How Contents Pros Deal with Adjusters

I’ve spent more than 30 years looking for formulas that help contents restoration professionals become remarkably successful. Often, I find them in unexpected places.

When Total Contenz’s marketing guru, Steven LaVelle, was writing “Get Paid! How Contractors Get the Money They Earn”, he interviewed Jim “Big Dog” Thompson, one of the most active large loss contractors in the country. With multiple million-dollar contracts under his belt (including over 200 Walmart locations), Thompson told LaVelle some startling, yet profound, statements about how to be successful in the world of restoration.

Thompson told LaVelle, “My front-line workers bring in jobs under budget and under time – how many contractors do you know who can do that? … [Many] restoration guys don’t give the owner or adjuster the bill until the last day of work – that is because they are trying to put more stuff on the invoice, or they don’t have the guts to hand the owner a bill up front because they might lose the job. The big time isn’t for sissies.”

As a contents restoration success instructor, I have had the opportunity to teach, consult for and manage more than 2,000 contents contractors. Surprisingly, many of them had fallen into precisely the trap to that Thompson had alluded. For whatever reason, the contractor opted to accept, launch and finish a job without any agreement from the adjuster assigned to the case.

Then, at the end of the job, the contractor would submit what they considered to be a perfectly fair and equitable invoice, only to have their payment paralyzed by being put “in review” or “pushback” by the adjuster.

But once they learned a more elegant way of proceeding, they never went back to the “roulette wheel” method of submitting an invoice.

My solution: Prepare a “pre-estimate” and, if at all possible, have the adjuster right there with you when you share it. That is the ideal way to proceed on an assignment.

During an initial walkthrough, take pictures of where everything is, the damage to any important areas and items, and discuss the intended scope of the job. We usually have the homeowner next to us every step of the way, and the scope that we present is full of superior tools with which the adjuster can take the opportunity to object there and then. He may share insights, like the fact that the available funds from the policy won’t cover all the best practices, and instead will make suggestions for alternative efforts.

A good contents manager always offers A-level services, but has B-level – and even C-level – back-up plans.

Waiting until the end of the job to engage in negotiations is the worst way to ensure you will be paid. If the adjuster agrees to your recommendations on how you will proceed with the job, it is best to get it out of the way before you actually begin to work.

If he is an experienced insurance adjuster and is in agreement with your practices and techniques, he may be basing his estimate on what he knows his boss has accepted in the past. When he “signs off” on your final estimate, you can be assured that it is something for which he is willing to pay.

Let’s say the adjuster objects to something in your scope. For example, he says, “Look, you don’t need five workers for this. I’m only going to let you have four.”

That has never slowed me down or changed my bottom line. If I have less manpower, I have to charge more “man-hours.” It all equals out. If there are five boxes to be moved and it takes one minute for each of them to be moved, according to Xactimate standards, I charge for five “man-minutes.”

If I am using five workers and they each take one minute to move one box, it comes out to five man-minutes.

If I am allowed to use only one man and it takes him five minutes to move the five boxes, it still comes out to five man-minutes. By complying up front with the adjuster’s wishes, he can present an estimate to his boss in a language he knows will be accepted.

Of course, that analogy is far too simplistic. What if the adjuster says, “I’m not paying for anything on the back porch or in the gazebo outside”? He is speaking from an understanding of the written contract and he has to deal with the homeowner.

But what if there is a gray area? The adjuster says, “Just total loss all that stuff in the storage room; I’m not paying to clean and restore all that old junk.” But you know for a fact (because you spoke with the owner) that it is filled with family heirlooms and valued antiques. You may have to inform the adjuster of his faux pas. The best way and time to do that is privately while you are still discussing the pre-estimate (not after you have cleaned and restored all the items without giving him the chance to understand their importance).

Arguments after work has been done rarely pan out; information exchanges at the beginning of a job often do. An adjuster needs to justify all his expenditures. It is our responsibility to give him the tools to make a cogent presentation.

Again, all this needs to be done at the outset of the assignment, not when he has already placed himself in jeopardy by making an incomplete or uninformed estimate for his superiors.

That is why my graduates rarely experience a pushback and get paid well and in-full.

“Aha!” I hear you say, “but what if the adjuster doesn’t want to see you, doesn’t want to talk to you, doesn’t read your pre-estimate, won’t answer your calls and seems to have formulated his own estimate by consulting a crystal ball with a major crack in it? How do you deal with an adjuster who has no interest in completing his job in a fair and reasonable manner?”

The pre-estimate can still help you. But that is a story for another day.

Bio: Barb Jackson is co-founder of Total Contentz. She assists disaster restoration professionals, helping to improve their contents processing capabilities with the latest technology and procedures. She is a leading contents restoration consultant, offering consulting and training services for full-service restorers and specialized cleaning contractors.