Estimate Follow-Up & Decision Recovery
Every estimate gets a value, an age, an owner and a dated next action, and the follow-up branches on why the homeowner has not decided.
- Tier
- Growth
- Build order
- 3rd of 7 for roofing and exteriors
- Shape of it
- 10 steps, 1 decision point, 2 escalation rules
- At launch
- Runs supervised, with you approving what goes out
The problem this solves
The failure chain is identical in almost every shop and it is an ownership problem rather than a sales problem.
An estimate is written. The homeowner says they want to think about it, or wait for the adjuster, or get another quote. It is marked pending. No employee owns the next contact. One automated reminder goes out. It ages out of the working view. The homeowner proceeds with the contractor who called back.
And "let me think about it" is at least five different problems:
Price. The number is real. The answer is financing or a different material specification, not a discount.
The insurance process. They are waiting on an adjuster, or confused about their deductible, or unsure what their carrier covers. The answer is clarity about the process, never a claim about the outcome.
A second quote. They are comparing two documents that describe different scopes. The answer is a like-for-like comparison, which usually favours the more complete estimate.
Trust. They have heard about storm-chasers and do not know if you are one. The answer is licence, insurance, local address, manufacturer certification and references.
Timing. They are waiting for a bonus, a tax refund, or the end of the season. The answer is a date, not a nudge.
All five get "just following up on that estimate", if they get anything.
How it works, step by step
Every wait, threshold and branch below is a value we set with you during the build, against your stages and your language. None of it is a default we impose.
- What starts it
- It decides something
- It escalates to a person
Step 1Trigger
The estimate is created before the rep leaves, carrying value, retail or insurance path, urgency, and whether financing was discussed.
Step 2
It is assigned an owner by name. Not a queue.
Step 3
Same day, the homeowner receives the estimate with the scope laid out, the photographs attached, and financing shown as a monthly figure beside the total.
Step 4
The system tracks whether it was opened. Unopened after twenty-four hours is a different problem from opened and ignored, and gets a call rather than another message.
Step 5Escalation
At the first branch point the homeowner is asked one question rather than nudged: what is the part you are still weighing? The answer routes the sequence.
Step 6Branch
Each branch has its own content, approved by the owner. The insurance branch explains the process and never predicts an outcome.
Step 7
Insurance-path estimates carry their own timeline, because the homeowner is genuinely waiting on a third party and chasing them weekly is counterproductive. The sequence tracks the adjuster milestone instead.
Step 8Escalation
Anything above an agreed value with no response escalates to a live call from the owner or sales manager, with the value attached.
Step 9
A stop condition ends everything when the homeowner signs, declines, or asks not to be contacted.
Step 10
Every closed estimate gets a reason code, reviewed monthly.
How it gets built
Built inside what you already run
- JobNimbus
- AccuLynx
- Roofr
- Leap
- or whatever your office already runs on
Nothing to log into and nothing to license. If a system needs a record your platform does not hold, we add the field to your platform rather than starting a second one beside it.
This is the actual build order, in the phases its own steps fall into. It runs in supervised mode first, with you approving what goes out, until you are happy with the tone.
- 1
Agree
Agree the fields that make an estimate complete and make it impossible to save without them.
The thresholds, the wording and the names are yours. We write them down with you and get the consequential ones signed off.
- 2
Build
Name the owner for each estimate type. This is the step that decides whether any of it works.
Built inside the software you already run, against your stages and your language.
- 3
Build
Build the good, better, best presentation with financing per option.
- 4
Build
Build open-tracking and the two responses that follow.
- 5
Agree
Write the five branches with the owner, including exactly what is said about insurance, which must describe process only.
- 6
Build
Build the insurance-path timeline separately from the retail one.
- 7
Agree
Set the escalation threshold.
- 8
Build
Build stop conditions and test them before going live.
- 9
Agree
Agree reason codes and diarise the monthly review.
- 10
Prove
Load the existing open estimate backlog on day one and work it by hand.
It runs with a person approving what goes out until you are happy with the tone. Nothing sends unreviewed on day one.
What changes after it goes live
How it runs today
The failure chain is identical in almost every shop and it is an ownership problem rather than a sales problem.
After this one is live
No estimate sits without an owner and a date. Open estimate value becomes visible by age band, usually for the first time. And the conversation changes from "did you think any more about it" to an answer to the specific thing that stopped them.
How to measure whether it worked
Your arithmeticRun with your numbers, not ours
Pull every open and lost estimate from the last twelve months and total by age band: nought to two days, three to seven, eight to thirty, thirty-one and over. Apply the company's own close rate to those that received no second contact. That is the pool, and it is typically the largest number in this playbook.
We agree the baseline before anything is built, and we do not take credit for things that were going to happen anyway. There is no figure on this page claiming what we have produced for somebody else, because there is no verified figure to publish.
What we will not do
This is from the same delivery document as everything above it. It is on the page because a supplier who has not thought about it will not tell you, and you would find out later.
Insurance is the line that matters most in this trade.
- No system makes any claim, prediction or representation about an insurance outcome. Not approval likelihood, not supplement acceptance, not what an adjuster will decide, not what a policy covers. Systems document conditions and route information. They do not influence claims.
- Several states regulate what a contractor may say and do regarding a homeowner's insurance claim, including rules on acting as a public adjuster and on advertising around deductibles. Every template touching insurance requires review by the contractor's own counsel in every state they work.
- Never suggest, imply or automate anything relating to deductible waiving or absorption. It is illegal in many states.
United States messaging rules apply in full. Automated SMS sits inside the TCPA and carrier A2P 10DLC registration.
- Classify every system as service or marketing before it sends. A schedule confirmation and a storm-season promotion are different things under different consent standards.
- Storm-event reactivation is the highest-risk system in this playbook, because address-based outreach after a disaster is exactly what regulators and homeowners associate with storm-chasers. It must go only to past customers with an existing relationship, it must be framed as an inspection offer to people whose roof the company installed, and it must never go to a purchased storm list.
- Consent recorded per number with date, source, wording and scope.
- Quiet hours 8am to 9pm in the recipient's local time.
- Honour STOP and free-text opt-outs immediately, cancel queued messages, and propagate suppression across every sending system.
- Route replies to a monitored human queue. A reply saying water is coming in is not a marketing response.
Nothing here is legal advice. State contractor law, insurance regulation, telemarketing statutes and municipal permit rules can each add requirements.
Nothing here is legal advice. Rules in this area have moved more than once recently, and every template that states a commercial term or a guarantee goes to your own counsel before it goes live.
Seven systems forroofing and exteriors.
We build one at a time and prove it moved before starting the next. The tiers are the dependency order, not a price list.
Tier 1Foundational
Nothing arrives late or unowned. These come first because everything above them assumes they are true.
- 1Storm-Ready Capture, Triage & Instant ResponseFastest visible result, and it survives the first storm Monday, which is when the owner decides whether any of this was real.
- 2Inspection Preparation, Arrival & Complete CaptureProtects the most expensive hour in the sales process and makes the estimate possible.
Tier 2Growth
The recoverable money. These work the pools the foundational systems have made visible for the first time.
- 3Estimate Follow-Up & Decision Recoveryyou are hereUsually the single largest recoverable pool.
- 4Production Control, Change Orders & SupplementsStops the margin loss and captures supplements at tear-off.
Tier 3Flagship
One connected system end to end, plus what the owner reads on a Monday. Only once the pieces are proven individually.
The tiers are the dependency order for roofing and exteriors, not a price list. Most firms do not start at the first one, because the order is a default and the call is where it gets changed.
A note on sequencing this trade
Season note. Build Tier 1 in the shoulder season and let it run through one storm event before starting Tier 2. A contractor who sees System 1 hold on the Monday after hail will build the rest without being sold again.
Back to the roofing and exteriors overview for the stage map and where these fit.
Is this the oneyou need first?
Often it is not. On the call we look at what is actually costing you most right now, which is frequently a different system from the one that brought you to this page. If there is nothing worth building yet, we will say so.