Policy Driven Sales with Taylor Bezek

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week's episode of Contractor Radio. You know us, we're always trying to bring you cool content and new things for you to think about, that you can add your rapport or just broaden your horizons or at least give you some entertaining content to listen to here at Contractor Radio. So this week we're going to be talking to Taylor bizek from the C3 group. Now, Taylor's got a lot of really interesting responsibilities over there and what he does and he pretty important to those folks. And so I'll let him explain a little bit more about kind of where he's from and what he does. But today we're going to learn a little bit about what we need to know as salespeople about insurance policies that can help us during the sales process. Oftentimes, we think about insurance policies from the standpoint of what's covered and what's not covered. And oftentimes that stuff that's not part of our sales process. It's almost more on the back end or on the administrative or on the supplementing side of things. But as it turns out, the more we know as salespeople, the better we are to service our clients. So there's another component we're going to talk a little bit, too, that we don't necessarily need to be a PA or a lawyer in order to address a little bit of these concepts with a customer. And I'm excited to get Taylor's information on kind of what we do and how we can operate and how these things can help us while we're at the door trying to service our clients. Now, before we jump into that information, I'm going to pause real quick to give a little love to our sponsors. And so here we go.

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Welcome back to this episode of Contractor Radio, where we're talking with Taylor Bezik. Of the C3 group. Taylor, how you doing, brother?

I'm doing great, Nathan. Thank you for. For having me today.

Absolutely, man, absolutely. Tyler, talking with some of the folks over there, they said you were the guy that we should have a conversation with, and you've got some really cool and unique information for us. So I'm excited to hear some of that stuff. But tell us a little bit about your background, where you came from. Who is Taylor Bizek?

Yeah, so I got into this industry, actually, via my cousin who was a restoration contractor here in Denver, where I currently live. I was living in Seattle, pursuing, possibly going to grad school, when he called me up and was like, hey, I got a job for you where you can make good money and work, you know, whatever hours you want. Unbeknownst to me, that was knocking doors and selling roofs. So that was my. That was my indoctrination by fire into the industry. And I did that for about two summers with him. It was good. And through that process, I met Matt Behrens and his then partner, Mike Lindhurst at C3 Group. And in pretty short order, I was like, man, I'd really like to be on that side of it and actually interacting directly with carry representatives and working on interpreting policy and advocating directly for clients and contractors, for that matter. So I jumped on with C3 Group back in 2012, summer of 2012, I believe. And at that time, it was three people. It was Matt, Mike, and his brother. Andrew is our xactimate guru and surgeon, and the rest is history. And we've been really fortunate to have success in the industry, mostly due to Andrew Barron's and his team's efforts in writing good, solid estimates. And then, you know, some of the stuff we've been able to be on the leading edge of with regard to policy interpretation and working with carriers in that regard. Awesome.

So what is your specific position at C3? What do you do for those folks?

So right now. Well, as of most recently, as of probably, I think it was February of this year, I switched over to the vice president of sales role at C3 Group. And in that capacity, my main tasks are reviewing qualifying and then approving or denying claims that we want to take on and possibly help with. So that's vetting damage, vetting policy, setting expectations with clients, and ultimately being the liaison for us, taking on and taking a claim that we ultimately think that we can help with. On top of that, it's doing stuff like this and shaking hands and kissing baby stuff, you know, spreading the good gospel of public Adjusting, I guess. There we go.

All right, so I kind of want to set the table a little bit for this conversation.

Right.

And one of the reasons is because anytime contractors start talking about policy, it can get a little bit dicey.

Right.

And so I think that. So for a lot of us, in order to just avoid the concept of running into a problem whatsoever, we try as little as possible to talk about policy. And so maybe we don't educate ourselves as much on that. But before we kind of talk about that, I want to talk a little bit about, like, this whole UPPA thing and maybe set some guardrails for our conversation on this.

Sure, yeah. And to lend some context there, I mean, we've always been vehemently opposed to UPPA and really any legislation or initiative that seeks to divide and alienate contractors from, you know, their clients, the insurance, you know, especially in, you know, restoration insurance claims instances. And UPPA aims to do that. You know, they've framed insurance carriers and carrier lobbyists and interest groups have framed contractors as a conflict of interest, thinking that they're going around overestimating and putting fluff in and basically fraudulently inflating these claims, which is so far from the truth, I can't even begin to explain that. And really what carriers have been doing is they've been using xactimate, which is a platform that's made to be a market price aggregator in the middle of the road. The middle 50% of the market is supposed to be what. What Xactimate represents. They're using that as the ceiling and trying to manipulate that down. So basically making the median the top and working contractors down from there. All that aside, we think UPPA is pretty ridiculous. And, you know, at the end of the day, the. The policy is the primary governing document that is going to pay the insured and ultimately pay you as a contractor to do the work. So to go and try to extricate contractors from having any conversation about what should be done within the context of the policy, it's really tough, and it really hamstrings what your ability is to do on site when you're trying to advocate for your client and advocate for the best practice in repairing a certain type of damage from a covered peril. So while you cannot interpret and try to advocate for coverage while you're on site and talking directly, so if you're meeting with an insurance carrier representative, you need to stay away from saying things about what the policy covers or what should be afforded and stick specifically to what you're seeing as damage and what you believe is compensatory to appropriately repair said damage. And as long as you stick to that, you're fine. But really that's only when you're interacting with an insurance carrier representative on site or over the phone or something like that.

Okay, all right, so those are some pretty good guardrails. I like that. Don't ever want to advocate that somebody do something that's going to get them in trouble. Right. But you and I think are kind of on the same page there. That the same way you don't want to get alienated, having a patient get alienated from their doctor when the two of them are really all about, you know, health, you know, between your contractor and your homeowner, that's a critical relationship, making sure that homeowners getting everything that they need and the contractor is being taken care of in order to do that. So we're on the same page there. Now you had brought up this concept or this, this topic of policy driven sales, which I think is an interesting concept. What do you mean by that?

Yes, so what I mean by that is that, you know, one, setting good expectations with your insured so that you guys have a unified front throughout the process, and two, you know, maximizing your return on investment for your time as a contractor, a contractor salesperson. And, you know, it really boils down to the two sides of variables that they are in a given claim. And one is the damage. I mean, and you know, that's when, when you're out soliciting and you're looking at properties, your eyes light up when you see really significant exhibited damage on site because, you know that there's not going to be a huge argument about the causation or the extent of damage. That's one major hurdle to get over, and that's great. And then you can come down and talk to your insured and say, hey, you know, this is absolutely damaged. It's going to need to be taken care of. The other hurdle is making sure that the insured has a policy that's going to compensate them or indemnify them to the full extent to get the work that's damaged done or to, to repair the damage that's been done and get them paid appropriately for it. And you know, what we're starting to see as public adjusters who work nationwide is we're starting to see a lot of, you know, kind of concerning policy provisions, you know, deductibles and endorsements that are limiting the amount of possible, you know, financial indemnification that Insured can get, in some cases, you know, between, you know, policy provisions, they're effectively writing out certain, certain perils. So, you know, when I say a policy driven sales approach, I mean, you know, getting in front of it and talking to your insurer, to your client and say, hey, you know, the damage is there. But let us take a look at your policy and let's hypothesize what the practical application of this policy is within the context of the damage that we're seeing and let you know if we even think it's a smart thing to file a claim or not. Because if you can come out there and differentiate yourself in that regard and say, hey, I'm not gonna just come out here, tell you to file a claim, so your insurance company is gonna pay for it, all you owe is your deductible, and then when it doesn't happen, walk away. I'm gonna give you a realistic picture of what you're looking at as far as an insurance claim from an indemnification standpoint.

Yeah.

Okay.

So in taking these things into consideration, my first question is kind of right off the bat, I think if any sales guy hearing that's kind of like, okay, what are some of the key things that we need to know about insurance policies? What should we be looking for?

So I would always say, if you can try to get ahold of, it's the declarations page. So it's basically the paraphrased policy without all of the, you know, the fine print, you know, common policy conditions, all this other stuff. While that is important, you get a really good snapshot of what the policy covers from the declarations pages. And that's gonna, that's gonna list whether it's replacement cost value policy, which you want an RCV policy first and foremost. I think most people, you know, at this point know what that is. You wanna know what the limits of liability are, you wanna know what the deductible is. And that's important because what we're seeing a lot in pervasive throughout the industry, both residential and commercial, are these increasingly high percentage deductibles. And also in hurricane states named storm deductibles that are exorbitantly high. So while you might have a $1,000 deductible for everything it'll say except wind and hail, and that'll be a 5% deductible. And that's 5% of the insured value of the property. So 5% of your total limits of liability. So it's really important to look at that. Because if you're sitting there and you're talking to an insurance, say, Joe homeowner, it's like there's great damage up here. You know, what's your deductible? And they go, 1,000 bucks. All right, well, your only financial obligation in this process is a thousand bucks. Your insurance company is going to take care of the rest. Well, fast forward, all the work's done. You're collecting, you're getting the deductible and they're going, well, it's actually 5,000 now. It's a much bigger conversation. It's, it's five times as high as they originally thought. Yeah.

And I mean, you want to talk about stepping in it as a salesperson, like you look like a fool. Right. They're going to wonder if they got lied to or, you know, I mean, so that's even a little bit of cya, you know, for yourself. Because if, because if you're getting through this process and you take great care of the customer and all of a sudden They've got this $5,000 deductible, when you kind of tell them it was only 1000 bucks, good luck getting some referrals from that.

Yep. And then after that you look at the endorsements. So usually right after the limits liability deductible, you know, if it's, you know, if it's an HOA or commercial property, you'll have like the roster of locations. You'll have a list of endorsements and it'll be a bunch of numbers with a short paraphrase description by each one. And while you probably, you know, if you see something condition concerning, you'd want to get the full policy and read all of the endorsements. But really what you want to look for in those are anything that applies to excluding, limiting acv, any stuff like that that would pertain to, you know, building envelope or whatever you're dealing with with regard to the restoration of the damage claimed. So what we're seeing a lot of, especially in Texas and it's creeping up to Colorado and we're seeing some of it in Minnesota, Iowa, you know, so it's happening across the board. Are ACV endorsements on roofs over a certain age or ACV endorsements on roofs of a certain type of material. So, you know, that can significantly impact, you know, the claim because it's an actual cash value endorsement. Meaning, you know, for example, say you have a 30 year asphalt shingle and you have an ACV endorsement on any roof over 10 years old or 15 years old. Just put 15 out there. So if the roofs are older than 15 years old, you're getting 50 cents on the dollar for that material, and that is it. And it's really important to look at what the definition of that is. So if you do see that endorsement, what is the definition of roof surface? Is it the shingles? Is it the shingles? Nails, felt sheathing? And then you also have to be cognizant about whether or not the carrier is going to try to depreciate labor. So it. It starts to get a little bit more nuanced in how you. How you estimate and how you, you know, sell this to a client to say, hey, you know, you're getting. You're getting the depreciated value of this material, and it's halfway through its serviceable life. So on your best day, you're getting 50 cents on the dollar for X, Y and Z with regard to the roof surface, which is. We're seeing that a lot. The other one is a cosmetic endorsement. So carriers will place a cosmetic endorsement on roof surfaces. Pretty much every metal roof has a cosmetic endorsement these days. The spirit of that is, you know, if there's not a hole through it, we're not going to pay for it. And you really got to, again, look at the definition of what cosmetic means and what functional means and be sure to be able to, you know, advocate for that when on site and say, hey, this. This is damaged.

Yeah, okay, so that's all really good information. So for you guys listening, I mean, you'll be able to download this podcast and listen to that stuff again. So if you feel like that was quick and you didn't catch it all, well, just rewind and go back and take your notes. So all of that kind of being said, these are some of the key factors we're looking for and kind of what they mean. How are some of the ways that these. How are some of the ways that these things actually affect the sales process itself?

So once you get more familiar with how the deductibles and how the endorsements are going to affect the bottom line for what they get paid for, you can have a more realistic conversation with your insured about what their maximum benefit is going to be in this claim, and then it's more of a conversation about either, A, you got to figure out a way to come up with a certain percentage of this, B, we're going to have to figure out a way to make this work by pulling money from somewhere else, or C, you know, you Tell them based on your coverages, there's a pretty big deficit here and you might be better off just doing this on a retail basis and, you know, saving yourself the headache of filing a claim. And I know that a lot of contractors have financing options available where they can, you know, provide financing to insureds. But if you're coming in as the expert, the real sales benefit is coming in and giving them a realistic picture of what's going on and not trying to set unrealistic expectations. I mean, if you're the one contractor, sales guy or gal that comes in and knocks and says, hey, you know, let's take a look at your policy and there's some serious considerations in this policy that are going to affect your maximum if you insured benefit in this instance, here's some other options for you. They're a little bit more painful from what you have to come out of out of pocket, but it's usually going to be a little bit quicker and it's going to be more cut and dry because you're not dealing with a third party making you jump through a bunch of hoops to get your money. And if the money's not there anyhow, you're jumping through a bunch of hoops to not get any money. And at that point, if you're a contractor, you've wasted your time and the insured's frustrated and they're still sitting with a busted roof.

Right, right. That's very good point. Okay, so then is there, is there, is there more than one right way to approach addressing these factors? Or is it like you're gonna have to do it this way, or are there multiple strategies you can use for addressing? Or is it like A plus C equals B?

I mean, it's really, you know, it's really coming, coming out of pocket in part or just doing it retail, I think, are the two best ways to address it when there are policy deficiencies, you know, and it really comes down to what you can do as a contractor, too. I mean, if you're the one that's coming in, you see an ACV endorsement and a high deductible, and you can narrow down, you know, what their best day is with regard to what they're going to get from their insurance carrier. You can have an intelligent conversation with the, hey, here's what we can do, you know, with, with, with materials and with, you know, our pricing. Here's how we can help you out. Here's what your financial responsibility might end up being here. Like, you know, give them Brackets, things like that. But just, just having that knowledge, I think, would, you know, differentiate you significantly as a contractor from most of the people that they're interacting with. And, you know, in my experience, you know, just as a public adjuster reviewing policies and setting expectations with clients, they appreciate it a heck of a lot more when you give them, you know, the straight, the straight dish instead of, you know, giving them unrealistic expectations or high hopes about what they can get when it's just not there.

Yeah. And, you know, the other major one is, is when you, when you set those expectations for what's going to happen and how it's going to happen, then it happens that way. Like, you talk about really reinforcing how your client feels about you and your expertise, but, man, you can't set those expectations if you don't know what you're talking about. So when you say, oh, well, this is going to happen and this is going to happen and this can happen, and then all of a sudden that's exactly what happens and how it goes. Like, even, even if it goes sideways, like, even if you set the expectation that this might go south and because of these factors that we have here, and then it does your clients like, well, he told me that this might happen like this.

Exactly. And it just, it sets yourself apart as an expert, you know, in the industry to say, hey, you know, I can't advocate for coverage one way or the other, but I can look at your policy and I can give you an idea what, you know, what practical implication these, these endorsements in this deductible are going to have on your ability to get this work done.

And, oh, sorry, go ahead.

No, and, you know, it's the, it's the time of it. So, you know, you can look at it and say, hey, you know, we can get X amount of dollars. It's a percentage of what we need to do the full work. But it's going to take us a long time. If you want to endeavor on that, that's great because every dollar you get towards doing this work is awesome. But, you know, how valuable is your time and you know, how quickly do you want to get this done? And to come in there and offer options to your point is huge, too, because they get so many people that, you know, knock on their door or come and talk to them and say, this is how you do it. I'm going to meet your adjuster. He's going to get paid for it. We're going to do the work. There might be some supplements, you're going to write us the checks and then we're all done. But it rarely ever works that way. And what we're seeing is more, increasingly there's little tricks and poison pills placed in all these policies that prevent getting indemnified for specifically wind and hail. I mean, primarily wind and hail, because there's so much of it now they're, they're finding ways to write it out of policies.

Right, right, exactly. Okay, so let's get kind of practical here on this. Some tips for. Let's say I'm a sales guy and I'm like, all right, I did what Taylor said. I went out, I did some research. I earned some, some, some credibility and some confidence from the client. Client gave me their insurance policy to take a look at. I'm reading through this thing and now I need to communicate and translate a little with the customer. What's going on here? Do you have some tips and some advice for how salespeople can talk about this that's not going to land them in trouble?

Yeah. So you can, you know, you can read policy and it's made to be written at a fifth grade reading level. Anyone can read it. And you can, you can look at it and tell people what their coverages are and they should know as well, but you can tell them what that means within the context of the claim. So say it's a roof claim. Let's use round number. It's $100,000 roof. You're looking at the declarations page and you're just, you're estimating in your head. You're like, oh, it's, you know, this looks like it's about $100,000. You look at their policy, they have a 5% win in hail deductible. So immediately you go, you're, you know, well, so let's say the total insured value is $100,000. You have a 5% wind in hail deductible. Immediately you're going, okay, your responsibility for deductible is $5,000. So you know, that drops your total insured value down to $95,000. The roof is totaled. It's just the roof. And the roof is, we'll say $20,000. And it has an ACV endorsement for a roof over 10 years old. So it's a 30 year shingle, $20,000. You're getting, you know, best day, maybe 10 to $15,000 less your $5,000 deductible. So by the depreciation on the top end and the deductible on the bottom end, you've seriously limited the amount of financial indemnification you have to work with to replace the $20,000 roof. You might have half the money all said and done with the insured coming out of pocket for their deductible. So if you can game plan it and give them a prognosis like that, when you're on site just to look at their policy and say, hey, I'm spitballing the roof costs this much. Your deductible is going to be this much. And when it's depreciated, our best day, we're getting 50 to 75 cents on the dollar for these materials. It doesn't give us a whole lot of money to work with to do your roof. So we're either going to have to find a way to finance it or maybe do it as a retail job. And you can figure out pricing that way. And then they don't have to go through the headache of filing a claim, sitting around waiting for their adjuster to come out, going back and forth and banding about, you know, how much this costs or supplements, things like that. You know, they can just get the thing done and it offers you a segue into that, into that realm as well. Okay, that's good. That's good.

Now there's a really cool. We're gonna talk about something else that's super cool to me. We're gonna talk about building credibility, which I love. That's a real big key to any sales strategy, no matter what you're doing. But then we're also gonna talk about strategy. So one of the things that you said that you want to get some of the word out here is how to build credibility through building a strategy around approaching this. But before we do that, we're going to give a little more love to some of our sponsors out there. Please. When you see our sponsors, go check out their websites, go take a look at them. They are literally allowing us to bring this kind of super cool, helpful and powerful education information to you.

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So go give them a little love. Reach out to those folks and talk to them about what they do and how they do that and how we can help you because they want to help you as well. They're already doing it here. So we'll be right back.

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We've seen a huge return in our investment, and I have no doubt that you will, too. Welcome back to Contractor Radio. We are sitting here talking about insurance policies and how they affect your sales process with Taylor Bezik from C3 Group. So, Taylor, we kind of teased everybody just a little bit before the commercial break about building credibility through strategy. So what exactly do you mean by that?

I mean, I really think it's, you know, it's the old adage, do what you say or say what you mean and do what you say. So it's setting good expectations, realistic expectations, and then following through on those. I mean, what we always tell people is, you know, as public adjusters, we are going to put together the best estimate that we can. We're going to represent it to your insurance carrier the best that we can within the context of your policy, meaning, you know, we're going to make sure that every coverage that you're afforded is going to be accounted for and every piece of damage that we can, you know, reasonably credit to the peril claimed, we're going to put in our estimate. And everything we put in our estimate is, you know, it's code. It's accompanied by a photo. And then we do what we're. We do what we say we're going to do. And we're. We're honest. We're like, we're not the ones holding the checkbook here. Your insurance carrier is. And as good of a job as we can do on our side, there's still the very frequent instance where they tell us to go pound sand and, you know, setting those expectations up front with the insured to say that we're not the ones that are ultimately writing the check. And there might be an instance where we have to take secondary courses of action in the form of appraisal or litigation. Possibly we want to avoid that because we pride ourselves in being able to settle these claims without having to go that route. But we want to make it clear that when it gets to that point, you know, you as an insured have some skin in the game. And that's, you know, that's where the credibility comes from. And where I see that, you know, with contractors, too, is, you know, just. Just setting good, realistic expectations with people and Saying, hey, you know, I'm going to do my best to advocate for what I think needs to be done to repair the damage here. But you know, at the end of the day, the policy is the primary governing document for how you get paid. Now I ultimately get paid and I can't change your policy, I can't interpret your policy, I can't talk coverage on site. I have to stay in my lane and my lane is really putting roofs on, putting siding on, repairing your home, bringing you back to pre loss condition. But it's up to your insurance carrier to give us the funds to do that. And I think far too often, and probably not any of the contractors that watch the show or listen here, but far too often, you know, you have, you have salespeople that, you know, in the pursuit of getting ink on paper and getting that contract signed, you know, they make some misrepresentations about, you know, what they're, what the, you know, the latitude of their ability is to effectuate change in a claim. And you know, we, we run into it unfortunately quite a bit where you know, we get referred a claim from a contractor and we have to go reset expectations. And you know, when we're trying to be, you know, the stakeholder quarterback for the insured, the contractor and the insurance carrier, sometimes those are difficult conversation to have to be like, well, I understand they told you this, but in reviewing your policy or in reviewing what's actually going on and reviewing the condition of your property, here's what we think is the best possible outcome and we're going to work our tails off to achieve that for you. But back to your point, Sorry, I kind of went on a tangent there. But back to your point about building credibility through strategy, it's being an expert in understanding what the process is and what the variables at play are and knowing taking a look at a property and consulting with a client and giving them an accurate picture of what their best day and their worst day is and what the timelines are going to be and all that.

Yeah. So as it pertains to building out a strategy for dealing with the details of some of these policy, is this something that you would recommend? Is this something that gets tailored with each and every individual client? Like we're going to need to build a strategy for Mrs. Smith or Mr. And Mrs. Smith because of their policy, or is this more of something that you can build templates for your people based on certain things, factors?

Yeah, so I think it's more of the latter. I think generally the strategy is the Same. It's just again, going back to understanding, you know, what the practical application of a policy and what your limits are when you're approaching a new client and just giving them, again, a realistic expectation of what's going to happen. And once you understand that, yeah, you know, you have a certain set of, you know, you have a certain, you know, set of information that you want to collect prior to endeavoring on, you know, you know, recommending someone file a claim, which, you know, it should ultimately be the insured decision. But, you know, you don't want to ever recommend someone file a claim without knowing what their coverages are, and, you know that they're going to be able to be indemnified for that loss. But it's, you know, obviously looking at the damage, understanding that, you know, it happened recently, looking at the policy or some portion of the policy that outlines the coverage, and then, you know, making sure that the insured is, you know, willing to have some skin in the game at the end of the day. Because that's the other variable is, you know, your client is not a passive participant in this process ever.

At least they shouldn't be.

No, definitely not. I mean, they are, you know, especially if you're, you know, in a contractor insured relationship. They're the one driving the ship, and they're your biggest advocate to make sure that you get what you need to do the work as well. And you can help them weaponize information and give the right information to the insurance company to, to come around and, you know, take things into consideration, maybe.

Maybe utilize information, utilize leverage, info, weapon. I don't know. I don't know if we want to use it. Well, Braden, cut that out. So how many, how many different. So let's say that I'm a sales manager and I got my team in front of me, and we kind of want to create some templated strategies, right? We're like, okay, well, if you see this in there, then we're going to do this. If you see that in there, then we're going to do this. How many different strategies should we be expecting to kind of get lined out for our sales team?

I, you know, and I can't speak to, you know, every contractor and what, what, you know, what their abilities are to, you know, make things work or, you know, finance certain things. But, but really what you want to come down to is, you know, understanding what the, you know, if you walk up and it's a full RCV policy, no crazy endorsements, you know, everything looks good. I, I would say Run it the normal way. Obviously just say, hey, you've got good damage, good damage, good policy, recent storm, client ready to go, sign it up and run it the traditional way, the way that it's supposed to go. Meet the adjuster, get it paid for and then do the work. Obviously if you see a deductible, that's a conversation you have to have about, hey, are you able to pay your deductible in a wind and hail situation, say it is 5% and it's X amount of dollars. Just prepare them for that and have that conversation.

Sorry to interrupt you, but have that conversation up front. It's like, don't a lot of salespeople, I see salespeople do this, they shy away from that conversation because they think that conversation, they just kind of hoping that the customer is just expecting to pay their deductible and they know what it is and everything's just going to be all good. We don't want to do that. You want to attack that conversation immediately. Because I tell you what, it's a whole lot easier to discover that your customers expectations on that deductible and what you know should happen are different. It's a lot easier to walk away from that situation when you've only been talking to them for like 20 or 30 minutes rather than we've got two or three, four hours into this project and they expected you to cover their deductible or they didn't know it was at 5%. Don't be afraid of that conversation at all.

Yeah, because it's your time and your time is your money. Especially as a salesperson, you know, I mean the, every hour that you sink into a claim that ultimately isn't going to bear fruit on the back end is an hour loss and an hour that you could be spending out getting more business. So yes, Nathan, to your point, have that conversation up front. And then you know, the other endorsements like the ACB endorsements or cosmetic endorsements, you know, if you see a cosmetic endorsement, you're dealing with a metal roof if, if it's not significant damage and a really large roof, I mean to substantiate cosmetic damage on a roof is pretty cost intensive. I mean I can flat out say that carriers, the spirit of those endorsements is that carriers are not going to pay unless there's a hole through it or there's dents to the seams or water's getting in. Clearly. And it's new from a recent storm. So that's a conversation to have and it Might not be worth pursuing at that point as a salesperson without, you know, a public adjuster or an attorney, because those are the people that are going to be able to make those nuanced legal arguments or the attorneys be able to make legal arguments. The public adjuster will be able to make nuanced policy arguments to maybe get around the definition of functionality versus cosmetic that you can't. Those are explicitly the conversations that you can't have. But that's another conversation to have with your insured. You see that endorsement, you go, oh, this is beyond my ability to advocate for on site. I'm sorry, that's just what it is. You may need a public adjuster or an attorney to help you out if you really want to pursue replacement of this roof. And through that conversation, you might find out with your insured that they don't. They're like, well, you know, I had another contractor say that it was damaged. I needed a new roof. So you're the second guy and I'm talking to you. Thanks for the information. And from that conversation, you might say, hey, yeah, you know, has anyone else here brought up that you have this endorsement? No, no one's even asked about my policy. And that builds credibility right there to say, hey, you know, I've done enough of this to know that this type of material with this type of damage typically is subject to this type of endorsement. And that endorsement is very difficult to overcome. And I cannot, with my ability as a contractor, overcome said endorsement.

Right, right. Prepare them for that. You know, like, I mean, ask the question, you know, this is kind of the situation that we're in, and are you up for a fight? Because absolutely. They're probably going to put one up. And if you're thinking, no, I'm not, well, then let's know that now. I don't want to waste the time of the client. If the client's like, if they reject it, I'm not going to do anything. Okay, well, great. I don't blame you. But let's figure out what that course of action looks like now.

Yeah. And all of this is, all of these conversations are qualifiers with your client or your insured to see, you know, how adamant they are about fixing the damage. Because everyone knows there's a spectrum. There's some people that are, you know, very, very adamant that they want to get the roof replaced or they're, they're, they're building envelope repaired. There's some that are like, yeah, you know, it'd be great if it did, but I'm really not expecting it to go through. And those are the people that you know, really you need to have these conversations with up front. You know, say there's an ACV endorsement for the roof and it's a 15 year old roof on a 30 year shingle and you go to them and you say, hey, your, your best day, you're getting you know, 50% of what this roof is worth. Are you, you know, it's obviously damaged, needs to be fixed. You know, are you able to one assume the cost of the other 50% to bring this roof back to pre loss condition with the material that's up there? Would you like to switch to a different material that's maybe less cost intensive but will lower your insured value or do you want to just, you know, let it sit or do you want to finance it all outright and not go through the claims process at all? And you know, when you see that type of endorsement, any endorsement that you know negatively affects the, the amount of indemnification that someone's get someone gets, you really need to have a serious conversation about how adamant they are to do the work and what their ability is to finance it or willingness to secure third party, third party financing through you as a contractor to do it.

And you know, I mean it's really, it's a really tricky thing too because honestly homeowners get their backs up against the wall quite a bit, they decide that they don't want to do anything about that damage and the life of their roof is now going to probably be sick to call them. You'll be paying out of pocket one way or another. So you know, that's part of that strategy question.

Yeah, and it will be, and if you don't do anything, it will definitely be uninsured the next time something happens. Because you know, if say you call in a claim and they come out and they look at it and they deny it, there is damage. But they're saying hey, you know, it's not functional damage, yada yada yada, we're not paying for it. And you sit there and rather than fight it as an insured and say, you know what, I'm just not going to do anything, I'm not going to worry about it. Well, fast forward, you know, two years down the road you have another significant event, another significant hailstorm and it severely damages the roof. Well, they come out and they say, oh well this is, this is all old damage. Or it was damaged before but it was never taken care of. And as BS as that is, it happens all the time where they deny a claim and then they come back out when another claim happens and say that the claim that they denied is the reason why the roof is shot and not the new damage. So we've seen it, you know, more often than we like. I mean, but it's a fact. And the other side of that is that there's, you know, a two year statute of limitations written into pretty much every policy for your ability as an insured or an insured's ability to file suit against their carrier. And while most people don't end up filing suit against their carrier, that provision and that two year window is leverage over the carrier to act in good faith and act constructively to resolve a loss. Because once that two year window eclipses, they know they have no recourse that they're facing if you're upset with the resolution of that loss. So as soon as two years elapses and you haven't filed suit or settled the claim, they don't have any incentive to work constructively with you as an insured or you as a contractor at all.

That's a really key point that contractors should understand inside and out. Because if you truly want to service your client, okay, looking at their policy and them having damage, whether it's enough or not enough, at the end of the day, it all still lands on their property and the condition of their property lands on them as a property owner. And so you are not doing them any good by simply going, oh, well and walking away. They need to understand the ramifications of doing that.

Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, we're seeing it now in Iowa specifically. Most policies have a one year provision, which is, you know, in terms of an insurance claim is a relatively short amount of time, especially if there's any sort of reasonable dispute, especially when you're in a global pandemic. You know, you thought things moved slow before. I mean, the last year everything was at a snail's pace, but none of the provisions changed. We were fortunate where, you know, you can get tolling agreements and verbal extensions, things like that, that will extend benefits under the policy. But, you know, one year is a small snapshot, especially on larger claims where you have, you know, a reasonable dispute. And in places like Colorado, where we haven't had a significant hail storm in a couple of years, we've had small ones here and there, but the large part of the Front Range, the Denver metro, most of Colorado Springs, hasn't had a major, major storm in a few years now. So there's A lot of contractors out there that are pursuing claims that are aged 9 months, 12 months, 15 months past the data loss. And you know, it's not a very good use of your time to be, you know, soliciting, signing and, you know, working on, you know, putting together an estimate or documenting damage, ordering materials when, you know, it's past the two year statute and the insurance carrier has no interest in paying due to late notice and it being beyond two years. Right.

So sharpen up contractors, there's still opportunity there. They still need a roof replaced, man. And so it may not come down to insurance money. Now you gotta be a real salesperson. Oh no. So you also wanted to talk a little bit about the concept of understanding policy roi, obviously return on investment. What exactly do you mean by that?

I, I think the main point of that is the time invested, being efficient with your time as a, you know, as a salesperson. I mean, we do it as public adjusters, you know, and as a contractor, I think you can be very savvy with, you know, the claims that you decide to take and be very, you know, discretionary with what you want to take based on, you know, doing a simple cursory review of someone's policy. Because like I said before, your time is your money. And every hour you sink into talking some insured into, you know, signing on the dotted line when ultimately it's not going to bear fruit from an indemnification standpoint is an hour lost that you could be going out and, you know, soliciting and signing more deals. And that's what I mean by roi. And it's a twofold. It's, you know, you're going to make sure that you're building the credibility and you're maximizing your margins with regard to, you know, what the policy affords and you're going to understand what the policy affords. The insured is going to be happy because they're going to know what to expect and what their policy affords and what their financial responsibility is in the claims process. And if it's a bad policy, you can say, hey, you know, I'm sorry, but I don't think it's here. And unless you want to do it on a retail basis or front a significant portion of this job, you know, it's really not a smart business move for my company to endeavor on working on your behalf to try to get a resolution to this claim. So, you know, I always say you see so many guys running around with, with trucks that say insurance specialist on them, you Know, you know, start.

Really?

Yeah, start understanding, you know, the policy. And I, and I know that most contractors do have a pretty good cursory knowledge of what, you know, a declarations page reads and what it means and what ACV means and what, you know, certain endorsements, you know, imply for a claim. But to be able to sit there with an insured and accurately, you know, lay out what you think their best day and their worst day is and what that means for the feasibility of getting this work done either all through insurance, none through insurance, some through insurance, you know, that's really helpful. And you know, I think you're, you'll find that you get a lot more business that way by being the, you know, the different, the different contractor that comes in and actually, you know, has a realistic conversation about that stuff. Yeah.

So in analyzing like the ROI on a policy as you're trying to go through this thing, are there varying degrees of ROI or is it like do it, don't do it?

Yes, there are. And it's case by case, really. And it's going back and looking at. Again, I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but look at your deductible. Make sure that your insured can afford that deductible. Look at the endorsements and make sure that those endorsements aren't going to put you in a place that when you get the maximum amount, when they get the maximum amount they can for the damage that's claimed, you're not at an upside down net leader where you're either trimming your margins so thin that if one thing goes wrong, you're in the red on a job or that they can't come out of pocket to help you out a little bit. Because if they're not interested in doing that and it's going to put you in that position, that might not be a job you want to sink too much time into. Because again, you know, the other side of it is that the more complicated these policies get and you know, when you're starting to try to, you know, massage the numbers and move money around to Rob Peter to pay Paul to get the job done, those are more hours you're spending on trying to figure out how to do this work and maybe that those hours aren't worth the, you know, the payout at the end and being able to identify that, I think is the biggest way to, you know, maximize your roi. And that's what it, what I think it means to use a policy driven sales approach. Because that's the other side of the fence, the damage is there. It has to get fixed. But now you got a client in a policy that are, you know, where the money's coming from and if the policy isn't giving you the money and the client's not going to give you the money, and you probably shouldn't be taking that job. Mm.

Mm. So what, what do you guys see as contractors? Biggest mistakes that they make. Like, if somebody's listening to this and they're like, man, I think I'm doing this right, but I don't want to step on any landmines. What, what are, what are the things that you guys are like, look, here's some, here's like the, the top things you need to really watch out for and, and, and, and try not to do.

You know, I would just say setting bad expectations from a time standpoint, timelines, because, you know, what I see is that you can only control what you can control. And at the end of the day, the insurance company is the one holding the checkbook, specifically in an insurance claim instance. So setting good expectations from a time standpoint with these clients because oftentimes, by the time a public adjuster gets involved, the insured is just so disillusioned and fired up and, you know, just not happy with how long it's taken. And while we as public adjusters and, you know, you guys as contractors deal with this every day, this might be the first or second time this person's dealing with it.

Right, right.

So, you know, just, just that side of it to say, hey, we're going to do our best to expedite this process and get you brought back to pre loss condition as fast as possible. But know that a lot of this is out of our control. We're contractors. You know, if we have the money, we'll put the roof on tomorrow, we'll put the siding on tomorrow, we'll redo the windows next week. But the problem is, is that, you know, if the money's not there, they can't, you can't do the work. You know, it gets protracted and it gets longer. So I think setting good time expectations is one and then the other. The, the other big mistake. I see a lot of. And again, none of this is, you know, universal through all contractors. There's a lot of good contractors that know just as much or more than I do about all this stuff. But it's reducing the process down to being overly simple, I think is another big one. You know, again, as public adjusters, we get brought in a lot and you know, I always have a consult and expectation setting call with my clients, and I say, here's what we're going to do. It could go this way, it could go that way. It's very contingent and subjective on your insurance carrier on whether or not they want to work constructively with us. And I go into painful detail about all of the things, all of the ways and variables that a claim can go. And I see a lot of contractors that just do the, hey, sign it up, we'll get it paid for, you'll have a roof on, it'll be easy, and it rarely is. And the other, I'll say this one. This is kind of facetious, but the third mistake is using the term slam dunk too much.

It's like getting a tattoo of your slam dunk.

It's like getting a tattoo of your girlfriend. As soon as you say that, it's not gonna be a slam dunk. Every time I hear the term slam dunk, it becomes the most, you know, biggest. It's the biggest can of worms ever. So don't use slam dunk.

Yeah, stop saying that. Don't say slam dunk anymore. That's funny. That's funny. Well, cool, man. So are you willing and able to help some of these guys develop some of these strategies if they reach out and have some questions for you?

Absolutely. And that's, you know, I never want to be salesy, but not that you would ever need to use C3 for this, but if you have questions or can get your hands on a policy, I know that pretty much any public adjuster will, you know, do a review for you and let you know, like, what certain endorsements mean, how that will affect a claim situation. And if you want to completely save yourself from any exposure or anything like that, we're always happy to review anything, even if it's not something that we would be interested in taking on or we don't think it's a good fit for us. We want to be a resource for contractors. We want to make sure that contractors are successful, and we want to make sure that you guys all stay in business. Because at the end of the day, you know, that's where public adjusters get our work from. It's contractors and.