How TODAY'S Homeowners WANT to Buy a Roof (w/ Marcus Sheridan)

This is how today's homeowners want to buy a roof yet sadly a lot of roofing companies are resistant to change. So they're forcing homeowners to do business the old way. But the companies who are giving homeowners what they want and the data and the trends don't lie, well, they are going to win against everybody else. I can't wait to jump into this interview with you because I was joined by Marcus Sheridan to break down the new way that homeowners want to buy roof. Now, if you're not familiar with Marcus Sheridan, I am excited to introduce you to him because if it weren't for Marcus Sheridan in his book, They Ask You Answer, I don't think my YouTube channel would have been as successful as it has been. I read everything he shared and I implemented it and Marcus shared in that book, They Ask You Answer, everything he learned about saving his pool company that was headed down the tubes during the 2008 crash. Now since then, Marcus Sheridan has become a world-renowned international speaker. He's authored more books, developed software and is a pioneer in sales and marketing for the home improvement industry. He's not just someone who figured it out. He is a master of his craft and I'm honored to have had an opportunity to speak with him here and bring to you the new way that homeowners want to buy a roof. Enjoy. In your book, They Ask You Answer, there's a stat and please correct me if I'm wrong because I did read it in 2019 or 2020 that said 80% of a buying decision is made by the time someone reaches out to your company. How do you feel that that statistic has changed, if at all, for modern buyers? Yeah, it's actually only going up and if you look at it, everybody at this point is a bit of an infovore. We are incredible consumers of information and it's one of those things where because we know we can get it, we can therefore mitigate risk and the way we mitigate the risk is just consuming more information on the thing. So it's actually quite stunning just how much content somebody will consume, assuming it's the right content, assuming it's the stuff that they actually care about that they want to know. Some companies can never quite figure that out for some reason because they're so interested in talking about things that they want to talk about, not what the buyer wants to talk about. So there's a delta between the two there. But they're more informed than they've ever been, which means, okay, you're not going to change that, it's not going to go back, so you better win the 80%. You better win before you've shaken their hand or before they have filled out that form, before they call you, you better win. Only difference is today, it's not just about winning with the human beforehand and winning the trust of the human beforehand, you've got to win the trust of AI too. That's the part that most people aren't understanding or even close to ready for, but that's where we're headed. Yeah, and I know it's a realm that you're incredibly up to speed with, including running a company, helping people do, which we will circle back to. But one of the things you and I connected with when we were getting this interview on the books is I shared my 2025 to 2028 Roofing Market Report, the future trends that $2 million plus companies must know are yet left behind. And I noticed after watching a video on one of your websites for priceguide.ai, which we'll also talk about later, that we both quoted some very similar statistics. Before we get into them, you and I share a common belief that the modern shopper, the modern buyer as you call it, is craving a different experience than in the past. And some of it's new and some of it's not. Some of it is just more common. So when I look back to seeing you speak, which I believe was in, I want to say 2021 maybe, 2021 at Dimitri's conference, one of his conference roofing process. You had shared some statistics. It was either that or in the book they ask you answer, which I, by the way, I highly recommend anyone moving into the content space, read Marcus, I know I shared this with you, but your book was the backbone of what I attribute the success of my YouTube channel to is just identifying what questions people have and creating content with the title of the question as they're thinking it, not the way I'm asking it, the way they're asking it. So I digress. In that book, you mentioned that when you were running a pool company, you were able to track how many page views a shopper had on the website before reaching out to get a quote. And again, I'm pulling from my memory bank and I'm asking for you to correct me if I'm wrong. It was something between 63 and 65 different pages on the website. Is that right? Well, there's a few different things with this. What we found is if somebody read 30 or more pages of our website before the initial sales appointment, that suddenly there was an explosion in closing rates and they would buy 80% of the time. Whereas, if they didn't hit that magic number, right, then closing rates were about 25%. And by the way, for in-ground swimming pool sales in home, right, generally industry average, one out of four you get, one out of four you close. So what it meant was we were actually pretty average until someone consumed 30 pieces of our content. And at that point though, imagine it, like somebody consumes 30 pieces of content, they're saying things like everything I learned about, in this case, pools, I feel like I learned from you. And that's what everybody's listening to this should be hearing from their customers. Everything I learned about a new roof or about solar or about whatever that thing is that you do, that they're feeling like you were their guide, you were their advisor long before they had met you. At least you had met them, right? Right. And it's a timeless strategy and that's a key point to emphasize because people get so attached to the idea that they need to do, then it was blog posts or web pages. And then it turned into you need to create videos and then it was, okay, now you need short form videos, which by the way, for our segment, I am very against I've yet to find anyone actually make any money off short form videos and home services. They're great to marketing to their friends, but not to people that actually want to get out their wallet and spend 10, 15, 40, $50,000 with, which I don't want to get down the rabbit hole. I like the aggressive take though. Yeah. It doesn't, you know, I just, I'm part of this, this mastermind called Genius Network and one of the members just got on Good Morning America and made zero sales. Zero product. Zero. Happens all the time. And they underestimate like the impact of an individual event and underestimate the impact of multiple, what would be considered smaller events. Totally true dude. Yeah. Spoke on stage for an industry conference, made a quarter million in sales and what so many people get obsessed with is like this cutesy. In fact, just at the RSRA annual event, one of our members made a very, I'll call it cute ad playing into the, I forget the whole like pop culture gene thing. I forget it was American Eagle or something, I don't know. And it was just a bunch of shirtless dudes climbing a ladder and it was a whole spoof and the thing just, it went and a lot of people watched it, but guess how many phone calls they got from it? Zero. Nothing. Nothing. And when you talk about content appealing to the modern buyer and that's the whole premise of this interview is closing sales for the new modern buyer. People want helpful information so they can make a decision without screwing up because they're spending their hard earned money. In this case, I'm the single most boring thing in the entire world that no one wants to spend their money on. So they want to do it right. And we are building a relationship with them, whether it's blogs, whether it's video, however, whatever AI through search, like the whatever delivery method, it's answering their questions, which appeals to instant information. I think that's the perfect segue. You had a stat in your video, and I'm looking down at my notes here that 75% of buyers today say they would prefer to have a seller free sales experience. Tell me a little bit about what that actually means. Yeah. This is a Gartner stat and it doesn't mean that people hate salespeople. What it does mean is that we just don't want to talk to a salesperson until we're confident, comfortable, we feel like we're informed, we feel like we're not going to make a mistake. That's the thing. It's like everybody doesn't want to make a mistake at them. And furthermore, we really hate surprises. We'll cross mountains to eliminate surprises during the buyer's journey. We just don't want those at all. Now, if this is true, and if we're saying we want to only talk to a salesperson when we're ready, confident, comfortable, informed, what we have to do is businesses to take advantage of that is give them more control. The way we give them more control is through what I refer to, and they ask you to answer now endless customers, what would be self-service tools. And self-service tools are essentially interactive tools that you would generally see on a website that allow someone to get an answer or take an action that previously they would have to have gotten by talking with a human first, all right? And there's five types of self-service tools. And let me tell you. This is taking over home improvement. This is going to be like, in the future, I can tell you this is going to be on every home improvement, home services website that you will find are these tools that I'm about to talk about now. First one would be self-assessment. This is when you get someone a score or a grade, all right? So that's the first one. Then we've got self-pricing tools. Self-pricing tool is when you give someone a general estimate as to what they're going to spend for that project, for that product service, whatever it is. Then you've got self-selection. This is when you give someone a recommendation as to what they should get. So for example, if someone is saying, "What is the best type of shingle for my roof?" All right? This is like a very classic question that somebody might ask if they're looking for a new roof. That would be a tool that they could go onto your site, they could answer a series of questions, and then they get a recommendation. Based on what you just said, we would recommend this type of shingle for you. In fact, here's the exact shingle we'd recommend. I'm just giving maybe a silly example, because it's not my world, but I do know home services and home improvement really, really well. Then we've got self-scheduling tools, which is really powerful, which is when someone can schedule a time without talking to a human first. There's different means of this, but let me just give you a quick example of something a crazy stat that we've seen, Adam. We've built these tools that, let's say a potential buyer has the ability to work with multiple salespeople in an organization. If they're allowed to choose which salesperson they work with, closing rates double every single time. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah. Let me give you an example, Adam. So let's say that you were looking to get solar for your home, all right? And you go to this one company, you really like the company, and it says schedule time with one of our reps, whatever you call your reps, right? Now, once you get to that page, then what do you see? You see an image of every rep they have, you see their bio, you get to watch a video about that person, and then you choose which one of those people you want to work with, and you sync with their calendar, and that's who comes out to your home. Double the closing rate, crazy, but it happens every time, dude, okay? So have you noticed any difference in the set rate, which again, just to define set rate for everybody, is the conversion from a lead to an appointment? That extra layer or that extra step in the marketing world is often known as friction, meaning it's more work for someone to schedule. That extra layer of friction to make a choice could possibly lead to decision fatigue at his steps. Have you noticed, because sometimes the things that increase close rate can actually hurt the set rate, but at the end of the day, we have to look at the net rate. That's true. Do you have any data into the impact on set rate versus the close rate, excuse me, the set rate versus not having them select who they're working with? No, I've not done that, and actually that's just a really valuable one, because as you know, especially when you get to bigger home services companies, they tend to have call centers and such that end up creating more steps oftentimes, and they can be good from a timing perspective, like fast, but they can also be ineffective for a variety of reasons. And I'm sure we could spend all day on some of these conversations, but the point is, when you're skipping multiple steps, because if you think about it, what you're skipping here is they're not filling out the form on your website the same way. They're doing everything in one fell swoop. Instead of saying, "Hey, I want somebody to reach out to me," it's saying, "Hey, I want to talk to you, here's who I want to talk with, here's when I'm going to talk to you." So that's the ultimate sense of having control as a buyer there. Buyer freaking love it. Now there's a phenomenon that happens here too, and this is why pricing estimators work so well. Same deal, which is because when someone is doing multiple interactive steps with a tool that you created to get an answer or to take an action, that increase what's known as sunk cost fallacy. Sunk cost fallacy, for those that aren't aware, essentially means the more time you invest in something, the more you try and make it work. There's no different than if you spent a bunch of money on Bitcoin at $100,000, and it drops to $50,000 in value, you're like, "Oh, I can't get out because it's going to come back." There's a sunk cost there. So Bitcoin is probably not a good example because it's going to continue to go up, but a meme coin, very good example because you might have invested in a meme and then it went to nothing, but the whole time you're like, "I just got to hang in there." See, that's sunk cost fallacy versus pulling the cord and ejecting earlier in that process. What happens when somebody invests the time of essentially choosing their salesperson now unconsciously, they're trying to prove that their decision was right to themselves, hence the closing rate going way up. Yeah. So you actually have the ability to get more leads in many ways because there's no doubt as to who am I going to work with, what's going to happen next, all these things, and now they've chosen their person, crazy, crazy stuff. That's the future in many ways of the way we buy, which is more control. And then the fifth type of self-service tool is self-configuration. This is just when you allow someone to build the thing that they are looking at. So no different than, I recently purchased a metal building, Adam, and the place I ended up buying from allowed me to make the 3D drawing on their website without even purchasing it, price it. So it was a configurator and an estimator at the same time, except in this case it gave me an exact number, totally the one that I went with because it removed all doubt, again, which is the key to great marketing, greatly generation, great brand building today is removing all doubt. And that huge metal building, it's like 44 by 70. The one I have in my house today is exactly what I drew up, color for color, like everything is the same as I drew it up. And so if you have a vision, meet that vision, that's very, very powerful. That's why self-configurators work so well. So all these tools that I just mentioned, these five tools I just mentioned, again, I talk about them a lot, endless customers, but they're taking over home services because people when it comes to their home, man, dude, they are just, this is like, as you know, this is my nest. And I want to feel like I am so in control of this decision and they will spend so much more time researching this decision because they're going to be stuck looking at whatever decision they make for the rest of their time on earth, assuming they're in that home. You brought up two very powerful points that I want to really dive into. One is when you talked about sunk cost fallacy and how when a homeowner who's shopping chooses the rep they're going to work with, that also to me sounds like Chiel Dini's principle of consistency, that people are more likely to behave in a consistent fashion, especially in view of others or publicly in front of others. Some people call this compliance. It's a very similar concept. So that's fascinating to me. The other element that you talked about was with the online configurators, is that what you called it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, self-configurators. Yeah, self-configurator. In marketing, and I'm curious your thoughts on this, and by the way, I just want to open the door to you disagreeing. I don't think agreeing on everything is healthy, us as humans. But in marketing, I teach eight laws of marketing and one of them is the law of fear. And what a lot of marketers and sales people talk about is using fear to drive decisions. But I feel like the missing link when it comes to fear is homeowners in this context shopping for roofing. Fear taking action because of what will happen. Example, I fear filling out the online form because I'm going to get bombarded. I fear setting an appointment because it'll be a two-hour hard sell and I'll be pressured. I fear making the wrong decision. So when we can alleviate those fears, i.e. using a configurator using, by the way, I'm looking at my notes, a recommendation tool, getting an estimate, now all of a sudden those fears are alleviated and that barrier, the decision making barrier, is lowered. And go ahead. 100%. 100%. What you just described, again, goes back to removing all doubt. This is also why we found that when it comes to online forms, you might appreciate this stat. One of the things I teach about in both books is putting a video next to that form that you're asking them to fill out. And the title of that video, which should be very visible in the page, it should say, see exactly what will happen if you fill out this form. And that's the title of the video. And then in the video, you explain what's going to happen if they fill out the form. See, there's four fears that people have when they're filling out a form online, like a contact us. First fear is, "Are you going to call me to death?" Second fear is, "Are you going to spam me to death?" Second fear is, "What are you going to do with my information?" Fourth fear is exactly what's going to happen if I fill out this form. Like what are the next steps? So if you create a video that says, "See exactly what happened if you fill out this form?" Explain those four fears, overcome them, right? And you transparently teach them, "Here's what's going to happen next." What we've seen over and over again is roughly an 80% conversion lift. So now just because those fears were mitigated, and you addressed them head on versus just ignoring them like everyone else, now you're getting way more conversions than you were getting before. This is a really simple way to increase conversions. No brainer. It's really, really powerful. But going back to those self-service tools, is it okay if we talk about this pricing estimator for a second? I would love to. And I have some follow-up questions for you out there. The first question, and this is the context for everybody who's listened to this. For years I've been teaching organizations how to win trust and generate dramatically more leads and sales by addressing the most common questions buyers have. That's the essence of they ask, you answer. The number one question that someone has, a buyer, when they know they have a problem and they need to fix it, first question out their mouth, roughly how much is this going to cost? That is the gateway of the buyer's journey. And whoever is willing to open that gate essentially dictates or is given the chance, earns the right to dictate that journey. And so a lot of companies refuse to address it. We see this prolifically in home improvement. In fact, just the other day, I was talking to a lady that runs a call center for a very large home improvement business in the US. They do plumbing, they do HVAC, they do some electrical, okay? And I said, "Are you finding that buyers are getting more and more pissed off when you refuse at the call center to give them any indication of pricing at all?" And she said, "Yes, more and more each and every year we're seeing a larger percentage of people saying, 'I'm not going to have you come out if you're not even willing to give me a sense for pricing up front.'" Right? Now, there's different ways that you can talk about pricing. And let me explain to everyone how to do this the right way. And just so you know, if you have a ChatGPT account, if you're listening to this, what I want you to do is I want you to go to custom GPTs or GPTs that's on the left side of your menu bar. And I want you to just do a search on Marcus Sheridan. And I've built a bunch of custom GPTs that work incredibly well within the home improvement home services space. One of them is called the Perfect Pricing Page by Marcus Sheridan. And it has a 16-point checklist basically of what, if you wanted to produce a, let's say, an article or a page of your website, which you should have that says, "What is the average cost for a new residential roof in 2026?" Okay? So that would be like, if I'm you listening to this right now, I would produce that immediately. Now, there's 16 different points to that. Just to give you a sense, you should talk about what drives cost up, what are the factors that drive cost up for a new roof, what are the factors that drive cost down, why are some companies in your market so expensive, why are some companies in your market so cheap? You could talk about financing, you could talk about initial cost versus long-term cost. You could talk about, you could show examples of projects and give general price ranges, but we don't have to do is you don't have to give an exact price. This is the thing that people screw up. They think pricing means I put myself in a corner and when I get to the home and I see things that were surprises, and which by the way, for us as contractors, they're not surprises, they're inevitable. Because you know when you get out there, you're going to find some stuff that's like, "Oh, that wasn't mentioned here," right? So if you do this, you take back the conversation and you can win the trust of the human. You can win the trust of the search engine, traditional search engine, and you can win the trust of AI. Now, you should create an article, a page of your site that does that. You should create a video that does that and then on that same page, if you want to create the ultimate user experience, you have what's called a pricing estimator. Now, notice I'm not calling it a quote tool. I'm calling it an estimator because if somebody was talking to you right now, Adam, and they said, "Hey, can you give me a sense for what it would cost to redo my roof?" You could, but you'd have to ask a series of questions and then you give them a general range. Everybody who's listening to this right now has had that question a thousand times. People say to you all the time, "So I'm not going to hold you to it, but roughly what are we looking at here?" Right? Now, again, if you don't say anything there, you're just going to piss people off at this point. Most aren't going to want to play. Most aren't going to want to give you the time of day. And so with a pricing estimator, the way that it should work, and not all of them work this way, but the way that it should work is they answer a series of questions just like you were talking with them in their home, things like quality of shingle, maybe, or just quality of the material that's being used. "Do you want something that's short-term? Do you want something that's long-term? Are you going to be in this home for five years, or are you going to be in this home for 50 years?" Just stuff like that. Does resale value match you or not? Do you care more about aesthetics or just general performance or both? These are questions that you could ask. Okay? Of course, one of them is going to be roughly what's the square footage of your roof. Not everybody knows that, but you can also give them a sense for things and help them get a range or something like that. All right? Now, here's the thing. When someone does that, they are empowered, and they have that initial gateway of the buyer's journey opened up, which is, "Okay, now I feel like I have a general sense to replace my roof." It says that it's going to be somewhere between $20,000 to $30,000. Now, notice it's not saying between $21,000 and $22,000. It's $20,000 to $30,000 in this context, or whatever it is. You fill in the blank, people. All right? I don't care where your average roof is. More or less, I don't care. Your thing, put it in there. But the point is, I did this with swimming pools. I was the first manufacturing/contracting company in home improvement to be very, very aggressive with pricing estimators, and it is phenomenal, the results, and so wild were the results that I saw personally that I created a software that helps home improvement companies do this as well. It's called priceguide.ai. You mentioned it earlier. That allows a contractor to quickly, easily, and cost-effectively put a pricing estimator on their website, and it could be working in less than 60 minutes. The beauty of it is, and here's the thing, because there's pricing estimator "tools" in the industry, but they're a lot more expensive. Pricing costs about $200 a year, Adam, $200 a year, which is crazy inexpensive. That's less than a lot of people are spending on one lead. On one lead. That's correct. That's correct. And here's, speaking of leads, here's the impact. The impact is 3 to 5x, 3 to 500%, more leads the moment you add it to your site. Now, when it comes to pricing estimators in roofing, what oftentimes you see is you might have like a Google Earth image, and it tells you the square footage, and then you give the person some price range, which is totally fine. It's better than nothing. The issue is this. They should actually answer more questions than just, "Hey, what's my address?" Because without that, you don't have the sunk costs in place. There's no interaction. The investment doesn't happen. They don't feel like they were thought out. It'd be no different than if you walked into the doctor's office, and the doctor took one look at you and said, "I can tell what's wrong. Here's what we're going to do, and here's how we're going to operate." That's dumb. That's actually not a very good UX. And so, you want the process of the interactivity with the tool, but I can tell you this, and I'll stop here, Adam, which is, within the next five years, mark my words, 90% of all whole improvement companies will have a pricing estimator on their website, and the reason is two-fold. Humans are going to force you because that's going to be their expectation. Second reason, because that has become the human expectation by that point, it's already getting there by the way, where the chips fall is now AI is going to make that a requirement to recommend your business. So if anybody has any wit about them at all, they see the trend line. Every single week, hundreds of thousands of people move over from using Google traditionally to using AI as their primary means of search. This is happening when people, homeowners are searching for a new roofer, new solar company, whatever it is. It doesn't matter. And so, as this occurs, we know more and more people are going to be getting their answers from AI versus getting it from Google. People don't want to see a list of 20 blue links to choose. What they want is an answer and a clear answer from something that understands them. That's what AI does. And so, in the future, what's going to happen is AI is going to realize, okay, the homeowner here has asked me to vet the best roofing companies in their market, in their area. And I'm looking at their different sites. I'm looking at their online reviews. I'm looking at all these things. And only a certain percent have pricing estimators. I'm going to eliminate the rest because a homeowner would want to get a sense for pricing up front. I'm going to eliminate all those that do not. For those that do, those are the ones that I'm going to recommend. So, you'll be left out entirely if you don't do this. Tell you, mark my words, because that's the definition of UX. And generally, when I make predictions like this, they become pretty accurate over the course of time. I can tell you, this one's going to be very, very accurate. This is table stakes. Yeah. Marcus, I couldn't agree more. In fact, I'm going to share my screen and I want to sketch some of this out for my friends who are visual learners. So, and please, again, let me know if you disagree. Right now, let's just say the number of people adopting technology. I'm going to talk about the adoption curve that we're on. And then on this axis, we have time. Let's use Uber as an example. When first came out, someone's like, "Oh, do I want to jump into a cab with a complete stranger that's not even a cab, it's their car and maybe their kid's car seat is even in there?" And then they're going to go to the destination. And the answer is no. And then more and more people do it. And then now I want to ask you, we're about right here, who here would actually pick up the phone to have to call a cab and go through dispatch and get put on hold and not know when they're going to show up because we want to be able to open our phone and know exactly where. And now cabs don't exist, which by the way, I know I'm being a little over, the cabs do exist, but very few people use them at scale. So we are, in my opinion, about right here on the adoption curve for this technology that you're talking about with priceguide.ai. By the way, there'll be links to Marcus if you can. Let's connect. I'd love to put the links to your GPTs that you created, a link to priceguide.ai. I'd like to put a link to your book, Endless Customers. But anyway, we are here. And you and I both agree for the 2025 to 2028 Roofing Market Report, there'll also be a link to that in the description, that homeowners will prefer to use a tech forward company. Now, if that's not enough, I want to just break down some math. And I'm terrible at math, Marcus, I hope you're better than me. So we can do this together. And I do have a calculator pulled up next to me so we can get it right. Let's assume, because people say, "Hey, I want to start using these online estimators, but I'm not good with tech." And the way we're going to end this, Marcus, I have three questions of the top concerns that I hear roofers bring up on these online estimating tools, which we'll hit in a minute. But I want to convince people as to the why. And if this is your web visits, now, if your website is converting it, let's say 10%, meaning of 100 visits, 10 people give you their information, you have 10 leads, let's assume eight of those are qualified. And let's assume qualified. And let's assume of those eight, we are closing at, I don't know, let's call it 30%. We'll round it up just for simple math. We have three sales. So three sales, average sale for today's conversation will be $15,000. So we have $45,000 in sales. Now with a tool, web visits, let's just go ahead and show the outcome here. How many, you mentioned 300 to 500% more, so we'd be lifting that from 30 to 50? That's exactly right. That's exactly right. I'm going to split the difference for fun. And we'll just call it 40. Why? I'm totally fine. You go in the lowest number because it's still mind boggling, the financial impact. Let's go in the low number then, just for fun, because it's always better to underestimate. So of that, and if we have the same 80% qualified lead rate, 30 times 80%, we have 24 qualified leads now, people that actually want to buy a roof, and if we use the same, how many? Nine sales. Nine sales. Now, see, I had a math ways with me, nine times 15,000, $135,000. Now this is off of 100 website visits. So that net difference is significant. We're talking nearly $100,000, and my question to you is, how long does it take for you to get 100 website visits? Because for many folks, you might be getting a lot more. You might be getting less. But we are talking about a net difference of 100,000, roughly, we're at 90,000. Let's just call it 90,000 times 12 for fun. We are talking about a net difference in this example of a million dollars, it's actually a million and 80,000. So that's the why behind doing this. What is the two things when you hear contractors that want to grow? More leads and then more salespeople. With this model, again, adopting to the new wave, this is the outcome. So I just wanted to visualize that for-- That's great, Adam. Stokes. And if you talk to most contractors today, and I speak to tons because I speak at a lot of events with contractors, what I'm hearing over and over again is I'm spending more on paid than I've ever spent, I'm seeing less results than I've ever gotten. And so average cost per click, cost per lead, cost per customer just keeps going up every single year. Those that are in the game, they know this. So what do we got to do to essentially mitigate this title surge of rising costs? Well, you can't expect to get people's data simply by having a contact us form and maybe you've got some buyers guide. Because the buyers guide that was working in the 2010s is not working today because the homeowner can create their own buyers guide in five minutes with ChatGBT and it's probably better than the one that you've got on your website right now. So you've got to give them something of value. If you're going to ask them to trade, which essentially early in this buyer's journey, you're asking them to trade their information, their email address of something for equal or more valuable exchange, right? So you giving them an estimate now gives them the sense of I got something of value. And so therefore, I'm going to give them my information as well. It's a beautiful trade. You get way more leads. One thing that people say about this Adam is they's like, well, I get more leads, but some of them aren't nearly as good, correct. And some of them are actually better. You're going to get more leads of all of it. And if you're any good at marketing at all, now you're going to get them, some of them earlier in the process, which means that you're going to nurture them more, which means they're going to be much more buyer ready. When they do have a problem, they're coming to you, you become their guy long before you know they exist because of the fact that you are willing to give this. So you realize right now, I'm the only professional speaker in the world that has a pricing estimator on my website in the entire world. For your speaking fees? For my speaking. That's amazing. No, I didn't know that. In the world. And I'd get leads from it that otherwise I never would have gotten. Yeah. As soon as that lead comes in, I'm able to reach out and knowing in my world that a lot of the people, more so than roofing, by the way, in my world, my budget, like what I cost will scare a lot of these organizations away. And it's like, oh, geez, that's too much, but now I got the information. And so I can reach out. I can say things like, hey, I know you filled out that form on my site. And if there's a budget issue, what's great is there's options that we have. Every year I do a certain amount of pro bono events. Every year. See, it's like, and I'm able to say, I've got other speakers that you could work with that can do this for you. And now all of a sudden I'm like, oh, I'm so glad you reached out, Marcus. Yeah, I can't afford the 25,000 that you would charge me, but I do have 10K in the budget. And I'm like, perfect, here's what we can do. I never would have had that conversation. Do you realize how many people never reach out to a company because they're too embarrassed to have to say, I can't afford that? It happens all the time, Adam, all the time. So your job, again, remove all risk. That's what Lee Jen is all about today. That's marketing 101 today. Yeah, remove all risk. I love it. Marcus, can I shotgun three questions to you, rapid fire, to wrap up? Please. So first one, a lot of roofers say this, and you spoke to this a little bit, but I'd like to unpack it a little more. They say, I can't give an exact quote because there are variables. There sure are. And as I mentioned earlier, you're not giving an exact quote. You're giving a general estimate, and now you're capturing the lead that you wouldn't have gotten. And in fact, on the estimate itself, you can put in big, bold, hey, this is just an estimate, and you could even give you an estimated monthly payment, assuming they're financing as well. So you can show two numbers, the estimated range as to what the project would cost, the estimated monthly payment, and watch what happens to your conversions, and now you can track value back to that. Yeah. As Cody Landles, who's one of our mentors in RSRA, who sells roofs over the phone and is running a call center right now for their private equity group, and he was doing over $2 million a month over the phone, and they give a range within a few minutes. And the range is because they have different packages, and it's like people then need to get on the phone or have the appointment because that first itch was scratched and you've educated them. Number two, a lot of concerns. If I'm too expensive, they'll shop elsewhere. Yeah. In conjunction with that, if they see we're more expensive, we just might scare them away. The thing that actually scares someone away, the same thing that scares you away when you're researching, when you're shopping online, is not when you're well educated, when somebody informs you and explains to you what value means for a product or service, rather when you can't find the information. The scariest thing that will scare someone away online is no information. Ignorance is not bliss online. Yeah. And the final one, which you actually started to talk about was, how can I deliver value if I share price first? Yeah. You're actually teaching value, and that's the big misconception. They think I'm sharing pricing, but you're teaching someone how to buy. Start from that perspective. Again, what drives cost up, what drives cost down, et cetera, et cetera. That is the key. By the way, before we jump off, can I make a recommendation to everybody, Adam, as well? Please do. I created a new tool recently that's amazing, and it's actually a self-assessment tool. What this tool will do, it will give you a grade, a number grade zero to a hundred, as to how well your site is doing in the eyes of AI, based on 18 separate trust signals AI uses to judge your business and say, "I want to recommend them or not." I'm really excited about this tool, and it's got a freemium version to it, whereas anybody's listening to this right now, you could go to this site, you could put your URL in, it will give you a score, and it will tell you where you're really screwing up, and where you're doing well. It's called AITrustSignals. You can find it at www.aitrustsignals.com. If you want to make sure you're crushing it with human and AI recommendations in the future, this is where it starts. Check that bad boy out. One of them on there is Discussing Pricing Online. That's a major trust signal, and you'll get a score for that as well. Check it out, folks. You're going to probably be pretty blown away. Some of you are going to be very concerned, as you should be. Either way, it's going to help you, and it's going to give you action items as to what you can do next. This is more important than ever before, because over 65% of Google searches do not even result in a click because of AI. Marcus, thank you. We will include links to everything in the description below, and I want you to imagine where you're going to be six months from now. Maybe you ran into Marcus speaking at an event, or maybe you ran into him speaking at an RSRA event, and you can walk up and shake his hand and say, "Marcus, I'm getting even more leads than ever before. My leads are qualified. My customers are having an easy buying experience in giving us five-star reviews, but most of all, it's allowed me to spend even more money on marketing to help grow our company and become future-proof." Thank you, Marcus, for joining us, and we'll see you guys on the next one. Now that you know how haul owners want to buy a roof, it's time to shift your sales experience. Watch this next video because I'm going to teach you the three ships that you need to make to start closing even more sales in 2025 to 2028. Hey, before you go, there are no fees for the show. But if I've helped you make money, will you do me a favor? That star rating in the podcast player you're listening to right now, it really makes a difference. If you punch in a star rating in a few words and share it with the world, that would really mean the world to me, and I thank you so much for doing that. And now I do have an invitation, a special invitation for my owners, my managers, and leaders of companies. Companies who are tired of being categorized as a scumbag roofer, knowing that eight out of 10 homeowners don't trust us because the greedy and corrupt ones have ruined it for all of us. And for the companies that are burning through sales reps like most, by the way, two out of three of them are quitting or get fired. They just don't have the training and support they need. And the companies who are tired of going at it alone as we navigate these sudden changes that are threatening our industry and have already toppled industry giants, things like the economy, rising interest rates, consolidation, technology, AI, insurance policy changes and legislative changes. Well, I've got an invitation for you, but this is not for everyone. Because what I'm about to share with you is a members only organization that requires taking a member pledge abiding by our code of conduct and signing a mutual non-disclosure agreement in violation of any of the above gets you kicked out. So if you're looking for that place to go so you can outsell, outgrow and outcompete the rest as we stomp the scum out, well, then the roofing and solar reform alliance might be exactly what you've been looking for. And inside you will get the ultimate endorsement by an organization that's already been featured in Fox news, USA Today, ABC, NBC and CBS. The company is that your homeowners trust. So we, my friend, can do the selling for you to show that you're better and different. The place to turn to get access to the roof strategist sales system, our roof with solar sales system and the ultimate community of like-minded professionals sharing insider information, what's working and what's not and being joined in the trenches by industry leaders. Not only myself, but folks like John Cenak, Deshaun Bryant, Cody Landles and Jim Alene will look no further. The roofing and solar reform alliance may be for you. Click the link in the description right now and set up your private tour. We're going to show you around inside, give you a day in the life and let you decide for yourself if it's a good fit and you can join 100% risk free. We back it by our 30 day, no BS money back guarantee. So what are you waiting for? Click that link, get your private tour set up right now or you can call or text us with any questions. That's 303-222-7133.