box, right? obviously we've got something going on here, right? So, it is able, you're able to dial the process in a bit with your team, by using this.

So it holds a lot of value here to be able to. Block that stage move. with those specific tasks and tasks in general, I think are just underutilized a lot of times, [00:43:00] I'm a big checklist person. And there's so many nuances to what we're doing here, whether it be at a sales appointment, whether it be pre-production, whether it be in production, even post-production, right?

Like even, okay, we've finished a job, pick the nails up.  

Nic: All that.  

Pete: Yeah. I see these guys like the roofings going on like crazy around me. And I always like to watch the setup at the beginning and the breakdown at the end.

And see what each team is doing to clean up and, how attentive they are to leaving the property. How organized it is, how, clean, are they leaving it? what are they doing if they have extra materials? All these things I find very interesting to see. To watch them. 'cause then you really find out the quality of the group.

And the process.  

Nic: Get those referrals and reviews after too. Yeah, exactly. Have those attention to details, who have those checklists and stuff. So you could really build that stuff out. As you can see in this one, just to show you how these stage blocking works, even for automations, you saw me on the screen book a time [00:44:00] for a sales appointment in the calendar.

I have automations that automatically go out. To make sure that these are all set up. So I have these emails and texts going out to the customer, but if you notice, it's still sitting in new lead because I created that blocking task. So it even blocks automations. But once I click this and I go back and refresh, you're gonna see that move directly into appointment scheduled right off the bat like that.

So it's really easy to work and it's foolproof to make sure that you can block these stage transitions, you can open these things up and really. Create something where you're comfortable. That you can step away and work on the company, spend more time with the family, and run lean and effectively with running that stuff as well.

And then the last thing I'll bring up just a, spoiler alert for a future one. We do have that signatures tool now as well. So if you're looking for a more advanced checklist that you want on the job for a roof inspection checklist, you can build these directly into your system with dynamic [00:45:00] fields that auto-populate directly for the customer and contractor.

Fillable fields all built in to make sure that everything is dial in the way that you need it to be, and that's gonna help you out immensely throughout that process. So you can see if I'm on the spot here and I'm ready to sign now as a field rep, I can start checking off the stuff that I need to do throughout this process, making my life a lot easier.

Pete: If you have specific checklists that you like for your team to review with the customer, or potentially you need a customer to sign off that things have been reviewed. Hey, sign off here that you know, you're, responsible for your plants and we're not, so if we kill your rosebush that you've had planted there forever. Yeah. It was on you to cover that right sign here.

So these type of checklists that give you a little bit more functionality potentially, if that's part of your process, it's a great way to dial that stuff in and be able to get, potentially that customer signature.

I even knew a guy that had [00:46:00] a spot for his customers to initial and also for his sales rep to initial, and that was like his foolproof way of saying Hey. We reviewed this with you. You signed off, our guy, signed off. I know that you guys had that conversation,  just a another level of accountability, there.

just so many good tools built into the product right now to be able to really dial in that process and take the guesswork out of it. Like one of the things that, as Nic's shown you guys all this, one of the things that I was thinking is it's removing a lot of the human error. It's, and the ability for me to do it any differently, like if Nic and I went out to quote a job in this workflow, we're essentially gonna do it exactly the same way because we don't have a choice, right? Like the process is so dialed in with the stage blocks and the checklist that we're gonna follow exactly the same pattern.

Which goes back to what Nic and I talked about with the customer experience. Right now, our customer experience is replicable no matter who's [00:47:00] doing it. No matter which salesman is out there, no matter who they're talking to in the company, the whole entire thing's gonna flow the same way. And then if they suggest their friend down the street, his experience is gonna be exactly the same.

And now, you get that consistency and that quality 'cause that's essentially what it equates to, right? Is now these guys are a quality team because I know what to expect, right? I know that, hey, the three other people that recommended them all said this is what happened. And that's exactly how it happened when it came to me, right?

and that equates to, the perception of being a quality company. all things to keep in mind here as you're building these out and fine tuning them, right? Like it's probably not gonna nail it. We used to say the ideal situation is probably three tweaks.

You build a workflow, it's probably gonna take you tweaking it three times to get it exactly how you want it,  

Nic: a hundred percent, and that, that's the important part. Again, the tweaking, building out, iteration, all that stuff. Building those automations to just make sure that [00:48:00] anytime you see something broken and you're making those changes and iterations and updating, try to see if technology can solve first.

People make mistakes. People forget things get busy, things come up. Sometimes you guys go to the doctors or you get in a car accident. Whatever the case is, make sure that your process is not interrupted by life happening. And that's where technology can really help you out. Set up your stuff, set up your automations to ensure that life doesn't get in the way.

Life finds a way to interrupt your process. Don't let it do it by automations.  

But building up all this stuff is super important. So take your time. I know we got, some time for some questions again, and don't forget the sock draw, but take your time to take a look at this stuff in your help center at the bottom. We do have the ability, for you to, have these kind of built in for, our education sessions.

We have them with our Roofr Academy. All these things are implementation teams here for you. So just take a look and see how we can help out. Send us an email. We're [00:49:00] here for you and you have the support for it. And don't just think of us, and Pete and I have said this a million times, don't just think of us as, Roofr employees.

Look at us on how we've helped other customers build out their process to work as. Needed to help them scale and help 'em take those next steps. 'cause ultimately, these are Roofr advisors. They'll tell you how they've seen successful roofing companies scale with Roofr and with other tools by building out processes with you.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah, we've had a pretty quiet chat today. If anybody's got any questions feel free to throw them in right now. We can jump on 'em and answer them here. But, as always, like Nic said, if you ever have questions afterwards, if you think of something, if you get into your Roofr account, something doesn't make sense or you can't find something that Nic showed you, feel free to reach out.

Hit up Nic or, you always have access to support and customer success, to help dial things in for you. Hopefully you guys got something good outta today and, more effectively [00:50:00] utilizing your job board and Roofr. And as always, the Roofr team is always here for you.

Joel, draw for the socks. Let's do it. Drum roll.  

Nic: Roll.  

Nice. Congrats Jeannette's Wolf. You won the socks. So Joel's gonna be reaching out for your info. We'll send those socks your way. Take a photo with them, put them online, tag us at Roofr.

Pete: Thank you guys. We really appreciate you jumping on today. Like Nic mentioned in the beginning, we've got some really good masterclasses coming down the pipe with some of the newer stuff we have going on, so be sure to jump on for those. Email and texting is the next one, I believe.

Nic: The email by the way is an integration you guys have been asking for. So keep an ear down from that. And there's another one that comes after that's live now in beta. So if you guys, like anything that rhymes with Schmoogle. Schmoogle Schmail and Schmoogle Schmalendar, those things, just reach out to your Roofr account representative because we might be able to help you out.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. And definitely [00:51:00] jump on for that one. Obviously, email and text a big part of the communication with the customer and your team. obviously jump on, we'll get some tips on how to leverage that a little bit better in the product. That was really nicely done with the code words there. I'm impressed.  

Nic: Like today I'm just on it.

Pete: So thank you guys for joining us, and Nic and I will see you next time on the Roofr Masterclass. Thank you everybody. Everyone have a good night.