Roofer MBA — 128 plays for the business side of a roofing company. Free to read, no account, nothing for sale. What this is →
Taking On an Insurance Job
Module 9 · Sales & Leads · Play 12 of 14
The problem in one breath
On an insurance job somebody else decides what your work is worth, pays on their own schedule, and has no interest in your margin — and most roofers agree to all of that without ever deciding whether they wanted the job on those terms.
Why it happens
Claim work looks like free money: the homeowner is not spending their own cash, so the price objection disappears. What is invisible up front is the time — the education, the line-by-line fight over what was left out, the weeks of back-and-forth before a shingle moves. In a market with real storms and somebody in your shop who knows claims, that time is well paid. In a market with a storm every few years and nobody who owns the process, it is the least profitable work in the building.
The play
Decide whether this is a business you are in, before the phone rings. Storm frequency in your market, the systems on the roofs, how your local carriers behave, and whether you have a person who can learn the claim process and give it real hours — the week after a hailstorm is not the week to work that out (Play 11, "When the Storm Hits"). If you are picking claims up sideways between re-roofs, be honest that you are letting someone else set your profit on those jobs.
Fork it at the first conversation: contingency, or normal customer. Either they handle their carrier themselves and you sell them a roof like anyone else — your estimate, your deposit, your payment terms, their claim is their business — or they sign a one-page contingency and you work the claim with them. Plain version of that trade: you get them whole for whatever they need to be whole for, and then you get to do the job. Have your own attorney write the page.
Never let a finished job become an insurance job. If the first you hear about a claim is after the roof is on, the answer is that the work is done, the payment is due, and you never agreed to wait on a company you have no agreement with. Ask at the start whether anyone is filing.
Do not send your estimate first. Wait for the carrier's, then go through it line by line, quantity by quantity, and list what is missing. Their first number is an opening position, and leading with your own hands them the frame (Module 10, Play 5, "The Carrier's Estimate Is Written in Software — Learn to Read It").
Fight it out before anybody touches the roof. Supplement with the missing items and attach the reason each one is required — the local code provision or the manufacturer's install specification, cited. Once the roof is finished your leverage is gone and you are asking a favor (Module 6, Play 8, "The Carrier's First Number Is a Starting Point, Not the Check").
Collect the whole deductible, always, and never pad the price by it. A shop offering to waive it is going to take that money out of the roof — thinner material, missing components, cheaper labor — and say so plainly to the homeowner, because they are being sold something dangerous dressed as a discount (Module 6, Play 16, "When They Ask You to Eat the Deductible, Have Your Answer Ready").
Know your settle-or-walk line before you are tired. Two questions: does this make the customer whole, and is it enough to build the roof properly? Yes to both, settle — you do not win every line. No, and it will not move: tell them straight that they are getting shorted, point them at a public adjuster, and step off the claim rather than build an underfunded roof.
Do this this week
Write down, in one line, whether your shop takes claim work — and if it does, who in the building owns the claim from first call to final check. If the answer is "whoever is around," that is why the last one lost money.
The tool
Before you take an insurance job — the fork, and the never list.
INSURANCE JOB — SETTLE THIS FIRST
ASK AT THE FIRST CALL
"Is anyone filing a claim on this?"
A job that becomes a claim after it's built is a job
you're financing for free.
THE FORK
[ ] NO CONTINGENCY — normal customer. Our estimate,
our deposit, our payment terms. Their claim is
their business.
[ ] CONTINGENCY SIGNED — we work the claim with them.
One page, written by OUR attorney.
No extra charge beyond the claim except upgrades.
The job is ours if the claim funds it.
THE ORDER OF OPERATIONS
1. Inspect and document everything, same as any job
2. Wait for THEIR estimate. Don't send ours first.
3. Line by line: quantities, measurements, what's missing
4. Supplement BEFORE any work, with code or manufacturer
spec attached to every item
5. Settle, or walk and hand them a public adjuster
NEVER
[ ] Waive or discount the deductible
[ ] Pad the price by the deductible
[ ] Start work and supplement afterward
[ ] Wait on a carrier you have no agreement with
Who in our shop owns claims: ________________
If your crew is 1099
Claim jobs pay late and start slow, and neither of those facts reaches the sub crew — their money is due on your terms the week they finish (Module 12, Play 5, "Pay the Day You Said and You Get First Call After the Storm"). Do not let claim work and financed work stack into the same month unless you have already priced what that costs you in cash (Play 10, "Financing Makes You the Bank").
One more thing: this play is how we run a shop — it's not legal advice. Rules change by state and by contract, so before you act on the legal-sounding parts, run them past your own attorney or accountant. It's your business, and what you do with any of this is your call and your responsibility.
M9-12 · Taking On an Insurance Job — Roofer MBA, https://roofermba.com/plays/sales-leads/the-insurance-job
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Same fire
The homeowner wants to run it through insurance
- M9-12taking on an insurance job — you’re here
Fixed this?
Take the claim job and the next fight is the carrier's first number, which is a starting point and not the check.
The fire right behind it is usually The adjuster's number came in way under the job.