The roofing cold call has a temptation no other home-services call has. Somewhere behind the homeowner is an insurer, and the fastest way to book an appointment is to imply that the insurer is going to pay for a new roof. Floors that give in to that book more inspections for a month, then spend a year answering complaints, cancellations and the occasional letter from a regulator.
So the first design decision in this script is a constraint: the setter sells an inspection, describes the roof only in terms of what is actually known about it, and never discusses the claim. Everything below follows from that. It is written for setters on a roofing floor — people whose output is a held inspection — and it splits into two calls, because the storm call and the aging-roof call open on different facts and fail in different ways. The general skeleton of a setter call is in our solar cold call script; this page assumes it and goes narrower.
Disclosure: Scout Data is our product. The detail these openers depend on — which streets sat inside a hail or wind footprint, on what date, and how old the last roofing permit on a home is — is what our homeowner files put on the setter’s screen before the dial. The lines work with that detail from any source; they do not work without it.
The compliance and insurance lines here are operational practice, not legal advice and not claims advice. What a contractor may say about a policyholder’s claim is restricted by state law in several states. Have the script reviewed by your own counsel before it goes on a floor.
What is actually for sale
A roofing setter is selling twenty minutes of a qualified person’s time on a ladder, at no cost, with an honest verdict at the end. That is the whole offer, and it is a good one — most homeowners have no idea what is on their roof and no easy way to find out. The call goes wrong when the setter tries to sell something bigger: a replacement, a claim, a payment. None of those can be sold on the phone, and attempting to costs the appointment that could have been booked instead.
That also settles the vocabulary. Say inspection, never estimate. Say inside the hail footprint, never hail damage, until someone has stood on the roof. Say the last roofing permit we can see, never your roof is eighteen years old, because no county records a roof’s age and a permit is a record of the last permitted work, not of the shingles.
The storm call
This call exists for a window after a hail or wind event, and the homeowner already knows a storm came through. The opener’s job is to connect the event to their street and get out of the way.
“Hi, is this [first name]? [Name] with [company], calling about your place on [street]. Your block was inside the hail footprint from the storm on the [date] — we’ve been out looking at roofs in [neighbourhood] since. Has anyone been up on yours yet?”
Three things are doing the work. The date and the street prove the call is about this address. “Inside the footprint” is a true statement about where hail fell, and it stops short of a claim about this roof. And “has anyone been up on yours” is a question the homeowner can answer without deciding anything — which is what earns the next thirty seconds.
Then the permission line, and the one qualifying question that matters on a storm call:
“I’m not going to sell you anything on this call. We’re booking free inspections on the streets that were in the footprint — someone comes out, gets on the roof, takes photos, and tells you straight whether there’s anything up there or not. If there isn’t, you’ll know that too. Is this your place, or are you renting?”
Ownership is the gate. A tenant cannot authorise a roof and cannot file a claim on one, and a storm file built from address-matched phones will hand a floor a steady stream of them. Log “renter” as its own outcome rather than as “not interested,” because a high renter share is a fact about the file, not the script.
The close is a time, close to the call, with a reason for the timing that is true: crews are in the neighbourhood now, and inspections booked this week are inspections that actually happen.
“[Inspector] is on [street] on Thursday and Saturday — would the morning or the afternoon be easier for you? It takes about twenty minutes and you don’t need to be on the roof, just around.”
Notice what the storm call never said: damage, claim, deductible, adjuster, covered, free roof. If the homeowner says any of those words first, the response is the same every time, and it is in the boundary section below.
The aging-roof call
No event, no shared context, no urgency the homeowner already feels. This call has to build its own reason for happening, and the only honest material for that is something specific and checkable about the house.
“Hi, is this [first name]? [Name] with [company]. I’m calling about [street] — we do a lot of roofs in [neighbourhood], and from the permit record the last roofing work we can see on your place was back in [year]. Is that about right, or has it been done since?”
The question at the end is not decoration. Permit records miss unpermitted work, and a homeowner who says “no, we did it in 2019” has just corrected the file — that gets logged and the call ends politely, and the record is better for it. A homeowner who says “that sounds right” has just confirmed the one fact the rest of the call rests on.
The permission line on this call is the same as the storm call’s, but the qualifying questions are different, because there is no clock running and the closer needs to know whether one is about to start:
- “Any leaks, or anything you’ve noticed — shingles in the yard, that kind of thing?” A yes changes the tone of the appointment; a no is not a disqualifier.
- “Are you planning to be in the house a while, or is a sale on the horizon?” A roof sells before a listing and a roof sells after a purchase; the answer tells the closer which conversation to bring.
- “Would it be just you deciding, or is there someone else you’d want there?” Same reason as every setter call — find the second decision-maker now.
The close leans on the age of the roof and the fact that knowing is free, not on a deadline: “Most people your roof’s age want to know where it stands before it decides for them. [Inspector] can walk it this week, no cost, and you’ll get the photos either way — Tuesday evening or Saturday morning?”
Which streets to make this call on is a targeting problem more than a script problem. The observed interval between roofing permits on the same home runs from an 8-year median in Ohio to 16 in Florida, so “old” is a state-by-state threshold — how to find homes with old roofs covers building the file, and how to sell a roof without a storm covers what the closer does after the setter’s job is done.
The boundary: what the phone never crosses
Homeowners in a storm footprint have often already talked to a neighbour, an adjuster, or a rep from another company, and they will bring the insurance question to the call. The script’s answer is the same regardless of how the question is phrased:
“Honestly, that’s between you and your insurer, and I’d be guessing if I said anything about it. What we can do is give you a straight read on the roof, with photos, so you know whether it’s even a question worth asking them. That part’s free either way.”
Specifically, a setter on this script never says:
- That the roof is damaged, or probably damaged, or that “most roofs on the street are.” Nobody on the call has seen it.
- That insurance will, should, or usually does pay for a roof. What a policy covers is not something the setter knows.
- Anything about the deductible — paying it, waiving it, absorbing it, or “working with” it. This is the line that ends careers, and in a number of states it is prohibited outright.
- That the company is calling on behalf of, or in coordination with, an insurer, a utility, or a government programme. It is not.
- “Free roof.” The inspection is free. The roof is never free, and “free” is the word the homeowner remembers when the paperwork arrives.
- Anything after “take me off your list,” beyond confirming that it is done.
Setters push back on this list because the forbidden lines work. They do — for a month. The floor that runs them books a wave of inspections that produce claims that produce disputes, and the homeowner who was promised a free roof and got a denied claim tells the whole street. The operational side of what happens once a claim is open is in insurance restoration sales process; none of it belongs on the setter’s call.
Pushback, and the reply that keeps the door open
- “The adjuster already came out.” Do not argue with what the adjuster found. “That’s good, you’re ahead of most of the street. A second set of eyes doesn’t cost anything and you get your own photos — want us to walk it while we’re in the area?”
- “We already had a roofer look.” “Then you’re already moving, which is the right call. Mind if I ask what they told you?” A homeowner comparing is a homeowner who has decided to act.
- “How do you know about my roof?” Answer it straight: “Roofing permits are public record, and the storm footprint is from weather data — we’re calling owners on [street] about it.” A dodge here ends the call; an honest answer usually does not.
- “It’s fine, no leaks.” “Most aren’t leaking yet — that’s the point of looking before it does. Twenty minutes, photos either way, and if it’s fine you’ve got that in writing.”
- “I can’t afford a roof right now.” “Nobody’s asking you to buy one today. The inspection is free, and if the roof has years left in it, that’s the answer you want.” Never quote a price or a payment; the closer has not measured the roof.
- “You’re the fourth company to call.” After a big event, true. “I believe it. I’ll be brief: we’re local, here’s our address, and the inspection is free with the photos going to you. If you’ve already got someone you trust on it, I’ll leave you be.”
The pattern across all of them is agree, then split — separate “never” from “not now,” and treat only the first as the end of the call. The deeper treatment of objections that are concerns rather than reflexes is in rebuttals and objection handling, and it transfers to roofing almost line for line.
Voicemail and the confirmation text
Most dials do not connect. The voicemail carries the opener and a callback path and nothing else:
“Hi [first name], [name] with [company] — calling about [street] and the storm that came through on the [date]. Nothing urgent, and no obligation. I’ll try you again [day], or you can reach me on [number]. Thanks.”
Once an inspection is booked, the confirmation text goes out within the hour, and it repeats the three things that make the appointment hold: the day and window, the inspector’s name, and the promise that the homeowner gets the photos whatever the verdict. A held inspection is the setter’s real output; a booked one is a claim.
When the script is fine and the list is not
A roofing floor is unusual in that its file can go stale in days. A storm list worked three weeks late has been called by every roofer in a four-hour radius, and no script survives being the ninth call. Before rewriting lines, check the file: how old is the footprint, what share of dials reach a renter, and how often the homeowner corrects the permit date. If those are the problems, the fix is upstream — storm damage leads covers working a footprint while it is fresh and DNC scrubbing for roofing and HVAC covers the scrub that has to happen before any of it reaches a dialer.
Judge the script itself the way any setter script is judged: held inspections per right-party conversation, never bookings alone, with wrong-party and renter logged as their own outcomes so the file’s failures are not charged to the lines.
Frequently asked questions
Can a setter tell a homeowner their roof has hail damage?
Not from a phone. A storm footprint says where hail fell; it says nothing about any one roof, and a setter who has not been on the roof cannot know. The honest line is “your street was inside the hail footprint on the [date]” — and the entire point of the call is to book the person who can look. Claiming damage that nobody has seen is how a floor earns a reputation as a storm chaser before the first truck rolls.
Should the roofing cold call mention insurance at all?
Only to decline to discuss it. A setter is not positioned to say what a policy covers, whether a claim is worth filing, or what an adjuster will approve, and any of those statements made on a recorded line is a liability for the company. If the homeowner raises it, the script hands it back: “That’s between you and your insurer — what we can do is give you an honest read on the roof so you know whether it’s even a question.”
What is the setter booking — an estimate or an inspection?
An inspection, and the word matters. An estimate implies the homeowner has decided to buy something; an inspection implies someone is going to look and tell them the truth, which is a much easier yes and is also what actually happens. On a roof that turns out to be fine, the inspection ends with “you’re good for a few years” — and that homeowner is the one who calls back when it is not.
How is this different from the solar cold call script?
The solar script has one product and one appointment. Roofing has two very different calls — one anchored on a weather event the homeowner already knows about, one on a roof’s age they may not have thought about — and a boundary the solar script never has to worry about: money that might come from an insurer. The skeleton (opener, permission, qualify, close) is shared; the lines are not.