The roofing industry is getting crowded. On average, the market has grown 2.7% each year for the last five years. This has led to a surge of new businesses taking advantage of this robust industry. As a result, established contractors need to work harder to sell more roofing jobs and outperform their competitors.

Increasing your roofing sales can seem like a daunting task. But by implementing a few strategies, your roofing business can gain a competitive sales advantage. Here are some of the ways you can get ahead of the other roofing businesses in your area and sell more jobs.

Four Key Tips for Selling More Roofing Jobs

Roofing Sales Tip #1: Stay on Top of Leads

Homeowners who need roofing repairs are looking for a solution as soon as possible. In many cases, they may be contacting multiple roofing companies to ask about the services they offer. In order to reach these homeowners before they reach your competitors, timely, focused follow-up is essential. Staying on top of leads as they come in will help you find highly qualified prospects and connect with them more quickly.

Keeping your leads organized and in a single place makes follow-up easier. Set up a system for tracking leads that everyone on your team can access and that can be updated in real time. It can also help to tag leads by priority, job type, neighborhood, and other important information to keep them organized and help you find the ones to follow up with first.

Read More: 4 Better Ways for Roofers to Keep Leads and Sales Organized 

Inputting your leads into a roofing software system like AccuLynx can help you stay more organized. It’s a simple process to add leads to the AccuLynx system, tag them with the relevant information to make them easier to find, and add updates as you learn more information about the homeowner and their job. When you log into AccuLynx, the first thing you see is a dashboard with a visual representation of your sales pipeline, so you’ll always know how many leads need following up with. And you can set tasks in AccuLynx to remind yourself to reach out to leads. With the organizational tools in AccuLynx, keeping track of your leads is much simpler, and you can focus on selling roofing jobs without worrying about your lead pipeline.

Roofing Sales Tip #2: Streamline Estimating

An accurate estimate is essential for better roofing sales. Overestimating can lead to price objections from homeowners; underestimating can cause customer dissatisfaction when costs later increase, impacting future referrals and word of mouth. The more accurate the estimate, the easier it is to sell the homeowner on the work you need to do. In addition, turning around an estimate quickly shortens the time between following up with a lead and closing a deal. Finding ways to estimate more accurately and efficiently will help you outpace your competitors.

Utilizing an aerial measurement service like EagleView or SkyMeasure ensures your estimates are as accurate as possible. Instead of having to climb on a ladder or take a guess at roof size, you can quickly obtain the precise measurements you need. (If your business uses roofing apps, you can even order aerial measurement reports from your phone or tablet.)

Within AccuLynx roofing software, there are many features that make the estimating process even easier and more accurate. You can:

• Upload templates for your most frequently used type of estimates
• Add aerial measurements to the estimate with just a few clicks
• Pre-populate an estimate with lead information using SmartDocs

Since all the information for an estimate is stored in AccuLynx, there is less risk of human error when it comes to estimate creation, and no need for double data entry. You can get a more precise estimate in front of a prospect in significantly less time, helping you move the sales process along.

Roofing Sales Tip #3: Be Ready for Questions and Objections

Homeowners are looking for roofing contractors who will be honest and informative. They want to make sure their concerns and questions aren’t brushed aside. And sometimes, they have objections that can make or break a sale. In order to close the deal and present your roofing company as the trusted choice, you need to be up-front with homeowners and ready to respond to their questions and objections.

Take the time to explain to homeowners exactly what your work for them entails, and why the repairs or replacements are necessary. This is especially important if you’ve found more repairs are needed than were originally anticipated. Homeowners appreciate having all the information in front of them, and working with them to address their concerns and answer questions will help you establish your business as the right company for the job.

In addition, it can help to have tools or products to offer homeowners to address some of their major objections. For instance, many prospects have objections around payment that can keep a deal from closing—either the roofing business doesn’t have a payment option that works for the homeowner, or the homeowner can’t afford the full, upfront cost of the roofing work.

AccuLynx has added two payment-related features to help contractors overcome these particular objections. AccuPay lets contractors process credit card, debit card and ACH transactions directly in AccuLynx, making it easy to offer electronic payment options to homeowners. With more payment options, the chances increase that you’ll be offering an option that works best for your customers. AccuLynx also provides integrated financing options, so you can offer homeowners an installment loan to pay for your roofing work. Having financing available will help you overcome price-related objections and sell more roofing jobs.

Roofing Sales Tip #4: Communicate Effectively

Not everyone thinks of good communication as a competitive advantage. But it can have a big impact on how you sell roofing jobs. The more your field teams and office staff are in communication with each other and sharing information back and forth, the more effective both teams will be. Staying connected ensures that everyone on your team is on the same page, reduces the likelihood of mistakes like showing up for a cancelled appointment, and helps your roofing business have a unified strategy for approaching prospects and selling them on your services.

4 Ways For Roofers to Facilitate Better Communication Between Sales and Office Teams

Utilizing roofing apps can make it easier to stay in touch when part of your team is in the field and others are in the office. With an all-in-one business management roofing app like the AccuLynx Field App, you can access the tools in AccuLynx on your mobile device. This means:

• It’s easy to keep track of appointments and leads from anywhere
• You have access to complete, up-to-date information on the homeowners you meet with so you can address their concerns more effectively
• You can add to a job file in AccuLynx right from the field to give an instant update on your meeting with the homeowner

In addition, the AccuLynx Field App lets you send messages and notifications directly within the app. You can use the @Me feature to alert someone on your team to an update or assign them a task. All the messages you send in AccuLynx are associated with a specific job or lead, so it’s easy to find them later on if you need to refer to them. If your team has trouble keeping track of updates that were given over the phone or you spend a lot of time digging through emails to find job information, communicating through the AccuLynx platform can improve your roofing sales process.

Start Selling More Roofing Jobs

Outperforming your competitors is within reach. With improved lead follow-up, seamless estimating, answers to common objections, and more efficient communication, your roofing business will be set up for greater sales.

Get a Custom Demonstration of AccuLynx Roofing Software Today!