Your Best Year EVER By Doing This One Thing Every Day

What if one simple daily habit could set you up for your BEST year ever?

Well, guess what?

It CAN.

I’ve done it. And I started this daily habit my very first year in roofing sales — even though I thought it was fluffy and silly at the time. But I quickly changed my mind because, with this one daily routine, I was able to smash my income goal.

Welcome or welcome back, by the way. My name is Adam Bensman, The Roof Strategist. I’m here (and on my YouTube channel and my podcast, on Apple and Spotify) to help you and your team smash your income goals — because the idea isn’t just to achieve those goals. It’s to exceed them.

And I did that my very first year in roofing sales. My goal was $100,000 back in 2011, and I generated $140,000 of income. I blew my goal out of the water by 40%!

I did it by following this simple daily habit that helped accelerate me up the ladder to chief operating officer of a roofing sales company (that operated in five states and six cities). And I’ve used this same habit to develop and grow The Roof Strategist brand.

Background on the Daily Habit: It’s All About Clarity

This all boils down to the focus and the clarity you can develop by practicing this one daily habit. I’m going to give you simple, yet tactical, advice and strategies you can use to set yourself up for your BEST year ever.

Now, there are three groups who can benefit from this habit:

1. Brand new sales reps: If you just got into roofing sales and you’re chasing an income goal, you got into industry for a reason. And that’s most likely because you want to bring yourself to a better place financially.
2. Seasoned reps: If you’re an experienced roofing sales rep, you’re probably trying to double your income or get to that next six-figure tier, whether it’s $200k, $300k, or $400k. Or, maybe, you’re trying to sell as much as possible but not work as many hours.
3. Owners and managers: If you’re in either of these roles, you’re looking to scale up your operations and create a more autonomous business. You want a really efficient sales team that brings deals in, and you’re trying to do that by creating really strong systems and processes (so you can get a little bit more hands off on a day-to-day basis).

Whatever group you’re in — and whatever the ‘best year ever’ means for you — it’s only going to happen with a few simple components that lay the groundwork for success.

Before we get into tactical strategy, though, let’s cover some basics and get on the same page when it comes to the “meat and potatoes” of roofing sales.

How to Think of Roofing Sales: The Pro Athlete Mindset

The roofing sales business is an infinite game. We are always improving and leveling up.

Think of it as if you’re an NFL athlete.

If you’ve reached that NFL level, do you stop practicing just because you’re now pro? No.

For some reason, though, it’s easy to fall into this trap in roofing sales. That can be arrogance, thinking:

I don’t need to learn anymore. I’m going to learn in the field. It’s all about experience.

Again, no. That’s like being an NFL athlete and saying:

Well, I’ll get my practice out on the field on game day.

That’s absolutely wrong. An NFL athlete practices:

• Harder
• More frequently
• With a very clear purpose
• With position-specific coaches on the field

By the way, that’s what we do inside the Pitch Pro Movement, with a team of five mentors — including Dashaun Bryant, John Senac, Mat Mulholland, Jim Ahlin, and me (but I’m not here to talk with you about that. If you’re interested, click on the link above. Or call or text my team at 303-222-7133 for more details).

I want to lay this groundwork about this infinite game in roofing sales.

There are infinite ways to improve, just like an NFL athlete who keeps training harder and harder. When they win the Super Bowl one year, that doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed a win the next year. Instead, it means the competition is going to get harder.

So, we need to continually level up.

Now, how do we apply this to the one habit?

We do it with a journal. The journal IS the habit.

I’ll explain what that means by:

1. Sharing some things in my personal journal
2. Explaining how daily journaling has changed my life (and how it can change yours too)

Disclaimer: When I say ‘journaling’ here, I’m NOT talking about writing down your love note to the cute girl at the coffee shop. I am talking about using this as the single tool to accelerate yourself to your best year ever. This is all about training and leveling up.

There’s something magical that happens when we distilled our thoughts on paper. So, spoiler alert — what goes in your daily journal is the REAL magic.

Roofing Sales Strategy #1: Get Organized with a Journal or Notebook

Jump on Amazon and get a paper notebook or notepad. I like small ones, like the one I’m holding up below, so I can carry them everywhere.

If you ran into me at Roof Con or another event this past year, you’ve probably seen me pull this out and take notes while we talk.

Here are a couple of the things I’ll be sharing with you because I practice what I preach:

• Your best year ever needs to be planned out. This new daily habit is going to start with a strong foundation for your goal. Put more poetically by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Something along those lines has been said by pretty much every personal development guru who’s ever lived.
• You cannot hit a target you can’t see. That’s from Zig Ziglar. And Brian Tracy tells us that every one minute in planning saves 10 minutes in execution. Think of it like trying to find a new restaurant or navigate a new city. You don’t just wander about or drive around aimlessly, waiting to stumble onto something. NO. You plug the address into the GPS, so you can get turn-by-turn directions and quickly get to the exact place you want to go. So, do the same thing for yourself.

Roofing Sales Strategy #2: Write Down Your Goal & Your ‘Why’

The first thing we’re going to do with our journal is write down our goal. Now, if you’re thinking to yourself, Adam, don’t be a dummy. I know I need a goal, here’s where it starts to get fun.

Originally, I wrote a goal that I thought I would achieve. Remember, my first-year goal was $100,000. Well, guess what? That goal wasn’t strong enough for me because things got tough and the days got hard. I got my teeth kicked in, I got rejected, and I felt depressed. I didn’t want to go to work. There were days that I’d rather sleep in or go have drinks.

That $100,000 goal wasn’t emotional at this point. By the way, at that time, I was living off $4.20/day in groceries. That was my grocery budget. I was broke, and I didn’t go out to eat. I couldn’t even afford a $5-footlong sub.

So, for me, chasing this $100,000 goal meant I could go out to eat. It meant that I could:

• Save enough money for a deposit on my dream house, which was also my first home
• Pay off my debt

Those were my ‘why’s.’ They were my reasons for setting that goal.

So, I wrote down my goal and those ‘whys.’

Your Why Matters More Than Your Goals in Roofing Sales

I will go as far as to argue that your ‘why’ is more important than the actual goals themselves. That’s because your ‘why’ will carry you through when things get hard — and when you’re asking yourself, Why am I out here doing this?

Now, I’m going to share a quick story with you. I ran into a sales rep at roofing process conference. Here’s what happened when I asked him what his goal was:

Sales rep: Adam, I want to make $400,000.

Me: Yeah, why is that?

The sales rep just looks at me like a deer in headlights.

Me: What’s $400,000 going to do for you that $350,000 or $200,000 won’t?

The point is that you need clarity. There has to be a reason that carries you through when things get tough.

So, write down:

1. Your goal: I want to earn $X dollar this year.
2. Your ‘why’: I want to pay off my debt, buy a house, move my family, set up my kid’s college fund, donate to charity, or whatever it is that’s driving you to set that specific goal. This is your grounding force.

Roofing Sales Strategy #3: Make a Plan

Once you’ve written down your roofing sales goal and your ‘why,’ you now need to turn your goal into a plan. Keep in mind that not having a plan is the number one mistake people make when they’re trying hit a goal in roofing sales (and in life, generally).

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

That’s from Benjamin Franklin. And it’s where most people fall short. They set an income goal, like $100,000, and they do some basic math to figure out how many roofs they have to sell to reach that goal. Let’s assume the average commission is $1,000. In that case, I’d have to sell 100 roofs to make that $100,000 goal. It’s just basic math.

Unfortunately, many people stop there. And they think, I’m just going to do this by working hard and putting in the time to make those 100 sales.

Well, how do they know if they’re doing the right things to achieve their goal?

They won’t know that without the right plan. Here’s why:

Example: Let’s say you told me that you wanted a six pack, but you go to the gym and do bicep curls and shoulder presses all day. I’m not going to tell you that you’re lazy, and I’m not going to tell you that you’re not working hard enough.

BUT I am going to question why you’re doing bicep curls if you want a six pack. That’s because you need to be burning fat and doing ab work, not shoulder and arm exercises.

So, what people fail to do is actually create the plan.

And the plan IS the easy part.

By the way, if you want my process that I’m guiding you through, check out my Complete Sales Strategy program. That’s available in the Roofing Sales Success Formula and as an add on to the Battle Pack. And if you have any questions, you can call or text my team at 303-222-7133).

So, again, let’s assume:

• Our goal is $100,000, with a stretch goal of $150,000
• We need to sell 100 roofs to hit that goal.

This raises some key questions:

• How do we do that?
• How many doors do we need to knock on?
• How many sales appointments do we need to run?
• How many letters do we need to send out?
• How many door hangers and cold calls are needed to make reasonable touch points?
• What should we be doing every day to get closer to hitting that goal?

We can break down our yearly goal into a monthly, weekly, and then daily plan by answering these questions.

Why Journal Your Daily Plan for Roofing Sales Success?

Your daily plan will go right into your journal, which we’re going to be talking about next. Here’s why this is so important.

If we know what we need to do every day, we can easily see:

• If we’re on track for the day, the week, the month, and the year
• Where we have to pick up the slack if we miss a day or we’re off for a week.

You don’t want December 28^th to be the day you’re realizing that you’re a little shy of your annual goal. Because guess what? You’ll only have a few days to try to make that up and hit your goal — and it’s not going to work. We need to stay on track.

So, let’s do a quick recap before we move on to the final point:

1. Get a journal.
2. Write down your goal and your ‘why.’
3. Break your goal down into an actual plan for the year, the month, the week, and the day.

Step 4: Make Journaling a Daily Habit

Now, it’s time to turn our attention to the actual journaling process. I’m going to explain how I do this using an example.

Let’s go over my daily plan for Dec. 28, 2021. I created it by writing down:

1. An execution list for the day
2. My goal
3. The ‘why’ behind my goal, which is the fuel that keeps me going

Next, I tracked everything I needed to do that day for the Pitch Pro Movement, the content, the sales calls I needed to make, and my follow-ups for that day (I also included some random personal things I needed to track). I usually write this daily plan the night before, but this specific one I did the morning of 12/28 (because I was sick the night before – still, I made a plan before diving into my day).

By the way, I’ve done a video on Planning Your Day, and my process has evolved since then because I continue to experiment (still, that’s a great video packed with some excellent insights and tips).

Daily Journaling for Roofing Sales Success: The Key Takeaway

This is probably the single most important takeaway from this entire discussion. I’m going to leave you lingering on one word. It’s the most powerful word, and it can change your life. That word is:

HOW

In my journal, I put the word ‘how’ right in front of my daily goal. Then, I ask myself:

How can I achieve [my daily goal]?

If your daily goal is to sell 3 roofs today, you need to be asking yourself — and writing in your journal — how can I sell 3 roofs today, so I can pay off my debt, save enough money for a home, or achieve my ‘why’? Write all of it out.

When you add a ‘how’ to your daily goal, you can tap into a supreme intelligence, answering your own question and giving yourself advice.

Back to the example daily goal above — so, how can I sell 3 roofs today?

After I write down this question, I start writing down the answers. I think smart and come up with answers and solutions like:

• Asking for referrals from every customer
• Calling every single open lead
• Showing up to all my installs and canvassing those neighborhoods
• Tapping into all the open leads in my company’s CRM
• Following up on all the supplements while I’m sitting on my build

The point is to get creative, start thinking smarter, and gain more clarity about how you’ll achieve your daily goals.

Consider this for moment. If I didn’t write out my daily goal as a question or my answers to it, instead just chasing my daily goal, do you think I would have enough clarity to hit it?

Or do you think I would have more clarity if I spelled out exactly how I was going to make it happen?

That HOW. That’s the key.

So, to set yourself up for your best year yet, it’s up to you to:

• Play the infinite game of roofing sales
• Continually level up to become a new version of you
• Get smarter about how you work this best practice of journaling into your daily life

Recap: How to Use Daily Journaling & Planning to Hit Your Roofing Sales Goals

Here’s a quick recap of how to make daily journaling and planning a habit, so you can stay on track to have your BEST year ever in roofing sales:

1. Get a journal: This will be your tool and your guide for staying organized and focused.
2. Write down your goal and your ‘why’: Your ‘why’ is the the reason that your specific goal is important to you. Without this reason, it’s easy to fizzle out, especially when things get tough.
3. Make a plan: Start to break your goal for the year down into monthly, weekly, and daily plans.
4. Journal your daily plan, every day: Write down your daily plan in your journal. Include everything you need to do, ideally the night before. And rewrite your goal with the word “how” — think, how can I get this done? Then, make sure you answer that question with your plan for that day.

I promise that if you start every single day of your life like this, you will have the BEST year ever.

Get More Roofing Sales Strategies, Tips & Videos

Subscribe for the latest roofing sales training videos and get a copy of my Pitch Like a Pro roofing sales training video library. It includes a ton of videos on roofing sales, as well as every 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.

Also, 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.