How to Scale a Roofing Business: 6 Steps and Lessons From an Owner

How to scale a roofing business in 6 steps

1. Systems and SOPs. Write down how your repeat work gets done: lead follow-up, the estimate, the sold-job handoff, scheduling production and closeout. Name one person who owns each document. Start with the SOP template guide and the five SOPs a roofing company should document first on our roofing operations manager page.
2. Sales process and handoffs. Define what happens from first call to signed contract, who does each step, and what information moves with the job. Most delays hide in the handoffs between the person who inspects, the person who prices and the person who schedules.
3. Lead sources and cost per lead. List where your leads come from and what share of the business each source brings. Know what a lead and a sold job cost before you raise ad spend, so a rise in lead cost does not take you by surprise.
4. Cash and job costing. Know what each job costs and earns, and keep a cash cushion for a slow season. Roofing has downturns, and what you did before one shows up afterward.
5. Crew capacity. Match the work you sell to the crews you have. Keep your best crews busy, and sell no faster than you can deliver at the quality you promise.
6. Hiring. Hire into a structure, not into chaos. Write what the role owns, how it is measured and who it reports to before you post it. When you are still the person everyone calls, a full-time operations manager is the next hire. See the hiring guide.

How to grow a roofing business without losing control

Growing and scaling are different problems. Growth is more leads and more jobs. Scaling is being able to handle them without the owner in every decision. The lessons below are from an owner who is in the middle of making that shift.

What a roofing owner learned: 6 lessons from the Business Operations podcast

These lessons come from a conversation on the Business Operations podcast with Pedro Parga, owner and founder of Fort Tex Metals & Roofing in Fort Worth, Texas. He has owned the company for seven years and confirmed it is a family-owned business with his brother. At the time of the recording the team had three office people, three or four salespeople and two gutter crews, plus a subcontractor who works only for them.

Lesson 1: Fix the process before it breaks

Pedro was direct that most roofing owners learn process the hard way. "Something usually breaks" first, and then you work backward to find out why. His goal is to get ahead of that: "We would like to be proactive. And right now we're reacting."

He also described why many owners never start: when you begin fixing process you find many other things to fix. His answer was to start anyway. Operations, he said, is "an ongoing fix," where you fix one thing and unlock another.

Lesson 2: Put process first, then add people

Pedro's company is putting process first too. When they added a salesperson they used to give the new hire a large amount of information in a short time, and found it did not work. They are now writing down procedures for every position and every pipeline.

"Writing them down for every single position, every single pipeline is something that we're writing down."

His advice on how to do it: write procedures you are actually going to follow. Copying someone else's playbook word for word will not fit your crews and your salespeople.

Lesson 3: Give every department a weekly number

Host Juan Pablo Gaxiola said it this way: "people they don't do what you expect, they do what you inspect." Juan said the number depends on the department, for example jobs sold for sales, views and conversions for marketing, and jobs fulfilled for fulfillment, and that the person who owns the task updates their own scorecard. He also said it is "not about like telling people what to do. It's more about reminding."

Pedro's sales team meets once a week, on Mondays, to go over deals, leads and what they are seeing in the market. He also made the owner's case for tracking: if he cannot track future revenue, he asked, how can he give a raise, or give his team more leads?

Try the owner bottleneck scorecard to see where your own week is going.

Lesson 4: Know your numbers before you spend more on ads

Pedro said his company got clean financial reporting in place this year, after years of eyeballing the numbers. He said "as you're going to grow and you're going to expand, you really really need to make sure that you know your numbers." Having those numbers is what let them invest in paid ads for the first time this year.

His way of describing it: "the money is the same, but if ... you don't know what you're doing with it, it's burning it." Once you understand why you are spending, it becomes an investment, and "the education is ... the difference-maker."

He also said that in his market, getting a customer online has become very expensive.

Lesson 5: Spread out your lead sources and keep cash for the slow stretch

Pedro said he has seen companies in his area that depend heavily on ad spend, and his view is that if most of your business comes from ads you are exposed when the cost of a lead rises. His company stays diversified: traditional marketing, work with the local community and a pool of past customers to go back to. "You also have to know what that money is for," he said.

His second point was cash. He has been in the industry long enough to know there is always a downturn, and what you did before it shows up with your suppliers afterward. Prepare before it happens, not after.

Lesson 6: Keep your crews busy and your relationships strong

Pedro works with subcontractors, and one of them works only for his company. That lets him focus on quality, as long as he produces enough work to keep that crew busy: "we just have to produce enough work to keep them busy all year."

He also credits relationships for much of his growth. "Everything is all relationship-based," he said, and he protects time for those relationships even when the calendar is full.

The constraint under all of it

Asked for the one constraint holding a business back, Pedro said it is the team not believing in the vision: "Everyone can be talented in their own ways, but if they're not believing in the vision, I think that's a huge restraint there."

Roofing growth checklist

• Write the steps for sales, production and closeout in plain language.
• Name one owner for each document.
• Give each department one weekly number and have the owner of the task update it.
• Hold the same weekly meeting at the same time.
• Know what each lead costs before you raise ad spend.
• List your lead sources and how much of the business each one is.
• Keep a cash cushion for a slow season.
• Plan crew work so your best crews stay busy.

When the owner cannot do all of this alone

Most roofing owners agree with every item above and still do not get to them, because they are on the roof, on the phone or in the truck. That is the point where a full-time operations manager helps. They own the follow-through, the weekly rhythm and the numbers, so you can lead.

At Edge, a Fractional COO leads the install of EdgeOS, runs the owner meetings, designs each sprint and coaches your operations manager. Your operations manager runs the team, the numbers and the weekly meeting rhythm, and keeps EdgeOS running day to day. We work with owner-led businesses nationwide that have $2M to $50M in revenue and 5 to 250 team members.

We've helped 85+ owner-led businesses and recovered and saved $2M+.

See how it works for roofing companies, or Book a Call.

Watch the episode

Full episode page: Roofing Growth Needs Systems with Pedro Parga