The battle between roofing salespeople and owners.
It’s as old as time, and as unnecessary as drip-edge on a metal roof.
Just kidding – just trying to get your blood going here.
Here’s WHY you should involve your salespeople in marketing
We live in an attention economy.
To get leads, deals and ultimately revenue – we first have to capture people’s attention. That can be on Google as they’re searching for something like us (that’s what we do – check out our SEO, PPC, and Website design services) and it can also be on social media.
The problem? According to ‘The Attention Economy’ author:
We’re competing with everybody – from the funniest cat video you’ve ever seen, to Biden tripping down the stairs or Donald Trump’s toupee flying away…
All the way to news about the brink of world war, the Feds latest announcement about raising or not raising rates, and sexy instagram models.
Yes we’re competing for attention with those people.
We need to create more surface area for our marketing
Besides paying more money.
We can involve ourselves with the entertainment part of people’s brain – by creating more heartwarming, funny, and interesting content that goes beyond just jamming informative content and promotion down people’s throats.
- We can involve our people in marketing, and do ‘collaboration posts’ on Facebook and Instagram – to get into their feeds (also we can do this with referral partners and ‘micro-influencers’ in our local market.)
- We can ask our team to like, comment, and share on our social posts so that they understand that’s good for the algorithm and the more visibility, the more leads we have to run.
- We can give them a higher % of commission on ‘self-generated leads’ and lead little workshops monthly or weekly (as a 10 min section of a sales meeting) about how to get more self-gen leads.
Most sales reps are making terrible mistakes in their personal branding that are costing them money
Your sales reps might be brilliant on the job, but when it comes to their personal branding, some of them might be dropping the ball – and this is costing them big bucks. Here’s what might be going wrong:
- The Faceless Crime: Are their profile pictures as blurry as a Bigfoot sighting or as irrelevant as a beach selfie? If customers can’t recognize them or fail to identify them as a professional in the roofing industry, they’re losing leads right out of the gate.
- The Mystery of Occupation: If their profiles don’t clearly state they’re in the roofing biz, how’s anyone supposed to know? It’s like they’re playing hide and seek with potential customers.
- The Silent Partner: Are they treating their company page like a silent partner? If they’re not sharing or engaging with company posts, they’re losing a golden opportunity to establish authority and build trust with their audience.
Here are 5 other ways sales reps can get more leads
Think of your sales reps as lead magnets. Here are a few strategies they can use to draw in those shiny leads:
- Go Old School: Encourage them to pound the pavement with some classic canvassing. There’s no substitute for a warm, personal touch.
- Star Power: Get them to strut their stuff in their own promotional videos. Who can resist a familiar, friendly face?
- Company Cavalry: Ensure your company is giving them all the tools and support they need. A well-equipped sales rep is a lead-generating machine.
Nitty gritty nuts and bolts tactics
- High-quality brochures, business cards, product catalogs, can help sales reps make a strong impression on potential clients.
- Also, online content like videos, blogs and social media posts can be used for sharing and engagement. You creating legit content – and telling them where to find it or creating a library, is a positive form of enablement.
- Paying for networking for them like BNI group membership, home shows and the branded backdrops for them.
- Training around referral partnerships with Insurance agents and realtors – and anything they might need (lunch or donuts anyone?) to follow through on those tactics.
- Door hangers, CRM’s, and canvassing software – as well as a clear expectation for how many doors to knock a day, or around every job – is also a very real form of enablement.
Perhaps even consider enabling them with their first 5 or 10 gift cards to ask for ‘one neighbor referral today, from each sold or completed deal,’ as John Senac ‘John The Roof Pro’ (great personal branding there!) suggests in this video:
The Fallout of Not Empowering Your Sales Reps
If you don’t empower your sales reps to stand on their own two feet, you’re setting yourself up for a whole lot of headache. Here’s what could happen:
- Lead Babies: Sales reps who rely too heavily on the company for leads can become ‘lead babies’. They end up throwing a fit every time they don’t get the leads they want, and this can disrupt the harmony of your team.
- Lack of Initiative: If your sales reps always expect the company to hand them leads on a silver platter, they may not take the initiative to find leads on their own. This can lead to a lack of innovation and creativity in your sales force.
- Dependency Culture: If you don’t foster a sense of independence, you could inadvertently create a culture of dependency, which can be detrimental to the overall performance and productivity of your team. Empower your sales reps to become proficient at generating their own leads, and you’ll cultivate a culture of initiative and self-reliance.
Thank you for reading this article – take a second to check out our services if you get a chance. We do SEO, PPC, and custom persuasive lead-generation websites for 60+ roofing companies and can do the same for you, so you can enable your sales reps with MORE LEADS. Check us out at https://hookagency.com