Guide
Roofers lead qualification: repair, replace or refer on
Roofers lead qualification starts with one sort: is this a repair that has to be made safe now, a replacement the owner will weigh up for weeks, or a job that belongs to someone else? Storms send the first kind in bursts, replacement buyers arrive slowly all year, and each lane needs its own questions, its own follow-up and its own place in your marketing reports.
Pick the lane before you quote
A roofing enquiry usually describes a symptom. 'Water through the ceiling' could mean a blocked valley that needs clearing or a roof at the end of its life. So your first job on the phone is finding the lane, because each lane's buyer is making a different decision and expects a different response from you.
Repair buyers after a storm want the water stopped, and many are already talking to an insurer. Replacement buyers have time, and they'll use it to compare quotes and ask the neighbours who did their roof. The third lane is work you shouldn't take, and spotting it early saves a trip up the ladder.
Lanes can change mid-call. A caller ringing about one cracked tile may mention three earlier leaks and a sale next spring, which turns a repair into a replacement conversation. Record the lane you end the call on.
| Check | Urgent repair | Replacement or restoration | Refer on or decline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical enquiries | Hail or wind damage, a leak after heavy rain, lifted sheets, a blocked valley or gutter | Rusting metal, porous or cracked tiles, leaks that keep coming back, a planned sale or renovation | Cement sheet removal with no licensed removalist, recoat-only jobs outside your licence, suburbs you can't reach, DIY questions |
| What the buyer is deciding | Who can make it safe soon, and whether the insurer will pay | Whether to repair once more or replace, and who to trust with a big job | Who can legally take the job on, or get to them in time |
| Who else is involved | Insurer, assessor, property manager or tenant | Both owners, or a body corporate for townhouses | The SES, a licensed asbestos removalist, a painter or a closer roofer |
| Your first question | Is water coming in right now? | What's prompting the change, and when do you want it done? | Which suburb, and what exactly is the job? If it isn't yours, tell them who to call instead. |
| Who pays | Usually the insurer after an accepted claim, sometimes the owner for the excess or make-safe work | Usually the owner, or the body corporate when the roof is shared | Not your question to answer; point them to the right trade |
| What a good outcome looks like | A make-safe visit booked, then a permanent repair quoted against the insurer's scope | An inspection booked with every decision-maker able to attend or see the report | A fast, polite referral and a logged reason for the drop |
How owners decide between repairing and replacing
Few owners ring out of the blue for a new roof. The decision builds over repeated leaks or one bad storm, and most callers already lean one way. Your questions should find that view without arguing with it.
Decision rule: qualify the enquiry for an inspection, then let the inspection settle repair or replace. A quick patch promised on the phone, or a new roof pushed before you've seen the old one, costs trust. Before the visit, ask about these:
- Age and material. Metal rusting through or tiles that crack underfoot point toward replacement. A younger roof with a few broken tiles points to repair. Ask about salt exposure and overhanging trees too.
- Leak history. One leak after a storm is a different job from a leak that has been patched twice. Ask how many times it's been fixed and by whom, because repeat patching is often the moment an owner starts asking about replacement.
- Maintenance. The QBCC says it often gets complaints about roof leaks, and while some trace back to defective work, many come down to a lack of maintenance and cleaning. A first leak under full gutters is usually a repair lead.
- Insurance. Moneysmart says most home insurance covers storm damage, including hail, strong winds and rainwater. When an accepted claim involves repairs, the insurer's written scope of works sets out what gets repaired or replaced, so the owner's choice may already be partly made for them.
- Asbestos. The QBCC says properties built before 1990 are likely to contain asbestos, and that owners shouldn't try to remove it themselves. A cement sheet roof on an older house changes the whole job.
- Hidden cyclone damage. The QBCC recommends owners of older buildings get the roof framing inspected after a cyclone, and says roof repairs must meet current building codes. A 'few sheets' job can grow once someone checks the battens and tie-downs.
- Restoration versus replacement. On a tile roof, a restoration usually means cleaning, rebedding and repointing, swapping broken tiles and often a recoat, while a replacement means new cladding and sometimes new battens. Tag the two separately so you can see which one your marketing brings in and which turns into signed work.
- The owner's plans. Someone selling within months wants a sound roof and a clean report for buyers, while someone staying for decades weighs a longer-lasting result.
The first two minutes of a roofing call
Write the qualifying questions as words someone can say aloud, so whoever picks up the phone, from the owner on a ladder to an answering service, collects the same facts. Ask them in order and stop once you know whether the roof is yours to inspect. Everything else can wait for the site visit.
On a storm morning the phone rings faster than one person can answer, so plan the overflow before the season. Set the voicemail greeting to ask for the suburb, whether water is coming in now, and whether there's an insurance claim, so you can call back in priority order: water inside or an occupant at risk first, property manager work orders for serious leaks next, loose sheets or tiles after that, and replacement enquiries once the urgent list is clear. If you close the office or change your hours for a storm clean-up, Google Business Profile lets you set special hours for exceptional circumstances, so callers see when you're actually available.
The script below works for a phone call and translates into a short web form. On the form, keep the required fields to name, phone, suburb, roof material, what's happening and whether there's a claim, with an optional photo upload. Leave the build year and solar panels for the call.
- 'Is water coming in right now, or is anything loose on the roof?' The Queensland Government points people to the SES on 132 500 for help with a damaged roof, so if you can't attend soon, say so. If water has reached light fittings or power points, tell the caller to keep clear of them and call an electrician: the Queensland Government's electrical safety advice says not to use wet or damp electrical items.
- 'Which suburb is the house in?' Ask this second, so a caller outside your run hears it early and you both save time.
- 'Have you lodged an insurance claim, and has your insurer named a repairer?' Moneysmart tells owners to talk to their insurer before paying for temporary repairs, and notes that many insurers have preferred repairers who can arrange a roof tarp.
- 'What's the roof made of, and roughly when was the house built?' The material decides the licence class, and an older cement sheet roof puts asbestos on the table.
- 'Do you own the home, rent it, or manage it?' The RTA lists a serious roof leak and serious storm damage as emergency repairs in Queensland rentals, and tenants should first try the emergency contact on their tenancy agreement.
- 'Is there anything else on the roof, like solar panels or an air conditioner?' The Queensland Government's solar advice says close inspections of a system, including any that need someone on the roof, belong with someone qualified, such as a licensed electrician or an accredited installer.
- 'Can you send a couple of photos taken from the ground or inside?' They help you judge urgency without anyone climbing a ladder.
- For replacements only: 'Who else needs to be part of the decision, and how are you planning to pay for it?' Two owners, a body corporate committee or a lender can all add weeks, and an owner who hasn't thought about funding yet belongs in the nurture lane rather than the inspection diary.
- For replacements only: 'What's prompting it, and when would you like it done?' An owner getting ready to sell works to a different clock from one who's tired of patching leaks.
Turn the answers into a next action
The script only helps if each set of answers leads to the same decision every time. The table below turns them into five outcomes. Use them as tags in your job management system or spreadsheet, so every enquiry ends the call with one outcome and one reason.
The nurture outcome matters most for replacements. An owner saving up, waiting on a sale or waiting for a body corporate meeting is a real lead who isn't ready. Agree a check-in date on the call, note it, and send one useful follow-up, such as a summary of what you saw at the inspection. Before you email or text marketing to anyone, follow the ACMA's spam rules: you need consent, the message must identify your business with correct contact details, and an unsubscribe request must be honoured within five working days. Stop when the owner has chosen someone else, and log it as lost.
Log drop reasons too: a month of them tells you which ads, pages and sources send work you never wanted. When the same unwanted searches keep turning up, Google says negative keywords let you exclude search terms from your campaigns, so add terms such as 'DIY', 'roof paint kit', 'apprenticeship' and 'jobs'.
| Outcome | Signals from the call | What you do next |
|---|---|---|
| Book today | Water coming in now, inside your area, roof type you're licensed for, owner or insurer free to choose you | Make-safe visit today or tomorrow; photograph everything for the insurer's assessor |
| Book an inspection | No active leak, inside your area, decision-makers named, timing within the next few months | Book a time when every owner can attend or receive the report; confirm access and any pets |
| Nurture | Genuine replacement need but no funding plan yet, a sale date months away, or a body corporate meeting still to come | Agree a check-in date, send the inspection summary if you've done one, and follow up once at that date |
| Refer on | Asbestos removal without a licensed partner, recoat-only work outside your licence, insurer has appointed another repairer, a tenant asking for non-urgent work the owner or agent hasn't ordered | Give the name of the right trade, tell them to go back to the insurer, or send the tenant to the owner or agent; log the reason |
| Drop | Outside your run, DIY or job searches, no address or photos and only wants a figure over the phone | End the call politely, log the reason, and check which search or source brought it in |
Where the enquiry came from changes what you check
Every source arrives with some questions already answered. A property manager's work order is usually authorised before you see it, while a door-knocked homeowner hasn't committed to anything. Tag the source alongside the lane, and spend your questions on the gaps it leaves.
You can filter a good share of poor-fit calls before they arrive. Say plainly on your ads and pages which suburbs you cover, which roof types and licence classes you work under, whether you take insurance work, and what you don't do, such as asbestos removal or roof painting. A service area page that lists the suburbs you really reach does more filtering than any call script.
Weather sets the rhythm. A hailstorm can fill a week with urgent calls from a few suburbs, then stop dead, while replacement research carries on. Between storms there's planned work you can market ahead of the season, such as gutter cleans and roof checks. It lines up with the QBCC's storm and cyclone season advice to owners: clear gutters and downpipes, and secure loose roof tiles or sheets, or hire a qualified contractor to help.
Match the ad settings to each lane. Google Ads lets you target areas within a country or a radius around a location, so storm ads can point at the hit suburbs while replacement ads cover your whole area. Its default location option also reaches people who've shown interest in your area, such as an interstate owner whose rental was hit, while the 'Presence' option limits ads to people likely to be in or regularly in the area. Pick deliberately, and pause storm ads once you're booked out. After a storm, a broad 'roof repair' ad can pull in people hunting for a tarp to fit themselves, so check the storm-week search terms first: why Google Ads produce the wrong leads shows how to read them.
Your own records beat any rule of thumb. Keep the source, lane and suburb log for a year and you'll see when maintenance work picks up and when replacement quotes slow. A hail week makes the quieter months around it look weak, so compare like with like: local SEO seasonality covers choosing fair comparison weeks.
| Source | Usually already known | What to check first |
|---|---|---|
| Google Ads search | The search they typed and the suburb targeted | Whether the search matched your work, or was a DIY, jobs or out-of-area search |
| Google Business Profile and organic search | They found you by name or by suburb, often after reading reviews | Lane and timing; these callers have often already compared you with others |
| Property manager or real estate agency | The property, the tenant's contact and often a work order | Who authorises the spend, the order's limit, and how access to the tenant works |
| Body corporate or strata manager | The building and the manager's contact | Whether the roof is common property, who on the committee signs off, and when they next meet |
| Insurer or assessor referral | The claim and usually a scope of works | Whether you're the appointed repairer and what the scope does and doesn't cover |
| Door-knocking after a storm | The address and what you saw from the street | Whether they've claimed yet, and that the ACCC's cooling-off rules apply before work or payment |
| Shared lead marketplace | A short job description and suburb | How many other businesses received the same enquiry under the platform's terms, and how fast you can respond |
| Past customer or neighbour referral | Your work, and often what you charged them | Whether this roof is the same type and age; a neighbour's roof is not always a guide to this one |
Licences and advertising rules that shape the enquiry
The QBCC licenses roof tiling and roof cladding as separate trades, which shapes the enquiries you can accept. The QBCC's roof tiling class covers tiles of concrete, clay, metal or similar material. Its roof and wall cladding class covers other roof cladding plus rainwater goods and flashings, and a separate class covers metal fascias and gutters. Both roof classes leave out painting roofs, so check a recoat-style 'restoration' against your licence before you quote it.
Asbestos sits with a different regulator. The QBCC notes that Workplace Health and Safety Queensland licenses the specialists who remove it. Without that licence on your team, or a licensed partner, an older cement sheet roof is a referral. Put that on your website so the caller hears it before you do.
Your ads carry obligations too. The QBCC expects a licensee's ads to show the licensed name, a line saying it's licensed under the QBCC Act, and the licence number, and it counts websites, Facebook pages, online directories and vehicle signage as ads. The ACCC adds that a claim about the future, like how long a new roof will last, needs reasonable grounds when you make it, and that a business must honour any warranty it offers. If you advertise a 'free inspection', the ACCC's guidance on free offers applies, and the FAQ below covers it.
Outside Queensland the licence lines fall differently. In Victoria, the Plumbing Regulations 2018 make work on roof coverings such as metal sheeting, roof flashings and roof drainage a plumbing class that needs Building and Plumbing Commission registration or a licence, while coverings of non-metallic tiles, concrete, slate, timber, glass or bitumen sit outside it. In New South Wales, roof plumbing on gutters, downpipes, flashings and roof coverings needs a contractor licence under the Home Building Act 1989 once the job passes a set value. So a lead from across the border may need a licence you don't hold, and the FAQs below cover each state.
A hypothetical worked example: the week after a hailstorm
This example is invented to show the method and describes no real business, customer or result. Every number in it is illustrative, not a benchmark. Say a three-person roofing business in Nambour takes six enquiries the morning after hail crosses the hinterland. It runs each through the call script and tags each with a lane, a source and an outcome from the grid.
Step one is the morning sort. The six calls produce two bookings for today, one inspection that needs a licensed partner, and three referrals or drops, listed below. Step two is the marketing response. Storm ads get narrowed to the hail-hit suburbs and paused once the diary fills on day two, while replacement ads keep running across the whole area.
Step three is measuring by lane, not in total. Say that over the following quarter the illustrative log shows 40 storm enquiries, 30 inspections and 24 signed jobs, against 25 replacement enquiries, 12 inspections and 4 signed jobs. Split by lane, the log shows replacement enquiries are where work is lost, so the owner reviews the inspection reports and the follow-up, not the ads. Divide each lane's ad spend by its signed jobs to get a cost per signed job for each lane, and compare those, rather than cost per enquiry.
Step four is closing the loop on slow sales. That cement sheet re-roof may sign weeks later, by phone or on site. To credit that sale to the ad that started it, Google Ads Help's recommended starting point is enhanced conversions for leads. Paid search versus organic lead attribution covers matching those outcomes, call tracking and conversion reconciliation covers phone leads, and marketing for roofers shows the wider plan. The six enquiries:
- A Palmwoods owner has cracked tiles and a wet ceiling, and her insurer has left the choice of repairer to her. Book today: make it safe, then quote the permanent fix once the assessor's scope arrives.
- A property manager emails a work order for a serious leak in a Woombye rental. Book today: arrange access with the tenant and invoice the agency.
- An owner wants his 1970s cement sheet roof 'replaced after the storm'. It predates 1990, so treat asbestos as likely. Book an inspection, but only with a licensed removalist partner lined up.
- A 'roof restoration' form arrives with photos of a sound tile roof that needs a recoat. Refer it on unless the business is licensed for the painting.
- A caller two hours north wants storm repairs. Drop, and suggest a closer roofer.
- A form asks how to patch a roof leak without a roofer. Drop it and check which search triggered the ad, then add the term as a negative keyword.
Common questions
How do roofing companies get better leads, not just more of them?
Better roofing leads come from telling the wrong callers what you don't do before they ring. List the suburbs, roof types and licence classes you work under on every ad and page, say whether you take insurance work, and run separate storm and replacement campaigns. Then tag every enquiry by source and outcome, and move spend toward the sources that turn into signed jobs, not the ones that simply ring most.
Do roofers need to be licensed in Victoria?
It depends on the roof. Victoria's Plumbing Regulations 2018 treat work on roof coverings such as metal sheeting, roof flashings and roof drainage that carries stormwater as roofing (stormwater) work, a plumbing class that needs Building and Plumbing Commission registration or a licence. Coverings of non-metallic tiles, concrete, slate, timber, glass or bitumen fall outside that class, though flashings and gutters on those roofs stay inside it. Never assume a Queensland licence carries across.
Is a roof plumber the same as a roofer?
Sometimes, depending on the state. In Victoria, roof plumbing is a plumbing class covering flashings, roof drainage and coverings such as metal sheeting, while tile and slate coverings sit outside it. In New South Wales, roof plumbing on gutters, downpipes, flashings and roof coverings needs a contractor licence under the Home Building Act 1989 above a set job value. In Queensland, the QBCC splits roof tiling and roof and wall cladding into separate classes. So ask what roof a caller has.
What is the average lifespan of a roof?
There's no single number worth quoting on the phone. Lifespan depends on the material, coastal salt exposure, overhanging trees, how well gutters are kept clear and the quality of the original install. That's why a good qualifying call books an inspection rather than promising a verdict. If you state a lifespan in an ad, the ACCC says a claim about the future needs reasonable grounds when you make it.
Can a roofer door-knock streets after a storm?
Yes, but the ACCC's rules on unsolicited selling apply. Door-to-door visits are only allowed between 9 am and 6 pm on weekdays and 9 am and 5 pm on Saturdays, and the customer then has 10 business days to cancel. During that cooling-off period you can't supply services or take payment, except for emergency repairs. So a door-knocked replacement isn't a won job until the cooling-off period ends.
Can I advertise a free roof inspection?
Yes, if it really is free. The ACCC says a product shouldn't be described as free when, on closer look, conditions apply, and that fine print can't conflict with the overall message of an ad. If the inspection is only free when the owner goes ahead with the work, say that up front or drop the word. A plain offer also sets honest expectations before you arrive.
How quickly should I reply to storm damage enquiries?
As quickly as you can honestly commit to. A storm-hit owner who can't get an answer will usually try the next roofer on the list. If your diary is full, give your earliest date and point urgent cases to the SES on 132 500 for help with a damaged roof. The ACCC notes that what staff tell customers, spoken or written, counts too, so don't promise a same-day visit you can't make.
Do roofers need a QBCC licence for small repairs?
A roofer needs a QBCC licence once the job passes the QBCC's value threshold for building work, and for some work, such as plumbing and drainage, at any value. Roofing work is also split across licence classes: roof tiling, roof and wall cladding, and metal fascias and gutters. Check the QBCC's scope for your class before you advertise a service, and look up your own regulator if you work outside Queensland.
