Buying roofing leads vs hiring a sales rep
A rep is a fixed cost with a hiring risk attached. Leads are a variable cost with no ramp. Most contractors get this backwards on their first hire.
Once referrals stop covering the schedule, the question becomes where the next dollar goes: into a canvasser or commission rep who generates their own opportunities, or into buying leads for the closers already on payroll. Both answers are defensible. What isn't defensible is comparing them on sticker price, which is how most contractors decide.
A rep is a bet on a person: on their ramp, their persistence, and their willingness to knock doors in August. Buying leads is a bet on a pipeline. The failure modes are completely different — a bad hire costs you a quarter and a territory's worth of goodwill, while a bad lead month costs you a subscription cycle you can cancel.
Roffy is the second kind of spend: exclusive, AI-scored leads from NOAA storm events plus vision scoring on satellite and Street View imagery, each sold to one contractor and locked 30-90 days (see how exclusivity works). This page is about when that's the better use of the dollar and when a person is.
The comparison most contractors get wrong
The usual framing is 'a rep costs me nothing on straight commission, and leads cost me real money up front.' It feels right and it's wrong. A commission rep costs you recruiting time, training time, management attention, vehicle and phone expenses, and — the big one — the opportunity cost of a territory being worked badly for three months by someone who then quits.
The clean way to compare is to put both on the same denominator: total dollars and hours invested, divided by jobs signed. For a rep, count everything through their ramp, not just commissions on closed deals. For leads, count the subscription plus the labor to work them. Run both against your last two quarters and the answer usually stops being a matter of opinion.
The second thing people miss: these aren't substitutes. A rep who generates their own opportunities and gets fed exclusive leads produces more than either input alone, because the constraint on most reps isn't effort — it's doors worth knocking.
When hiring the rep is the right call
Your leads are outrunning your closers. If leads are aging past 24 hours because nobody has time to work them, buying more is lighting money on fire. Hire capacity first.
You have a real training system. Reps succeed where there's a defined pitch, shadowing, and weekly accountability. Without that, you're not hiring a salesperson, you're sponsoring someone's self-directed experiment in your territory.
You're building an organization, not just a schedule. A sales team is an asset with enterprise value. A lead subscription is rented capacity — useful, but nobody buys a roofing company for it. Same tradeoff we lay out on the agency vs buying leads page.
When buying leads is the right call
You have closing capacity sitting idle. If you or your crew can take more appointments this week and simply don't have them, leads convert directly into revenue with no ramp. That's the cleanest case there is.
Cash flow is tight enough that a bad hire would hurt. A subscription you can cancel at the end of the cycle is a smaller bet than a person whose ramp you fund for a quarter. Roffy's tiers are month-to-month and cancellable from the dashboard — the full policy is on the no-contract page.
Your market is seasonal. Storm-belt roofing volume is lumpy. Lead spend flexes up and down a tier with the season; a salaried rep bills the same in a dead month, and a commission-only rep tends to leave during one.
The setup that usually wins: feed the rep
The highest-leverage version of this isn't either/or. Hire the rep, then hand them exclusive storm-scored leads instead of a map and a wish. A canvasser knocking cold streets might work a neighborhood with no verified storm event and no roof-condition signal. The same person working a list of homes where a NOAA-confirmed event passed over and the roof scored as a likely candidate is having a different conversation on every door.
It also changes your hiring math. If reps ramp faster and quit less because the work is less demoralizing, your effective cost per hire drops — which is a real return on lead spend that never shows up in a cost-per-lead comparison. Price the tiers on the pricing page against what one avoided bad hire costs you, and the framing shifts.
Frequently asked questions
Is it cheaper to buy roofing leads or hire a salesperson?
Compare on cost per signed job, not sticker price. A rep's true cost includes recruiting, training, management time, vehicle and phone, and the ramp period before they produce — plus turnover risk if they leave mid-season. Roffy's published tiers run $298-$1,398 one-time or $398-$1,798/mo, roughly $4.50-$8 per exclusive lead, with no ramp. Run both against your last two quarters using total investment divided by jobs signed.
Should I hire a canvasser or buy leads first?
Depends on where your bottleneck is. If leads are aging because nobody can work them fast enough, hire closing capacity first — more leads into a saturated team just raises your cost per closed job. If your team has open calendar time, buy leads first, because they convert to revenue with no ramp period to fund.
Do exclusive leads make sales reps more effective?
That's the common pattern. A rep working cold streets has no signal about which homes need work; the same rep working storm-scored exclusive leads knows a confirmed event passed over the property and how the roof scored before knocking. Contractors typically report faster ramp and less burnout, which lowers turnover — a real return that never appears in a cost-per-lead comparison.
What's the risk of relying only on a commission sales rep?
Concentration and turnover. Roofing sales turnover is heavy, and when a rep leaves they often take relationships and territory knowledge with them. If one person generates most of your opportunities, their departure is a revenue event. A lead source you control diversifies that risk because the pipeline doesn't resign.
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