If you think you own a roofing company... You're in trouble.
“Being a small business owner, I’m always looking to support other small businesses. That being said, everyone’s enemy, “commoditization,” is attacking at an alarming rate in almost every industry and now I'm even seeing it in our industry… roofing.” – Bill Chandler
As a small business owner, I implore you to patronize other locally owned business owners and avoid corporate-owned shops as much as possible. We need to stick together, kemosabe!
So how can we survive, and even thrive, when commoditization comes to prey on our businesses?
Focus on Marketing.
You might say, “What about customer service?” Customer service is a function of sales and marketing, although most business owners don’t look at that way.
Yes, you had better deliver an excellent service. If you don’t, more sales and marketing will only let the market know that you aren’t good at what you do, faster.
However, I’m assuming your deliverable is excellent. If that’s true, then you need to focus more time, energy, and money on marketing. NOTHING is more important.
I moved from “darkness” into the “light” when I heard the legendary Dan Kennedy say that to be successful I needed to shift my thinking from being a practitioner of my service to a marketer of my service.
Honestly, that paradigm was the catalyst for my roofing business exploding because it put my focus on what was most important.
I understand if you don’t like that inconvenient truth because I didn’t like it. Initially, it was easier to practice my craft than it was to study marketing and practice getting good at it, but then something amazing happened.
I started loving marketing because I became great at it and it became easy, and fun because of the amount of money I made skyrocketed.
I am no longer own a roofing company… I now own a marketing company that provides roofing as a service!
What are you doing this week to improve your marketing?
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If you’re ready to take a deep dive into the psychology of why you need referrals and learn how to get them at will…
Check out my Master-Class for Roofing Owners and Marketers HERE!
Should You Invest in a Roofing Mentor?
“If you ask any successful business person, they will always have had a great mentor at some point along the way” -Richard Branson
Top business leaders don't stay stuck for long, they hire coaches and mentors to show them the path and compress time frames.
Small businesses tend to stay small because they are typically limited to the knowledge of an owner and a few key employees.
This group solves problems to the best of their ability and the result is the current level of success of the business.
Whether that means annual revenues of $300K or $30 Million, an organization will operate at a level equal to the tools at its disposal.
The growth of a small business can stall when an owner runs up against a problem that neither he nor anyone in the organization can solve.
After repeated attempts, the team just can't seem to figure it out. Everything they try loses money.
Rather than admit they don't have the knowledge or skills required, they blame the failure on a downturn in the market or some other factor that is beyond their control.
Then to keep from throwing good money after bad, they give up on their growth strategy and just focus on keeping what they've got.
Imagine if a Fortune 500 CEO told their board of directors and stockholders that they have tried everything they can think of to grow and the best course of action is to just be thankful for what they've got.
At least they wouldn't have to worry about being stuck anymore.
"Would you ever consider learning to fly a plane by just climbing in and figuring it out as you go? Would you take your family with you? Of course not! You would want a seasoned instructor with years of experience in the same airplane you intend to fly. He's there to keep you (and your passengers) from getting killed while you're learn. With so much riding on your success and 2/3 of small businesses failing within 10 years, would you want to treat your roofing company any differently?"
So… when is the right time to invest in a mentor?
If you've hit a ceiling and just can't break through, or even if you feel like you can eventually get there on your own but you don't want to waste time and energy, a mentor who's already bridged the gap is the best way to get unstuck or get ahead.
Here's a formula you can use:
Chances you can figure it out on your own (and in a reasonable time frame) = X
Chances you can reach your goal with the help of someone who's already been there = Y
If X is greater than Y and the lost time is less than the cost of a mentor, then do it yourself.
But if Y is greater than X, then take the shortcut.
So when's the right time? Whenever it's the percentage play.
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If you’re ready to take a deep dive into the psychology of why you need referrals and learn how to get them at will from someone who's been doing it for a decade…
Check out my Master-Class for Roofing Owners and Marketers HERE!
4 Choices That Highly Successful Roofers Make
“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.” ―
Success in life is determined by your thoughts, your beliefs, and especially your choices.
We make so many decisions on a daily basis that it is impossible to come up with an accurate number. One study suggests that it could be as high as 35,000. As absurd as that sounds, consider a Cornell University study that found we make 226 decisions about food alone in a given 24 hour period.
And as your level of responsibility goes up, so does the opportunity for decisions to be made. With a couple of thousand choices being made every hour, you can surely see the need for the subconscious to help us handle the workload.
Imagine the overwhelm if we were aware of all those choices. The downside, however, is that our autopilot makes decisions based on our past and current belief systems.
This works well if our goal is to stay exactly where we are, but it becomes problematic when we want to achieve higher levels of success. With that understanding, the challenge becomes taking manual control of the choices that have the power to change your life for the better.
Here are 4 choices that highly successful contractors and business owners make that seem to elude everyone else.
1. Control
The best of the best choose to be in control of their destiny, and therefore their success. If you believe that life happens to you and that there is nothing you can do to change it, you will never find the success you are looking for.
If you're not in control, you have a built in excuse for not achieving your goals. Don't set yourself up for failure. Choose to believe you're in control.
2. Commitment
Many contractors commit to the change that growth requires, right up until the going gets tough. Then they fall back into the perceived comfort of wherever they were before.
Top performers know that commitment doesn't even get tested until adversity punches you in the mouth. It's not something that you possess, it's a choice your make even though giving up looks like a much better option.
In case you're wondering, it should feel like picking a fight you're not at all sure you can win. Commitment makes damn sure you do.
3. Opportunity
The most successful among us focus on the opportunity instead of being blinded by the risk. This won't come naturally, given the way we're taught to think about money and our feelings about losing it.
But if you understand what's happening, you can choose to place the emphasis on the potential gain instead of the risk of loss.
If you're worried about making a mistake, be absolutely sure that you will. Nobody's perfect, so the goal is to win more than you lose and keep pushing forward. Whatever you do, don't let fear turn into inaction. That's a prescription for mediocrity, followed by a healthy dose of regret.
4. Knowledge
High level contractors and business owners learn how to be successful from those who have already achieved what they want to achieve.
That can be a hard pill to swallow at first. As business owners, we believe that we can handle anything. If we didn't, we would never have had the confidence to start a business in the first place.
But it's this self reliance that actually prevents us from seeking or accepting help when we need it the most. Whether their business is struggling or they're just stuck and can't seem to get to the next level, successful people choose to learn from a proven winner.
Why hope you have enough time and resources to figure it out on your own? Acquire the knowledge and achieve your goals.
If you truly want more success, find more successful people and do it the way they do it.
All the Best!
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If you’re ready to take a deep dive into the psychology of why you need referrals and learn how to get them at will…
Check out my Master-Class for Roofing Owners and Marketers HERE!
Should You Strive To Be A Roofer? Or a Marketer?
“The business you're in is the marketing business. Everything you exchange for money is just a deliverable.” – Dan Kennedy
You don't get to be a great roofer without becoming a great marketer.
You can be the best roofer in the country, but if no one asks you to build their roof, you're going to get skinny... quick!
Marketing is really the price of admission for you to get to do whatever it is that you have chosen as your profession. For us, it's roofing.
Unfortunately, no matter where you look, there's no shortage of roofers. That means we have a commoditization problem that is getting worse, not better.
Given that there are more choices available than there are people needing to make that choice, we have to establish some method of differentiation in order to survive, let alone thrive.
And contrary to popular belief, that does NOT happen by excellence alone. In some cases, it doesn't happen by excellence at all... it happens through marketing.
How many mediocre products can you think of that experienced massive success just because they were great marketers? The fast food industry is full of them.
And just as sales experts make significantly more money than employees in non-sales roles, companies that learn how to differentiate through marketing generate more revenue than those who rely on quality and word of mouth alone.
When it comes to deliverables, good enough is usually good enough. If you can build a roof that only a small percentage of industry experts can critique, how much more money are you going to generate by getting even better? None. The people who matter (paying customers) won't even be able to recognize the difference.
We are conditioned to be concerned about getting better and better at the "thing" that we do. We should actually be working on getting better at marketing ourselves so that we get more opportunities to do that thing and help more people.
There are generally three ways to sell something...
- Push
- Pursuit
- Attraction
Push typically involves physically putting items in your path. This can be the end cap in retail or the impulse items at the grocery store checkout.
Pursuit can be anything from a clerk following you around in a department store to someone canvassing a neighborhood going door to door.
Even when someone has a legitimate need, they are reluctant to put themselves in a situation that they know will be uncomfortable or awkward.
Attraction is the process of creating the perception that the customer is discovering you instead of having products or services pushed on them or them being pursued.
It allows them to feel like they are in control because it was their actions that led them to you. What they don't realize is that we have positioned ourselves at the end of their decision making path as the best (or only) option to consider.
If the word manipulation comes to mind, consider this... a magician wouldn't ask you to pick a card from the deck if he wasn't reasonably sure he could control the variables and answer correctly.
With attraction, we create an environment that leaves very little to chance. All in the interest of serving a customer that we know we can help.
If your a roofer and you're tired of relying on pursuit strategies, we're here to help. Our system that generates an endless stream of roof replacement from insurance agents may be the attraction strategy you've been looking for. Connect with us to learn more about the Magnetic Referral Machine.
“Isn't it time to stop chasing the wrong roofing customers and start attracting the right ones?”
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If you’re ready to take a deep dive into the psychology of why you need referrals and learn how to get them at will…
Check out my Master-Class for Roofing Owners and Marketers HERE!