Why your leads go cold (and the five-minute fix)

Before spending another dollar on advertising, it's worth asking what happens to the enquiries you already get. In most trade businesses, a meaningful share of them quietly go nowhere — not because the leads were bad, but because nobody got back in time.

Speed beats almost everything

A homeowner filling in a form rarely fills in just one. They contact two or three businesses, and the first to respond with a real human conversation usually gets the job — often before the others have even seen the enquiry. Replying within five minutes rather than an hour changes outcomes dramatically.

For a trade, the hard part is obvious: you're on a roof, in a ceiling cavity, or under a house. Nobody expects you to sit by a laptop.

What to put in place instead

• An instant automated text or email that confirms the enquiry, names a callback window, and sounds like you wrote it.
• Notifications that go to a phone, not just an inbox nobody opens until 7pm.
• A fixed time each day — smoko and end of day — where every new enquiry gets called.
• One follow-up two days later and one a week after that. Most businesses never send either, and a real share of quotes close on them.

This is the cheapest improvement available

Lifting your close rate from one in four to one in three costs nothing in ad spend and is worth as much as a 30% budget increase. Fix the follow-up first, then scale the advertising into a system that converts.