I had five reps and needed to know what happened at the door

I'm Jordan Andreassen, a roofing sales manager. I had five guys, and I got tired of training new reps to knock doors, then hearing they were knocking with no way to verify it. I needed to see the doors they worked, give them clear targets, and help them find areas with a higher chance of hail damage.

That's where StormLens started.

The map and the door knocking belonged together

I'd used a variety of weather services. The data was often inconsistent or unclear, and none of them effectively combined weather data with canvassing. For a door-to-door storm roofing contractor, those are parts of the same day's work.

I wanted to show NOAA's own radar data without re-modeling or re-scoring it ourselves. Contractors, adjusters and inspectors could use it to support what they found on site.

I also didn't like handing over reports that advertised the weather service instead of my company. When I'm putting together an evidence package for a homeowner to submit to their insurance carrier, I want my company's name and logo on it. That mattered enough to build it into StormLens, including reports on the free plan.

A few days that shaped the app

One day I needed to follow up with a lot of homeowners in a storm-impacted area. That became saved lists and routes. I could circle the area, gather my follow-ups and prior inspections into a list, and get directions between them.

Storm alerts and the prospect list came from the same kind of need. After a storm, I wanted to work down a list of people whose properties were in the affected area, call them back, and mark them off as I went. I built the list around doing that work.

The Goal Calculator came out of a conversation with a rep who was discouraged by poor results at the door. We sat down and entered his revenue from prior customers, his income target, and his success rates for appointments and the other steps along the way.

His numbers worked out to 13 doors a day, five days a week. That was his target based on his own prior performance, not a promise about what 13 doors will earn anyone else. But it gave us something specific to work toward. We could talk about the doors he needed to knock and how those fit the income he wanted.

I remember starting without any tools

When I was a new rep, my company didn't provide field tools. They didn't know of any or supply any. It was go out, knock, and hope for the best. I couldn't afford my own tools until later in my roofing career.

The hardest part was knowing whether the time and energy I was putting in would pay off, or whether I was just spinning my wheels. I care about this industry and people's success. I want a new rep to have a way to track the work and set goals from prior performance without first finding money for another monthly bill.

That's why there's a free plan.

Dominating a single neighborhood is better than popping roofs off randomly around you. Keep track of the conversations. Know who needs a follow-up. Give yourself a chance to serve the homeowners in a storm-impacted area instead of moving on and forgetting them.

My dad and I

StormLens is our family-owned, father-and-son company in Claremont, North Carolina. My dad has years of experience in SaaS and CRM software. We used that experience to design the customer and sales management side of the app, alongside what I needed in the field.

I built StormLens because I needed these tools for my own team. I hope they help you make better use of the time you put in at the door.