As an insurance restoration roofing contractor, you know that storms come on their own schedule. Storm season won’t wait for your business to have the perfect strategy in place or find a better system to manage your paperwork. And once that storm hits, your business has to be ready to start knocking on doors, selling your services, and delivering great work for your customers. While you can’t control when a storm hits, there are things you can do right now that will help you have a more successful storm season. Here are 5 ways to gear up for big storms today using roofing contractor selling software.
Read: 3 Ways a Roofing CRM Can Help You During Storm Season
5 Ways to Prepare for Storms With Software
Roofing Contractor Selling Software Tip #1: Make Sure Information is Easy to Access
During peak times like storm season, your teams can’t spend hours hunting for information. If your job information isn’t well organized and easy to access, you run a greater risk of errors and mixups, and your teams will have to spend more time looking for the things they need.
With roofing contractor software like AccuLynx, you can keep all your information safe and accessible to everyone who needs it. Instead of keeping job information in paper files that could be lost, damaged, or forgotten, AccuLynx gives you the ability to store it in digital job files. These job files contain everything related to a given project, from photos to messages to estimates. Since AccuLynx is a cloud-based CRM system, any member of your team can access this job information at any time, whether they’re in the office or out in the field. And updates to the information can be made in real time, so it’s easier for everyone to stay up to date on what’s happening with a given project.
Roofing Contractor Selling Software Tip #2: Streamline the Estimating Process
Streamlining your estimating process before storm season gets underway will help you cover more ground and beat out your competition. The less time you spend estimating, the more time you can spend generating leads, selling jobs and completing work for your customers.
Roofing contractor selling software, such as AccuLynx, can help make estimating a smooth and simple process. You can store digital estimating templates in AccuLynx so you can create an estimate from anywhere. AccuLynx also integrates with leading aerial measurement providers EagleView and GAF QuickMeasure, so you can order measurements directly from the software system. Once you have the measurement reports, it’s easy to create an estimate directly from those numbers—no need to enter data twice or double-check you have the right information.
With the SmartDocs feature in AccuLynx, you can also pull in other customer information automatically, helping you seamlessly and quickly create your estimates. This helps you save significant time without compromising accuracy. And once a digital estimate is complete, you can email it to homeowners for approval right from AccuLynx. With the tools in AccuLynx, you’ll be done estimating a job and back knocking on doors before you know it.
Roofing Contractor Selling Software Tip #3: Fix Communication Problems Before They Arise
Many roofing companies struggle with communication, especially during busier times of year. This can lead to a host of issues, from poor customer service to disengaged team members. Strengthening your ability to communicate with your customers and teams will help you stop these issues before they start and ensure that everyone stays on the same page.
AccuLynx offers many features to help you communicate more effectively. Our Automation Manager allows you to create emails, text messages, and tasks that are automatically triggered based on events in AccuLynx. For instance, you can set up an appointment reminder email that is automatically sent whenever a new appointment is scheduled in AccuLynx. This will help you keep important communications from falling through the cracks, no matter how busy your schedule gets.
What happens when the weather changes or there’s an urgent update to the job information? AccuLynx also offers two-way text messaging capabilities to help you reach out to customers and team members more quickly. You can send an SMS message from a company-specific local number right from the AccuLynx job file, and you’ll be notified in AccuLynx when you receive a response so you can view it and answer right away. A complete record of your conversations is saved in the AccuLynx job file, so you can refer back to it if needed and double-check what’s already been communicated. These features not only speed up communication, they help keep everyone on the same page without adding more to your already full plate.
Roofing Contractor Selling Software Tip #4: Simplify Production Management
Once you’ve sold a homeowner on your services, you want to be able to deliver your best work and repair or replace their roof in a timely manner. The insurance restoration roofing process can be full of unavoidable delays, such as waiting for a response from an insurance company or having to reschedule an installation due to inclement weather. Simplifying your production management will help keep you from incurring further delays while making it easy to provide great customer service.
AccuLynx integrates with three of the leading material suppliers, SRS Distribution, ABC Supply, and Beacon so you can order your materials and view your real-time pricing directly within AccuLynx. Once an estimate has been approved, you can quickly turn that estimate into a material order and send it electronically to your local supplier branch. No more playing phone tag with your branch or logging in to other websites—you can seamlessly place material orders within the same roofing contractor software you use to manage the rest of your business.
With the AccuLynx Production Calendar, managing your production schedule is just as simple and seamless. The Production Calendar gives you a complete view of all your scheduled deliveries and labor orders, color-coded by crew, so you can see the entire week’s schedule at a glance. If you need to reschedule anything, all you have to do is drag and drop the item to another day. Your crews are instantly notified of any updates to their schedules, so they’ll never miss an appointment. The Production Calendar helps you keep track of everything production-related so nothing falls through the cracks, reducing delays and improving your customer service.
Roofing Contractor Selling Software Tip #5: Evaluate Your Past Performance
Every storm season is different. But looking back on your performance from last year can help you strategize for upcoming storms and make adjustments to tactics that weren’t working. For instance, evaluating the performance of your salespeople can help you understand who will be your greatest asset during canvassing, while looking at a breakdown of your profits by location will help you make a plan for which neighborhoods to target. Reviewing last year’s results will give you valuable insights to set you up for success this year.
In AccuLynx, you have access to a robust suite of reporting tools with our ReportsPlus feature. You can view pre-built reports focusing on the key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to most contractors, or create your own reports that reflect the results you’re most interested in. ReportsPlus lets you evaluate high-level KPIs or drill down into more granular data. With the information found in ReportsPlus, you’ll be fully equipped to plan for this upcoming storm season. And if you want to check in throughout the season to see if your strategies are effective, you can get reports on your KPIs automatically delivered to your inbox on a weekly or monthly basis. AccuLynx makes it simple to look back on past performance and use the results to create an actionable strategy for the future.
Read: Top 5 Mistakes Roofers Make During Busy Season
Be More Successful This Storm Season With Roofing Software
Storms are unpredictable. But when you pair the right strategies with roofing contractor software like AccuLynx, you’ll be prepared with the right tools to succeed whenever storms hit. Keeping your information easily accessible, streamlining complex processes like estimating and production, improving your communication, and learning from your past performance will help you have your best storm season yet.
