One of my roofing clients met with an insurance adjuster a while back. My client does a great job at making the interaction all about the other person, so he let the adjuster take the lead in looking at the roof. In this interaction, that meant letting the adjuster go up the ladder first to look around for damage. The adjuster seemed a little surprised, but he examined the roof with my client.
Once they finished on the roof and came back down, the adjuster started opening up and sharing with my client.
My client asked, "So you work with a lot of roofers?"
The adjuster responded, "I do, and that's why I was a little surprised. Most roofers are waiting up on the roof for me, and as soon as I get up there they start pointing out all the damage."
He shared, "I've looked at maybe 400 roofs this year, and only twelve of them didn't get a new roof." He paused, then continued, "But I definitely remember all twelve. In each case, I basically got into a fight with the roofer."
"In fact," he shared, "I just got done with a roof where that happened. The roofer screamed at me for ten minutes! So this was definitely a nice change of pace."
My client joked, "Well, do you want me to yell at you?"
The adjuster chuckled, then asked, "Well, what else do you want on the claim?"
My client ended up pointing out some additional storm damage, and the adjuster told him insurance would cover all of it.
Different stands out! And there are two keys to succeeding by being different: guts and humor.
My client had the guts to act differently than other roofers. It would be much easier for him to start pointing out all the damage to the roof. But he didn't, and that made an impact.
Then once my client had established rapport with the insurance adjuster, he even made him laugh a little bit!
How could you use guts and humor to stand out from the competition?
