This is an operational description of how a restoration sale moves, written for the contractor’s field and sales side. It is not legal advice, not claims advice, and not public adjusting. What a contractor may do or say on a policyholder’s claim is restricted by licensing law in several states; confirm your own rules with your own counsel before adopting any step here.
A retail roofing sale has two parties. A restoration sale has three, and the third one — the carrier — sets the timeline, writes the scope, and holds the money. Contractors who sell restoration badly are almost always contractors who behave as though there were two parties: they promise the homeowner what the carrier will do, and then the carrier does something else.
So this page is organised around ownership. Nine stages, and at each one, what the contractor does and what stays with the homeowner and the adjuster. The stages the contractor owns are where the sale is actually won; the stages it does not own are where reputations are lost. It is a sibling to roofing insurance supplement basics, which goes deep on stage eight, and it starts where how to canvass after a hailstorm ends — at a homeowner who has said yes to a look.
The nine stages, and who owns each
| Stage | The contractor does | Stays with the homeowner or carrier |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Inspection | Gets on the roof, photographs the condition with scale, gives an honest verdict | Nothing yet — the homeowner has made no decision |
| 2. Findings | Shows the photos, explains what was found in plain terms | Whether it is worth calling the insurer — the homeowner’s call |
| 3. The claim | Provides the photo set and the inspection notes on request | Filing, and every conversation with the carrier about coverage |
| 4. Adjuster visit | Is present to point out what was documented, where state law allows | The scope the adjuster writes, and what the carrier approves |
| 5. Agreement | A written contract, scope and terms in the form the state permits | The homeowner signs, or does not, in their own time |
| 6. Material and schedule | Colour, product, install date, what happens to the yard | Choices among what the approved scope allows |
| 7. Production | Builds the roof and photographs everything the tear-off reveals | Nothing — this is the contractor’s stage entirely |
| 8. Supplement | Documents the gap between the written scope and the roof found | Whether the carrier revises the scope |
| 9. Completion and invoice | Final photos, invoice, completion certificate | Release of any remaining claim funds, on the carrier’s terms |
Read the right-hand column as the list of things the sales process must not promise. Every one of them is a decision someone else makes, on someone else’s schedule, with information the contractor does not have.
Stages 1–2: the part that is entirely yours
The inspection is the sale. Not a step towards it — the sale. A homeowner who watches a rep get on the roof, take forty photographs with a chalk circle for scale, come down and say “here’s what I found, here’s what I didn’t, here are the pictures either way” has already decided who they trust before anyone has mentioned an agreement.
The photo set taken here is also the file that every later stage runs on. The adjuster’s visit, the supplement and the final invoice all go back to it, so it is taken as though nobody will ever be on this roof again: a wide shot of each slope so every close-up can be located, close-ups with scale, the soft metals on the same elevation, and the date and location intact on every frame.
The findings conversation is where discipline shows. The rep describes what is in the photographs — bruised shingles on the west slope, granule loss, cracked pipe boots, a dented gutter — in plain words, and stops. What it means for a claim is not the rep’s to say. “Is this the kind of thing my insurance would cover?” gets the same answer every time: “That’s a question for them, and these photos are what you’d show them. I’d rather you had the honest picture than my guess.” On a roof with nothing on it, the conversation is shorter, and it ends with the photos handed over anyway.
Stages 3–4: the part that is not
Whether to call the insurer is the homeowner’s decision. The contractor’s role is to make the file ready if they do — the photo set, the date of the storm, the inspection notes — and to be reachable. It is not to file for them, to characterise the damage to the carrier, or to predict the outcome.
When an adjuster is scheduled, common practice in many markets is for the contractor to be present to walk the roof and point out what was documented, so nothing in the photo set is missed on a single visit. Whether you may be there and what you may say while you are is a state-law question; where it is permitted, the job is to show, not to argue. The adjuster writes the scope. Contractors who treat the adjuster’s visit as a negotiation lose the file’s credibility for every stage after it.
The homeowner hears from you during this stage even though nothing is happening. After a large event the carrier’s calendar can run to weeks, and silence from the contractor reads as neglect. A short message every few days — “no word from the adjuster yet, we’re ready when they are” — is the difference between a homeowner who waits and one who signs with the next company through the door.
Stage 5: the agreement
Restoration agreements are commonly written so that the work proceeds if and when the claim is approved, at the scope the carrier approves. Whether such an agreement is permitted, what it must say, and what cancellation rights the homeowner has are regulated differently by state — some states prescribe the language and the rescission window, several prohibit specific terms. Use the form your counsel has approved for that state and no other.
Operationally, the agreement is signed after the findings conversation and before the adjuster visit, in the homeowner’s own time, and with nothing in it that promises what the carrier will do. A rep who needs pressure to get it signed did not do stages one and two well enough.
Stages 6–7: back in your hands
Once a scope is approved, the homeowner’s choices are inside it — colour, product line, install date — and the sales conversation becomes a production one. The one selling moment left is the upgrade: a homeowner whose claim covers a like-for-like shingle may choose to pay the difference for a better one, and that difference is retail money, sold the retail way, with the homeowner paying it knowingly. Anything that blurs the line between what the claim pays and what the homeowner pays belongs to the deductible problem, and it is the one thing this process never touches.
Production photographs as it goes. The tear-off is the only moment the decking, the underlayment and any second layer are visible, and a supplement for any of them that is filed after the new roof is on is asking the carrier to pay for something nobody can inspect. Twenty minutes of photographs before the first sheet goes down is the cheapest insurance the job has.
Stage 8: the supplement
The adjuster wrote what could be seen from a ladder on one visit. The crew found the roof as it is. The supplement documents the difference — as a delta, never as a re-estimate, with each line justified by a concealed condition, a code requirement or an omitted necessity, and submitted in writing against the claim number. Roofing insurance supplement basics covers all of it, including why supplements fail on sequence far more often than on merit. On a team of any size this stage belongs to a production coordinator, not the rep who sold the job.
Stage 9: completion and the last payment
On many replacement-cost policies the carrier pays part of the claim up front and releases the remainder once the work is complete and invoiced — the mechanics vary by policy and carrier, and the contractor’s part is only to make completion provable: final photographs, a completion certificate, an invoice that matches the approved scope plus any approved supplement. The homeowner deals with the carrier on the release; the contractor makes that conversation short by having the paperwork right the first time.
Then the referral. A restoration customer who was told the truth at stage two, kept informed through stage four and invoiced cleanly at stage nine is the most valuable lead source on the street — and, unlike the footprint, does not expire.
The pipeline, measured by stage
Retail roofing tracks leads, appointments and closes. Restoration tracks a longer funnel with a gate the contractor does not control in the middle of it:
- Inspections held — the volume stage, fed by the canvass.
- Inspections with documented damage — the honesty stage. A rep whose share here approaches 100% is finding damage on every roof, which is not what roofs do.
- Agreements signed — the trust stage.
- Claims approved — the carrier’s stage. Track it, but do not manage a rep on it; they do not control it.
- Jobs built and collected — the only stage that pays, and the right one to commission on.
The two ratios worth watching are documented-damage-to-inspections, which catches over-selling, and approved-to-signed, which catches under-documenting. A team whose second ratio falls after a big event usually has a photography problem, not an adjuster problem.
Where the process starts
Every stage above assumes an inspection got booked, and inspections get booked on the streets the storm actually hit. Working a validated footprint rather than a county alert is what fills stage one with roofs a claim is plausible on — storm damage leads covers that targeting, and roofing sales scripts covers the door itself. What material the roof is made of changes what the inspection finds and what the scope allows; roofing material statistics has that distribution by state.
Disclosure: Scout Data is our product, and it sits entirely before stage one — hail and wind footprints on the map within hours of an event, permit history and roof material on each home, and contact matched to the owner on title. Nothing we sell touches the claim, the scope or the money, which are yours, the homeowner’s and the carrier’s in turn.
Frequently asked questions
What is the insurance restoration sales process?
The sequence a storm-damaged roof follows from a free inspection to a paid invoice, with an insurer’s claim running through the middle of it. It differs from a retail roofing sale in one structural way: the contractor controls the inspection, the build and the documentation, and does not control the timeline, the scope or the money. Selling well in restoration is mostly a matter of doing the first three superbly and never pretending to control the other three.
Can a roofing contractor handle the insurance claim for the homeowner?
What a contractor may do on a policyholder’s claim varies by state, and several states draw a hard line between documenting your own scope of work and negotiating or adjusting a claim on someone’s behalf — the latter generally reserved for licensed public adjusters or attorneys. Nothing here is legal advice. Get the rule for every state you work in from your own counsel before the process depends on it.
How long does a restoration sale take?
Longer than the sale, and the difference is the claim. The inspection and the findings happen in a day. Everything from the filing to the adjuster’s scope is on the carrier’s calendar, which after a large event can stretch to weeks. The contractor’s levers are keeping the file complete so nothing waits on them, and keeping the homeowner informed so the silence is not read as neglect.
What does a restoration sales rep actually get paid on?
On most restoration teams, on the job when it is built and collected — not on the signed agreement, because an agreement contingent on a claim that is denied is not a job. Pay plans that commission at signature produce reps who sign everything in the footprint; plans that commission at collection produce reps who inspect carefully and document well. The second kind is the one that survives a market.