Smooth Talker in Sales

So, you want to be a smooth talker in sales.

I’ve been seeing more and more comments on my YouTube videos saying things like:

Hey, Adam, I want to learn to speak like you.

I want to learn how to communicate like you.

Can you please teach us how to be a smooth talker?

That’s what has inspired this topic, and it’s exactly what I’m going to teach you right here.

Disclaimer: I want to get one thing out of the way upfront. This is NOT about learning to be some slick salesperson. It’s truly about how to communicate clearly, distill your message, and speak in a way that allows other people to hear exactly what you mean.

After all, in sales, there can be this disconnect between:

• What you are thinking
• What you say
• What people hear

So, our mission is to become a smooth talker and make a seamless transition between your thoughts, your words, and how people hear and receive them.

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

And by becoming a smooth talker, you’ll:

1. Create even better customer experiences
2. Earn more sales

Now, let’s get started.

How to Communicate Better & Be a Smooth Talker in Roofing Sales

When it comes to being a smooth talker in sales, how do you get there?

The answer is quite simple — it’s practice.

Now, don’t worry. I’m not going to leave you hanging by just telling you what to say and sending you off to practice alone. That doesn’t give you enough.

So, I’m going to share some tips that break it down:

1. What kind of practice works
2. Where to practice
3. How to practice

These three elements are so important to helping you become a smooth talker and better communicator in roofing sales.

Roofing Sales Smooth Talker Tip #1: Role Play

Imagine you have a really great year, and you sell a hundred roofs. You might hear the same objection about 30 times. That means you’ve had 30 opportunities in high-stakes, real-world situations, ones that income depends on, to figure it out and ace it.

Will that make you a pro?

Probably not. It usually takes more time than that.

When you practice role play, though, you can get in far more repetitions, like 40 or even 50, in just a couple of hours.

So, with role play, you can really fast-track your practice. It’s the fastest way to level up your smooth talking abilities in roofing sales.

You can literally get about 5 years of experience within about a month of regular role play. Again, it takes practice and time to become an effective smooth talker in sales, and role play can give you tons of practice.

By the way, I provide roleplay training with instructions in my Roofing Sales Success Formula for owners and managers to use with teams.

I’ve had an opportunity to do hundreds of videos, train thousands of people, speak on stages, and run private training events. And I still mess up, sometimes. In fact, if you watch this video version of this blog with the subtitles on, you’ll see:

• How I messed up here and there
• How I can quickly recover because I do all of my videos in one take, and I don’t edit my videos

That’s helped me practice my delivery and how to present a strong message concisely, without splicing sentences and distracting viewers. That’s not real practice.

So, the bottom line is that role play is the best way for you to practice and refine your smooth talking skills.

Roofing Sales Smooth Talker Tip #2: Observe Others

Another way to improve your smooth talking skills is to learn from other people. This can actually help you role play even better too.

Now, I want you to study the people you see as smooth talkers. These people can be:

• Celebrities
• Musicians
• Artists
• Sales trainers
• Anyone featured on my YouTube channel

Focus on the people who you admire most, anyone who you look up to.

Then, study how they speak and what they say.

Let’s break down the key language elements you should focus on next.

How to Study Others’ Language: Observe Sentence Length, Word Choice & Tonality

The few key language elements to zero in on include:

1. Sentence length: This is a big deal because a lot of people talk WAY too fast. They’ll get too much information out, and they don’t break it up. Then, the listener can’t tell where one sentence stops and the next begins. That’s confusing, and it can make people uncomfortable. So, we have to slow it down, keep the sentence length shorter, pause, and take breaks. That will give the listener a chance to digest what we’re saying.
2. Word choice: Big words don’t usually land right, even on really intelligent people. In fact, a company called Agora Financial (a multi-billion dollar a year organization that sells financial advice) found that anything above an 8^th grade reading level dropped conversions by a whopping 50%! That’s pretty crazy. Now, think about all of our presidential campaigns. There’s usually a single, very simple, very easy-to-understand message. So, with word choices, stick to words at the 3^rd to 5^th grade reading level. That means simple words (and short sentences) that are easy for people to hear and quickly understand. By the way, you can use a free app called Hemingway Editor to test the reading level of your word choices.
3. Tonality and cadence: Tonality is the influx of your voice. It’s the pitch that suggests excitement, calm, anger, curiosity, or whatever. Tonality can create a mood. On the other hand, cadence is the speaking speed. It’s the way you slow down, speed up, or take dramatic pauses. Together tonality and cadence can make a really big difference in how your message lands.

So, this is what you’re going to study — sentence length, word choices, tonality, and cadence — in those people who you see as strong communicators and smooth talkers. If you do, you can figure out how to mirror their behaviors in your role play.

Roofing Sales Smooth Talker Tip #3: Use Subtitles

Another strategy for improving your smooth talking game is to practice with subtitles. This is really powerful.

In fact, one gentleman commented on one of my YouTube videos that he was watching my videos with subtitles as a way to learn how to speak more clearly. Actually, he would:

1. Watch a video with subtitles on
2. Mute the video and read the subtitles out loud to get some direct practice

So, use subtitles on roofing sales training videos. Those can be a great tool for honing your language skills and breaking all of this down.

On that note, here’s a related pro tip. I’ve also used the strategy of closing my eyes and imagining a typewriter, like someone’s typing a transcript, when I hear people speak in the real world.

In fact, when I saw Ed Mylett at Roof Con, I loved how he spoke and presented himself on stage. So, I spent a few moments:

• Closing my eyes
• Listening carefully to his word choices
• Visualizing them in my mind’s eye

I basically created my own subtitles, so I could dissect his sentence length, examine his word choices carefully, and observe his tonality and cadence more closely.

I found that really inspiring because I think Ed Mylett is an incredibly strong speaker (If you haven’t had an opportunity to hear him speak, check out his podcast here).

How to Fast-Track Your Smooth Talking Game: Ditch the Roofing Sales Scripts

Now that we have the breakdown in place, I want to go deeper to help you become a smooth talker really quickly.

The way to do that is to jump ship on the roofing sales scripts you’re using.

As you hopefully see by now, I am NOT a big fan of word-for-word scripts. That’s because scripts are robotic. They simply don’t work because, in roofing sales, there are ALL of these different scenarios because we’re presenting to homeowners based on their specific situation. That means there are:

• 7 different scenarios on the storm side
• 4 different scenarios on the retail side

And there simply is NOT a word-for-word roadmap to guarantee the sale for every situation. There’s no single set of exact words that if you say them — this word, then that word, then the next one — that will lock in a deal every time. It simply doesn’t exist, and roofing sales just doesn’t work that way.

Additionally, the way you speak and the way I speak can naturally be different.

That’s why I teach formulas instead.

How to Use Formulas in Roofing Sales: Think Cooking Challenge

To get a really clear idea of how to use formulas in roofing sales, think of it like a cooking challenge. Let’s say there are 10 chefs, and each chef gets five ingredients in a mystery box challenge:

1. Steak
2. A potato
3. Butter
4. Salt
5. Pepper

When the competition starts:

1. You grab those five ingredients and make a beautiful dish.
2. All the other chefs race into the kitchen too, each grabbing different cuts of steak — a filet, a T-bone, a ribeye, etc.
3. Everyone cooks differently. For the steak, there’s the reverse seared steak, a grilled steak, sous vide steak, and more. And the same goes for the potato. There’s a twice-baked potato, steak fries, hash browns, etc.

All of these steak and potato options can go together in different combinations. So, what happens with each chef’s final dish? After they cook, each chef:

• Explains what they’ve made
• Communicates with confidence and passion
• Describes the dish they created because the formula or recipe they followed was essentially their understanding or interpretation of how those ingredients go together

Essentially, they have used their flare, their culture, their personality, their style, and their confidence to assemble the ingredients.

That’s why I teach formulas in my Roofing Sales Success Formula & Complete Sales Strategy. And it’s what thousands and thousands and thousands of people are being trained to do.

So, whether you sell in the south, the north, the east, or the west — and regardless of whether you’re native to the U.S. or not — you CAN become an incredible salesperson and a smooth talker by just following the formulas and knowing what dominoes to knock down to earn the sale.

And those formulas I teach, which you’ve probably heard me talk about, are the:

1. SLAP Formula
2. ARO Formula
3. CAR PARK Formula

All of these are included in the Roofing Sales Success Formula & Complete Sales Strategy, which is backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee. It’s an investment that you’re literally going to earn back on your very next sale, oftentimes before the credit card bill even shows up.

If you’re interested, just call our office at (303) 222-7133, and I’d be more than happy to chat with you about it.

Recap: How to Become a Smooth Talker in Roofing Sales

Now, to wrap this up with a quick summary, here’s what it takes to become a smooth talker in roofing sales:

1. Practice roleplaying: If you don’t have a team to role play with in a structured setting, find a friend or your significant other, so you can get those repetitions in.
2. Observe and study people who inspire you: Pay attention to their sentence length, word choice, cadence, and tonality. Also, stick to a 3^rd to 5^th grade reading comprehension level. This is probably the MOST important takeaway.
3. Always turn on program subtitles: Seeing and reading subtitles can help you practice and internalize everything faster.

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.