Restoration Business Development Rep Career Guide: Marketing Reps and Sales in Restoration

The U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET occupational database describes the closest published occupation to this job, sales representatives of services (SOC 41-3091), as selling services to individuals or businesses.

Its task list for the occupation includes contacting prospective or existing customers to discuss how services can meet their needs, and consulting with clients after the sale to resolve problems and provide ongoing support.

In a restoration company, those generic tasks take a specific shape.

The call list is built from businesses that sit upstream of the loss: plumbing companies, insurance agencies, property management offices and commercial facility contacts.

The rep's product is the company itself — its mitigation response, its contents operation, its rebuild capability — and the rep's job is to be the name those contacts reach for when a customer's loss needs all three.

The role is not a field job.

Water extraction, soot removal and tear-out belong to restoration technicians, crew leads and the project managers who run the jobs; the rep's work happens before the truck rolls, and again after it leaves.

It is also not the company's marketing program.

Budgets, search and pay-per-click, review generation, lead purchases and agency choices are the owner's side of the desk.

A restoration company's next job arrives through someone else's phone, and the rep's territory is the list of people holding those phones.

Four kinds of contacts anchor it.

• Plumbing companies. The trade standing in the kitchen when a supply line, water heater or drain fails, and the person on site when a customer asks about cleanup while the water is still standing.
• Insurance agents and brokers. The professionals a customer may already have a policy relationship with when a loss happens — a contact a restoration company builds long before the next claim.
• Property management offices. One vendor relationship that can cover many units in a portfolio, so it can carry loss after loss.
• Commercial and national accounts. Facility managers and portfolio owners whose buildings can produce larger, programmed work rather than one-off referrals.

How those relationships are compensated is where the job touches the law.

The referral rules our research verified are Florida's; it did not survey other states.

Florida's contractors statute, section 489.147(2)(c), prohibits a contractor from offering, paying, receiving or accepting any compensation or reward for referring services for which property insurance proceeds are payable.

The statute's penalty provision lets a contractor be fined up to $10,000 per violation.

Two more Florida lines sit next to the referral ban.

Section 489.147(2)(d) bars contractors from interpreting policy provisions, advising an insured on coverage or adjusting a claim unless licensed as a public adjuster.

Florida's public adjuster statute, section 626.854(16), separately bars a licensed contractor or its subcontractor from advertising, soliciting or performing public adjuster services without that license.

Together those Florida statutes describe the line a marketing rep walks there: building name recognition and relationships is the job, while pricing someone's claim or paying for insurance-paid referrals is not.

Our sources carry no restoration-specific BLS occupation for business development or marketing work.

The closest published group is sales representatives of services, SOC 41-3091, an all-industry occupation spanning service sales across the economy.

In the May 2025 BLS OEWS survey, that group earned a national median of $69,990 a year, or $33.65 an hour.

The 10th percentile earned $37,980 and the 90th percentile $148,840.

Read that as a proxy, not a benchmark.

It averages service-sales reps across every kind of employer, and our research found no restoration-specific figure to compare it against.

The outlook number carries the same caveat.

BLS projects employment in the group to grow 2.7% from 2025 to 2035, an all-industry projection for the proxy occupation rather than a restoration forecast.

Commission is the pay question this title raises, and one federal rule reaches it directly.

Under the FLSA regulations the Department of Labor administers, commissions are payments for hours worked (29 CFR 778.117).

For a non-exempt employee they must be included in the regular rate used to compute overtime, however and whenever they are paid.

The exemption reps ask about is outside sales.

It carries no salary-level test, but it takes a primary duty of making sales or obtaining orders or contracts for services, plus being customarily and regularly engaged away from the employer's place of business (29 CFR 541.500).

The edges of that exemption cut through this job.

Sales made by mail, telephone or the internet are not outside sales unless the contact is used merely as an adjunct to personal calls.

A home or office used as a base for telephone solicitation counts as one of the employer's places of business (29 CFR 541.502).

Promotional work designed to stimulate sales that someone else will make is not exempt outside-sales work under the rule (29 CFR 541.503).

That is why the line between generating a referral and closing the job matters here.

Where any individual rep lands is fact-specific: the duties, the share of time spent away from the office and whether the rep closes the sale decide it, and the title on the posting does not.

The formal bar is low.

BLS lists a high school diploma or equivalent, no related work experience and moderate-term on-the-job training as the typical entry requirements for sales representatives of services.

That profile describes the proxy occupation rather than a restoration-specific gate: the listed education is a high school diploma, the listed experience requirement is none, and the training happens on the job.

What the work tests is applied.

The transferable skills underneath it are clear phone and written communication, enough restoration literacy to describe mitigation, contents and rebuild work accurately, consistent contact records, and the discipline to work a route alone.

Because the role sells on behalf of crews, the strongest reps learn the delivery side's vocabulary: water damage and drying, soot and odor, mold protocols and contents claims, at the level a plumber or an agent can follow.

Employers add their own hiring requirements on top, and the posting is where those live.

Ask in the interview how the company splits lead generation from job closing, because that split defines the work more than the title does.

Our research holds no restoration-specific progression data for business development titles, so this section describes the track's shape rather than measured moves.

The occupation's entry profile — a high school diploma plus moderate-term on-the-job training — is a low formal gate, so the backgrounds that carry into the role are the ones that have already practiced the skills in the requirements above.

Inside a restoration company the role sits on the office and management track.

Its neighbors are the restoration coordinator who dispatches and tracks job files, the estimator who prices the work, the project manager who runs it, and the production and operations managers who own capacity and margin.

The post-sale half of the occupation's task list — consulting with clients after the sale to resolve problems and provide ongoing support — is the part that compounds.

In this role that task is account care — keeping the referring partner informed while the job runs and after it closes — and it is part of the job, not an afterthought.

Where the title leads is a company-by-company question.

The same territory can grow into senior account work, into estimation or project management on the delivery side, or into general management, depending on how the company is built and what the rep wants from the work.

911 Restoration's careers page, for one example, lists sales and business development among its common roles, alongside restoration technicians, crew leads and project managers, customer care and dispatch, marketing and corporate, and operations and logistics — and says it posts openings on LinkedIn.

Whether the employer behind an opening is an independent restoration company, a franchise location or a regional or national restorer, the duty list tells you more than the title does.

The same name can describe a pure relationship-builder, a closer who signs the job on the doorstep, or one person doing both — and that split shapes both the workday and the pay structure above.

Openings are listed on restoration business development rep jobs, where you can filter by location and salary.

Career information, not legal, insurance or pay-law advice. Confirm referral-fee and adjusting rules with the state named, and overtime classification with the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division, before you act on any of it.