The Sales Playbook
For Home Improvement
Page 2 of 9 · 105 articles

The hailstorm rolled through your territory at 2 AM last Tuesday. By 9 AM, three out-of-state storm chasers had knocked 200 doors in your neighborhood. Your phone's been quiet. Their phones are ringing. You've built your retail roofing business over ten years. You have five crews, a solid reputation, and a steady stream of planned replacements and repairs. But when storms hit, you watch competitors pull $2.4 million in insurance work over 90 days while you're grinding out $180,000 in retail job

Virtual roofing sales appointments aren't the future—they're the present. The pandemic forced the industry to adapt, and contractors who figured it out discovered something unexpected: virtual appointments can be just as effective as in-person visits, with one massive advantage—you can do three times as many in a day. But here's what most guides won't tell you: there's a right way and a wrong way to sell roofing virtually. Get it wrong, and homeowners feel like they're watching a bad YouTube vi

Your new rep just finished three weeks of generic sales training. He learned the "consultative selling framework" and practiced "SPIN questioning techniques." Then he shows up to his first appointment and the homeowner asks: "Do you guys offer GreenSky financing or just Mosaic?" He has no idea. The training never covered YOUR financing partners. Here's the problem: Most roofing sales training teaches "a" sales process, not YOUR sales process. Reps learn one way in training, then get told to d

Your sales manager just spent 47 hours training a new rep who quit three weeks later. Meanwhile, your competitor trained five reps in the same timeframe using AI. All five are still producing. KEY INSIGHT: The gap isn't about finding better candidates. It's about using technology that scales without burning out your management team. Traditional training requires constant human attention. AI training runs 24/7 without fatigue. This isn't future speculation. Roofing companies are already using

You just hired a rep who seems promising. Your regional manager asks: "When will they be ready?" You hesitate. "Maybe... six weeks? Eight?" Wrong answer. You just set yourself up for disappointment, premature firing, or watching a decent hire quit because they feel incompetent. THE HONEST ANSWER: Traditional training produces first sales in 30-90 days. Full productivity takes 6-12 months. Anyone promising faster results with traditional methods is lying or has never actually trained a rep. T

Your new rep starts Monday. You've got him scheduled for 10 weeks of ride-alongs, product training videos, and shadowing. By Week 12, he'll be ready to knock his first door solo. Except he won't make it to Week 12. According to industry research, 43% of new sales reps leave within the first 90 days. Your 12-week onboarding plan puts his first real appointment around Day 84—right when most quit. Here's the disconnect: traditional onboarding treats roofing sales like enterprise software sales. I

You posted a job 48 hours ago. You've got 127 applications. 83 of them are pure trash—people who've never sold anything, much less knocked a door or closed a $30,000 roof deal. Another 32 might be okay, but you have no idea which ones because reading 127 resumes would take you 6+ hours. Meanwhile, your two top reps just quit to start their own companies. Storm season starts in 3 weeks. You need bodies yesterday. This is why we just added three major updates to GhostRep's AI Recruiting System

Your rep closes 18% of qualified appointments. Team average is 32%. He's been with you four months. You hired him because he had door-to-door experience and crushed his interview. Now he's burning through your best storm-damaged territories and converting nothing. You're thinking about firing him. Before you do, read this. Before You Fire: Most Underperformers Are Fixable Here's what most managers don't know: Only 46.7% of sales reps globally meet quota according to Sales Hacker's industry a

Your roofing company has a specific way of doing things. Your products. Your pricing. Your competition. Your financing options. Your service area. But generic sales training doesn't know any of that. It teaches "best practices" that might work somewhere, but don't match how your business actually operates. That's why we built Brand Logic—a system that lets you create completely custom training scenarios in about 15 minutes. Not generic roleplay. Training that features YOUR products, YOUR compe

HomeAdvisor roofing leads cost $75-$110 each, but the real cost per job is $500-$900 after factoring close rates and dead leads. Contractor reviews show 13-18% conversion vs Thumbtack's 10-15%. See actual math from 2025 data.

