Rachel Markley and Michele Meier of Built Strong Exteriors help drive multi-million dollar returns with the company's strategy of working on insurance claims in-house.

The 2024 storm season struck early and often across much of the Great Plains and Midwest, meaning roofers are already hard at work — not just repairing homes and restoring communities but also that other seasonal specialty — wrangling with insurance carriers.

Built Strong Exteriors has a team driving multi-million dollar returns on insurance coverage approvals in Minnesota, which is no stranger to wild springtime weather and wicked winters.

RC recently caught up with Michele Meier, Built Strong’s project analyst director, and Rachel Markley, the company’s leading sales producer, on how they added more than $10 million in revenue last year while solidifying relationships with homeowners for years to come.

Through meticulous organization and notetaking, Markley developed a system that delivered an additional $3.2 million in insurance approvals last year, driving in more revenue than any of Built Strong’s skilled sales reps, Meier said. 

“This is pretty impressive when you figure that the average contract a sales rep brings in is just shy of $26,000, and her average overage is just over $6,000,” Meier said.

The company has an entire team dedicated to the new approach to working insurance claims.

[Editor’s Note: The conversation has been lightly edited for space and clarity.]

RC: Briefly describe how you got into the roofing industry.

Michele Meier (MM): I went to college and earned a bachelor’s degree in retail merchandising and management. My long-term goal was to be a buyer, but one of the last classes I took in college was logistics, and I fell in love with it. Out of college, I became a logistics broker and did that for 14 years, but there’s a very high burnout rate.

I have a good friend who connected me with Tony Flattum (Built Strong’s managing director). I was just doing overflow or helping out anywhere I could. There was no actual position, but we were killing it, and he needed the help. That was 2017, and I’ve been there ever since.

Rachel Markley (RM): A good friend told me about this position. I came from an insurance company where I had nothing to do with claims and knew literally nothing about construction. I started three years ago and haven’t looked back. It gave me so much freedom in my life and so much knowledge in an industry I had no idea about.

RC: Would you explain what "supplementing" means in insurance parlance?

MM: These big insurance companies are a business; like any business, they’re trying to cut costs any way they can.

Between that and having unknowledgeable adjusters in the field, we’ll get a statement of loss back, and we’ll find out that the insurance company had an adjuster from Texas looking at a roof in Minnesota. He doesn’t understand how much snow we get and that we need all these different code components. Our job is to ensure that insurance is cut for the items needed to do the work.

Theresa and Rick Stover, the founder’s daughter and son-in-law, purchased the firm from her father in 2008.

RC: You raked in more than $3 million in supplement revenue last year. What are you doing, and how are you doing it?

RM: I attribute my success to how I organize my day. I split my day up into sections and know that with this job I have to use my brain differently for different activities. When I first started, it was trial and error. I learned pretty early on that the way my brain worked was to split the mental actions I would have to take for each activity into a solid chuck of time. I really learned how to just harness my day better.

I also use my calendar and make many notes. If I didn’t do that there’s no way I could keep track of what I’m doing. And I want to go back to that file, to that day and say, “This is what I did, and this is why I did it.”

RC: Would you give us an idea of the volume of work you’re performing and what it means to Built Strong?

RM: Last year, I sent a total of 562 supplement requests to insurance, and I closed 510. That doesn’t mean the others weren’t successful either; it just means they might still be open this year. The average supplement I bring [in] is about $6,400. Our whole department brought in $10.3 million last year.

RC: How do you set up that process?

RM: So, on the calendar that I create for every single supplement, I also create a note. And I never get rid of those because oftentimes you might supplement a file, but then later, something else comes up during that repair, and you have to supplement again. I want to know who this is, who the adjuster was I worked with and how it went.

This is huge for me because I’m juggling quite a bit, and I won’t remember everything, but my notes are extensive.

RC: What top tips could you offer roofers considering supplements as a revenue stream?

MM: For me, it’s about offering the “silver platter.” You need to have the supplement in order: all the documents, all the building codes, all the tech bulletins [together] so you can just hand it off to the adjuster, and they don’t have to search for anything. Don’t give them a reason to say “no” is the way we try to go about it.

RM: The three things I would recommend are:

• Read through your file thoroughly before you start. You get a lot of information from that and know kind of what you’re looking at before you start it.
• Start making notes on those key things that you’re finding.
• Communicate very well with your own team, because you’ll need them, and the homeowner – because they need you.

RC: Any other thoughts about supplementing insurance?

RM: I would like to just say if there's a construction company or restoration company wondering if this is something they would want to do, it's completely another income stream for your business and you're already out there doing the work.

So why wouldn't you review what insurance has approved and make sure for the homeowner that the home is repaired to code, and the damages have been appropriately assessed?

You're creating lasting relationships with the homeowners. You're helping them navigate through a pretty stressful process, and many homeowners do not know how or what to do with what insurance tells them.

MM: Take this away from the sales reps. Let the sales reps do what they do best: [out of the office] selling and getting that next contract. Bring it in-house and have someone strictly do those supplements because the sales reps don’t know the building code like our team would or all the tech bulletins … so don’t bog them down. Let them keep making millions and have another department making more.