The estimates that
just went quiet.

What it tends to cost

Be careful with the statistics you'll find here. Nobody has published an honest figure for how many touches a roofing estimate needs, so treat any number you see on a vendor's blog as marketing. Roofr suggests a 30 to 50% close rate on qualified leads, and that's a target they'd like you to hit rather than a measurement of what shops do.

What I can tell you is what the shape of the leak looks like. An estimate sitting untouched for two weeks is usually gone, and most shops can't say how many of those they have without going and counting.

On options and financing there's better evidence, though it comes from the next trade over. In an ACCA study of HVAC contractors, the ones who offered financing on every job financed 35% of sales, against 17% for the ones who offered it only sometimes. Same homeowners, same neighborhoods, different habit.

A better plan

Write the follow-up schedule down and run it whether anyone feels like it or not. Day 3, day 10, day 30, with each note saying something new, stopping the second they answer. The schedule matters more than the wording, because the thing that kills estimates is silence rather than a bad pitch.

Put two options and a monthly payment on every retail estimate. Not because you want to sell the expensive one, but because a single price is a yes-or-no question and two prices is a which-one question.

Know your close rate by lead source. A shop that closes 40% of referrals and 12% of paid leads is running two different businesses and should probably stop funding one of them.

Check this yourself this week

In AccuLynx or JobNimbus, filter open estimates to no activity in 14 days. Sort oldest first. Add up the contract values.

That total is not money you lost, and I want to be clear about that. Plenty of those homeowners were never going to sign. But it's the pool the leak comes out of, and most owners are surprised by how big the pool is.

The napkin version

Ten minutes with your own numbers, no spreadsheet needed:

Open estimates with no activity in 14 days, times a share you believe would sign with a real follow-up (start at one in twenty), times your average retail job, times your gross margin.

Count a job you didn't sell at gross profit, because you never bought the materials. Count money you already earned at full value.

It'll be rough. That's the point. A rough number you worked out yourself is worth more than a precise one somebody sold you.

What the assessment does differently

The number above is a pool, not a loss. The Leak Assessment takes your actual close rate, your average retail job and your gross margin, and works out what a real follow-up routine would be worth in your shop, counted at the low end and shown line by line. You can argue with any assumption and I'll rerun it while you watch.

Haven't taken the scorecard yet? It's twelve questions and about three minutes.