At this time of year, it might feel like your insurance restoration business is moving at a snail’s pace. In many places, it’s too cold or wet to work on roofs, and the busy season is still months off. What’s a roofer to do?

The offseason is the perfect time to gear up for the busier times coming in the spring and prepare your business for the next year. With some strategic planning, you can take advantage of this downtime to make you even more productive when work starts up again. Here are a few things to make sure you do this offseason.

Evaluate Performance From This Past Busy Season

How did your insurance restoration business do this past year during your peak times? Answering this question in detail will help you plan your approach for next season. By evaluating every aspect of your past performance, any changes you need to make to your strategy will become clear, and it’ll be easy to see what’s working and what isn’t. The offseason is a great time to do a deep dive into metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) from the busiest times of this past year.

When you’re evaluating your business performance, it’s important to go beyond just the top-level results. Revenue earned and deals closed are a good place to start, but important information about your insurance restoration business can be found in more detailed reports like materials usage or lead source.

If you’re using roofing software like AccuLynx to manage your insurance restoration jobs, you can ReportsPlus to find detailed figures on every aspect of your business performance in the system and easily create custom ones. The more data you can review, the better you’ll understand your past year—and the year ahead of you.

Read: What to Look for in Your Year-End Reporting as an Insurance Restoration Business

And once you have these results in front of you, you can make a plan to help you move forward with your strategy for next year. This could include things like streamlining your processes to cut out inefficiencies, establishing new best practices for your work, or setting up Smart(er)Docs to ensure you’re collecting the right information. Whatever you learn from your results, make sure you put it into action.

Attend an Insurance Restoration Event

One of the best ways to spend a slow offseason is to learn something new and make new connections. The busy season is often too hectic to do more than keep working, so if you’ve been wanting to build your skills or network, you can take advantage of slower days to make these things happen.

Many roofing associations schedule their trade shows and conferences during the winter because they know insurance restoration contractors have more availability. From big events like Win the Storm to smaller regional shows, you can find a trade show or conference near you to attend. These shows are a great opportunity to get connected to like-minded roofers, see the latest in technology and products, and attend seminars on relevant topics.

In addition, you might consider taking a course or brushing up on a certification during this downtime. Adding new skills to your toolbox makes your business more attractive to customers and helps you stay ahead of the competition. Whether it’s an online course or a meeting of contractors in your area, don’t overlook the option of getting further training or resources to make you a better roofer in the new year.

Research Insurance Restoration Technology

New tools and technology are being released every year, and they’re helping many insurance restoration contractors be more productive and profitable—including your competitors. Staying up to date on what’s out there to help you manage your business should be a key part of your operating strategy. This is especially true if you’ve identified a problem you’d like to solve or have a new goal you’d like to reach in the next year. Searching for technology with these issues in mind can help you more easily identify solutions.

See a demo of the insurance restoration technology trusted by thousands

Some roofers feel that it’s wasteful to research new technology during the slower months. After all, why pay for something that you won’t use for another few months? But this is actually the perfect time to adopt a new business management tool. Since your insurance restoration business is less busy, you’ll have plenty of time to learn the new technology, train your staff, and incorporate the technology into your processes. Then when the first big storm hits, you’ll already be up and running with new technology and ready to maximize sales.

The offseason is more than just a slow time without many roofing jobs to finish. It’s also an opportunity to take care of some of the important insurance restoration tasks that fall to the wayside during busier times of year. You can gain valuable insight into your past performance, learn from trade shows and classes, and find out what technology can help you do more business in the new year. When you check these tasks off your list, your offseason can be productive even if it’s too cold to get up on a roof.