How to Turn Skeptics Into Your Biggest Brand Advocates

Not everyone is going to love your business right away. That’s just a fact of life. But the way you engage with people who are initially skeptical can have a major impact on your eventual success.

This is especially true if you’re doing something relatively unprecedented, like pioneering a brand new category within an established industry. When I started Roof Maxx with my brother Todd, no one else had an eco-friendly roof restoration product for residential properties. And not everyone we pitched it to believed it would work.

Instead of simply ignoring those voices or openly fighting them, we set out to educate. Today, many of those original skeptics openly advocate for the kind of roof restoration solutions we introduced.

Here’s how we did it, and how you can do the same if you run into doubters.

Related: Double Your Sales by Turning Skeptics Into Customers

Knowing who your naysayers are tells you a lot about their motivations

I got an email this morning from an insurance carrier in Texas who expressed interest in learning more about our product. This is particularly meaningful to me because insurance carriers were initially some of the most skeptical voices about what Roof Maxx could do. That’s clearly no longer the case — but what changed?

In a word, time. Insurance carriers have always been conservative because their livelihood depends on avoiding unnecessary risk. That means they don’t support new technologies or solutions until there’s ample evidence that they work.

When roof restoration was brand new to the residential market, insurance companies never recommended it. We knew there was nothing we could do to change that overnight. But we also predicted that insurers would eventually start recommending alternatives to roof replacement, because we noticed that the number of roofs being replaced by insurance was climbing significantly year over year, and we recognized that this couldn’t possibly be sustainable for the carriers paying out the policies.

When those carriers started looking for other solutions to recommend, we wanted roof restoration to be the natural choice. So we focused on amassing as much evidence as we possibly could that the science behind Roof Maxx was solid. As it turned out, this had the added benefit of helping us educate skeptics among the homeowners we served directly.

You shouldn’t fear skepticism because it often masks interest

In those early days, some homeowners were understandably a bit incredulous about the idea that spraying a plant-based solution on their existing shingles could help them put off an expensive replacement for years. We could tell that a lot of them were intrigued, especially when they learned it cost up to 80% less than replacing their shingles outright. The trouble was that most of them had never heard of the concept.

Even if people had heard of roof restoration, their local contractors weren’t offering it back then. So we needed as many other ways as possible to show them our solution worked.

There was no silver-bullet tactic that got everyone on side. It was a combination of many different initiatives, including:

• A study by Ohio State University verified that our product could extend the lifespan of asphalt shingles by restoring their flexibility and durability for up to 15 years with repeat applications.

• ASTM (American Society of Testing Materials) certification, which is required for all construction materials in North America and is looked for by most engineers and architects.

• Requesting testimonials from every homeowner who would try our product and sharing them on social media. As I’ve written elsewhere, word-of-mouth is one of the best tools there is for building brand awareness.

• Reaching out to traditional media personalities like Mike Rowe and inviting them to work with us. Social media gets you reach, but being on TV gets you credibility.

Slowly building that foundation of credibility helped us grow the business even without the endorsements of contractors or insurers. It also meant that we were a natural fit when carriers eventually needed to change their business model.

Related: I’ve Earned Nearly 19,000 Glowing Reviews for My Business. Here Are the Strategies That Made It Possible.

Learning to see what skeptics can’t is the key to winning them over

I said earlier that I predicted carriers would eventually need something to recommend instead of roof replacements, and I was right. That’s because the number of roof replacements in the country was quickly getting out of control.

When I started out in roofing, somewhere between 3-5% of roofs in America were being replaced by insurance annually. Today, I’ve heard from various contacts that the number is closer to 1 in 3.

Early on, I noticed two major trends contributing to this dramatic increase, and neither of them had anything to do with storms getting worse:

1. Shingle quality was noticeably declining over time. Newer asphalt shingles were made with significantly less material than older ones and simply didn’t last as long as they used to.

2. Contractors started recommending full roof replacements anytime a roof had even minor damage. Many wanted to sell the solutions with the largest profit margins, even if they weren’t necessary.

The result of all this was the current insurance crisis. The costs for carriers to pay for all these replacements have become unsustainable, and if they raise premiums too much, homeowners become furious. So instead, many insurers have started looking for other options they can recommend.

Related: How 15 Years of Almost Failing Helped Me Find a Pathway to Success

All of which brings me back to this morning’s email. Insurance carriers, who used to be some of the hardest people for us to win over, are now embracing roof restoration and reaching out to us unprompted to learn more about the product they once ignored. As more of them come on board and accept our technology, we’re also seeing thousands of roofs being restored that would have been replaced just a few years ago.

So, the first step toward overcoming skeptics in your industry is to learn who doesn’t believe in you and why. Consider the problems they’re most likely to face in the future. Until then, work on proving your value to the people around them. When those headwinds eventually appear, you’ll go from being an option they never considered to being their ace in the hole.

Not everyone is going to love your business right away. That’s just a fact of life. But the way you engage with people who are initially skeptical can have a major impact on your eventual success.

This is especially true if you’re doing something relatively unprecedented, like pioneering a brand new category within an established industry. When I started Roof Maxx with my brother Todd, no one else had an eco-friendly roof restoration product for residential properties. And not everyone we pitched it to believed it would work.