Earn Like the Top 5% in Roofing Sales

How can you earn like the top 5% in roofing sales?

I’m going to tell you exactly how you can do that, explaining:

1. What the top 5% are earning 
2. The top five things that the top 5% are doing to be successful

I’ve learned this after serving thousands — and thousands and thousands and many thousands of sales reps. I’ve personally seen what they’ve done and what separates these high earners from the everyday people.

Now, anyone can do these five things. I truly mean that.

Will everybody do them? No, of course not.

So, whether you’re brand new in roofing sales or you’re a seasoned veteran who needs some inspiration, my goal is to help you find the fastest path to joining the top 5%.

In fact, even if you’re coming back into roofing sales or you want to refocus, get over some burnout, and start taking it more seriously, this can help you.

It can literally get you back on track and help you figure out what to focus on, so you can join the top 5% of earners, owners, and managers (and if you have a team who needs to see this, please share this with them).

Sometimes, all we need is a little kick in the behind to:

1. Find that motivation
2. Dig deeper
3. Achieve our greatest goals

Before we get started, I want to say a quick welcome or welcome back. My name is Adam Bensman, The Roof Strategist. Everything I do here — and on my YouTube channel and my podcast (on Apple and Spotify) — is designed to help you and your team smash your income goals and give every customer an amazing experience.

And I have a freebie to help get you started on that journey. If you haven’t already done it, get your free copy of my Pitch Like a Pro roofing sales training video library, sent right to your inbox. It has more than 300 videos, organized by category, for easy binging. You can get instant access now (by clicking on that link).

Now, let’s get to the top five things that the top 5% do.

What Does the Top 5% Mean?

First, let’s define what we consider the top 5% to be.

With this, I want to:

1. Look at both storm and retail roofing salespeople
2. Eliminate the outliers (e.g., the 7-figure incomes from the big, once-in-a-blue-moon events)
3. Just look at everyday roofing salespeople

So, what is the top 5%?

In my opinion, these are the folks who are earning over $200,000/year.

They have hit the multi-six-figure mark every year, and some years, they could be earning even more.

Now, let’s jump into their habits and what the most successful roofing salespeople are doing.

Roofing Sales Top Earner Habit #1: Do What Others Won’t Do

People who earn multi-six figures are typically willing to do what other people are not willing to do.

That can mean working on rainy days that others use as an excuse for a day off. The top earners aren’t going to take a pass. They’re:

• Figuring out what they can do to make sales and generate new business
• Focusing on chasing their goals
• Using their time wisely, focusing downtime or time they can’t knock on doors to do other things, like direct mail, cold calling, working their relationships, working their pipeline, and rehashing old leads
• Finding a way to work versus passing off excuses

And that’s not only on the bad-weather days. Top earners work on the weekends and holidays too (and I know we need to find balance. Of course, no one wants to burn out).

Still, top earners are willing to put in that extra work and make sacrifices. On that note, I love what Brian Tracy says — You have to be willing to pay the price.

What does that mean?

It means you have to pay the price to be wealthy. You have to invest the time, make the sacrifices, and work smarter.

The same thing holds true in roofing sales.

If you want more flexibility, you have to be willing to pay the price. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Some people are totally satisfied and comfortable not working that much because their lifestyle needs are met. So, there’s no wrong way to do it.

You just need to be willing to pay the price for what makes sense for you.

Roofing Sales Top Earner Habit #2: Practice the Fundamentals

Top earners aren’t just willing to do what others won’t. They’re also focused on practicing the fundamentals. Let’s look at some super talented folks to get a better sense of this.

Now, I get really excited watching people perform at the top of their game. That includes athletes, chefs, artists, musicians, and anyone who’s in the zone and mastering their craft.

In fact, I’ve learned A LOT from hearing about the late Kobe Bryant and how he practiced and developed the skill sets that brought him to be ranked as among one of the greatest basketball players that ever lived and played the game.

I just listened to a podcast about Kobe Bryant that shared that he used to go to the gym at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. to:

1. Get in a third daily practice because everyone else was practicing twice a day.
2. Practice his fundamentals, like his footwork, shooting, and all of the basics that we may find boring.

He found deep meaning in it and an unshakeable foundation that required no thought.

We can also look at some famous chefs like Gordon Ramsey. You’ll remember his face if you’ve ever watched any of his cooking shows. Gordon Ramsey is one of the well-known, highly accomplished chefs of our time. People either love or hate his personality, but we can’t dispute the fact that he’s wildly successful.

On his cooking shows, you’ll notice the challenges involve cooking very basic things, like frying an egg. They practice the fundamentals, going through them over and over again.

In roofing sales, one of the best ways to go over the fundamentals is with roleplay.

Why Roleplay for Roofing Sales?

The reason roleplaying is key in roofing sales lies in the numbers. So, let’s break down the numbers.

Example: Say that you sell 100 roofs a year, and you get one objection 20 times. That means it’ll take you 3 years to hear that objection 60 times. Does that mean you’re a pro? NO, it means you got 60 repetitions. I bet you Kobe Bryant took way more than 60 shots every single morning.

So, how do we build this in the same way for roofing sales?

With roleplay — because going to game day, meaning real-world sales, is not practice. Practice is roleplay.

And when we roleplay the right way, we’re breaking down all of the key sales activities or sales dialogues to get in those repetitions.

That’s exactly what I teach you in my training center for teams. I teach you how to roleplay:

• At the door
• After the homeowner responds at the door
• How to overcome objections
• How to start the appointment
• How to end the appointment

So, in two to three sessions, you and your team can develop the same level of true-to-life experience and practice as someone who’s been doing roofing sales for three years but never practiced with roleplay.

So, practicing fundamentals and doing that roleplay is super, SUPER important.

If you do, you’ll see, the feedback loop that I teach. So, in my training, we do a short spurt, after which the rep provides his or her feedback and we provide feedback. Then, the coach provides feedback, and you go again. You’ll watch people integrate these changes, lightning fast. It’s SO freaking cool.

So, again, top earners are:

1. Doing what everyone else is not willing
2. Practicing the fundamentals

Roofing Sales Top Earner Habit #3: Assemble Your Talent Stack

Another key activity among the top 5% of earners is assembling their talent stack. That means developing a unique set of talents.

Before we dive into this one, I want to give a big shout to a special person, Dashaun Bryant of Roof Hustlers. My good friend and fellow mentor in the Pitch Pro Movement, Dashaun is SO focused on developing his talent stack, and he speaks quite openly about it, especially in his sessions in the Pitch Pro Movement.

He speaks openly about finding resources outside the roofing industry, so it’s MORE than just sales and roofing.

So, our talent stack is ALL of the unique capabilities that we develop over the years. It can include skills like (but not at all limited to):

• Sales
• Closing leads
• Communication
• Conflict resolution
• Time management
• Systems thinking
• Self-reflection
• Organization
• Psychology

These and other skills come together to create your talent stack. And all of the multi-six-figure earners who I work with are so keen on developing skill sets outside of sales and roofing.

By the way, among the skills I’ve highlighted here, I’ve found that the three most important skills for roofing sales are:

1. Communication skills
2. Time management skills
3. Systems thinking

Systems thinking is the ability to quickly audit what’s going on, like how much stuff is on your plate, and operationally streamline it, thinking really intelligently about how you can continue to grow. It’s not a skill set everybody has, so we need to learn it, and we need to train ourselves how to think that way.

In other words, we need to think about how to think. And the top 5% are just really, really, REALLY successful at that.

Roofing Sales Top Earner Habit #4: Gamify Your Growth

Another thing the top 5% of earners do is that they gamify their growth.

Now, what do I mean by gamify growth?

I mean that they will:

• Look at a number, like their income goal
• Say to themselves, I have two ways of selling. I can make more sales or earn more per customer.
• Strategize ways to make more sales, thinking about easier ways to do it. They’ll think, I don’t want to go out knocking on doors. I want to work on more referrals. I want to work more direct mail. I’m going to work on my installs.
• Be strategically smarter about their decisions. They’ll think, Hey, I want to earn more per customer. So, they might look at two neighborhoods with equal sales opportunities and see that this one’s got about 27 square roofs, one has 30 square roofs on average, and another has 35 square roofs on average. Even though it’s only a few squares difference, if you sell 100 roofs — and it’s a 5 to 7 square difference — that’s 500 to 700 squares. It adds up A LOT to your bottom line, the profit in your pocket, and the commission in your bank.

So, to act and think like a top 5% earner, gamify your growth — and look at roofing sales as personal development in disguise.

In other words, think about how you can get better at:

• Communication system thinking
• Developing your talent stack
• Strategically pinpointing your areas of growth and opportunity

Roofing Sales Top Earner Habit #5: Be a Perpetual Student

Being a perpetual student means being a forever student who’s eager to learn and soak up new information.

In fact, we were just on the Pitch Pro Movement this morning (and I’m going to give another shout-out to Dashaun because I learned how he runs his Pitch Pro Movement sessions).

By the way, you can join both Dashaun and me, as well as John Senac and Jim Ahlin, in the Pitch Pro Movement (just click on the link).

So, Deshaun starts off the sessions by asking:

1. What do you want to stop doing?
2. What do you want to start doing and keep doing?

Do you know what many folks want to keep doing?

Studying — many folks say, “I want to be a forever student.” Interestingly, someone also shared that they wanted to stop watching the news.

So, I shared what I’ve done. I’ve upgraded my audible account to the prepay for 24 titles, and I now listen to audiobooks instead of watching the news in the morning. I’ve literally replaced the habit of watching the news with audiobooks, and I now finish an audiobook every three to five days (I’m also reading at night).

The point is to continually find ways to be a sponge.

Funny enough, I ran a training sessions for about seven of a company’s highest performers. They were all earning between $250k and a little over $500k a year from roofing sales. And I’m sitting here thinking:

These are the guys and gals who are going to be in the back of the room, with this skeptical teach-me-something attitude.

OH BOY, was I wrong! These top earners had their notepads ready, taking notes. And, Jason, by the way, shout out — Jason sent me a text saying he couldn’t believe after training that these guys were just soaking it up.

And they did because they’re smart perpetual learners who wanted to find the one or the two little opportunities to keep upping their skills.

How to Bring It All Together

When we bring it together, we realize this really powerful truth, and it’s our greatest threat.

In fact, your greatest threat is the exact same thing as your greatest opportunity — and it took me a long time to figure this out.

What am I talking about?

I’m talking about what you do NOT know. In other words, a lack of knowledge. What you don’t know is what gets you into trouble or scary situations.

Still, what you don’t know yet is also your greatest opportunity. It’s what you discover that becomes the foundation for just totally wild growth.

Example: Imagine you run 50 sales appointments a year, and you can’t one-call close to save your life. So, that’s going to require two or three visits to the home each time. And that burns up all this time. But the minute that you learn to close on one call — BOOM! You run and close those 50 appointments. And it takes a third less time. That means you can put in about 70% of the same effort and still yield a similar output.

So, when you learn this new stuff, you start closing deals left and right. Now, for that exact same effort, you earn MORE money. You maximize the output from your inputs.

That’s why it’s so important for us to continually learn. And I’m really glad to have you here because it tells me that you want to keep learning and doing this.

So, those are the five different things that the top 5% of earners do.

Get More Roofing Sales Strategies, Scripts, Tips & Videos

If you want more on any topic in roofing sales, you’ll find it in my all-in-one sales training, sales strategy, and sales system, the Roofing Sales Success Formula & Complete Sales Strategy.

This exclusive program covers everything from knock to close, with packages for individual roofing sales reps and entire teams. Many roofing sales companies LOVE this program because it’s a consistent process to train everybody on a relatable sales system that WORKS and that’s a lightning-fast way to get results.

If you have questions, just call or text (303) 222-7133 for more info or a private demo.

You can also subscribe for the latest roofing sales training videos and/or get a copy of my Pitch Like a Pro roofing sales training video library. It includes every roofing sales video I’ve ever done, organized by category, along with a bunch of tips, tricks, and more. It’s great for new people and seasoned veterans, and it’s updated all the time to help you and your team smash your income goals and give every customer an amazing experience.

And don’t forget to check out my Marketing Battle Pack for instant access to 70+ pieces of my proven, turnkey roofing sales and marketing materials. It’s an entire suite, specially designed for sales teams, managers, and owners, providing:

It’s affordably priced and comes with a 100% money-back guarantee. There’s also a playlist of instructional videos in there, explaining every single thing. So, you can watch the videos, and you’ll know exactly what to do.

Thanks for joining me, and I look forward to sharing more with you in the next blog.