The benefits of digital sales

MCS Influencer Randy Chaffee says you can impact or be in front of thousands of people in that same period of time.

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with MCS Influencer Randy Chaffee. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro: Hello, everybody. We are back here with metalcoffeeshop.com for our September influencer question. I have Randy Chaffee here. How are you doing, Randy?

Randy Chaffee: I'm doing great, Alex. How are you?

Alex Tolle: I'm good. Happy to see you.

Randy Chaffee: It's always good. It's always good. It's always good to see you. It's always great to talk metal.

Alex Tolle: Yes, definitely.

Randy Chaffee: I think my favorite... I live a weird life, I suppose, because I get excited about talking about metal. It's a lot, I'm sure, but it's what I do.

Alex Tolle: Hey, we do too. We love talking metal, we love talking roofing, so we get it. Okay. So our September question is how can contractors incorporate more digital sales and marketing in their business?

Randy Chaffee: Well, Alex, that's a great question. It's so timely because as anybody that knows me at all, I'm the old-school road wearer, right? That's four-plus decades. I built my career, I built my life and the kissing babies and brohugging and pizza pie lunches and all that person-to-person stuff and still the best by far. Nothing beats good old person-to-person, whether it be trade shows or calling on customers sitting at their kitchen table or at their office, at their desk or whatever, but in today's world, there's so many opportunities to force multiply our efforts.

Digital just has opened up so many things. I think the whole Covid lockdown world that we went through a few years ago, obviously a terrible time, but one of the things that came out of that is I think it expedited our move into the digital world way faster than it would've went. It was going there anyway, but when we were forced to do it... Because I'll admit, Alex, I was the same as everybody. I realized there needed to be better ways to do it. I don't know if I'd have done it as quickly if I wasn't forced to, but once I was forced to, I latched onto it and absolutely love everything about digital, virtual, what we're doing right now.

There's so many opportunities, as we are talking before we started recording. In a day's time in your office, you can touch so many people, whether it's Zoom meetings, Teams meetings, Google Meets, whatever and with social media, with doing videos, with doing YouTube channels, how-tos, those things just open the footprint up to such a large percentage of people to where if you're a contractor or a roofer, you're going to be lucky to meet two or three potential customers in a day. If you're in the manufacturing side, where I am, on a good day I'm lucky to see four or five customers from when I'm traveling. And then you take into airports and rental cars. When we're doing all that stuff, sometimes it's less than that. Still very valuable, but I can sit here in my home office and not only do these sort of things and talk to 20, 30 people, but by using social media and using other virtual things, YouTube and all those things, you can impact or be in front of thousands of people in that same period of time. So I think it's a real benefit.

And the other thing I like about digital is every time you post on social media, every time you do a video on social media or on YouTube or guest or host a podcast or any of those sort of things that are out there and all those are subjects of their own or topics of their own, but every time you do that, you add to your credibility; you add to the fact that you're a trusted advisor; you add to the fact that you're a trusted person; and you're doing it without being in somebody's face. Because if you watch this today, or you watch anybody's post about a really beautiful roof or a beautiful building or a beautiful whatever and especially if you use testimonials, there's no sales guy in your face beating you about buying anything. It's very non-intrusive, right? It's a very non-intrusive way of selling if you do it the right way.

And that would be the thing that I would caution. It's easy to get off the trail of selling, right? Everybody wants to sell. We want to sell roofs, we want to sell buildings, we want to sell, in my case, all the stuff that I'm involved with. But I found that with digital, with virtual, any of those things, the less selling you do, the better off you are. Be an informational person. Be a helper. Become a trusted advisor and establish yourself as a pro. Establish yourself as somebody that's trust worthy. You do that on a regular basis, and you'll become the go-to person over time and I think that's really important.

But the beautiful thing is... And I love digital because... There's an old song... Again, I use a moniker of four-plus decades, which makes me sound really old, but there's this old song by Bread. You ever heard of Bread? You was way too young. Yeah, I knew you wouldn't. Bread was a song back in the '70s. And one of their songs... They was pretty big back in the day. But one of their songs was If, and it says, "If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can't I paint you?" It was a love song, right? But I think about that often because if you post a picture, let's say, that's a thousand words, that's better than just saying it. If you type up a social media or any kind of digital in-type only, that makes an impact. But if you put a picture up... Using Bread, and Bread is the ultimate, because greatest group back in the '70s... That's not true, but I made that up. But if it's worth a thousand words, what's video worth? 10,000? 100,000? I don't know how many, but it's a lot of Xs, right? Because video is so big.

So I tell people... I'm sitting here now in my office, and I've got my iPad and I got my computer and I got a bunch of stuff that I use for podcasting and all the other stuff that I do. I'm just on my cell phone right now because it was easier to jump on, to click the Join button on the invite and just jump on and do it. So this iPhone that we have, or Android or whatever you using, the smartphone, man, just there's opportunities all day, every day to jump on, to shoot a quick video, stick it out on social media, stick it out wherever that you are, let people see what you're doing. Let them see you at a job site. Let them see you jumping in your pickup, heading out to go see a new customer. Let them see you with a customer, walking with your crew, whatever you're doing because that's what people really want to see is they want to get to know you as the individual. If you paint that picture, the rest of the stuff will come along.

And people still want to see the beautiful roof. Don't get me wrong. But if all you're showing is a picture of this beautiful roof, then that's one of 700 other people's beautiful roofs that are putting it out today as well. But the only thing that you have that nobody else has is yourself, and I think it's sell you first. I think that's a key, in my opinion and especially in digital because with digital, you get to be raw and organic. You get to be authentic, you get to be yourself and man, yourself sells better than any other thing you have. Sell you, and if you do that, you'll be way more successful, in my opinion.

Alex Tolle: Yeah. Everybody's on social media scrolling all the time, and if you see your local roofing company or a local contractor and they're just out there doing their day-to-day job and you can kind of get to know them and then when you're ready to get work done, you have somebody that you're already familiar with. You feel like you're not meeting a stranger, having a stranger come over and give you an estimate. So I totally agree.

Randy Chaffee: Exactly. And I think a key to that, too, is... I know in the B2B world, and I think it falls into the roofing world, for example and specifically talking metal roofing here, any given... In the B2B world, there's a number and I use it when I do talks and whatever and I think it's pretty accurate, that 95% of anybody out there right now with potential customers for me are not interested in buying something from me today right this minute. Okay? The 5% I'm doing what I'm doing with. I'm engaged somewhere. The other 95%, I've got to be in front of them, so that when, like you just said, when they're ready, I want to be top of mind. I want to be first of mind.

And I think I would challenge contractors, installers to think about the fact that probably everybody in your marketing area is not sitting there right now going, "You know, honey? We should buy a new metal roof. Let's buy a new metal roof." They're not. They're just not. They're either not ready, they're not going to be ready for five years, they're not going to be ready for six months, whatever that number is.

So I think the beautiful thing with a continuous redundancy in a good way is that, like you just said earlier, you build upon that reputation so that when it's six months or six years, you want to be top of mind when they just say, "You know what? I like that. Who's that guy we always look at? He's funny and he's got that really cool thing, and God, he's really good at what he does. Who was that? Oh, that was Bill over at Bill's Roofing." That's where you want to be, right? And there's so many opportunities now. Yeah, I use the term a lot, but it's a real force multiplier. You can so multiply your efforts with just a little bit of time.

Alex Tolle: They've made it so easy. I love it.

Randy Chaffee: It is. It is. I find content out of nowhere. You're just walking down the road or driving down the road and you see something of interest. And it doesn't have to be... My last bit, my take, don't make it all product-related. You want to make some of it product-related; that's important. But people, again, want to know you, who you are, what you think, what you do. Got to work to your comfort level, but something motivational you saw that you might find of interest, something... You saw a beautiful sunset; snap it and throw it out and say, "Hey, thought you all might enjoy this. Great time. It's a great day to be alive, blah, blah, blah. Randy." Boom. Because people want to see who you really are.

Because if you are 100% product only, it's easy... And you hit it earlier. Everybody's swiping, swiping, swiping, swiping, swiping. I'm a bad swiper. I've become a TikTok guy. I love it. I know for older guy, it's weird, but if you're about 11 and a half seconds in and you're still yapping, I'm already flipping by, even though I'm kind of interested in what you're going to tell me, but you've already bored me with it. So I think that's key with the few... Are product only, and that's all you do, that's...

I've been doing some promotions just recently on an upcoming trade show and some things that's going to be going on, and I decided to back them back a little because this exact thing. "Okay, yeah, that's just Randy talking about this. I know. You're going to be at the trade show. I know you're going to be doing this. You already told me 12 times already." It wears out to where people just swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. So you got to mix some other things in there so that they're going, "There's a reason I want to watch what this guy or gal has to say." So I think that's important too.

Alex Tolle: Definitely. Well, Randy, thank you so much for always being here for influencer topics. We appreciate you. We'll catch y'all next time on the next metalcoffeeshop.com influencer topic. Thank you.