4 Better Ways for Roofers to Keep Leads and Sales Organized

One of the biggest challenges for a growing roofing business can be keeping track of your leads, progress and contract pipeline.

By: Nate Stein, AccuLynx

From tracking and assigning new leads all the way through invoicing the customer, information can easily be lost or confused in the process. Relying on a paper trail or several applications can be messy, and ultimately cost you business if you’re not organized.

Business management software, or a CRM, can help roofing contractors consolidate and organize their workflows by bringing the process online into one all-encompassing platform. By using a software program like AccuLynx, roofers have the ability to see their entire pipeline, from unassigned leads all the way through completed invoices in one place. With the ability to easily keep track of each step, managing your roofing business is smoother, more organized and easy to understand.

Reduce the Clutter

Having a visualization of your sales pipeline is an easy way to gain quick perspective on the state of your roofing business. A dashboard pipeline that shows you leads and prospects, as well as approved, completed, and invoiced jobs, means you see everything and can immediately pinpoint inaccuracies. A completely digital platform, with search and filtering options, means pulling up and locating specific customer information only takes seconds.

Another capability of the pipeline is the power to reduce clutter. By eliminating all of the physical paper, you’re less likely to misplace or lose important documents that need to be returned to the office. By accessing your paperwork via an app or digital platform, you never run the risk of spilling coffee on your contracts in the back of the truck again. Additionally, digital records mean your sales staff can make updates to contacts in the field, which updates the system in the office, keeping all teams on the same page.

Know Where Your Money Is

After you complete your job, you probably want to collect your cash fast. No one enjoys waiting for their receivables or commission check, and manually keeping track of them can be aggravating for both owners and office staff. Collecting your money as fast as possible is a major key to building a strong roofing business. But even more important is knowing WHERE that money is and HOW LONG it has been outstanding. With the Accounts Receivable feature on the AccuLynx Dashboard, this is painless.

There should be no such thing as “set it and forget it” when it comes to invoicing completed jobs. With the ability to see and set permissions for individuals or company finances, you always have a picture of how much money is outstanding, tied up in material orders or what an individual's commission is that month. Sorting features let you compare month over month, or for that specific week - it can be as broad or as granular as you need.

Make Data-Driven Decisions

While a business may be incredibly personal to you, it’s important to remember that when it comes to the health of your company, you need to be making data-driven choices. Being proactive instead of reactive when making decisions with regards to your roofing business will lead to more leads and a higher closing rate.

One way to remain objective in within your sales pipeline is to use Smart Assign features. After you or an office employee inputs the data for a new lead, it needs to be assigned to a sales rep. In the past, you might have just assigned random sales reps to your leads, not basing your decisions on anything but a simple guess or whoever “calls it” first. With Smart Assign, you can review data on each salesperson based on distance to the job, their closing rate, and the dollar amount of jobs they complete. By assigning your new leads to sales reps based on knowledge, you can increase performance and more quickly convert leads to and completed projects.

Learn to Prioritize Your Jobs

With software platforms like AccuLynx, you can set a priority for each job in order to ensure that urgent projects get completed first, instead of the order they come in. If Nancy has a huge hole in her roof with water leaking into her kitchen, you're probably going to want to deal with her roof before customer Andrew’s, who just needs a few shingles replaced. By prioritizing all your jobs based on need and urgency, you can make sure that you complete the most important jobs first.

With any standard filing cabinet, or shared calendar it might be difficult to keep track of these urgent jobs without immediate access to notes or material orders. A complex labeling organization is not nearly as useful as software with the ability to give you the information in a matter of seconds. By preventing Nancy’s kitchen from turning into an indoor pool, you can satisfy her by giving her greater peace of mind, while at the same time ensuring that Andrew’s new shingles are also replaced in a timely manner.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared on the AccuLynx blog and can be viewed here.