As a roofing business owner, finding quality salespeople for your business can be an onerous task.
The reality is that there is no easy or surefire way to alleviate the burden that comes with finding a new salesperson for your roofing business, but there are a few things that roofing companies can do to make the process easier.
Adam Sand is one man who has done just that.
As one of the owners of Sargeants Roofing in Edmonton, Alberta, Sand has spent years refining what his company looks for during their process of hiring sales reps.
Consequently, he now has a good understanding of the type of people who will succeed at sales in the roofing industry.
“The best salespeople are military police, people who are used to structure and discipline. They follow a process and they lead up and down the chain of command so they fall into the ranks really well,”
he says.
“Also, ex-business owners are good because they like that the chairs, computers, paper, printer, marketing, advertising, products, and the office manager are all paid for. Any ex-business owner that goes to sales, they typically do really well.”
Sand adds that there are a few other people who do really well in sales, despite what some may perceive as being true.
“The other two are drug dealers and people who are good with the opposite sex,”
Sand notes.
No matter where you find your next sales rep, Sand says that in order to locate that individual, it is incumbent upon you as a business owner to be proactive throughout the hiring process.
Sand explains how many ex-business owners and quality salespeople will find your company, provided you run good hiring ads on platforms that are consistently frequented by ideal candidates.
This includes websites like Indeed, Kijiji, LinkedIn, and Monster.
Sand says of those four platforms, Indeed is the one that offers the most favorable results.
“Indeed seems to be the place that gets the best volume,”
he states.
Sand then goes on to say that in order to ensure that good talent remains motivated to stay at your company, it is important to create a culture that people want to be involved in.
“You have to look like a business where there are things going on,”
Sand says.
“That means your accountant and marketing make your business look like a place where action is happening because no one wants to go work somewhere where someone has to die before they can move up. They want to go to a place where there is opportunity, so you have to create the ambiance and the appearance that opportunity is at your place.”
“Other than that, sales management is key because you’re always hiring and training a team to sell stuff. You’re always hiring, and you never stop hiring because whoever is running your company is always going to try and fill the capacity of the sales. Whatever they can sell, they’ll go kill themselves trying to fill the capacity. It doesn’t matter if it’s selling cars or selling cell phones.”
This is another reason why Sand looks into other industries when looking for a salesperson because, despite popular belief, finding quality salespeople to sell roofs doesn’t necessarily involve only looking within roofing communities.
“I like going outside of the industry and looking at things like cell phone salespeople,”
Sand says.
“They are amazing. They sell something everybody already has.”
“I also find that they’re really good at following process and doing good paperwork. They understand that product knowledge is a huge thing and the general idea behind a contract and why it’s important to dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s.”
Want to hear more from Adam Sand?
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