Transcription
Do ratings and warranties actually drive sales? And what should you be communicating to homeowners when you're sitting at the kitchen table about the product's rating or, better yet, their warranty? In this interview with John Cene, we're going to break it down because John, not only is he well, let's face it, he's kind of known as the pro in the industry, but he's been testing shingles from all different manufacturers, and I can't find anyone more well-equipped to answer this question. Sean, thank you, brother. Thanks for being here.
Fun to have you. Uh, fun to be on, I guess. So, sorry, you're interviewing me.
Have you here, too? Every time we get together, we have a blast. And there's been a lot of uh, a lot of chatter on the roofing internet about ratings and warranties. And there's, you know, moves on that some people have thought that that warranties are are, and again, I'm I'm paraphrasing what I've what I've seen on the internet, you know, just quote unquote marketing lingo versus a rating. And, you know, many salespeople when they're in the house, there are some companies that are very pro-offering warranties and others that are very against offering warranties. So whatever might be on the package, so to speak, on a on a shingle manufacturer choice doesn't matter, doesn't really come up much in the house. And my anecdotal observation, just from working with literally thousands of roofing salespeople, is neither of these things, rating nor warranty, really comes up a tremendous amount or consistently in the sales experience, which I think does two people a disservice. One, the salesperson, and two, the homeowner. So I want to just kind of break down the difference. If you were to to just synthesize rating versus warranty, what's the distinction between them? And then let's start diving into uh, the communication best practices in the house. So let's begin with rating versus warranty.
Rating versus warranty, I guess in its simplest form. A rating is based on some evaluation, some test, some performance, you know, review of a product to provide some rating that it could perform a certain way versus a warranty is some party, whether it's a third party or the person that actually manufactured the company that manufactured the product, providing some layer of protection or backing behind a statement that's being made. So, the statements could be one and the same as far as the the statement. For example, let's say that something was going to be rated for an inch and a half impact or warranted against an inch and a half impact. Yeah, I understand that statement sounds similar in nature, but one is based on an evaluation on a day zero shingle. The other one is based on what the maker of the product or some third party is saying, "Hey, if it experiences this thing and it fails to a certain extent, then we actually come in and back that up." And I understand warranties are all going to vary. Uh, and Adam, I, at its truest sentiment, I definitely appreciate the idea that that there is kind of this thought that warranties are almost a a marketing feature, a marketing piece. And I think we felt that in in the transition from 30, 40, 50-year shingles into limited lifetime. I think we felt that marketing feel, right? We we went from, "Oh, you get a 30, a 40, or a 50-year shingle" into "limited lifetime." But when you really look at the language of the warranty, not much changed, just this vernacular of "limited lifetime" and maybe a few other minor bells and whistles, but they all still had depreciation. They all still had limited payouts over time and then an endpoint where they no longer offered a payout of any kind. And I've sat with teams, Adam, where they they downplay the warranty. "Well, you know, the shingle's warranted for this, but none of them make it that way. They're all going to experience damage and this, that, and the other." So what you want is this this special thing that holds your shingle on better and, you know, so I think everybody has has heard some sales pitches out there that that underplay warranties or downplay warranties, and I just, I think it's just a lack of clarity of how they actually work and what do they mean?
Right. That makes sense. You know, I like to bring up auto analogies and and I'm curious your thoughts on this. I didn't even think of it till we till we started talking. You look at at manufacturers of vehicles and they'll say, "Hey, this vehicle, you know, is designed around these engineering standards to be rated for, let's just say, 100,000 miles." Like that's the the the minimum serviceable life of an engine, but the warranty is in place for 3 years, 36,000. So, it's like it's performance was designed around this standard. It's warranted around this standard. And anyway, so just another way. You think that's an accurate way to kind of distinguish?
I think it's a really accurate way to do it. And I'll I'll break that down one more level. Okay. I have a vehicle that is higher performance. And one of the things that irritated me about it is the vehicle's top speed versus what the tires are rated for are widely discrepant. And I thought, why would you put a tire on a vehicle that exceeds the tire's rating by 25 miles an hour, right? Like the vehicle's top speed exceeds it by that. And it's rated for a specific speed, but it's not warranted. If I drive 123 miles per hour on that tire and it fails, there's not a warranty to come in and say, "Hey, you were at 125 or 123, it's rated for 125 and it failed. We've got a warranty. We'll replace your tires and the vehicle for flipping the vehicle at that speed." No, that's not how any of that works. It was just evaluated and rated. That that its rating is 125 miles an hour and that you really shouldn't exceed that rating on that tire. But there's no guarantee for me or layer of protection. You know, Michelin, Goodyear, whoever it may be, isn't coming out to be like, "Yeah, we'll we'll back you up. If you get that thing to 124.5 and it goes, we'll cover it." That's not how that works. And there's auto analogies are great analogies to really break down these concepts. You know, and I I got really excited when you and I connected on on this topic because I see so much reactivity in the roofing space around a warranty that there is very little energy placed on rating or what I'll call actual performance. It's like, you know, this this warranty stated X, but there's not as much energy placed on on performance evaluation or rating evaluation. So, what I'd love to do is just one, ask you why do you think that is? And then we will move in for my sales friends who are tuning in with practical advice in in the home on how to communicate this difference. But why do you think the the industry has gotten so uh reactive? I'll just say it, emotionally reactive around warranties.
I think there's a handful of things going on. I think that we went from the simplicity of, "Hey, 30, 40, 50," and let's be honest, Adam, there's a lot of people watching this video that really don't remember those days of 30, 40, 50 when that was the good, better, best uh, because we're talking pre-2000 at that point. But we went from that to kind of this, I don't want to say flatline, but it's the word that comes to mind, this "limited lifetime," right? So, if everything became limited lifetime, and that's the only thing you had to pitch, then there was not a lot of value to create in presenting a warranty. If if shingle manufacturer A and shingle manufacturer B had "limited lifetime," I think the average salesperson didn't want to get into the minutiae of, "Well, let me explain what limited lifetime means," because you you run the risk of overselling, overtalking, overstepping boundaries, not understanding the technicalities of all that. And then the piece to talk about became some of the manufacturers' upgraded warranties that offered greater workmanship. So, less, if if we flatlined all of the manufacturers' warranties, then the the next piece to really talk about became more of the workmanship aspect. I mean, if every shingle warranty was this close in the limited lifetime concept, then the separation started to become more of the workmanship, the guarantee from the manufacturer to add on above and beyond the the contractor's 5-year workmanship warranty. These 10, 15, and 20, 25-year workmanship warranties. So, we kind of saw this shift into that where there was less talk about the material warranty. And I do think there's confusion on that, too. I think that understanding, if you were to guess, Adam, just percentage-wise, if you were to ask a roofer this question, "What does the manufacturer's material warranty actually cover?" What percentage of them could answer it accurately?
Oh, gosh. And I don't need a real percentage from you. I just want you to process. I want everybody watching this to process that.
And I think it's, unless you're a shingle geek like me who just looks at those things, tears shingles apart, breaks them down, reads every word in in warranties, you don't deeply understand. And and I hear statements like, "Well, if you don't put step flashing on the roof, it voids the manufacturer's warranty." And I'm like, "No, it doesn't. The shingle's warranted against defects, not against whether it leaks where you failed to put a flashing. And that has nothing to do with the shingles at all." This is where I'm talking about that there's just massive misunderstanding and lack of clarity of what does the manufacturer's warranty mean. So when it really just covers the materials and it's all limited lifetime and there's not a lot of disparity in that, how are you bringing value to the homeowner? Well, it's shifted to workmanship and add-on warranties and these more robust systems that manufacturers. So, I think that all kind of hybridized together is why we've seen warranty not be this massive focal talking point when you are at the selling table with a homeowner.
Right. Yeah. So, and I see uh in the sales process and I'll admit, I was not, you know, hindsight looking back, wish I spent more time on this in my days selling than than uh than I see the opportunity now. And the landscape has changed over the last what, 15, 16 years. Uh, and I know there's folks that have been doing it way longer than me. I think you and I both got into the industry roughly around what what year? I got in 2011. I don't remember what year. I know it was within a couple years of mine.
It It was right around then, too. I, a lot of people don't know the full background story, but I worked on a CRM with somebody in the roofing space well before I ever sold a job because he had a box of files and didn't know what his pipeline was. So, I got to be engulfed in it well before it was ever sales, sales manager, anything like that. So,
Yeah. Yes, we are both 15-plus years in the space uh at this point.
Yeah. So, it's been a while and and a lot of times, and let's face it, this is a this is a competitive, it's a cutthroat industry and the playing field is continually attempting to get leveled, right? Like this person does this and then they step up here and so the the things pretty neck and neck from a perception standpoint, which is when in sales and marketing, perception is often everything. So the perception is a level playing field. But now when we actually start breaking down,
You could use that. I mean, that's a let's let's just look right at this because we're going to talk about ratings. You look at the discovery of truly discovering and understanding the Malarkey products and their survival of a hail event that took place in a very, very abnormal location. And they were like, "Why does this shingle not have hail damage?" And then we see what happened with all the UL testing for ratings. Well, then you had this Malarkey product with all these ratings that were kind of competing with everybody's tier 2 or tier 3 shingle, but it had this UL Class 3 or Class 4 rating. Then suddenly you saw everybody, like you said, this this happened and everybody started, "We got to get ours to pass. We got to get ours to pass. We got to get ours to pass." And you started seeing, "Okay, we need one in the Class 3 category," and then we need one in the Class 4 category. Used to be zero or Class 4 only on the ratings. And then as these products really started to show these ratings, everybody's like, "Now you see this this level playing field concept that you're talking about where everybody has a no-class offering, everybody has a Class 3 offering, everybody has a Class 4 offering." And again, you start to see it kind of flatline and neutralize some of the conversations and pitches that may be going on when you're looking at four to four or three to three or no rating versus no rating. So, to your to your point, yes, something happens in the space and then you see everybody else kind of react to it and change things and rate things and test things. It's just the pattern we've seen in this industry for a long, long time, over and over and over again over the course of our careers. And you know what, Adam, I'm not picking on you. You weren't in the boom of all the class products of selling. You've got to coach hundreds of contractors and all part of the the group and everything that have been in that market, right? But that wasn't a kitchen table pitch for you when you got into this. It wasn't a kitchen table pitch for me when I, we didn't even have a Class 4 product that you could, you had to custom order it when I got in. It wasn't, it wasn't sitting in a shingle yard when I got in.
Yeah, it was it was a different landscape. It really was. And now as as technology has evolved and and new products have been developed, I think the rating component is such an important part of the sales experience for a homeowner. And down to which I've got some videos in mind that I want to do in the future on this, but product demos in the house are a big deal. Like I was just at FRSA and and um, I showed folks, you can take a piece of ice and water shield and you can put it on the cap of a water bottle in in the house, just like that. Yeah. And then stick a nail through it and turn it upside down. And like, it's amazing how many people, there's a handful of people like, "Yeah, I've been doing that." And then others that are like, "Oh my gosh, how have I never thought of that?" And most of the people that that I just shared that with, I'm like, "Grab a sample. Go, you know, check it out. Try it out in the home next time and practice it in your truck or office before you go do it in front of a homeowner."
Yeah, it's nothing nothing like flopping mid mid uh midprocess there. But, you know, in and we see, you know, Tampa doing the pull test and seeing is believing and it's a great way to get hands-on. Uh, I've even had, well, there's a whole, there's a whole variety of different um product demos you can do in the house with ice and water shield, with shingles themselves, with pull tests themselves, with putting synthetic versus felt paper in in the homeowner's hands to tear and feel. So when you talk rating, if you were to talk rating with a homeowner, what are you going to emphasize in terms of features or benefits about a product that speak to the rating and and most importantly, why it's important to the homeowner?
Loaded question here. So, we'll try and keep it focused. I do think that you have to understand what's important to a homeowner. And if you aren't consulting and conversing and gathering information and understanding what is important to them, you can go through three different pitches about the ratings and the products and the wins and the impacts and things like that all while that homeowner checks out and is thinking, "I got to pick up the kids at 3:00. Oh, I forgot to order milk with my grocery order." You know, and they're just tuned out on it. So, there's a little bit of relevancy. But let's just say I have somebody who's in a really good hail market, right? They experience hail storms every two to three years. They're on their second claim, right? So, they're probably, they've felt this process a couple times now. There's very likely, even if they're not thinking at that type of mind, that the conversation about ratings is going to be a relevant conversation to that person because they've been through two claims. They probably saw premiums increase. They saw deductibles change from the claim they had 10 years ago to the claim they have now. They may have even seen the pain of the claim change between 10 years ago and now. And the one 10 years ago was easy, and this one was difficult. So when I go into that conversation I'm having with the homeowner, the uh, I am going to ask questions, learn as much as possible. And I'm probably asking that question mainly because I don't want to be the one who's like, "Now I want to talk to you about ratings," right? Like I don't want to go into that one.
How important is it for you to prolong your chances of having another hail claim, right? Like I'm probably leading with questions that are going to get them thinking about that process, that pain, what this experience was like, what that deductible cost that they didn't plan. You know, I want them to be prepared for that. So, I want them to think about it.
You know, in your market, there's I'm going to show you the primary product that homeowners use, and here's the reason they use it. This is the primary product that they use. The number one reason is the average hail storm here in Oklahoma in the last 10 years was somewhere between an inch and three-quarters to two inches. Right? We get a lot of hail. It happens. It could be this market. This may or may not see it for another 10 years, just like you did, Mr. Smith. But this particular product that I'm showing you has a rating that it's actually tested when it's manufactured. It is tested for its performance for a 2-inch impact. They actually drop a 2-inch ball. In fact, I want you to see what that's like. And I take one of those 2-inch steel balls out and I hand it to them. I want you to hold that for a second. So, the day they manufacture this product, they send it off to a third-party company who then drops the steel ball, lets it hit the shingle, and evaluates if it breaks, fractures the shingle. And this one actually passes their test for 2-inch rating. So, it's rated for this 2-inch drop. Now, full transparency, steel is going to perform differently than hail. This steel isn't going to shatter. So, it's a it's a fairly sound rating that they put on this. It is rated against it. But I do want to be crystal clear. There's no guarantee. Hail can come in some different shapes and sizes. It could be jagged. It could be smooth. It could be really, really soft. It could be very, very hard. But you're at least positioning yourself a step ahead of the entry-grade products that have no rating at all that were never tested or evaluated against this. I mean, really feel the weight of that in your hands. That's what was dropped on the product that we use as our leading install. Most homeowners selected. That's what was dropped on it beforehand.
So, if you're interested in that layer of protection, it's what I would encourage you to go with. The nice part is, and then again, in this scenario, they've been through a claim. Look, insurance has paid for $23,000 of your $27,000 roof. $2,000 more and you're going to have a much better product on here. It's why most homeowners do it.
So, that's just a light version of it. But, I like them to have something tangible they can touch. That's going to be the shingle. That's going to be the steel ball. I think people don't realize like the size of two inches or the weight of a two-inch steel ball. You can order those things online for, I mean, it's not that expensive to have those in your truck. The first time you drop one on a homeowner's floor, though, you're going to hate it. So, make sure you don't drop one on their tile floor or their laminate floor or something. Be very safe how you handle them. But give it to them. Make sure they hold it over the table. Let them feel the weight of it. It's that to me makes the rating more real to that homeowner versus I can sit there and pitch you and tell you the technical. I could be like UL218 and just bore the snot out of a homeowner. Not what I want to do. I like you, Adam, like tangible. I like showcasing. I like touch. I like feel. I like real. But it starts with the trigger of how important it is for you to maybe avoid a hail claim again. You know,
If I could help you avoid a hail claim in the future, would you be interested in that? Like, I think there has to be something to get them their mentality into the, "Well, that sounds like a good idea."
So, the parallel that I that I draw, thank you for all that, by the way. And and for those that that are on Amazon as we speak or wherever ordering a steel ball, um, I would recommend doing this outside. You know, it's the same like when I remember when I was training my team, they're bringing sample boards in the house and all it takes is some granules to shed and then the the hardwood floor is scratched and you're like, "What? You guys did this?" So, be careful. But what I do want to get to and I want to again go to the auto analogy. Um, there's three vehicles that come to mind. And when we talk rating, what that really means is tested. And when a homeowner hears something like rating and they hear again, tested, what it means is the emotional outcome or the emotional benefit of, "I can sleep easy at night because I know this will do exactly what they said it's going to do." And uh, I used to, to uh, people would ask like, "Well, what's the secret of running a successful roofing company?" I used to be like, "It's this simple: Answer the phone, show up on time, and do what you say you're going to do." And when your when your products do what you say you're going to do, you're in a good spot. So, you look at the Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, got its name from running the Rub the the world-famous Rubicon Trail in California, meaning it is trail-tested, tested, and it's tough. You look at the Mercedes G-Wagon, and on the inside of the of the doors, I believe it's on the inside or it's a badge on the outside. There's a a mountain they test them on. I'm going to butcher the name because it's in Austria. Um, but it says like, "Tested in Austria on this mountain." And then you look at the uh Ford F-150 Raptor. It was developed and tested in the Baja, I don't remember if it was the Baja 500 or 1000 race. I can't remember, but it it won in or placed third, I think, in the factory class. Uh, only with with very little modification just to meet the the race requirements. So, people hear tested equals durable and will perform as expected. Uh, and I think it's it's a huge opportunity for salespeople to to discover and learn about ratings and the implications. And the other thing that I want to add, and I'm curious, this is the um uh the sales and marketing [snorts] training research I've pretty much dedicated my life to. That a feature of a product, and I'll give you give you an example. Um, nail strip, that's a feature. The benefit is well, easier, faster to install and more durable in terms of coming off should there be wind. But then there's the emotional benefit. And the emotional benefit is what you really want to dive into. And that is, you can fill in the blank. If it's if if something happened to your roof and the wind blew and there was one shingle missing and you you feel this, what? Imagine what could happen to the rest of your roof. And now you're you're completely exposed versus you've you basically have a failsafe to some degree in place uh with with you know, so that's the the emotional benefit. So, feature, benefit, and then the emotional benefit. And the more we can tie your rating to testing and testing to an emotional benefit, the greater the success you'll experience uh when selling in the home. So.
Yep, 100%. Yeah. I think we need to talk about the difference between rating and warranty because for the first time on the market, salespeople are going to be either pitching or potentially going up against a product that is actually warranted for a very, very specific impact. So, we look at the UL testing that exists out there for Class 3 and Class 4 for 1.75-inch impact and 2-inch impact. Again, it's a rating, and that's a really great pitch to a homeowner. It's a great thing to talk about if it's a benefit that's there. Sell that benefit. Make sure they understand it. Makes, again, I like the steel ball idea because it gives you the ability for a homeowner to really be like, "Oh, geez." You know, if it can handle this, it's going to be able to handle some hail, right?
Right. I caution salespersons, don't overpitch it.
Okay.
I did have a company who did not do great in how they were pitching the Class 3 and Class 4 products and did experience a sizable hail storm and had some customers that were mad that I thought it was not going to get hail damage. And so again, understanding that this is what, if you heard mine, I say, "Look, there's no guarantee, but at least you're putting yourself in a better position to be more resistant to these things." So, I caution you not to oversell ratings because if you oversell them, you're going to have an underinformed homeowner. And while again, a lot of them perform great. I've shot a lot of these products with our Hail Cannon, and I'm I'm impressed with a lot of products out there, you know, to be able to take that first rip, and that's that's the impressive piece is be able to take that first rip. The challenge is a lot of these tests are day zero. Um, I have had the benefit of because of NTS going in and taking products that are 5, 10, 15 years old. Now, we don't have a lot of Class 3s and Class 4s there, but I've even taken some 5-year-old Class 3s and Class 4s and ripped them. And again, I can see the difference between a day zero test and a five-year-old test, and there is some difference. So, don't oversell your ratings. But when you look at what Tamco released in the Hail Guard, the willingness to be able to offer a warranty for hail up to 3 inches, and I think that if you are out there selling that, recognize that the person you're selling against is likely pitching a Class 4 product. It's the closest competitive product that they can pitch out there um as part of that process. And there's a big difference between that 2-inch rating versus a 3-inch warranty. So, I still believe that getting too technical is not the approach. Getting boring, getting technical, getting down in the weeds, or overspeaking about a warranty you may not fully understand in depth what it is that um you need to be cautious about that. Like that takes a very, very technical understanding person, and there's really only one of four four personality types that would arguably even be interested in it, and that does not represent 25% of the people out there, to be very clear. It represents a personality type, not a market segment of any kind. But if I was in the home talking about the actual warranty, I would be talking about how you're shifting the liability over away from the homeowner and into the manufacturer's hands. And arguably away from the insurance company and into the manufacturer's hands. So, it probably still has some similar leading questions.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith, how important is it for you to try and avoid a claim in the next 10 years? Right?
Well, what if that liability was actually shifted completely out of your hands for the next 10 years, right? So, I'm probably layering my questioning process to then go in and do it. Now, I'm probably using different props, right? Instead of the 2-inch steel ball, I'm probably taking something that you can either have made or you can use uh 3D printers to print a uh something 3D, a 3-inch ball to show them the size of it, or a baseball is fairly similar in size. It's just not similar in weight. Hail can vary greatly in weight, and hail is going to be heavier. But something to actually show them that this is what this is, and then talk about the duration. And if you're a Tamco contractor and you have the ability to upsell that to a longer duration of time that they'll provide that warranty, obviously that's going to change your pitch. But in short, I would I would likely be then pitching, you know, you know, you, me, I know you mentioned you working with another roofing contractor, and I love the idea that you're getting other thoughts and opinions, right? Like I I want to appreciate that moment. Did they talk to you about impact-rated products? "Oh yeah, they were saying that theirs goes up to 2 inches." And you realize very quickly here what the homeowner heard in the last pitch was, "It protects against 2 inches." And you're like, "It does not." And this is where, as a salesperson talking about the warranty, I'd want to make a bigger emphasis on the difference between a warranty versus a rating and how that product has an upfront performance evaluation it goes through to rate it for that impact. It does not have any layer of protection. If you put that shingle on and in two months you see a 3-inch hail storm or even a 2-inch hail storm that manages to beat it up, there is going to be a, "Well, too bad, so sad" type of conversation with you versus the product that we have here to offer you. The manufacturer will back this. So, if it sees the exact same storm and heaven forbid it did manage to show damage, it shouldn't, but you can get your manufacturer involved to evaluate it. Rather than having your insurance company, rather than filing another claim on your history, rather than paying another deductible as part of a claim, you have the backing of Tamco. You have the backing of them. Think of it like this. You know, we're your roofing company, and you may get our guarantee, but wouldn't it be better if you could get a guarantee from a large brand that was recognized all across the country?
I know for me, that gives a piece of mind. I could go buy a Ford truck right now and buy a third-party warranty, or I could have Ford back it, who's a big brand, been around a long time, and all across the country, and there's a dealership every corner I turn or no matter where I move to. And great, that warranty is easy and in effect. This isn't backed by us. This is backed by the actual maker of the product to be warranted against hail up to 3 inches.
The average hail in your market was 1.75 to 2 inches. So, we're not just right at the threshold. We're above, well above that threshold in this market to give you that layer of protection. So, I'm probably having conversations in that regards. And you know what? I'll say this to anybody who's watching this. Pay attention to some of the free Tamco trainings they're doing out there, guys. They're three, four hours, and they're going to come in and they're going to teach you guys how to pitch this product and how to talk about Hail Guard and how to specifically go through things with that. Um, you know, the trainers that are doing that in the different markets, I don't know if they're they'll change over time, but the guys doing that presentation now are sharp gentlemen that I know have been in roofing, been in sales, own companies, and they're going and working on this pitch and this presentation. There's a lot to gain from it. amount of time in this interview to go through that entire pitch. But I would highly encourage anybody, whether you're Tamco or not, go to one of those free trainings. There's a lot of value to be gained in those free trainings. Even just the whole concept of a retail pitch that's layered in there. But I am pitching myself above and beyond what I know my competition's pitching in ratings and really making sure the homeowner is going to understand the difference between rating and warranty versus the average person selling the rating is hyping the rating and not putting a lot of emphasis on warranties or guarantees. And like I said, I always caution my homeowners. Now, there's no guarantee, but this is providing you at least a better product to be more resistant to this. So, you don't have the backing when you're doing the UL3s and the UL4s. You are doing the backing with the Hail Guard where you can now sell above and beyond and really kind of stand out against that competition that's pitching that Class 4. In fact, the tagline of the shingle is "Beyond Class 4" for that very reason.
So, tomorrow morning's action items with your sales team: Number one, have a conversation about the difference between a rating and a warranty. Number two, discuss the difference between a feature, a benefit, and an emotional benefit. Then number three, begin working as a team or as an individual salesperson on communicating the value as it pertains to rating, testing, and what that could mean to a homeowner to give yourself a competitive edge in the house and a a differentiator in a what is now very, very stiff and competitive market, especially as price sensitivity has been a topic as of late. It is very important to showcase something new, something different, and something even better than the rest. John, thank you so much.
Pro tip, too, real quick before.
Yeah.
So, I love this one. I think one of the ways that you can continually work on your bettering your craft is to record yourself. A lot of people go in, they pitch, the homeowner buys, and the message we receive internally is, "I did good. I have nothing to change." Okay?
There's nothing painful that's saying you need to improve. So, one of the things that I do in the home very often is I go, "Do you mind if I turn on my AI notetaker while I have this conversation with you? I'm happy to share the notes." And you don't have to say that last part. I do. I'm pretty good at my pitch. And I push my little button on my notetaker back here and I record. Not so much for the homeowner, more for me. And then I go back and I listen to it. There's so much to be gained in listening to your pitch. And you may find you have someone on your sales team that you listen to, you're like, "Oh, got to fix a few things." And you may find some, there's someone in your sales team that you're like, "That's it. This is the gold standard. This is how we should be saying it every single time."
Because while you're going to take classes and you're going to have owners that watch this that are going to go explain how this is done, you're still playing the telephone game.
It doesn't mean you don't have some shark on your team who's just so, so great at this entire presentation. And it doesn't mean you have somebody who understood what you said and isn't going to botch it. But as a salesperson, my pro tip is go listen to yourself. Listen to the words you said. Listen out. Listen to how your voice tone changes. And then the second time you listen to it, listen to the homeowner go from, "Oh, wow. That's really interesting, too." Okay.
Okay. And you're like, "Wow, I just flatlined the home." There's so much to be gained in that little pro tip of just recording yourself and listening to it. It takes 10, 15 minutes of your time to go back and listen to those. And there's so much to be gained from that.
Yeah.
And the reason I say, "Do you mind if I turn on my notetaker?" is some states require permission to record. And it's a good way to obtain permission to get that record.
Yeah. Check states. Uh, your local regulation regarding single-party or two-party consent states. And of course, consult with your attorney before doing any of this. Uh, but I couldn't agree more. Uh, when done legally, compliantly, with permission from homeowners, having a recording can be an incredibly immense value add to really uh distinguish between what people think they say they're saying and what they're actually saying. And as a as someone who's trained thousands of salespeople, I can tell you it's amazing how many times you're like, "I get it. I'm doing it perfectly." And then you do it, you're like, "Something's a miss from here to here to what they hear." So, uh, really, really rich. And you know, the the industry is getting even more competitive in my opinion. I think the level of sophistication in roofing companies is continuing to grow. This is uh, I think personal opinion, I think it's a a large byproduct of of private equity coming into the space, just bringing a higher level of sophistication and and business skills and of course resources to force roofers to think less like a roofer and more like a a sophisticated entrepreneur. And this is being manifested in business practices and operations and financials, as well as the marketing experience to to homeowners to generate leads, but most importantly, the sales experience. And the reason I'm saying sales experience and not pitch, and this is it's about what the homeowner is experiencing. And when you can create an amazing experience that gives the homeowner exactly what they need, what they want, and what's going to make them feel great, you deliver an amazing service behind it. That's the that's the secret to really winning in this industry. So, John, thanks for being here. If you wish to join John and I in the trenches in our training and growth community called the Roofing Strong Alliance, membership is now available at no additional cost to the TMC Edge contractors. You can click the link in the description to learn more and we'll see you inside. John, till next time. Thanks, brother.