Building a Balanced Sales Team: Strategies for Growth in Commercial Roofing
For commercial roofing businesses, growth hinges on more than just gaining new clients; it’s about having the right team in place to meet both immediate and long-term goals. A balanced sales team ensures you can scale effectively, whether through acquiring new customers or deepening relationships with existing ones.
Understanding the Two Pillars: Sales and Account Management
Your business’s sales strategy can be divided into two primary functions:
- Sales Reps: These team members focus on generating leads, securing new clients, and penetrating new markets.
- Account Managers: These roles are tailored to nurturing and expanding relationships with existing clients, ensuring repeat business and maintaining customer satisfaction.
Each of these roles supports your business differently, and finding the right balance between them is essential for sustainable growth.
The Role of Sales Reps: Driving Expansion
A sales representative’s primary focus is on building new opportunities. This can include:
- Vertical Expansion: Targeting specific industries, such as property management companies, schools, or restaurants, to develop new client bases.
- Geographic Growth: Breaking into new territories or regions.
Metrics play a critical role in the success of sales reps. For example:
- Define how many new clients a sales rep should bring in monthly.
- Track activity levels, such as calls made, roofs inspected, or leads followed up.
- Focus on high-return targets, like industries where your company has proven success.
Timing is also crucial. Hiring during quieter seasons, like winter, allows time for training, so reps are ready to perform during busier months, such as spring.
The Role of Account Managers: Building Relationships That Last
Account managers are tasked with deepening relationships with current clients. This means:
- Strengthening Trust: Regular check-ins to ensure client satisfaction and uncover new opportunities.
- Growing Accounts: Expanding the services provided to existing clients, such as moving from basic maintenance to larger-scale replacements.
Effective account management relies on setting clear, measurable goals. Examples include:
- Increasing revenue from existing accounts by a specific percentage annually.
- Expanding services to additional locations within a client’s portfolio.
Aligning Team Roles with Business Goals
Determining whether you need sales reps or account managers—or a combination of both—starts with evaluating your current position and objectives:
- Are you ready to grow your customer base?
- If yes, focus on sales reps to generate new leads and convert them into customers.
- Do you need to maximize revenue from current clients?
- If yes, invest in account managers who can scale existing relationships.
A successful strategy often combines both. For example, a sales rep might focus on winning new business in a vertical like restaurants, while an account manager works to grow revenue from existing restaurant clients.
The Importance of Clarity and Measurable Goals
For any role, clarity is key. Employees need to understand their specific objectives, such as:
- The number of new leads to generate or accounts to grow.
- Expected revenue targets.
- Activity metrics like calls made, roofs inspected, or quotes delivered.
Having these measurable goals not only boosts accountability but also simplifies performance reviews. They provide a framework for recognizing success or identifying when an adjustment is needed.
Building for the Future
A well-structured team isn’t just about immediate results—it’s about setting your business up for long-term success. By understanding the unique value of both sales reps and account managers, and aligning their roles with your goals, you can create a high-performing team that drives both growth and stability.
The key takeaway? Look at where you want your business to go and tailor your team to get there. Whether it’s hunting for new opportunities or farming deeper connections with current clients, the right people in the right roles will make all the difference.
