“Why did the roofing company fire the roofer who went to the bathroom too often?

- His waste factor was too high. (🤣)” - Unknown Dad Joke

Introduction:

If you're at the helm of a roofing business, you understand the importance of maintaining a consistent flow of high-quality leads. After all, they form the very backbone of your company.

A steady stream of qualified leads not only ensures a reliable number of roof replacements each month but also maximizes your efficiency. Wasting time on appointments, traveling to homes, and presenting your best pitch, only to face rejection because potential clients are still exploring price options, can be a significant drain on resources.

I begin with this to underscore the critical role that qualified leads play. A qualified lead not only leads to a qualified appointment but also significantly increases the likelihood of closing the deal. However, the process doesn't end there. How do you further refine and qualify your leads, transforming them into appointments that are not just interested but genuinely prepared to buy? This is where your focus should shift, optimizing your efforts towards sealing the deal.

With that said, here is what you should do from the moment you take a lead to the moment they say yes and sign the contract.

Let’s determine what is the difference between a lead, prospect and a customer?

  The best way to describe the relationship between a lead, prospect and customer is to run through the lead-to-customer timeline. Upon initial contact with your company, we call an interested party a lead. Once a lead has been contacted, qualified and offered your services, we then call them a prospect. Once you’ve closed your prospect and they’ve agreed to work with you, they are then called a customer. 

Now I am not going to talk about how to get those leads here, I am talking about how you can actually close more from the ones that you currently have. (If you have trouble getting a steady flow of leads, you can contact me directly and I will fill your pipeline)

How do you actually go about turning a lead into a customer?

After sourcing your lead, you’ve still only fought half the battle. The steps you take next towards securing the work and turning those roofing leads into paying customers are just as important; if not more important to the success of your roofing company.

What we will cover are only the steps needed to convert a lead into a customer which are - Response time, Persistency and Follow-up.

All of them being equally important in the client acquisition process.

One last definition and we will go into the good stuff of this blog:

• Response Time is defined as the period between a contact form submission or missed phone call by a lead, and the first contact attempt.

• Following Up is the process of communicating and nurturing a lead AFTER you have contacted them

• Persistency is defined by how many attempts you make to contact your lead.

Research has linked the immediacy of response time, persistence and follow-up processes with positive sale outcomes and business prosperity.

Now that we know what each of the definitions mean, we will break down all of the three and see why implementing them will help you close as much as 90% of your leads if you follow it by heart.

A) Response Time

Effectively reaching out to your new incoming leads comes down to one thing: Timing! The quicker you are the better.

Look at it this way, if a customer has just made an inquiry, it is very likely that they’re a) still by their computer and/or phone, and b) still interested in discussing their inquiry.

When you get on the phone and contact them immediately, you’re still at the forefront of their mind and what better time to catch them when their most pressing thoughts are with yours truly! This is something the marketing experts commonly refer to as ‘top-of-mind-awareness’.

The moment a lead reaches out; be it via an online contact form or via a phone call – they are at their highest level of interest in your services. Reaching out to them at this exact moment is key!

“The odds of making successful contact with a new lead are increased 100 times, if the lead is called within 5 minutes versus 30 minutes”

Taking time to reach out to a lead after they have shown interest can prove to them two things:

You don’t have necessary systems and processes to be notified about them being interested or if you do and do not reach out fast, you don’t care or have no capacity (either way it’s a gap in your service delivery). 

Nowadays, people are more likely to buy from someone who provides their service and provides it FAST. Give them the WOW effect – impress your leads with a speedy response, building confidence and trust.

Here we have that visualized backed up by a study (yes, I am not just making that up):

The aim was to assess how long it took each company to respond to a test lead. As you can see from the chart, 26% responded within just 5 minutes. But in reverse, 65% took longer than an hour to contact their lead. 

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which companies are closing more work in this study. Those in the 26% that get in touch with their leads straight away; at the point they’re most interested.

The same study also looked to see if Contact Rate (The ability to make contact with a lead) and Qualification Rate (Whether a lead was ready to be sold to or not) were also affected by lead response time. You can see in the chart below, the longer you leave your lead, the less chance you have of a) making contact, and b) selling your services – if you manage to get in touch. Let's see the results:

Crazy right? When it comes to picking up the phone, you better be the best!

So what do we know so far about response time:

✔️ The chances of making contact with a new lead are extremely high if you make a call/SMS within the first 5 minutes of submission

✔️ Those chances drop off dramatically after the first 30 minutes

✔️ Specifically, you’re 100x less likely to make contact if the first call/SMS is made 30 minutes after submission

If you leave your lead to rot for more than 5 minutes, it’s likely that the top 26% will have already taken your job!

What to do if you can’t actually get back at them in 5 minutes? Maybe you are on the roof and can’t drop everything to call or SMS a new lead. I get it.

What you can do is invest your time in creating an automated message if you didn't pick up the phone or invest in a software that will tell you once a new lead has come in. Then what you can do is hire an appointment setter that's only job is to pick up the phone or call back leads you weren't able to pick up in time. The automated message can look something like this:

‘Hi, you’ve reached [Your Name] from [Insert Business Name Here]. Your business is important to us and we’re glad that you chose us. I wanted to let you know that we'll call you within the next 5 minutes. Thank you”

When you see it, it means a lead has come through by any means. A proper software will have the capability to automatically send a message to your appointment setter so he can act on it. On average, an appointment setter can cost you from 500$ a month (Pilipino VAs are pretty good and there are some with fluent english) and the software I am speaking about (Go High Level) you can get for 97$ a month. So for 600$ per month in expenses you can increase your lead quality, lead to appointment conversion rates, appointment to sale conversion rates, revenue per appointment and overcall customer satisfaction and quality a lot. It's worth it in my opinion.

Once you or your appointment setter are on the call with the client, it's worth asking them qualifying questions to understand who are you speaking with. (At RoofBuddie, we are using a landing page with a survey that automatically qualifies the lead, ensuring only qualified leads are contacting you)

Some of the questions are: What's the scope of your project (roof replacement, new roof, repair, etc.); How long has that been a problem for (understand how bad the problem is); when would you like to get that done? (pretty obvious); Street address, name, phone and you're good to go.

Another useful tip is to ask them these questions before dropping the call:

"The last step is to make sure there is someone at home when we come out. We know life gets super busy so we just like to double-check that someone will be able to help us while we are inspecting the roof in case we need assistance with anything.

And is there a reason that you would want to cancel or reschedule this appointment? The only reason I ask is that we get super busy and I want to make sure we get you in and don’t have to push the appointment too far out.

Thanks, I’ve received your input and the appointment is scheduled for time/date. In case you need to reschedule there is a link in the email where you can do that."

It ensures a lower amount of no-shows.

Okay Yoan, but what do I do when I set the appointment? Is it that easy? Now I will have a bazillion appointments.

Well, no of course! It will depend on how good your nurturing was (If you use the questions from above you will have success) and your attitude towards them.

If you are calling them sounding like someone who hates their life, job, dog, house, mortgage and their wife’s mother - then guess what - they will sense that and not want to work with you. You might set appointments but when they close the call will go “What have I done? I don’t want this guy fixing my roof with that attitude”

TRUST me, it does matter. Now that doesn’t mean go all enthusiastic like a salesman in the 90s. Just be honest and want to help them. You can either do that alone or get someone to manage that for you - it’s cheaper, better and easier that way.

Now, we spoke some time about how to nurture and follow-up with a lead but why does that matter? Well, you specifically are selling a high-ticket product and whether or not you have thought about it, high-ticket products are not as easy to sell as something that is cheap.

On top of that you are selling a roof, an investment people make in their homes. So you need to build that trust, build the relationship with your prospect to turn it into a customer.

As we told you there are 3 steps: a lead, a prospect and a customer. A high-quality lead is generated through various methods but mainly correct advertising; A high quality prospect is being made from that same lead but with the correct attitude towards proposing your solution to THEIR problem (only after you’ve heard it); And lastly, a happy and well-paying customer is created from a well-nurtured and understood prospect.

People don’t buy because they want a roof - a common mistake. People buy because they will feel better emotionally when the new roof is placed. Maybe they are feeling miserable that it leaks so the feeling of a new roof is what they are after.

“Companies that do well at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost.”

Plug your own numbers, see what you can do with a simple nurturing process in place.

And lastly...

C) Persistency

Persistence is key; If you’re spending money on a roofing lead, does it make sense to give up after just one or two phone calls? Big no-no! You may as well throw your money down the drain, along with your chances of long term success!

Did you know: The chances of making contact with a lead increases with each call made. Your chances of making contact on the first attempt are just 11%, but by the 6th attempt, you will have contacted 90% of your leads.

More than that and it might just be unnecessary. Lower than that and you might be missing on leads that could potentially turn into a paying customer.

Yet findings from a lead response study involving 3,000 companies have found that people give up too easily; only making a mere 2.39 call attempts to a new lead before giving up.

And with that, we’ve covered all of the basics that are…basic… but they tend to get forgotten. Applying the above will guarantee you closing almost all of the leads that contact you. Having proper processes and systems in place for a better customer experience is key. You can’t rely only on good roofing services for growth. At some point you need to tweak everything else 🙂

If you need help with generating quality leads or simply having someone who will pick up the phone and set appointments on your behalf, we'll need to talk.

Click this link (link to my calendar) and select the time that suits you best and your schedule.

'Till next time!