A short YouTube video by Mike Andes advising small/home-service businesses to actively follow up on estimates that remain in 'sent' status. Andes highlights a hidden problem: many estimates never receive any response (neither accepted nor rejected), and recommends calling customers directly to request a clear yes or no.
There is one hidden problem keeping your business small. Let me explain. When you go to your CRM and you go into your software, you can see what percent of your estimates have been accepted. That's pretty easy. That's called your close ratio. But a lot of people don't realize the hidden killer for most small businesses in the home service industries is simply that the majority of their estimates never even get a response. The status of those estimates remain as sent. Not closed, not won, not lost, just sent. We literally never even hear back from the customer. And we did all this work to get them the estimate proposal. Show up to their house, get the pricing information, ensure that our office sent the quote to them at the right time. All that fun jazz, but we never actually get an answer. We never get a yes or a no. This is when you call up the customer, say, Mr. Jones, I just need an answer. Whether that be no or yes, I just want to know, do you want to accept the job? That seems like a pretty reasonable ask to me.
