Start With the Criteria, Not the Pitch
An intake script is not a sales pitch. It is a qualification checklist wearing a conversational script. Before a single word about your company gets said, the script needs to confirm the same four things any appointment vendor would sign off on at kickoff: roof age, storm or hail damage status, whether the person on the phone actually owns the home and can say yes, and whether the address sits inside your service area. Skip any one of those and you are booking on hope, not criteria.
Storm and Restoration: Insurance-Fluent Questions
Storm and restoration homeowners are usually deciding fast, often within 1 to 3 days of a hail or wind event, and the questions that matter are insurance-specific: is there an active claim, has an adjuster already been out, is the homeowner aware of a contingency agreement and what it means. This is not back-office trivia on storm work. It is core to whether the appointment is real.
One line belongs in every storm script, stated as policy, not left to a rep's judgment: never offer, imply, or discuss covering or waiving the homeowner's deductible. It is illegal in a minimum of 28 states. Texas has treated it as a crime since September 1, 2019, with homeowners involved facing potential misdemeanor charges, up to 180 days in jail, and fines up to $2,000. Colorado's SB 38 (2012) makes it illegal for a roofing contractor to pay, waive, or rebate a homeowner's deductible at all. If your storm script implies a discount tied to the deductible in any state, rewrite it before it goes back into rotation.
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Book a Roofing CallRetail: Filtering Tire Kickers Without Sounding Pushy
Retail homeowners are self-funded or financed, researching on their own timeline, and typically comparing two or three bids over a 5 to 14 day window. The intake script here is less about urgency and more about genuine intent: is the homeowner actually planning to move forward this cycle, or gathering numbers with no near-term plan to act. Questions about timeline, financing status, and whether other bids are already in hand surface that difference without sounding like a cross-examination. Retail homeowners respond to brand, warranty, and financing detail more than to speed, so the script should let those points land rather than rushing past them to get to a booked time.
Commercial: You Are Not Talking to the Homeowner
Commercial roofing intake is a different exercise entirely. The buyer is a property manager, facility director, or asset manager, not a homeowner, and the sales cycle runs 3 to 12 months, sometimes through a committee. An "appointment" in this segment often means getting on a vendor list or securing a walk-the-property meeting, not booking a same-week close. The script needs to confirm the contact has actual authority over roofing decisions (or knows who does), the property's roof type and rough age or lifecycle stage (TPO and metal roofs run 20 to 30 year lifecycles), and whether there is an active budget cycle or RFP process underway. Quality Contact Solutions runs a dedicated commercial-roofing-appointments practice built around exactly this distinction, evidence that the buyer-identification step is the real qualification bar in this segment, not the roof itself.
What Every Script Needs Regardless of Segment
- Explicit agreement to a specific date and time, not a vague "someone will follow up." A soft "sounds good" is not a booked appointment.
- Service area confirmation against your actual footprint, not just a city name.
- A documented record of what was said and agreed to. That documentation is also what makes a call defensible under TCPA consent rules, and it is the paper trail behind a receipts-backed billing relationship if you are buying appointments from an outside vendor.
What this means for you
- An intake script is a qualification checklist first and a pitch second. Roof age, damage status, homeowner status, and service area get confirmed before anything else.
- Never offer, imply, or discuss covering a homeowner's deductible in a storm script. It is illegal in at least 28 states, including Texas and Colorado by name.
- Storm, retail, and commercial scripts need different questions because the buyer, timeline, and definition of "qualified" are different in each segment.
Sources
The external data in this guide draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- The Roof Strategist, storm vs. retail roofing sales
- Abstrakt Marketing Group, commercial roofing leads
- Texas Department of Insurance, state law cracks down on roof scams
- Colorado Roofing Association, waiving insurance deductibles is illegal
- Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, assignment of benefits resources