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Marisol from Trevino Tile and Stone in San Antonio explains how sticky-note lead tracking cost her a third of her jobs — and how automated missed-call texts, instant call logging, and quote follow-ups replaced two failed CRMs without her installers ever touching a phone.
Marisol runs Trevino Tile and Stone in San Antonio — five people, eleven years, backsplashes and shower surrounds. The phone rings plenty; the problem is what happens between the ring and the quote. Here's how she plugged the leak without forcing her installers onto software.
In this episode:
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Eric: So walk me through it — the sticky note thing. Like, literally a sticky note?
Marisol Trevino: Literally. Yellow ones. Sometimes pink if we run out. My office helper, bless her, she answers the phone, writes the name and the number and what they want, and then she sticks it on the edge of her monitor.
Eric: On the monitor.
Marisol Trevino: On the monitor. And by the end of a good week there's like a little fringe of them, and I'm supposed to come through and pull the ones I've quoted.
Eric: And how often does that pulling actually happen?
Marisol Trevino: Whenever I remember. Which is the whole problem, right? I'll get to a lead on Thursday that called us Monday morning, and by then the lady already had two other guys out to measure.
Eric: Right. And in your world, whoever quotes first —
Marisol Trevino: Whoever quotes first, usually wins. Or at least gets the shot. Tile and stone, backsplash work, small remodels — people are ready. They've been staring at their kitchen for six months and they finally called somebody. They're not gonna wait four days for me to feel like doing paperwork.
Eric: Okay, before we go further — tell folks what you actually do. Like, the shape of the business.
Marisol Trevino: Yeah. So I'm Marisol, I run Trevino Tile and Stone out of San Antonio. Five of us. Me, an office person part-time, and three installers. We do backsplashes, shower surrounds, some floor work, a little bit of outdoor patio stuff. Been at it eleven years.
Eric: Eleven years, that's real.
Marisol Trevino: Real enough that my knees know it.
Eric: And where's the work coming in from? Because that matters for what we're gonna talk about.
Marisol Trevino: Mostly Nextdoor. Some yard signs — we do a nice sign, people notice. A little bit of word of mouth from designers. Almost nothing from Google, honestly. I know I should care about that. I don't.
Eric: That's fine. That's actually kind of the point. You've got a working top of the funnel.
Marisol Trevino: The phone rings.
Eric: The phone rings. That's the hard part and you already solved it. So the leak isn't at the top.
Marisol Trevino: No. The leak is between the phone ringing and me actually sending a number.
Eric: And you have a guess at how bad the leak is?
Marisol Trevino: I think I'm losing a third. At least. Maybe more. I don't wanna know maybe more.
Eric: A third is a lot of backsplashes.
Marisol Trevino: It's a truck payment. It's two truck payments.
Eric: Okay. And you told me before we started — you've tried CRMs.
Marisol Trevino: I've tried two. And I abandoned both.
Eric: Why?
Marisol Trevino: Because my guys wouldn't touch them. I'd set the thing up on a Sunday, all excited, watching the YouTube videos, and by Wednesday I'm the only person putting anything in it. And then I'm doing double work — I'm doing the job AND updating the software about the job.
Eric: And at that point it's worse than the sticky notes.
Marisol Trevino: It's worse than the sticky notes! Because at least the sticky notes are honest.
Eric: Right.
Marisol Trevino: The software was lying to me. It said we had eleven active jobs and we had four.
Eric: Okay. So let me tell you what I think was actually going wrong, and you tell me if I'm off.
Marisol Trevino: Please.
Eric: The problem wasn't the CRM. The problem was you were trying to solve a follow-up problem with a project management tool.
Marisol Trevino: Hm.
Eric: Those are different things. Your installers don't need to log anything from the truck. That was never gonna work. They've got glue on their hands.
Marisol Trevino: They've got glue on their hands and they're forty-five years old and they don't wanna tap on a phone.
Eric: Right. So asking them to update job status is the wrong ask. What you actually needed was something that grabs the lead the SECOND the call comes in, and starts the follow-up for you, without your office person having to remember, and without your installers having to touch anything.
Marisol Trevino: Yeah.
Eric: Does that track?
Marisol Trevino: That tracks. That's exactly it. The installers were never the problem. I was making them the problem.
Eric: You were making them the problem because the tool made you.
Marisol Trevino: Yeah.
Eric: Okay. So here's what we did with you — and I'll say up front, we run everything at the agency on one all-in-one ops platform. It's the same thing we set you up on. I'm not gonna keep naming it, it doesn't matter what it's called, what matters is what it does.
Marisol Trevino: Sure.
Eric: Step one was the phone. Every call that comes in to your business line now gets logged automatically. Missed call, answered call, doesn't matter. It's in the system before your helper even reaches for a sticky note.
Marisol Trevino: And that part I didn't have to train anybody on. That was the thing.
Eric: Nobody had to do anything.
Marisol Trevino: Nobody had to do anything. The phone just... did it.
Eric: Step two — missed calls. This was the big one for you, I think. When somebody calls and you don't pick up, within about a minute they get a text back. From your business. Saying hey, sorry we missed you, what are you looking to get done, we'll get you a number today.
Marisol Trevino: And they REPLY. That's what killed me. They actually text back.
Eric: They text back because they were already holding the phone.
Marisol Trevino: They were already holding the phone!
Eric: Right.
Marisol Trevino: I had a lady text back a picture of her kitchen before I'd even finished my coffee. She called at seven forty-something in the morning, I didn't answer because I was driving, and by eight fifteen I had photos and rough dimensions.
Eric: And how long would that have taken on the sticky note version?
Marisol Trevino: I probably would've called her back Wednesday.
Eric: Yeah.
Marisol Trevino: If at all.
Eric: Step three was the quote follow-up. Because you were sending quotes eventually —
Marisol Trevino: Eventually.
Eric: — but then if they didn't answer that day, that was it. It died.
Marisol Trevino: It died on the vine.
Eric: So we set it up so every quote that goes out, if the customer hasn't responded in two days, they get a friendly check-in text. If they still haven't in five days, another one. Different message, softer. And that's it. We stop after two. We're not pests.
Marisol Trevino: I would never have done that manually. Not because I didn't want to — because I'd forget.
Eric: Of course.
Marisol Trevino: I don't have a brain for that. I have a brain for grout.
Eric: And that's fine. That's the whole idea.
Marisol Trevino: And I wanna say — the follow-up texts, they don't sound like a robot. That was important to me. My old CRM sent this thing that was like, "Dear valued customer, comma."
Eric: Dear valued customer.
Marisol Trevino: Nobody talks like that! In South Texas nobody talks like that. So we wrote them in my voice. Or, like, the voice my helper would use. Short. Friendly. "Hey, just checking in on that backsplash quote, any questions?" That's it.
Eric: That matters more than people think. The template being in your voice is half the battle.
Marisol Trevino: It's most of the battle.
Eric: Now — the installer piece. Because that was your dealbreaker before.
Marisol Trevino: My dealbreaker.
Eric: We did not ask them to do anything different.
Marisol Trevino: Nothing.
Eric: The only thing that changed for them is when a job gets confirmed, they get a text with the address and the scope. That's it. They don't update anything. They don't tap anything. They just show up.
Marisol Trevino: That's it. And when they finish, they text my helper "done" like they always did, and she marks it in the system. One person. One place.
Eric: One person, one place. That's — honestly, that's the rule for a five-person shop. Don't spread the software across the whole team. Put it in one person's lap.
Marisol Trevino: I wish somebody had told me that four years ago.
Eric: A lot of people would've sold you seats for everybody.
Marisol Trevino: Oh, I bought seats for everybody. Twice.
Eric: Right.
Marisol Trevino: The other thing I wanna mention — we use Notion for the actual, like, job details. The design choices, the grout color, the photos the customer sent. That lives in Notion because it's easier for me to look at on my laptop at night.
Eric: Yeah, and that's a totally reasonable split. The ops platform runs the pipeline — leads, texts, follow-up, the pulse of the business. Notion is the workspace where the messy stuff lives.
Marisol Trevino: Right. I'm not trying to force one tool to do everything.
Eric: You tried that. It didn't work.
Marisol Trevino: It did not work.
Eric: Okay. Results. Because I know people listening want to know did it actually move the needle.
Marisol Trevino: It moved the needle. I'm not gonna throw numbers at you because I don't want to be one of those people.
Eric: Good.
Marisol Trevino: But I will say — my quote turnaround went from three or four days to same day. Almost every time. And the follow-up texts alone have pulled back jobs I would've written off. Like, genuinely dead leads that come back two weeks later going, "hey, is that quote still good?"
Eric: That's the money right there. Those are jobs you already earned once and lost.
Marisol Trevino: I already earned them. I just wasn't there to catch them.
Eric: And the installers?
Marisol Trevino: The installers have no idea anything changed. Which is the biggest compliment I can give it.
Eric: That's the best review of software I've ever heard.
Marisol Trevino: They think I got more organized. I did not get more organized. I just —
Eric: You stopped needing to be.
Marisol Trevino: I stopped needing to be. Yeah.
Eric: Okay. If somebody's listening right now and they're running a small trades shop, or honestly any small service business, and they hear themselves in what you just described — sticky notes, slow quotes, failed CRM attempts — what's the ONE thing you'd tell them to try this week?
Marisol Trevino: Just the missed call text back. That one thing.
Eric: Just that.
Marisol Trevino: Just that. Before you rebuild your whole operation, before you try to get your guys on an app, before any of that — set it up so that when somebody calls and you don't answer, they get a text within a minute. That is the single thing that stopped my bleeding.
Eric: That's a great answer. Because it's small.
Marisol Trevino: It's small. And you don't have to train anybody. And you'll know in a week if it's working, because people will text you back.
Eric: They will text you back.
Marisol Trevino: They'll text you back. And you'll feel a little dumb about how long you went without it.
Eric: I felt dumb about it too. When we rolled it out at the agency.
Marisol Trevino: Everybody feels dumb about it. That's how you know it's the right thing.
Eric: Marisol, thank you. Seriously. This was a good one.
Marisol Trevino: Thank you for having me. And thanks for not making me feel stupid about the sticky notes.
Eric: The sticky notes were doing their job. You just outgrew them.
Marisol Trevino: I outgrew them.
Eric: Alright, folks — if this one landed for you, do us a favor and hit subscribe so the next one shows up. We'll be back next week. Take care of yourselves.
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