These guides exist because the first step in fixing any business problem is the same: get an honest number. You can do that yourself, this week, with the phone, quotes and spreadsheet you already have. Each guide ends with a decision rule, so you know what the number means.
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The one-week missed-call leak test
Over five working days, record every call from an unknown number, whether a person answered and whether anyone called back. Multiply the callers you lost by your close rate and average job value, and you have the weekly cost of the leak.
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The one-sheet lead log: tracking a small business will actually keep
One spreadsheet with seven columns, filled in for every enquiry, is enough to tell most small businesses which marketing pays. The trick is keeping it short enough that people use it on their busiest day.
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Same-day quotes without working nights
Most slow quotes are not caused by complex jobs. They are caused by steps that wait for one busy person. Measure your real turnaround, remove those waits with templates and price blocks, and follow up every open quote on a fixed schedule.
Why start with measurement
Owners usually know something is wrong long before they know what. A slow month could be fewer enquiries, more unanswered calls, slower quotes or a competitor's new ads. Each of those has a different fix, and treating the wrong one wastes money.
Measuring first also protects you from vendors. If you know your missed-call rate, your quote turnaround and your sources before anyone pitches you, it is much harder for someone to sell you a fix you don't need. The services overview shows how each measurement points to one of our four fixes.
Guide 1: The one-week missed-call leak test
The missed-call leak test shows you how to count, over five working days, how many new callers never reached a person and never heard back. It covers where to find the data on common phone setups, how to separate new callers from existing customers, and how to turn the count into a weekly dollar figure.
You'll learn:
- why "calls missed" overstates the problem and "callers lost" is the number that matters
- how to set up a simple tally if your provider has no export
- the threshold at which missed calls are worth fixing before anything else
Guide 2: Same-day quotes without working nights
The same-day quotes guide is for trades and service businesses that lose jobs between the visit and the signature. It walks through a quote timeline audit of your last 20 quotes, the most common bottlenecks, how to build a quote template from your own best work, and a follow-up rhythm that doesn't feel pushy.
You'll learn:
- how to calculate your median days from enquiry to quote
- which steps usually wait on the owner, and how to take them off the owner's plate
- what to say in a follow-up message two days and seven days after quoting
Guide 3: The one-sheet lead log
The one-sheet lead log guide shows how to set up a single spreadsheet that records every enquiry's source, value and outcome. It is the cheapest form of tracking there is, and for many small businesses it is enough to stop wasting money on channels that don't pay.
You'll learn:
- the seven columns that matter, and why more columns make the log fail
- how to get staff to fill it in during a busy day
- how to read the log after two months and decide what to cut
What the three numbers tell you together
Each guide produces one number, and together they give a simple picture of where your business loses work:
| Number | Where it comes from | What a worrying result looks like |
|---|---|---|
| New callers lost per week | Missed-call leak test | More than two or three |
| Median days from visit to quote | Same-day quotes audit | More than two working days |
| Share of paid work with a known source | One-sheet lead log | Less than about four in five |
If all three look healthy and you still feel short of work, the issue is probably volume, which points to local visibility repair. If one or more look worrying, fix those first, because extra enquiries would only flow into the same leaks.
How to use the guides with us
You don't need to run any of these before contacting us. But if you have, bring the numbers to your consultation and we can skip straight to diagnosis. If the numbers point to a fix you can make yourself, we'll tell you that too.
For the bigger picture, read about how we work, see how each district of the city tends to leak on the areas page, or go straight to the contact page.
Frequently asked questions
Do we need special software for these guides?
No. They use your phone's call history or provider portal, your sent quotes and a spreadsheet. The point is to get a first honest number quickly.
How long does each guide take to run?
The missed-call test runs for one working week. The quote audit takes an afternoon. The lead log takes about an hour to set up and a few seconds per lead after that.
What if the numbers look fine?
Good news is useful too. It means the problem is somewhere else, often visibility, and you've saved yourself from fixing something that wasn't broken.