The roof is the only part of a commercial solar project owned by somebody who isn’t your customer. Three of the five answers you need are held by a manufacturer, a roofing contractor, or a file nobody has opened in a decade.
Solar installers are used to controlling the technical conversation. Production modeling, interconnection, equipment selection, structural loading. All of it sits inside the project.
The roof doesn’t. It carries a warranty written by a manufacturer, it was installed by a contractor who may still be responsible for it, and its condition is documented somewhere the facilities side controls. None of those parties is in your sales meeting, and any of them can stop a signed project.
So the roof questions come first, on the first visit, before anybody models anything.
In short
- Ask whether a manufacturer guarantee is in force before you ask anything about production.
- Work on a covered roof usually has to go through an approved contractor, which is a schedule and a cost, not a formality.
- Get the roofer into the conversation early. They become either your ally or the person who kills it late.
The questions, and who holds each answer
| Question | Who actually knows | Why it decides the project |
|---|---|---|
| How old is the roof and what is its expected remaining life? | Facilities, or the last inspection report | A short remaining life means removal and reinstallation mid-array |
| Is a manufacturer guarantee in force, and what type? | The manufacturer, through the building’s records | Determines whether anybody can touch the roof without losing it |
| Who installed it, and are they still approved for that guarantee? | The roofing contractor | Work may have to be done or supervised by them |
| Is there a leak history or a moisture survey? | Facilities, and often nobody has written it down | Wet insulation under an array is expensive to reach later |
| What is the structural capacity and where are the drawings? | The owner’s records, or a structural engineer | Decides ballast versus attachment, and whether it’s feasible at all |
Three of those five are answered by somebody outside the room. That’s the whole difficulty, and it’s the reason these questions belong at the start instead of after a proposal has been written.
The guarantee question stops the most projects
Commercial roof guarantees are valuable and buildings protect them. Where one is in force, the terms typically govern who may work on the roof and what has to be approved in advance, and an array involves either penetrations or substantial added load.
An installer who doesn’t raise this is setting up a late failure. The project gets modeled, proposed, and sometimes approved, and then somebody on the facilities side mentions the guarantee and the whole thing pauses while a manufacturer is consulted.
Raising it yourself on visit one costs you nothing and buys a lot. It signals you have done this on real buildings, and it puts the obstacle on the table while there’s still time to design around it.
“Before we look at production, is there a manufacturer guarantee still in force on this roof? If there’s, we will want to talk to whoever holds it early, because that usually shapes how the array gets attached.”
Getting the roofer on your side
Installers tend to treat the building’s roofing contractor as a risk. Approached differently they’re the most useful person available.
That contractor knows the roof’s real condition, holds the guarantee relationship, and has an existing relationship with your prospect. They also have an obvious commercial interest, because work on that roof is likely to go through them.
A call that opens by asking for their view, instead of asking their permission, generally goes well. Ask what they would want to see before an array went on. The answer is usually specific, reasonable, and exactly the list you needed.
Get in front of the owner
Abstrakt sets appointments with the owners, facility managers, and directors of facilities weighing commercial solar, so your team spends its week on roofs instead of building lists. The site visit, the proposal, and the job are yours.
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When the answer is that the roof goes first
Sometimes the honest recommendation is a new roof before any array. That feels like losing the deal and usually isn’t.
A building that reroofs on your advice has a roof with decades of life, no guarantee conflict, and an owner who now knows you told them the expensive truth. The array follows on a known schedule, and you’re the only installer in the conversation when it does.
The alternative is installing over a roof with eight years left and owning that decision for the rest of the system’s life. Somebody pays to remove and reinstall that array, and everybody involved remembers who recommended it.
What to write down on the first visit
One page, before any modeling. Roof type and approximate age. Guarantee status and type if known. Who installed it. Any known leak history. Whether structural drawings exist and who holds them. What you could not determine and who would need to answer it.
That page does two things. It tells the owner you understand their building as a building, not as a surface area. And it’s the document that keeps a proposal from being built on assumptions that fail in month three.
Getting in front of commercial solar buyers
Asking the right roof questions keeps a project alive. Finding the project is a different job.
Commercial solar buyers are rarely shopping. An owner with a suitable roof is usually thinking about something else entirely, and will keep thinking about something else until somebody puts a credible number in front of them.
That makes this a direct contact business rather than an inbound one, with a decision cycle that can run a year or more from first conversation to signature. Installers who grow steadily are usually the ones who stayed in touch with owners who said not yet.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do commercial solar installers find projects?
Through direct contact with owners and facility managers rather than inbound enquiry, since buildings with suitable roofs are rarely looking. The decision cycle is long, so the installer still in touch when the budget appears tends to win.
Is cold calling worth it for commercial solar?
It still works, because owners and facility managers are reachable by phone and rarely respond to email from companies they do not know. The challenge is sustaining it across a decision cycle that can run a year or more.
Should a solar installer hire a salesperson or outsource appointment setting?
The in-house comparison is not a salary against a retainer. It is salary plus payroll taxes, benefits, software, ramp time and somebody to manage them. Outsourcing trades that for a fixed monthly cost and a faster start. Which is right depends on whether you can keep a salesperson busy and managed.
Keep going
- Commercial solar lead generation
- The three numbers a commercial solar proposal has to survive
- How to write a commercial solar proposal that gets approved
- What to say when you cold call a facility manager
- When commercial building budgets are actually set
About this article
Jeff Winters is Chief Executive Officer at Abstrakt. Reviewed by Neil Erker, Chief Marketing Officer. Abstrakt sets appointments for commercial solar contractors and the wider trades, and the patterns here come from that calling.
Jeff Winters is the CEO of Abstrakt Marketing Group, a U.S.-based B2B lead generation and appointment-setting company that books qualified sales meetings for clients across the commercial trades, IT and managed services, manufacturing, and B2B services. He has spent his career building and running outbound sales programs at scale, and he breaks down what actually works in sales and lead generation on Abstrakt's podcast, The Grow Show.
