Storm Season: How & Why to Adjust Your Pitch & Process

Pete: All right, we are back. Welcome everybody to the Roofr Masterclass series. I am your host, Pete McKendrick, with my co-host Nic, and we are joined today by a special guest. Slayer of lake trout. Purveyor of homemade bacon. And oh, by the way, in his spare time, he runs a couple of roofing companies, Corey Combes.

What's up, Corey?  

Corey: Appreciate it and that's a great introduction, man.  

Nic: Can that go on your LinkedIn?

Corey: Yeah, man. I'm gonna put that lake trout picture up there and be like, purveyor of bacon and catcher of lake trouts.

Pete: Yeah. Well, welcome Corey. Glad to have you on, man, as always. And, been on a few times before, right? You've been on a couple of these, so welcome back and always a good topic here, leading into storm [00:01:00] season.

We've already had what, one or two hurricanes, I think skirt. The coast out there. South Carolina saw some weather not that long ago, so welcome everybody, who's listening. I know we've got a handful of people in here. As always, if you guys ever have questions along the way, feel free to throw 'em in the chat.

But a couple housekeeping items here really quick. Maybe we should start by letting Corey actually introduce himself. He might be able to one up my intro.

Corey: When, when Joel reached out about doing this, you know, with you guys, I thought it was really an interesting thing to talk about because there's such an interesting juxtaposition between what's happening right now in the industry in terms of the challenges with insurance, and really looking at how we think we should pitch to homeowners.

And the last. What, three years? We've dealt with some pretty significant events in our area, which hadn't been the case for a long time. So I'm really well versed and have maybe a good framework for people to use when they're thinking about what they should do for [00:02:00] their company when it comes to storm season and when storms are gonna hit, and all of that stuff.

And luckily I bought another company, last year and so I got to see it in both companies and really figure out what we were gonna do to capitalize on it. So, yeah, this is a pretty timely topic to discuss.  

Nic: Yeah, I think the last time we didn't have a hurricane hit land was 2009 or something like that.

Know we're getting deep into the season, but the peak of the season for storm season's just about to come around. I think September 10th. The timing on this is perfect because it's not the same pitch. And I've always respected the way that you've come about it.

And the way that you've presented it in not only your talks at RISE and other places, but how you and I chat about it, how it's a different pitch and depending on who you're talking to, you pitch with the customer in mind instead of the business in mind.

Corey: That's a great way to say it.

We had some assumptions and I'll talk about you know, a few years ago there was this [00:03:00] thought or this, movement, that somebody brought into the industry and they coined it one industry, one model. And the thought behind that was if we can just bridge the gap between homeowners getting their insurance check and offering financing to bridge the gap, that should move the needle for people to buy from us immediately.

And allow us to build the roofs and all that stuff while they're going through the insurance process. And so I wanna talk a little bit about that and the actual practicality of it and how it actually doesn't work at all and why.  

Pete: Okay. Yeah, no, I think it's, interesting, because in the time that I've been in this, we have seen a couple of movements right?

Around insurance work specifically. And storms and how people have approached it, and we saw this spike in popularity to be the storm roofer, and travel and chase the storms and do all this stuff.

And now we're seeing more and more folks that [00:04:00] are only really working storms in their general area. Or at least in their region, kind of scaling that whole idea back. That makes for a much different scenario, right? A much different pitch and set up as opposed to being on the road all the time after storms.

Interesting to see. I just witnessed it firsthand here with hail, you know, we had a massive hail storm. And to see the neighborhood, the local roofers, the regional guys go on the attack against the incoming storm chasers and the kind of the battle between the two of them, for the jobs, was really interesting to experience firsthand.

Interested to dive into this one for sure.  

Corey: Yeah, I think the thesis, we'll stick with Nic's comment, you know, we pitch with the homeowner in mind. And I think that'll be the thesis here for this masterclass, because that's a really succinct way to describe our perspective that we need to have even during the craziness of storm season. The way that I like to learn. I like to mess things up at an epic level and then figure out, okay, well I don't wanna do that again.

Right. So, when Hurricane Ian hit [00:05:00] here, it was. Just like everybody else, I'm like, oh, we're gonna go down there and we're gonna make just a boatload of money. There were some things that I didn't understand about leaving my area, which by the way, it was, I don't know, two and a half hour drive.

But there's just some things that you need to have in place and things that you need to think about if you're gonna work outside of your core geographic area.  

Nic: And before we get in, what I think is really important for everybody who's watching now and later on YouTube is you should watch this regardless of where you are geographically.

Because if you're not in the Gulf and getting hit with hurricanes it's not just about that. If you're in an area that gets hail, it's not just about that. You can be in Toronto, Canada, or Seattle where you don't get massive storms.

This method, this process and how to pitch properly can be worked no matter what, whether it's retail or insurance. If you're looking at, commercial or residential, [00:06:00] this is a process that can actually be replicable and help you and your company grow. Don't be scared away by storm season. It's great timing for that and I think it's super important.

But the way that Corey teaches this and the way that Corey, does this on a day to day will show you a lot of things about your company that you can take that next step with.  

Well, we'll dive in right here. Obviously we have the host here, myself and, the leader, the chief and commander, Pete McKendrick. You can reach us easy Pete at Roofr and Nic at Roofr dot com. Also, as I mentioned, this is on here live, but also you can catch it on Roofr dot com slash masterclass or on our YouTube.

So at any time, you can come and rewatch these. If you miss something, you can rewatch it, in a couple days from now. And it will always be hosted there as well. And if you have any feedback, just hit up Joel dot castelli at Roofr dot com and feel free to ask questions or anything directly in here as well.

So you see Joel in the chat. And then for our next masterclass on the 16th, race to face, Pete, he picked up that, that [00:07:00] line. I love it.  

Pete: That's the guy who actually coined the phrase, nice. That's amazing. So that'll be a good conversation.  

Nic: Meet Victoria, our Roofr of the month from Dynasty Roofing and learn about our journey and running a successful roofing company after her husband's unexpected passing. Really awesome podcast to listen to. I listened to it this morning.

Incredible story. I highly recommend that. Incredible story.  

Corey: She almost came to work for me, about a year and a half ago.  

Nic: Oh, really?  

Corey: Oh yeah. Yeah. It was, interesting, really interesting story. That whole dynasty. Victoria's great. Yeah.

Pete: A lot going on in her life right now, so, very impressive.  

Corey: Yeah. Yeah. She got a lot dropped on her lap, man.  

Nic: It threw me for a wrench listening to it. I wasn't expecting it, so I can imagine Pete recording it.

For today's agenda, we're gonna be going through storm season pitching, adapting to customer needs, using tech to stay on top and adjusting your process.

We'll finish up with some q and a, so we'll get started here. Met the expert. The Lake Trout extraordinaire. That's right. Pete, why [00:08:00] don't you take it away?  

Pete: What does storm season mean, right? What's the definition of storm season? We think hurricanes.

But obviously there's a lot of things that can be, accounted for under the storm season idea. You know, hail is a big one.

And so you've got, any major weather event. It doesn't necessarily mean. Tons of visible damage, right? Like we had, the hail here, a couple miles away from me had baseball size hail, obvious damage, right?

Busted windows. Holes in siding, missing shingles on roofs, but over here we had much smaller hail, but still significant damage to a lot of properties. But from the road to, the normal eye. The houses look fine so, you have to really get up there and look to see the stuff and, the damage is there.

It's not always obvious damage with some of this stuff. And, definitely worth having someone take a look at it afterwards if you experience some type of weather. The biggest thing I noticed here was the local or the regional guy being able to pitch against the out of towner. And how do you essentially use that trust and credibility? And then [00:09:00] obviously response time is huge. Nic and I are big proponents of the speed to lead thing. Obviously, time is of the essence when you come to these storms and people have damage, potentially have leaks and things like that.

Corey experienced it firsthand personally, last year, with the storm. He knows very well the damage that's caused by these things and the work that goes into getting life back together afterwards.

Let's dive into it, with you, Corey, and talk about where you guys are at, in Florida. You guys are on the west coast of Florida, prime spot for hurricanes. What kind of damage do you guys normally see with those hurricanes?

Corey: Yeah, it's interesting that you brought up, storm season isn't always about some major event. In Florida, believe it or not, we have a season, a lot of people don't think that we have a season, but during the summer, it starts late June, July, August, September, and then it rolls into mid-October.

That's our rainy season. That's when we get, pretty significant thunderstorms that'll roll in in the [00:10:00] evening. Usually, 2, 3, 4, 5 o'clock is when we start to see the storms develop. And so we. See a lot more leaks. We see, windborn debris hitting roofs, because the winds can whip up.

It's not just about, did we have a hurricane? It's understanding how to mobilize pretty quickly and keep our, not only speed to lead down, but our speed to the inspection as well, because that's becoming much more important now. To get there as quick as you possibly can because they want to hire somebody immediately.

We lost a lot of deals because we just, we got so backed up and we got so booked up, we were two to three weeks out and, by the time we called them to say, Hey, we're, we're coming to do your inspection. And they're like, whatcha are talking about?

We already signed a contract, right? So being able to mobilize quickly, set the right expectations and deploy your people is a really critical part of this as well.  

Nic: When you're [00:11:00] looking at this from a standpoint like Pete and I always talk about like matching urgency with urgency, and that's a good way to separate yourself from the competition.

What's your ideal timeframe of you getting out, like either responding to a lead that came in through your system or actually setting that appointment. Do you have timeframes that you base on those?  

Corey: When it's not storm season, we've got three to four days max. When I was selling years ago, people would wait two or three weeks. Now, four days max. They want their estimate, they want somebody to come out. They wanna know what it's gonna cost, and they wanna sign a contract as quick as possible.

We've gotta get there, within two to three days.  

Nic: That's awesome. That's fast to get everything up and running, especially when you're busy. It's tough to get out there at that time. So that's awesome that you have those kinda KPIs that you're looking for.

Corey: We're fundamentally revamping our process. It's forced us to change the way we do things because people want things so quickly now. When you have people [00:12:00] that are reliant on showing up and going out there, you either have to have a ton of people on your sales team, which that's problematic, or you have to figure out a way to get people the information that they need quickly so you can at least pacify 'em, and then your inspection becomes a confirmation and not the first time that they've.

Gotten the information from you that they need.  

Pete: I spoke to Brent from Brentwood Roofing. When I did a podcast with him he said that when he gets a lead in, the first thing he does is create a proposal and send it to them.

He gets it to them within like 10 minutes and says, here's my proposal for your roof. Based on the measurements, this is a ballpark proposal. That you can look through read through do your homework, figure out what colors you want, all that kind of stuff.

By getting something in their hand, like you said, kind of pacifying them and getting it like three quarters of the way there so that when he gets out there to do that inspection, he's essentially confirming [00:13:00] his own proposal, answering any questions that they may have about it, and then, he can quickly get a signature.

An interesting way to go about it, but a smart play, I think especially in a super competitive market where he is in Texas.  

Nic: We used to do that with the marketplace as well, where we would just send out the quote and we had contingencies in the backend because you are gonna run into stuff. There could be multiple layers. You could have these issues here. It could have plywood that's damaged, or whatever the case is. And you just have that built into the backend so that you like, Hey, when I come on site, this is what we'll confirm. Some of this I won't be able to confirm until the roof's off.

So here's the price on it. I like to be upfront with everything.  

Corey: Yeah. So to tie this back to storm damage. What we're attempting to do is make it a little bit more streamlined.

For our repairs, for an example, we have a tiered repair schedule that we send out to the homeowner. If somebody says, Hey, I need my roof repaired. We go out there, we say, okay, rather than trying to figure out every [00:14:00] single thing that needs to be done. Give them a quote on the repair and let 'em know, Hey, if we find other things, it's gonna be more we landed on a tiered repair system.

And this actually worked really well for us when we were doing, the restoration stuff after the hurricane hit. Because when they called us up, the first thing we did, we set the appointment and we told 'em we would have somebody come out and do an inspection, and we gave them our tiered repair pricing.

So we sent them a PDF that said, if you have shingles up to this amount, this is what it's gonna cost. If you have plywood, underlayment, et cetera. It's gonna be up to this amount. And then our tier three, if you have cap shingles, you know, squares, whatever it's gonna be this amount. And then we'll determine if either we can do a repair or if we need to do a full replacement.

The thing that people need to realize is when you have a homeowner that their house is damaged, they [00:15:00] see that there's some shingles missing. They don't know. Is this a critical issue? Is this something if the next time it rains? 'cause you gotta think it's summer, we're gonna get rain almost every day.

And so is this a critical issue that water's gonna leak into my house, damage my house, and cause a bunch of problems for me and disrupt my life? They don't know that it's not that big of a deal because there's only several cap shingles missing and it's not a big issue. Water's not gonna get, they don't know that.

When they see that there's damage on the roof, they immediately equate that with leak that's going to disrupt their life and cause problems. So to start the conversation and get the ball rolling. We decided we're gonna send out a menu of here, this is roughly what you can expect to pay if we're doing this amount of work.

If you see a homeowner that's like, oh, okay, well at most I'm gonna end up paying, $2,100 for a large scale repair, at least they [00:16:00] can wrap their mind around what the, dollar value of their repair is gonna be. Worst case scenario. And it worked out pretty well. We sold. We had a lot of people there.

It was just like, great. Just schedule us and have somebody come do it. Right? Yeah. Sold a ton of repairs that way.

The thing that I think we want to change a little bit: we had to figure out a better way for us to interact with homeowners on the front end because we'd literally got, I'm not joking you, I am not kidding you. 200 to 300 calls a day. My Google bill for January. Was obscene. We spent, I think my Google bill just for January was like $186,000.

It was obscene and what we really had a hard time with was the capacity of, we had three people on the phone because that was what we had, the storm hit in October. By November [00:17:00] our phones were just blown up. During the holidays, it kind of slowed down a little bit.

But after the holidays, holy shit. Yeah. Everybody was ready to do something and the phone just went bananas, man. I was getting really frustrated because my conversion rate from calls to booked appointment to inspection were terrible.

The volume of calls were so high that we just couldn't deal with all of them. And that's a blessing and a curse. That means our marketing is doing really, really well. We have great digital credibility, people can get ahold of us and all of those things is really good.

The flip side of that is, is when your conversion rates are low, you're still spending all that money with your marketing and with Google and all of that stuff. So we're literally just flushing money down the toilet because we can't get to those people in time and they're gonna call somebody else.

I mean, they're just gonna keep calling. Until they get ahold of somebody. Until that somebody comes out to their house.

Now I know what everybody here's thinking. Why don't you [00:18:00] just go out and knock doors? Well, let me tell you a little something about this area and door knockers over the last few years.

People are fatigued. They don't want to deal with door knockers. They don't want to deal with people knocking on their door. Most people, and we learned this during Hurricane Ian, most people would rather call somebody and have them come out to the house because they feel like they're a more credible company.

Why has that happened? Well. You have the insurance carriers which lobby, the politicians. You have the politicians, which are tied into the news media, and then you have the media which disseminates information. So all of the newscasts, all of the neighborhood groups, like all of these people. Now, the narrative is don't trust anybody that comes and knocks on your door.

They're all crooks. Right. [00:19:00] So therefore when they call somebody, now it's their choice and they feel like they're in control of the situation where vice versa, when you knock on their door, now they're much more weary and they don't feel like they're in control of the situation. So that's sort of what happened to us.

And then, you know, we can get into how we learned how to handle it and the pitch. That I think every roofer should use no matter if it's a storm situation or not. It centers and hinges around the customer and pitching with the customer in mind and having conversations instead of, Hey, I can get this for you for little to no money or free.

Nic: That's a big thing they always teach you in sales too, you don't wanna throw out that discount too early or just at the top because it devalues your product or there's something hidden. So if you come in there door knocking and say, Hey, Mrs. Jones, I [00:20:00] can get insurance to pay for this for you.

People have caught on, especially those folks in Florida where you've had storm after storm, after storm stuff comes up, there's bad news about it. Your government's good at making sure that they shine a light on the bad actors, right? Not to say that everyone's bad actors, but it shines the light on those that are bad and it hurts us in a way as roofers with our credibility.

But doing stuff like we're talking about here really breaks open that difference.  

Pete: Yeah. I mean, we experienced it even here firsthand. It probably took, I would say, less than two weeks for people to be over the whole door knocking thing.

You would literally see people on Facebook saying like, contractors are knocking my door. I don't trust 'em. What should I do? They're telling me this, should I believe it?

And asking, can a local roofer just call me? I'm not even talking to you unless you're a local guy. And it was so funny how quickly the tide turned, right. The whole door knocking effect, has lost its luster [00:21:00] because it's lost its credibility in a way. It just doesn't have the trust factor that you are getting from someone who's picking up the phone and calling you.  

Corey: Yeah, I'm not saying door knocking doesn't work.

That's not what I'm saying.  

Pete: Right.  

Corey: But, you know, so my house flooded during Helene. We got almost 20 inches of water in my house. We were over here one day, had the complete, the house was gutted. We were cleaning it out, drying it out . The hassle and the headache and the worry and all that stuff when you're dealing with your house is enough. And then, somebody knocks on the door, I open the door and it's this guy standing there and he is like, Hey, did you guys have damage during Helene?

I'm all sweaty and dirty. And it was a public adjuster. And I just looked at him and I said, bro, I respect the hustle. Okay? This is the wrong time, dude. Like, our houses have flooded.

Do you see all this trash out in the driveway? Like we're just trying to get our life back together, like [00:22:00] kick rocks, bro.

The problem that I think we face this mentality of buy or cry. Like just go knock no matter what.

And there's no thought about, what's going on with the homeowner. There's no thought about like the, I don't wanna say trauma, but it's a traumatic situation. It's a traumatic experience when you've just had a hurricane ripped through your area. Water's backed up through your house, your roof's torn up.

It's traumatic. And the last thing you want is somebody knocking on the door like, can I have a second please? I need to figure this out. Right?  

Laughter: Yeah.  

Corey: When you start to build credibility as a local roofer.

You have marketing out there, you have a local office, you have reviews, it's becomes attraction rather than promotion.

Your Facebook page. Your Facebook business page. During a storm event and after is huge because if [00:23:00] you have a way for these people to go out and look and see what you have done in the community, you have a long track record of, working in the neighborhood.

We share our project, map it all the time, which people love that because they can't go in and they can be like, oh, I can go to your website and I can see. All of the houses that you've done in the area, and you have this local established credibility. So people are more likely to call you when they can do a little bit of homework and see, okay, these people are actually local.

They've been here for a while. I thought when we went down to Fort Myers and Cape Coral during Hurricane Ian, I was like, oh yeah, we're right up in Tampa. And people are like, I don't wanna deal with you. They're like, you're not local. And I learned that lesson. It's hyperlocal, you know?

And so that's why having, an established office in the area you're working, having marketing, Facebook, so homeowners can get a little bit of a comfort level with you.  

Is huge. [00:24:00]  

Pete: Yeah. It's funny that you said that there was a roofer here that had the same issue.

He was like 30 minutes outside of town, and he's like, I'm local. I literally shop in your neighborhood. No one would give him the time of day. He's like, I can't even book an appointment. Like, what is happening?  

Corey: Yeah. So, when you have a regular pitch that you use and that pitch is centered around who and how, it doesn't matter if it's a storm situation, it doesn't matter if it's a regular retailer or cash situation. It doesn't matter.

The buyer has changed over the last five years.

It used to be you could go knock on the door. You can gain some rapport. You can talk to the homeowner. You can say, Hey, look, we're in your neighborhood. We're a local roofing company. Some of the other neighbors had damage on their roof.

I would be happy to go up, do a free evaluation. Just make sure everything's good. No obligation, whatever.

And people are like, okay, cool. You're gonna gimme a free inspection check on my [00:25:00] roof.

People have gotten less willing to let people up on their roof unless there's a storm situation. 'Cause they've seen all of the news stories about these unscrupulous roofers getting caught, causing damage.

So much so that they enacted legislation in Florida. To curb some of that a little bit. And the end result was people are suspicious of roofers.

So it's a credibility issue at that point. I need to be able to build trust and credibility. Just like if I want somebody to spend $20,000 with me. I have to build trust and credibility. So let's look at how people are actually evaluating us when we either step on the doorstep or when they call us, and then we meet them to do an inspection and an estimate.

What are some of the key things that they're looking at so that they can evaluate us? It's a question that we think a lot about because we [00:26:00] want to meet homeowners where they're at, and so. A few things that they use to evaluate us, right?

One, it's not price. It's really not price. The reason that most people struggle in retail sales is because they spend the homeowners money for them, they think that it's about price, but what they don't realize is that price is the only thing that homeowners generally have. To compare us to because they don't have the information to think about their project differently.

And this is why we have those who and how conversations. So they're looking at things like, what are your offerings compared to others? What is your credibility? What is your competency compared to others? Are you gonna be around if I give you my money? What happens if there's [00:27:00] problems? Why should I trust you with my money?

And if there is an issue, are you gonna be around for the long haul? Those are really the things that they're looking at.

What do reviews not say most of the time? Oh, I got the cheapest price. Yeah. Right. Reviews never say that. Reviews say things like, the process was great. The team was very communicative. They answered all my questions. They showed up when they said they were going to, you know, all of those things that homeowners use as criteria to actually choose their contractor. Even though they don't know that they're using that criteria, so why isn't our conversation centered around what we know homeowners actually want and how they're comparing us to others?

Okay, so the pitch isn't just, Hey, I can get your Roofr paid for by insurance. Okay, well if that's your only value, then [00:28:00] anybody that steps on my property that says that can get that done. Now you've just levelled with the playing field with them.  

Nic: We always talk about reviews and referrals.

It kind of is that separator and we brought you up as an example, with being able to generate those by just simply asking for those reviews by making sure that you're having the process and everything lined in.

Corey: I mean, you could even test this next time you're with a customer, ask 'em, say, Hey, what got you guys to give us a call? And they say, oh, your reviews were great. Oh, fantastic.

What about our reviews was important to you and what stuck out enough for you to give us a call? When you ask 'em that question, they really haven't thought through that. And so when you ask 'em to articulate what it is that stood out to them, now you're getting them to draw a connection between what their neighbor or somebody else said and the things that they [00:29:00] want.

And when they say things like, you communicated well, the office staff was friendly, all of that. Now I can drill down into something specific and say, okay. So it sounds to me like what you're saying is communication is very important to you. Oh yeah, absolutely.

And so now we can start really talking about some of the things that the homeowner really wants to see happen. With the contractor they hire, and we can have those conversations around those, and that's the who and how. And so that'll lead into questions like, what are your biggest concerns about me going up on your roof or this process in general?

When you ask 'em to articulate that, they'll start to realize that their concerns aren't really as big as they thought they were.

And now you can ease them into getting up on their roof. Doing a free inspection for them , because as soon as you step on the property, most of the time people put up that like, I'm not buying shit today. You know, [00:30:00] like, I'm just doing my research. Right.

My favorite thing to say is, there's really no difference in your pitch if you're doing restoration or if you're doing, regular retail stuff.

The only difference is, once you get into the process, it's gonna diverge from, Hey, I need to walk you through what the claims process looks like, versus I need to walk you through the other parts of the build process that we're gonna control, and that's it.

So the way you acquire the customer is usually different. Some of the information that you give the customer is different. And then the way that they pay the bill is different. Everything else in my opinion, should be the same because you still have to build trust and credibility and figure out. Who they're gonna hire and how they're gonna hire.

Nic: Mm-hmm.  

Corey: And if you can figure that out, you're not gonna get price shopped when the claim goes [00:31:00] through because you're gonna be their guy. You've built that trust and credibility, or if they're paying the bill themselves, you're gonna figure out what they really value. And now you can have, conversations around that when you do your presentation and build value so they see, the benefit of hiring you rather than hiring somebody else.  

Pete: Yeah. I think one thing that sticks out for me here is the claims process on that last slide before we move on, I hear so many contractors say, they're essentially trying to do the claim,

they're almost like filing the claim for the customer, right? And like walking them through it step by step and filling it out with them and everything, as opposed to like. Being there to guide them or assist them. Talk a little bit about how you guys handled that side of it, Corey.  

Corey: Yeah, we came up with some questions when we knock on the door, one of the first questions is, Hey, do you have any interior damage from your roof issues?

Okay. That was first question. Yes or no? Then we ask them, have you already filed a [00:32:00] claim or are you in the process of filing a claim? Have you already hired a roofer or do you have somebody that you're considering? We're asking them to see where they are in the process.

So we need to know what do we have to educate them on. We're not allowed to do very much in Florida. We can advise on scope and code and give them pricing. That's it. We can assess the condition, talk to them about what has to happen and why as it relates to installation manuals and code, and help them build a case on why certain things need to be done.

But when it comes to coverages, policy, the process of filing claims, we just can't talk about it. Mm-hmm. So, what we offer them is the information, the documentation, and the clarity so that they'll know exactly what's going on and what [00:33:00] to ask for and why.

We'll actually sit down and say, okay, so here's what's going on. Here's what needs to happen. Here's why, and here's the documentation. We ask them to select us as their contractor before we go through all of that work.

We're gonna put a lot of work into this. We just want to have you select us as your contractor. I'll give you an estimate. You can accept the estimate. If your insurance company comes back and says they're gonna pay you more than what my estimate is. Great. I'm gonna send you an invoice for this amount.

All our cards out on the table and be a hundred percent transparent. How does that sound? People are like, yeah, thank you. Right? So, we try to take that confusion away from the homeowner while staying in our lane.

Nic: Diving into how you kind of take away that confusion, how do you stay on top of everything.

You have a pretty big tech stack as well. How does tech allow you to stay on top of all this, especially the speed to lead and everything else?

Corey: Well, we couldn't do it [00:34:00] without tech. We have to have some automated instant booking options. The automated instant booking options are on our website. All of that traffic gets funneled to, a piece of tech where not only can we track it.

But it gives the homeowner some control and autonomy of how and when they book an appointment, they don't have to wait to talk to somebody. So that's the first thing. That was one of the things that we learned during Ian, and then we relearned it during Helene and Milton. So we've really got that system dialed in.

What we're working on building now is a way for homeowners once they book an appointment, they can go into Roofr's Instant Estimator. They can get themselves a quote, they can get themselves a visualizer. All of the information that they need so that they [00:35:00] know roughly what their project's gonna cost.

And so in our booking emails, we'll say, here's our repair menu. Here's roughly what you're gonna spend. If you're gonna replace your roof, here's roughly what the process looks like, and here's what it's gonna cost to replace your roof.

We focus through a little bit more, reducing the bottlenecks for people so that if they actually book an appointment with us, we know that that's a slam dunk. They already have all the information that they need.

So I would rather set us up for success knowing that our conversion rates are gonna be garbage because you just can't handle the volume. You, you can't, like if you're getting 300 calls a day, I don't care what you're doing, you cannot handle it. You can't.  

Nic: We talk about that a bunch, like in the past, Pete, in one of your presentations, what would you do if you woke up tomorrow and you had a hundred leads in your bucket?

Pete: Yeah.  

Nic: And it seems crazy to think, but if you've ever lived through a storm, you can have a hundred calls overnight. Pete, you always talk about production is another bottleneck that we can get [00:36:00] to in general, but servicing these people on a timely, manner is difficult.

We dealt with it up in Toronto in 2018 when we had a massive windstorm, the biggest one in a hundred years. You went to bed, you woke up and you're like, I don't know what to do with all these phone calls. And you're going down the street doing repairs and people are coming out of their house with their checkbook waving, being like, please just help us out too.

The only way they stay on top of that or attempt to. You got measurement reports, you have instant estimator tools. And then obviously trying to be educational and transparent as Pete and I like to say. Breaking everything down with itemized quotes, just letting them know, I love the way that you do quotes at, south Shore and Jerry's.

Corey just kind of like really breaking down every little thing that you're doing, just so that they're aware of seeing exactly what's gonna happen.  

Corey: It's the only way that you can just destroy somebody else's estimate. If you have everything laid out and lined out exactly what you're gonna use, the quantities, all of that stuff.

The other thing that I learned over the years is when somebody says, Hey, can you give me a breakdown? [00:37:00] I'm like, yeah, there it is. There's everything we're gonna do for that lump sum price down there. Right.

Dan asked, what visualizer are we using? We're testing renoworks right now, which they have a good visualizer, but most of the shingle manufacturers have a visualizer that you can use. You can just send 'em to their website and have 'em use that visualizer.

Whatever your shingle manufacturer, your preferred shingle manufacturer, most of 'em have a visualizer that work. So I would suggest using those, that's the easiest way to do it. We're trying to figure out Reno works because at some point we wanna do our siding too and try to get through this process with siding.

So we're looking for something that's a little bit more, flexible, I would say.  

Pete: Obviously this slide here, we wanna save time, I ask the question, how many leads do you think you could take in before your process starts to break down? Sometimes it's 50, sometimes it's a hundred, maybe it's 20. I think having that good streamlined process, can you maintain it?

If the volume of leads start to flow. Here we have material ordering now. We [00:38:00] have integrations with all the big suppliers, that help streamline that process.

One of the things that I really like. That you can talk a little bit more about it. Corey, here we're starting to run low on time, but is the transparency piece , when you're quoting in these storm situations and really just in everyday quoting, right?

Like how much of an advantage it gives you.  

Corey: Yeah. That's one of the things we're really trying to crack the code on is like giving enough information to help people but not giving too much information where it scares 'em off, the best way that we found to do it is just give people options, so we always sell on a best, better, good.

We do line items and we break everything out that we're gonna do. And then we also have a section that's called build as needed or something to that effect. And we put in there hey, if it's not listed above the line, here are some other things that can happen. And here's what we charge if those things do occur.

People love that. One of the complaints you get when you try to write a [00:39:00] change order for a homeowner is, well, I thought this was included. And so if you can have those conversations on the front end, say, look, I can only include what I can see.

We've done all this to try to be as accurate as possible, but if we do have something happen, here's some other charges that could potentially happen. Here's what we charge for them. Here's your measurement report. We'll go through, we'll show you exactly what quantity, so you are, we're a hundred percent transparent on what we're gonna charge you.

The other piece of transparency is if you can't do something, tell people. They're like, Hey, I need somebody to come tarp my roof right now today. And we're like, we're not gonna get there. It ain't gonna happen. We'll be there tomorrow or the next day. But we can't be there today.

What you gotta realize about people in a storm situation is your ass is on fire and everything's a priority to that homeowner. Everything, their estimate, their pictures, their tarp, you returning their phone call or you picking up the phone, everything is a priority to them.[00:40:00]  

And we even got a couple bad reviews because somebody said they were gonna call 'em back. Like one of our admins said they, we were gonna call 'em back and schedule an appointment and they just forgot because the call volume was so high and people were like, oh yeah, don't trust these scumbags, they won't call you back.

And it's like, I'm really, really sorry. But we had two hurricanes hit us back to back. We're getting 300 calls a day. I am really, really sorry. And you know, I called a few people. We sent 'em gift cards. I apologized. I sent out a few bottles of wine and said, look, really sorry. Most people took their review down right.

I just explained the situation to 'em. Just be transparent. In everything you do, just try to be transparent, period.  

Pete: You know, I used to work at UPS and we used to say, we have 60,000 packages in a night.

But to the homeowner, that one package is the most important package. To us it's just another box. But to that homeowner, that's the most important package. Same idea here, right? You're getting 300 calls, but to [00:41:00] that homeowner, there's only one call that matters, so you gotta remember, keep that in mind, as you're moving through that process with them.  

Nic: I always say, and that's exactly why you should have big communication, where you have automation set up for emails and texts the home is the most important thing,

so you clearly don't always have the time for it because you're also running a business and in charge of hundreds of other people's homes. So it's a good way to streamline your process with material order. Little spoiler Easter egg there. ESX file compatibility if you're working on anything there.

So keep your eye out for that. Maybe with Roofr, you never know. But, ultimately gotta move fast. Faster than fast. 'cause customers want answers now. I know we got ending in 30 seconds there, Pete.

Corey: Look, we need to do a part two on production because the production side is a critical piece too. Yep.  

Pete: Thank you for coming on Corey, 'cause we're about to run outta time here. Thank you everybody for joining us and look for a part two here.

‍