Segment First, Then Measure
Reviewing storm, retail, and commercial deals together against one shared timeline produces a review that lies to you in both directions: a healthy retail pipeline looks stalled next to storm-speed benchmarks, and a normal, on-schedule commercial deal looks abandoned next to a retail cadence.
| Segment | Typical sales cycle | Review cadence that fits |
|---|---|---|
| Storm / restoration | 1 to 3 days, insurance-funded | Weekly, sometimes daily during an active event |
| Retail | 5 to 14 days, homeowner self-funded or financed | Weekly |
| Commercial | 3 to 12 months, committee decision | Monthly rollup, with milestone checks (vendor-list status, RFP stage) |
The Four Numbers That Matter
Inside each segment, track set rate (contacted homeowners who agree to a time), sit rate or show rate (of those, who is actually present), close rate (of sits, who signs), and cost per booked job (what you spent divided by how many of those actually closed). The largest US roofing companies close around 27% of estimates overall, and roofing sales teams generally land in the 20% to 40% range on estimates they actually sit, by industry estimate. The Lead Giants publishes its own claimed 70%-plus show rate and 25% close rate, a useful reference point, though it is a vendor-published figure rather than an independent audit.
A blended "conversion rate" across all four of these hides which stage actually broke. Reviewing them as four separate lines is what makes the review diagnostic instead of just descriptive.
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Book a Roofing CallReviewing a Bought-Appointment Vendor Inside Your Own Pipeline
If you buy appointments from an outside vendor, fold that vendor's numbers into the same weekly review rather than treating vendor performance as a separate report nobody reads. A weekly cadence matched to weekly, receipts-backed billing is what catches a vendor's sit rate or close rate drifting before a full month of spend has already gone out the door. Waiting for a monthly invoice to notice a problem means a month of paying for appointments that were already trending soft.
What a Slipping Number Actually Tells You
- Set rate flat, sit rate falling. The confirmation step is the problem, not lead quality. Check whether the second confirmation checkpoint is actually happening before the scheduled time.
- Sit rate healthy, close rate falling. The appointments are real and the homeowners are showing up. The problem is downstream, in the pitch, the pricing, or how the estimate itself is being run.
- Set rate itself falling. The problem is upstream of confirmation entirely, in list quality, targeting, or the intake script's ability to actually book a time rather than just gather interest.
Cadence: Weekly vs. Monthly
Weekly reviews fit storm work and any bought-appointment vendor relationship, because both move fast enough that a monthly check catches problems too late. Commercial pipeline benefits from a monthly rollup instead, with milestone checks (has the account moved from cold outreach to vendor-list status, has an RFP opened) standing in for the weekly funnel numbers that would otherwise show no movement at all over a 3 to 12 month cycle. Running commercial deals through a weekly numeric review invites the wrong conclusion: that nothing is happening, when in a 6-month cycle, nothing happening in week 3 is normal.
What this means for you
- Separate storm, retail, and commercial deals before reviewing any number. A shared timeline makes a healthy pipeline look broken in one direction and a broken one look fine in the other.
- Track set rate, sit rate, and close rate as three distinct numbers. A blended conversion rate cannot tell you whether the problem is qualification, confirmation, or the pitch itself.
- Match review cadence to segment: weekly for storm and any bought-appointment vendor, monthly rollups with milestone checks for commercial.
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.
- RoofLink, roofing industry statistics (close rate benchmark)
- The Lead Giants, roofing appointments pricing and published show/close rates
- The Roof Strategist, storm vs. retail roofing sales
- GhostRep, roofing lead cost benchmarks