Do you need more leads, or are you losing the ones you get?
Before you pay for more leads, count how many calls and form requests went unanswered last month. If that number is above zero, more leads means paying for more calls you will also miss.
You had a slow month, so the plan is more leads. Run some ads, sign up for a lead service, maybe redo the website. It feels right because the problem looks like too few people calling.
Check that before you spend anything.
You only remember the calls you answered
Think back over last month and you will remember the jobs you booked and the tire kickers who wasted an afternoon. You will not remember the call that rang out at 2:14 while you were on a roof, because nothing happened afterward. There was no voicemail and no name, so no job ever came of it.
Missed calls leave nothing behind, so they never make it into your picture of how the month went. Your phone kept track anyway. Open the call log, scroll back 30 days and count the numbers you don't recognize that you never called back.
What one missed call is worth
A person with a broken furnace or a washed out driveway calls down a list. They stop at the first contractor who picks up or answers back. If that was not you, you were never in the running, no matter how good your work is.
Take your average job. Multiply it by the calls you counted. Say only one in four of those people would have hired you. Write that number down and look at it next to what you were about to spend on ads.
The lead you pay for twice
If you buy leads or run ads, every call has a price on it before you say hello. A missed one costs you the ad money and the job. Then you go buy another lead to replace it.
Buying more leads on top of that raises the bill for the calls you miss.
Forms count too
A form request at 8 PM is a missed call that happens to be written down. If it lands in an inbox you read the next morning, that person has had twelve hours to hear from somebody else.
Questions to ask yourself
- How many calls did I miss last month, by the call log and not from memory?
- How many of those did I call back the same day?
- When a form comes in at night, when does that person first hear from me?
- If my leads doubled tomorrow, would I book twice the work or miss twice the calls?
- What did I spend last month to make the phone ring, and what did the missed calls cost on top of it?
If you can't answer the first one, you don't yet know whether leads are your problem.