How Do You Win?

Now That You've Caught Up

So, you're like, “Dang! OK? I got some nuggets and now I'm going to beat my competition.” That's misleading because it's not true. This is how you get caught up to where everyone else is playing. “So, how do I now win?” you ask. “How do I blow past everybody else at this point?”

It's all going to come down to data. Data, data, data! Who's thought about data and roofing together? Who's like, kind of on the data train already? Because it's new. It's a new train. The data train is an absolute game changer.

It's Going to Be Obsolete

Now, this may be hard to hear to a degree, but eventually, your way of business is going to be obsolete, some way or another. Now, I think that door knocking will always have a very secure place in the industry. There's always that personal touch element that will trump, you know, pretty much anything else that happens. It will always be around and be important, OK? But, eventually, it's going to be obsolete too. So, the industry, it's evolving every single day. It's getting smarter. It's getting faster. It's getting more efficient. So, with this evolution, there will be people who are very slow adopters, very slow adopters and will be very stubborn and set in their ways, right? This strategy will seem way too big and intimidating. They won't want to venture into this realm at all. And, they'll say, “You know what, my stasis, I love my stasis. I'm gonna stay right here.”

Blockbuster

OK. I get it. I mean, we all know the Blockbuster story, right? Blockbuster was actually approached by Netflix to be acquired and be a partner with them and go to the moon. Blockbuster said, “we love our stasis. We don't think that this is a thing. And now, fast-forward to today. Netflix releases a movie every single week, a Netflix original movie every single week for all of 2021. Did you know that? Think of how many movies that is. Every single week, they release a brand new, full length Netflix original movie every single week of 2021. Blockbuster, there is like one ironic location still out there alive, right? We don't want to be a Blockbuster. So, I hope that you take this pretty seriously because I am forecasting, pun intended, what the future is going to look like at these conferences and in the industry. It's all going to be about data. So, the biggest winners are those that adopt and implement early.

T.O.M.A

So, that's what I'm actually here to talk about. I want to show you the new age of door-to-door sales and how you can actually leverage data to benefit you. So, with data, you say, “how does that actually help my knocking?” Has anyone heard of TOMA before? Anyone who's in marketing heard of TOMA? TOMA is Top of Mind Awareness. You want your customers to have TOMA. You want them to recognize who you are. You want to be at the front of their mind, right? Let me demonstrate TOMA. Name for me a cell phone brand. “Sprint.” OK. Name for me a quality cell phone manufacturer, who like, makes the phone. “Android.” Name for me a fast food burger joint. “In & Out.” OK? Alright. So, you see what I'm getting at. Your TOMA is what we just saw displayed. You recognize things. They're at the front of your mind. It's what you think of first when I say, hey, here's a category. So, imagine in your local market, if you had the ability to be the person, the company that's at the front of everybody's mind. Now, maybe you will never have as intrinsic of a mental connection with say, McDonald's as, you know, the average American does, however, you want your market to recognize you. Does that make sense?

So, you say, “how do I get into my customers mind without being on their door, without meeting them, or anything else?” Right? TOMA should come to you at a premium. It is the most important game changer that you're going to hear this year. Everyone else is talking up a version of traditional strategies, rinsing and repeating a lot of the same old mentality, familiar techniques with a couple of new embellishments, bells, and whistles. There are very few things out there that are actually brand new to the home improvement industry this year that are really shaking it up.

The Silver Bullet

Ready? Here is the silver bullet I promised. Getting TOMA in your market before you ever go out and knock on a door is a massive, massive deal. If I were to go to your market right now, today, and knock on some doors while wearing a blank shirt and I ask the homeowner to name a roofing company in your city, who are they going to say? Is it going to be you or is it going to be some competitor that’s been around for years and have their teeth in everything? Why is it going to be the company that they say? How do you beat that? How do you beat 80 years in business? Like, it's 4 generations of contractors with a famous family name that everyone in your city has heard. That's hard to beat, right? You're not going to equalize TOMA by just getting on the doors. You'll never catch up.

Think about this for a second. You could be the better salesperson but, if the other company has better TOMA, they're going to get the sale. For example, you are running circles around some rando kid that just got off the doors but he's picking up these sales and you’re not. That's BS, right? I'd be super frustrated. It's my neighborhood. 10 years of experience on the doors, I would never ever want something like that to happen to me. But, this is a reality for some. If you are not leveraging TOMA for you and your company, it could be leveraged against you. And, that would be really, really frustrating to experience.

How Do I Create TOMA?

How do I create TOMA? Like, how does that actually happen? There's a few different ways to create TOMA. Some are a lot more efficient than others. OK? For example, I don't want to market to somebody and create TOMA in someone who's not going to be a buyer. That's a waste of time, right? They're not going to be a buyer. I'm not interested.

Now, some of you are specialized. You only do specialty roofs, like, you really want tile or you want metal or something like that? When you go out and knock doors, you have to discriminate big time on the houses. You have to determine where your sweet spot is, right? Another attribute that applies to everyone is your revenue mark, that is, a low water line where if the job is below a certain amount of revenue, it's just not worth it. And so, that could be $10,000, $8,000, $7,000. I don't know. It depends on the market you're in, clearly, and the margins you work with. So, we're just not going to market to those people. We’re not going to spend any of our marketing dollars on households or homeowners that aren’t a good fit. We’re going to exclude them from all of our campaigns and we are going to skip those doors when we are out canvassing. I’ll explain how we go about filtering out these households and identifying the best targets in the next part. Stay tuned.