Roofer MBA — 128 plays for the business side of a roofing company. Free to read, no account, nothing for sale. What this is →
The Roofs You Already Won
Module 9 · Sales & Leads · Play 8 of 14
The problem in one breath
The cheapest job in your pipeline is the second one from a customer you already have, and almost nobody in this trade ever asks for it.
Why it happens
A roof feels like a once-in-twenty-years purchase, so the shop finishes the job, cashes the check and mentally files that customer as spent. Nobody notices that the man who just paid you owns four rentals, or manages a hundred and forty units, or sells eleven houses a year and needs a roofer for every one of them. The referral you hoped for was a neighbor walking up to the crew. The one that mattered was standing in the driveway signing your final invoice.
The play
- Learn which of your customers touch more than one roof. Landlords and rental owners. Property managers. Realtors with closings on the calendar. HVAC companies and general contractors who cut holes in roofs for a living. One job for any of them is not a job, it is an audition for everything they own or touch.
- The audition is almost always a small, urgent problem. A leak over a tenant's bedroom. A penetration an HVAC crew opened this morning. Something a house has to have fixed this week or the closing slips. Get there fast, fix it clean, bill it fair — and a shop that can do that reliably inherits the whole portfolio. This is what your repair capacity is really for (Module 13, Play 1, "When She Says It's Leaking, the Clock Starts").
- Ask at the two moments they are happiest with you. The final walkthrough, and again when you pick up the final payment — the same two moments the review ask belongs in (Play 9, "The Review You Earned"). Not a month later by email, when the roof has become furniture. Most shops — including good ones — have never once asked on purpose, and that gap is worth more than any new lead source you could buy this year.
- Ask a question they can actually answer. "Know anybody who needs a roof?" gets a polite no forever. "Do you own anything else we should look at?" and "Who else's roofs do you take care of?" get names, because you have asked about their world instead of the whole county.
- Do not build a rewards program to make it work. A referral fee is one more thing to track, argue about and forget to pay in a shop that is already thin on people. Ask well, do the work fast, and stay easy to reach. That is the program.
- Then give these customers an owner and a season. Mark every multi-roof customer in your list. Somebody calls them once a quarter — not a mailer, a call — to ask what is coming up. This is usually the exact channel your lead count says is free and nobody runs (Play 1, "Count Where Last Year's Jobs Actually Came From").
Do this this week
Go through last year's jobs and mark every customer who owns, manages or sells more than one building. Call the top five and ask what they have coming. That list is short, it is free, and no competitor of yours is calling it.
The tool
The ask — what to say, and when.
THE TWO ASKS — WHILE THEY'RE STILL HAPPY
AT THE FINAL WALKTHROUGH
"Do you own anything else we should be looking at?"
"Who else's roofs do you take care of?"
WHEN YOU PICK UP FINAL PAYMENT
"If anybody asks you who did your roof, we'd take the
call. Rentals, family, work — doesn't matter."
WRITE DOWN WHAT THEY SAY. A name with no note is a lead
you'll lose by Friday.
THE MULTI-ROOF LIST — mark these customers, call quarterly
[ ] Owns rentals [ ] Property manager
[ ] Realtor [ ] HVAC / GC / builder
[ ] Owns commercial [ ] HOA or board member
Who calls them: ____________ How often: ____________
THE TRIGGER IS SPEED, NOT PRICE.
The small urgent repair is the audition for everything
else they own. Drop what you're doing and go.
If your crew is 1099
The fast small repair is the one thing a sub crew is worst at — nobody mobilizes a full crew for two hours of work, and the job is too small to be worth their drive. That is the argument for keeping one man of your own who can be on a roof this afternoon (Module 12, Play 1, "Your Crew Or His, Priced On One Real Job"). Without him you can win the portfolio and then be unable to serve it.
M9-08 · The Roofs You Already Won — Roofer MBA, https://roofermba.com/plays/sales-leads/the-roofs-you-already-won
Take it with you
One email unlocks this and every other sheet and card on the site. The plays stay free.
Same fire
You can't say where your work actually comes from
- M9-01count last year's sources
- M9-08the roofs you already won — you’re here
- M9-09the review you earned
Fixed this?
Counting last year tells you which faucets are real. The weekly number tells you whether they are still running.
The fire right behind it is usually Cash is fine this week and you can't see next month.