Phil Risher explains why gutter cleaners and service businesses win more deals by responding first to estimate requests. Speed matters, but only if a real person answers the phone or texts back quickly. Relying only on AI answering services costs you leads because prospects won't engage with automated messages.
You got 10 minutes because that person— think about someone wants to get their gutters clean. They are going online and submitting forms to probably 3 different people because they're gonna get 3 estimates and then they're going to make a decision from there. They read the reviews already, they went to the website, and they're picking these people. Rarely do people get just one estimate. They're going to reach out to a couple different people. So if you can text them and email them right away and ask for a picture and move the ball forward, you're going to initially stand out and close more deals. So yes, speed to lead is everything. The other thing to this is answering the phones. So there's ways to do like missed call text backs or AI answering services, but I always recommend that as a last resort, not first resort. Gotta answer your phones, you gotta respond to customers. We have clients where we turn on the AI automations and they don't respond to those text messages, and then they lose leads. There needs to be a human element that picks up the ball and gets stuff on the board.
