Estimates

Answering estimating calls after hours without hiring anyone

Most estimating enquiries do not arrive during business hours. They arrive when the homeowner is home, looking at the problem: evenings, Saturday mornings, the first warm weekend of quoting season.

Those are the hours you are least able to answer, and they are the hours with the most intent behind them. Somebody standing in their yard at 7pm annoyed about somebody who wants a price before they will book is ready to buy.

An after-hours answer does not have to be a person sitting up waiting. It has to know your services, quote from your pricing, tell them whether you cover their address, and book them in — then leave you a note that reads like your office wrote it.

The test is whether the caller can tell. If they hang up knowing when you are coming, they do not care what answered.

Done properly this is the cheapest growth in estimating: no advertising, no new trucks, no extra estimators. You are simply stopping the leak in what you already paid to generate.