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A tile contractor loses two or three big jobs a month after measuring them, because leads live across Facebook, texts, calls, and referrals — and quotes live in a notebook in the truck. We break down the four-inbox problem and a measure-to-quote pipeline that follows up for you.
Marisol lost a full master bath job — herringbone floor, zellige shower — because the estimate sat in a notebook in a truck that wasn't with her. Eric argues the problem isn't discipline; it's a system built from four inboxes and a whiteboard nobody opens.
In this episode:
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Eric: So you texted me last week and the message just said "I lost another one." And I knew EXACTLY what you meant, but for people listening... tell me what happened.
Marisol Trevino: Okay so, a woman calls me on a Tuesday. She wants a full master bath redone, herringbone floor, the whole shower in this beautiful zellige. Nice job. I go out Thursday, I measure everything, I write the numbers in my notebook, I tell her I'll get her a price by Monday.
Eric: And Monday comes.
Marisol Trevino: Monday comes, and I'm on a job in Portland, the neighborhood not Oregon, and a saw goes down, and one of my guys cuts his hand, not bad but bad enough, and by the time I get home it's Wednesday and the notebook is in the truck and the truck is at my cousin's because he was borrowing it.
Eric: Oh no.
Marisol Trevino: And I remembered her on SATURDAY. Saturday morning. I called, she was very nice, and she said they'd already signed with somebody else.
Eric: How much was that job, roughly?
Marisol Trevino: It would've been one of the bigger ones this quarter. I don't want to say the number because my husband listens to these things now, but... it hurt.
Eric: And this isn't the first one.
Marisol Trevino: Eric. It is not the first one. It's not the fifth one. I lose two, sometimes three good ones a month like this. And the crazy part is I HAD the lead. She called ME. I went out. I did the work of measuring.
Eric: Right, you paid for the lead with your time already.
Marisol Trevino: Exactly. The marketing worked. My referrals work. Facebook works. It's the part AFTER that's broken.
Eric: Okay so before we get into what to do, let me just say back what I'm hearing, because I think a lot of folks listening are nodding right now. You've got leads coming in through, what, three or four channels?
Marisol Trevino: Facebook messages, texts to my personal phone, calls to the shop line, and referrals which usually come in as a text from whoever referred them saying "hey my friend's gonna call you."
Eric: Four inboxes.
Marisol Trevino: Four inboxes.
Eric: And then the estimate lives in a paper notebook in a truck that sometimes is not with you.
Marisol Trevino: When you say it like that.
Eric: I'm not making fun, I'm just... this is the thing I want people to hear. The problem isn't you. The problem is the SYSTEM is four inboxes and a notebook. Nobody could run that clean.
Marisol Trevino: My husband says the same thing. Nicer than you though.
Eric: Fair. Okay. So here's what I think is actually going wrong, and then I want to walk you through what we did with a client who had basically your exact situation, different trade but same shape.
Marisol Trevino: Please.
Eric: The thing that's going wrong is not that you're forgetting to follow up. It's that "follow up" is a decision you have to MAKE every single day, on top of running crews, on top of your kids, on top of the saw breaking. And decision-making is the most expensive thing you do all day.
Marisol Trevino: Huh.
Eric: So the fix isn't "try harder to remember." The fix is you take the follow-up decision off your plate entirely.
Marisol Trevino: Okay, but how, because I've tried spreadsheets, I've tried a whiteboard in the shop...
Eric: Yeah, and those all put the work back on you. Every morning you have to LOOK at the whiteboard. Every morning you have to open the spreadsheet.
Marisol Trevino: I never open the spreadsheet.
Eric: Nobody opens the spreadsheet. So here's what we do at the agency, and it's what we set up for this client I'm gonna tell you about. We run everything, and I mean everything, through one all-in-one ops platform. It's the platform we use for our own business and for clients. All the inboxes feed into it, all the follow-up runs out of it, and the estimate lives in it.
Marisol Trevino: One place.
Eric: One place. And the important part, the part that would've saved you the zellige job, is that the second a lead comes in, the platform sends them a text. Not from a robot number, from YOUR number, or a number that looks like yours.
Marisol Trevino: Saying what?
Eric: Saying what YOU would say. "Hey, this is Marisol from Trevino Tile, got your message, I'll be in touch within the day to set up a time to come measure." That goes out in under a minute, whether you're on a roof or asleep.
Marisol Trevino: Okay.
Eric: Then, and this is the part, if you don't move that lead forward in the system in, say, forty-eight hours, it pings you. And if you still don't move it, it pings you again. And it drops the customer a soft check-in on your behalf. "Hey, just circling back, still want me to get you that number?"
Marisol Trevino: Wait wait wait. It sends the check-in FOR me?
Eric: For you. In your voice, because you wrote the template once, six months ago, and then never thought about it again.
Marisol Trevino: Oh my god.
Eric: Yeah. So let me tell you about this guy. He runs a roofing outfit, similar size to you, two crews, his wife does the books. Same problem. Different notebook, same problem. Leads coming in from four places, estimates getting lost, and he was losing, by his count, about one job a week that he'd already gone out and looked at.
Marisol Trevino: One a week is brutal.
Eric: One a week is the business. So we sat down with him and we did three things, and I want you to hear the order because the order matters.
Marisol Trevino: Okay.
Eric: One. We pointed every inbox at the platform. Facebook messages, the website form, the shop line, and we got him a business texting number that forwards to his cell but logs everything. So now when a lead texts, it's in the system whether he sees it or not.
Marisol Trevino: My personal number stays personal.
Eric: Your personal number stays personal, which, by the way, your husband will thank you for.
Marisol Trevino: He would love that.
Eric: Two. We built him what we called a "measure-to-quote" pipeline. Just a little board. Lead comes in, moves to "contacted," moves to "measured," moves to "quote sent," moves to "won" or "lost." Five stages. That's it.
Marisol Trevino: I could do five stages.
Eric: Anybody can do five stages. And each stage has a timer on it. If a lead sits in "measured" for more than two days without a quote going out, the platform texts him. If it sits for four, it texts the customer on his behalf.
Marisol Trevino: The customer gets a "hey, working on your number" text.
Eric: Exactly. Which does two things. It keeps the customer warm, and it makes him look like a business that has its act together, even on the day he doesn't.
Marisol Trevino: That's the part I want.
Eric: I know. Everybody wants that part. Three, and this is the one that changed his life, we put the quote itself in the platform. So instead of him writing numbers in a notebook and then transferring them to an email at night, he builds the quote on his phone, in the truck, standing in the bathroom he just measured, and the customer gets a link to view it and accept it.
Marisol Trevino: On the phone. In the truck.
Eric: In the truck. Before he leaves the driveway.
Marisol Trevino: Eric.
Eric: I know.
Marisol Trevino: I do the measure, I sit in the truck for ten minutes anyway, drinking a Gatorade, thinking about what I'm gonna charge...
Eric: You're already doing the work. You're just doing it in a notebook that gets left at your cousin's.
Marisol Trevino: Okay, okay. So what happened to the roofer.
Eric: So, first month, honestly, it was rough. He hated it. He didn't want to learn a new thing. His wife pushed him through it. By month two, he told me the number of quotes going out in under twenty-four hours went from, I think he said, maybe one in five, to almost all of them.
Marisol Trevino: Almost all.
Eric: Almost all. And his close rate on the ones he quoted fast was way higher than the ones he quoted slow. Which, that's not a surprise, right? Whoever quotes first usually wins, especially in trades where the customer is anxious and just wants somebody to tell them it's handled.
Marisol Trevino: Yeah. Yeah, the first good number wins. I've always known that.
Eric: You've always known that. Now the system enforces it for you.
Marisol Trevino: Okay so, honest question. What does this cost me. Not dollars, I mean, what do I have to give up to set this up.
Eric: Great question. Realistically? A Saturday. Maybe two Saturdays. You sit down, you write out what you'd normally say to a new lead, what you'd say two days later, what you'd say a week later if they went cold. You write those three or four messages ONCE. That's most of the work.
Marisol Trevino: I can write those in an hour. I say them fifty times a month.
Eric: You already have them memorized. You're just gonna type them out.
Marisol Trevino: And the pipeline board thing.
Eric: The pipeline board is maybe twenty minutes. And honestly, if it helps, some folks keep a light version of it in Notion too, just as their own workspace to think in, and then the platform does the actual customer-facing work. Whatever fits your brain.
Marisol Trevino: My brain is a notebook and a Gatorade.
Eric: Then we'll keep it simple.
Marisol Trevino: Okay. So if somebody's listening and they're me, basically, what's the one thing to try this week. Because I know you like to end on one thing.
Eric: I do. And I want to be careful here, because it's tempting to say "go sign up for the platform this week." That's not the one thing.
Marisol Trevino: No?
Eric: No. Because if you sign up for anything before you know what you want it to DO, you'll just have another inbox you don't check. So the one thing this week, and this is free, this costs nothing, is sit down for twenty minutes and write out the three texts.
Marisol Trevino: The three texts.
Eric: The immediate "got your message" text. The forty-eight-hour "still working on your number" text. And the one-week "hey, wanted to check back in" text. Write them in your voice. Don't make them sound like a business. Make them sound like you.
Marisol Trevino: Because those are the ones I'd be automating.
Eric: Those are the ones you'd be automating. And here's the thing, even if you never set up the platform, even if you just... put those three texts in your phone as saved replies and sent them by hand, you would stop losing so many jobs. That alone.
Marisol Trevino: Yeah.
Eric: The system is a force multiplier. But the words are the thing. The words are yours.
Marisol Trevino: The words are mine.
Eric: The words are yours.
Marisol Trevino: Okay. I'm doing it Saturday.
Eric: I know you are.
Marisol Trevino: And then I'll call you and we'll do the rest.
Eric: And then we'll do the rest. And I want a full report on the zellige lady, too. Send her a nice note, tell her you'd love to be considered for the next one.
Marisol Trevino: You think?
Eric: I think. People remember the person who came back around six months later like a grown-up.
Marisol Trevino: Alright. Alright, I'm doing it.
Eric: Marisol, thank you. Genuinely. This is the conversation I have with somebody almost every week and it never stops being the same problem.
Marisol Trevino: Because it's not just me.
Eric: It's not just you. It's almost everybody running a real business with their hands. The leads aren't the problem. The follow-up is the problem. And the follow-up is fixable.
Marisol Trevino: The follow-up is fixable.
Eric: That's the whole show right there. Hey, if you're listening and any of this landed, do me a favor and hit subscribe so the next one shows up for you. We'll be back next week. Marisol, go find your notebook.
Marisol Trevino: It's in the truck.
Eric: Of course it is.
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