What is in your opinion the difference between a professional and a nonprofessional roofer?

A professional knows industry materials, standards, and practices well enough to see a full range of options on each project, has a reasonable idea about the time, effort, and expense entailed by each of them, has seen and made enough mistakes to provide informed opinions concerning the consequences of decisions made and actions taken, knows the difference between his responsibilities and other people's, and takes full responsibility for his.

Well Vickie, you asked what is a professional "Roofer". Of course there will be many replies commenting on many different areas of the roofing "Business", all of which are legitimate and have plenty to do with the overall scope of things.

But a professional "Roofer" doesn't have to own a business. Like some of the others have already stated, he or she is the person who is an expert in the roofing trade, has many years of experience, pride and integrity in their work and will do the right thing even when nobody's looking and no one else but them would ever know the difference! ;)

A professional roofer gives a bid and that is the price he does the job for, take it or leave it. A nonprofessional gives a bid and if it is too high for the customer, starts to negotiate a different price.

I despise BBB. We have an A+ BBB rating with zero complaints, but it's a scam. There are roofers who have an A+ rating who I know to be crooked as a corkscrew. As soon as I pay $900 each year for our 2 memberships, they start jacking me up about buying ads.

My guess is that they are a lot like Facebook. My friend is banned from Facebook because of unPC posts regularly. I make the exact same posts and never get banned. The difference? I bought $7,000 in Facebook ads last year...

A Professional Roofer is on Angie's List and has a BBB Sticker

A professional roofer has a long history of installing roofs that last longer than the guarantees. He listens to his customer's needs and tailors a solution that fits his needs, not some pre-determined set of ideals established by a roofing trade organization.

A professional is an expert at what s/he professes to be and is worthy to be paid for it. So a professional roofer is an expert at roofing and worthy of being paid for it. That does not mean s/he is necessarily an expert business person or an expert sales person or an expert anything else.