Most trades owners know something is wrong with their marketing but not what. The symptom they feel, a quiet phone or a week of junk calls, is often a side effect of a different problem. This guide gives you a twenty-minute method to find the real one, using numbers you already have somewhere. You need a pen, last month's phone log, your inbox and your job list.
Step 1: Collect four numbers
Answer first: you need four counts for one recent, normal month: enquiries in, enquiries answered, quotes sent and jobs won. Everything else in this guide comes from those.
- Enquiries in (E). Every call, text, email, website message and platform lead from a new customer. Count missed calls too, and calls that hung up at voicemail. Leave out existing customers calling about a current job.
- Enquiries answered (A). The ones where someone in your business actually spoke or wrote back to the person within a reasonable time. A callback two days later counts only if the customer was still interested.
- Quotes sent (Q). Written or verbal prices given for a specific job.
- Jobs won (W). Quotes that became booked work.
Add two more if you can:
- Average job value (V): total revenue from new-customer jobs divided by W.
- Review count and date of last review, from your Google Business Profile.
If you don't track enquiries, rebuild them. Your phone's call history shows missed and answered calls. Your inbox shows emails. Your job list shows what was won. Expect to undercount; that's fine for a first pass.
Step 2: Work out three ratios
Answer first: three ratios turn the counts into a diagnosis. Each one points at a different problem.
| Ratio | Formula | What a low number suggests |
|---|---|---|
| Answer rate | A ÷ E | Leads are being lost before anyone talks to them |
| Quote rate | Q ÷ A | Many enquiries are the wrong fit (bad leads) |
| Close rate | W ÷ Q | Quotes lose on trust, price or follow-up |
Here is a worked example. A residential electrical business has a month with E = 70, A = 49, Q = 30 and W = 12, and an average job value of $1,400.
- Answer rate: 49 ÷ 70 = 70%. Three in ten enquiries never reached a person.
- Quote rate: 30 ÷ 49 = 61%. About four in ten conversations went nowhere.
- Close rate: 12 ÷ 30 = 40%.
Monthly new-customer revenue is 12 × $1,400 = $16,800.
Step 3: Price each problem
Answer first: put a rough monthly dollar figure on each problem by asking what would happen if one ratio improved and the others stayed the same.
The answer-rate leak
If the electrician answered 90% instead of 70%, A would be 63, not 49. At the same quote and close rates, that is about 63 × 0.61 × 0.40 ≈ 15 jobs instead of 12. Three extra jobs at $1,400 is about $4,200 a month. That is the price of the missed-call problem.
The bad-lead drain
If the quote rate rose from 61% to 75% because fewer wrong-fit people called, there would be about 37 quotes and roughly 15 jobs, again about 3 more. But the real saving here is also time: 19 of 49 conversations led nowhere, and if each took 10 minutes, that is over three hours of office time a month, plus whatever you paid to attract them. This is the bad-leads problem.
The trust gap (and reviews)
If the close rate rose from 40% to 50%, W would go from 12 to 15. Reviews are one of the main drivers here, especially when your profile is thin compared with competitors. Count your reviews and check the date of your most recent one. If you have far fewer than the three businesses above you in the map results, or nothing new in three months, the review problem is part of this gap.
The owner-time cost
List the marketing jobs you personally did last month and the hours they took. Then list the jobs you meant to do and didn't: review requests not sent, quotes not chased, photos not posted. The second list is usually the costly one. If it is long, the no-time problem is quietly feeding the other three.
Step 4: Watch for problems in disguise
Answer first: two disguises account for most wrong diagnoses, and both lead owners to buy the wrong fix.
- A leak dressed as a lead shortage. The owner feels "not enough leads" but the answer rate is low. More advertising makes this worse, because it sends more people to an unanswered phone.
- A lead-quality problem dressed as a sales problem. The owner feels "we can't close" but the quote rate is also low, and the lost quotes are mostly price shoppers from one source. Sales training won't help; filtering will.
A third disguise is quieter: an owner-time problem dressed as everything else. If marketing only happens after slow months, all four ratios drift down during busy seasons. Check two months, one busy and one slow, and compare.
Step 5: Rank and pick one
Answer first: fix the problem with the largest monthly dollar figure first, unless a cheaper fix of similar value is available.
For the electrician above, the ranking might look like this:
- Answer-rate leak: about $4,200 a month, cheap and fast to fix (call coverage, missed-call text-back).
- Trust gap: about $4,200 a month, slower to fix (review routine, better quote follow-up).
- Bad-lead drain: about 3 jobs plus office hours, medium effort (targeting and website filters).
- Owner time: hard to price, but it is causing the review gap.
The sensible order is the leak first, because it is fast and cheap, then reviews, because they also raise the close rate on every new lead the first fix brings in.
Warning signs checklist
If you can't get numbers this week, these signs are a rough substitute. Tick any that apply.
Not enough leads: crew idle at least one day a week; long gaps between enquiries; most work from repeat customers; no website page for your most profitable job.
Bad leads: many calls from outside your area; frequent "how much for…" calls that end at the price; quotes won rarely from one particular source; ad spend rising while booked work doesn't.
No reviews: fewer reviews than nearby competitors; nothing new in three months; no direct review link in use; crews never ask.
No time: Google profile unchanged for a year; marketing only after slow months; nobody but the owner can log in to anything; quotes go unchased.
The section with the most ticks is a good guess at your biggest problem.
What to do next
Start tracking the four numbers properly this month: a simple spreadsheet with a row per enquiry, a source column and an outcome column. The lead quality scorecard guide shows a layout that also scores fit. If time is the barrier, the two-hours-a-week guide shows how to fit the basics in.
If you'd rather talk it through, bring your four numbers and call, text or email. The first conversation is free for eligible trades businesses, and it starts exactly where this guide ends: which problem costs you most, and what it would take to fix it.
Frequently asked questions
What if I don't track enquiries at all?
Rebuild last month from your phone's call log, your inbox and your job list. It won't be exact, but a rough count is far better than none, and it tells you what to start tracking.
Is a 50% close rate good?
It depends on the trade and the source. Emergency repair calls often close at a high rate; competitive renovation quotes much lower. Compare your rate by source and over time rather than against a national figure.
How often should I run this check?
Monthly is ideal once tracking is in place. At minimum, run it before any major marketing spend and again a couple of months after.
What if all four numbers look fine?
Then your marketing may not be the bottleneck. Capacity, pricing or hiring may be. That is still worth knowing before you spend money on more leads.