7 Roofing Business Management Strategies
Running a successful roofing business requires more than just roofing knowledge and expertise.
Roofing business owners also need to train and manage employees, establish effective business processes, manage customer relationships and monitor business performance. It’s critical to have strategies in place for all aspects of managing your roofing company.
What is a roofing management strategy?
A roofing management strategy is any technique that allows roofing business owners to efficiently meet their goals.
You may have different strategies for the various aspects of your business, such as pricing, scheduling and payment processing. Once you have a roofing strategy in place, you’ll need the right tools to implement it effectively.
How can you benefit from a roofing management strategy?
A roofing management strategy will make your business run more smoothly and enhance the quality of your roofing services.
Getting team members on board with your business goals creates a sense of shared responsibility and streamlines operations. Roofing management strategies can also help with employee retention and improve customer experiences.
Key elements of roofing management
Here are some critical aspects of your roofing business to consider when building your strategy.
Hiring and training employees
As you grow your customer base, you’ll need to hire and train employees to expand your business. Hire employees with a willingness to learn and a commitment to excellence. Develop a training program for roofers to learn about roof inspections, roof installation and roof maintenance.
Train employees to deliver a good customer experience. A good roofing contractor should not only know how to install shingles but also how to interact with customers.
Production management
For your roofing company to be successful, you’ll need to coordinate your day-to-day operations. For each roofing project, you’ll be responsible for ordering the appropriate materials, dispatching team members and scheduling the new roof installation, roof replacement or roof repair.
Customer relationship management
Providing good customer service is just as important to growing your business as performing high-quality work. You’ll need processes in place to follow up on leads, communicate with current customers and request reviews or testimonials after finishing a roofing job.
Marketing
You should use a variety of marketing strategies relevant to the roofing industry to grow your business. Write a marketing plan that includes digital marketing, print advertising, in-person networking and word-of-mouth referrals. Homeowners or commercial property owners should be able to find your roofing business on a search engine and assess your reputation.
Accounting
It may not be everyone’s favorite part of running a business, but managing estimates, invoices and payroll is essential to the success of any roofing company. If you’re doing the accounting on your own, ensure you have the tools to help you track your revenue and expenses.
Best business management strategies for roofing companies
Besides completing roofing projects, you and your employees must ensure that other administrative activities are covered. Check out these best practices to scale your business for growth.
1. Communicate with team members in real-time
To oversee dispatched team members and ensure your commercial or residential roofing project is going as planned, you’ll need an internal chat tool that allows you to communicate with on-site workers. This will ensure you can proactively solve problems on-the-job, preventing costly delays and dissatisfied customers.
Broadly’s team chat tool allows you to keep track of all your communications in one place.
2. Track team performance and provide feedback
Employee management requires you to assess team members on each aspect of their job performance and identify areas where workers can improve. Feedback should be specific and actionable — your employees should understand what steps they can take to meet expectations.
You should also reward team members who display superior performance with specific feedback, meaningful praise and recognition among the team. Broadly makes it easy to track team performance based on customer feedback.
3. Collaborate to deliver a consistent customer experience
Getting your entire team involved in customer relationship management allows you to deliver a seamless customer experience across the board. With Broadly’s collaboration tools, you can ensure that customers always get a quick response from someone, even if you’re busy managing other aspects of your roofing company.
4. Manage your online reputation
Customer reviews are essential for building an online presence. 49% of consumers report that they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. That’s why you’ll need to strive for high star-ratings on every platform, from Yelp to Facebook.
Review management is easy with a tool like Broadly, which allows you to monitor and respond to reviews from one convenient platform. You can even automatically request reviews from satisfied customers with the click of a button, making reputation management a breeze.
5. Delegate tasks in your marketing plan
While 47% of small business owners handle marketing efforts themselves, you can implement a more robust marketing plan if you get help from your office manager or hire an independent contractor. For example, improving your roofing company’s search engine optimization (SEO) with content marketing requires regularly posting new content, which may be too time-consuming for a business owner alone.
You’ll also want your team members to regularly post on social media, whether that’s promotions, photos of finished roofing systems or educational videos. And finally, you’ll need an effective email marketing strategy to convert roofing leads into paying customers.
6. Automate communications with customers
Providing good customer service means keeping in touch throughout the process — from the moment a customer requests a free quote to the time when they leave a review. But it’s challenging to manage communications with a large customer base.
A unified Inbox enables you to manage customer communications from various platforms in one app. Set up templates for saved replies to drive consistency and save time. Automated tools can help you send scheduling reminders, request payment and ask customers to write reviews with one click.
7. Use technology to streamline payments
A good payment tool like Broadly will save you a ton of time and improve the customer experience. Broadly allows you to text or email a mobile invoice instantly. Not only will customers appreciate the convenience and security of paying directly from their mobile phones, but you’ll get paid faster and streamline your payment workflow.
Put the best management strategies to practice with Broadly
The best roofing companies leverage technology to scale their business as they grow. The right marketing, employee management and customer relationship management tools will support your success and give you back your free time. Broadly is a flexible solution for roofing companies, offering a full suite of tools to meet your business needs.
From a professionally designed website with Web Chat to email marketing templates tailored to the roofing industry, Broadly delivers everything a roofing company needs to be successful.