From the moment you file your LLC. paperwork you will get flooded with ads and offers for all kinds of business tools, new apps, marketers and more. How do you know which ones are a good fit for your company?
The goal of all these digital tools is to streamline your business, add efficiency and automation wherever possible, and at the end of the day, make your work life easier.
While most modern apps are relatively intuitive to use, there’s still a learning curve that comes with every new program. Time is money and the more time you have to spend learning a new program, the more you’ll end up asking yourself: is this worth it?
Plus, the more digital tools you’re using, the greater the chance that you have redundancy in your protocols or at least in the capability of your tools. So, you want to be strategic about what programs you incorporate into your workflow in order to maintain efficiency in your procedures and keep your costs down – because subscription fees add up!
In this video, Dmitry dives into the essential business tools you need to run a competitive roofing company. We hope this will help you navigate all the offers to select the tools that will be the most useful to your business. This video is sponsored by Enhancify, and you can learn more about how they help roofers better serve homeowners by clicking our affiliate link here. Let’s get into it.
1. PRESENTATION
To compete in the modern business world, you should have a digital sales presentation to share with prospects. You want to share enough about your company to establish that you are capable, trustworthy, and reliable. You need to share how you plan to address their needs and complete the job, how much it will cost, and other expectations.
The days of doing this with pen and paper are over. To be professional (and not get stuck hauling around stacks of paper files) you should bring a tablet and use a sales presentation app. We recommend SumoQuote. You can customize the branding of your presentation and it prompts you to address all pertinent information so that you can feel confident you will have all your bases covered when meeting with the homeowner.
2. ACTIVITY TRACKING
If you’re door-knocking or canvassing an area, you will need to keep track of who you have talked to and what you learned about the prospects. You need to know the neighborhoods you’re working and manage the leads from your referral list. We recommend Lead Scout to help with this task, a software platform that empowers your sales reps to self-generate quality leads and amp up brand visibility wherever there is opportunity.
Imagine having a sales team NOT tracking their activity. You would quickly run into team members inadvertently duplicating each other’s efforts, losing leads and ultimately missing opportunities. A tracking app avoids these pitfalls and keeps a permanent record of where your team has been.
3. SUPPLEMENTS
In the roofing industry, dealing with insurance claims is part of the bread and butter of business. If an insurance adjuster leaves something off your estimate, they aren’t giving you enough money to do the job. To ensure that your company or client is not hit with unexpected expenses, you need to thoroughly review every insurance claim and if you find anything is missing, the insurance claim must be supplemented.
If you can’t afford an in-house Xactimate expert at your company, we recommend you find a partner like Estimate Experts. Their platform makes it easy to quickly produce accurate insurance supplements, so you can properly adjust the claim and confidently complete the project. Click estimate-experts.com to learn more.
4. CRM
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, and it’s an essential tool for managing and supporting customer relationships that allows you to track and build relationships across the entire customer lifecycle.
There are a ton of quality CRMs out there! If you’ve been following our channel for a while though, you know that we love and recommend JobNimbus. It’s custom tailored for contractors, and roofers in particular love it.
5. EFFECTIVE WEBSITE
Straight up, you are NOT really in business in 2023 if you don’t have a company website! But if you’re just getting started (aka in your first year or two of business) you don’t need anything too sophisticated. In fact, We recommend keeping it simple with a DIY website using Squarespace or WIX.
As your business matures, so should your website. You will have more testimonials, more documentation of your work, and other content to share. You may want to add a blog to improve your SEO, create a cost “calculator” or want more sophisticated intake forms for prospects.
When you’re ready to take it to the next level, we recommend partnering with a marketing firm like Hook Agency. They are based in Minneapolis and work exclusively with roofers and contractors. Not only do they understand the ins-and-outs of modern marketing, advertising and create beautiful custom websites, but their roofing industry expertise is unparalleled.
6. RECRUITING PARTNER
You need a go-to place to hire new staff when you need it. Referrals are the best place to start, but sometimes you need to reach outside your personal network to find quality, reliable workers. At Roofing Insights, we’ve been using LinkedIn lately, but Indeed, GlassDoor, Craigslist, and industry Facebook groups are all viable ways to find your next employee.
7. FINANCING
Most people cannot afford to pay for a roof out of pocket so you need to be able to offer them a financing option. We recommend Enhancify because they make the whole process easy and are accessible for startups and small companies.
Enhancify is a financing system built specifically for contractors to offer more payment options to homeowners. With their help you can turn large jobs into affordable monthly payments. Click our Enhancify affiliate link here to learn more.
8. MAPPING HAIL
If you’re in the storm chasing business, you need a hail mapping tool. This will give you easy access to the latest hail, wind and tornado maps with detailed information about each event.
We recommend HailTrace. Their software helps you better reach potential leads, check estimated amounts of impacted properties, and manage your customers.
9. MEASUREMENT TOOL
Nowadays you can avoid having to get up on the roof yourself to measure it by using a measurement app. We recommend Roofr because it is consistently accurate and affordable. This kind of measurement tool will give you detailed information about the surface area and dimensions of your client’s roof with overhead schematics, pitch and direction reports, and a structures summary for each job. Other measurement tool companies worth checking out are Eagleview, RoofScope, and iRoofing.
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Hopefully this list helps you navigate the world of options out there! The more you know your niche and your team’s strengths and preferences, the easier it will be to figure out which systems will work best for your company. If door-knocking is a key part of your strategy, for instance, you will definitely want to get an activity tracker app but may be able to skip having a CRM if you find a tracker app that covers your bases. Just create a system that you can consistently follow! That upfront organization will go a long way towards giving you and your clients peace of mind.
Great informations, thanks for all