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One of the benefits of writing this column for the Exterior Contractor section of Qualified Remodeler is that sometimes you get to look “under the hood” at some the magazine’s ongoing research programs like the Top 500.

Our company, Lifetyme Exteriors, is driven by analysis of internal numbers. Being allowed to see aggregated data from all of the Top 500 companies was extremely interesting. (As a side note, I was not allowed to see individual company data, just the aggregated numbers.)

Here’s my take.

Based on numbers from the Top 500 Remodelers provided by Qualified Remodeler, the data revealed that out of all firm descriptions, (from the “Remodeling Service” section on the entry from), there are three groups that collectively represent 86.2 percent of the Top 500 businesses.

Those three types of businesses include the Exterior Contractor, which comprised 32.4 percent, with $2.06 billion in total gross sales; the Full Service Remodeler, at 31.8 percent, and achieving $1.14 billion in total group sales; and the Design/Build Remodeler that made up the remaining 22 percent, at $523 million in 2007 total gross sales.

The remaining 13.8 percent of the 500 firms include Kitchen and Bath Specialists at 4.2 percent and just over $373.5 million in aggregated, Insurance Restoration firms at 5.4 percent in number and just below $774 million in gross sales. “Other” firms, that not did fit into the above categories represented $165.5 million in gross sales, and the “No Response” firms were at just over $23 million in total gross sales in 2007.

The “No Response” category was, of course, found and given after the gathering/analyzing of the data.

So, what is most interesting about all those figures? It is that the Insurance Restoration firms, although they make up only 5.4 percent of the firms on the Top 500, collectively achieved higher gross sales in 2007 over the Design/Build Remodelers at 22 percent of the 500 firms.

I really wanted to find an explanation for this, so I looked deeper.

Let’s just look at a few examples. For one, the Insurance Restoration firms, on average, only take 55.5 days between the estimate given and the project’s completion, which is the second fastest time out of all the categories. Not surprisingly Exterior Contractors reported the shortest time elapsed between the day the estimate was given and the project’s completion, at just over 43 days, on average.

Secondly, Insurance Restoration firms only spent, on average, 3.5 percent of their 2007 Remodeling Gross Revenue (or just over $58,000) marketing their service. Again, this was second lowest, but now to the Design/Build remodeling group, which spent, on average, just 2.8 percent of their gross remodeling sales on marketing.

However, the most intriguing information that came from the data had to do with question No. 12 from the Top 500 Remodeler survey, which asked: “What is the average cost per lead for each marketing source?”

The results for the Insurance Restoration firms showed that out of the eleven ways to market their services, they paid the lowest in seven out of the eleven categories and were either second or third to lowest in the other four.

Obviously, this limited amount of data does not explain all the reasons as to why the Insurance Restoration firms, at 5.4 percent of the total firms, achieved such a high 2007 gross sales. It stands to reason that their businesses are highly dependent on rates of insurance claims, but it does suggest that they are doing a few things well in relation to the rest of the field.