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Renata of Kowalczyk Hardwood and Tile in Toledo lost three flooring jobs because nobody called back after the estimate. Price had nothing to do with it. Eric explains why estimate follow-up is a memory problem and walks through the simple CRM pipeline they built to fix it.
Renata found out at the grocery store: a homeowner she had quoted for white oak floors went with someone else because "we never heard back from you." In this episode, Eric and Renata unpack why good contractors lose jobs to silence, and the simple system that stops it.
In this episode:
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Eric: ...so wait, back up. You found out about this HOW?
Renata Kowalczyk: At the grocery store. I'm standing in line and there's this woman I'd done an estimate for. Nice lady, big open-concept first floor, wanted white oak. And she goes, "Oh, we LOVE our new floors!" And I'm smiling, and in my head I'm going... what new floors? We never did your floors.
Eric: Oh no.
Renata Kowalczyk: Yeah. And I asked her, you know, as casually as I could manage, "Who'd you end up going with?" And she said, totally innocent, "Well, we never heard back from you, so we figured you were busy."
Eric: Ouch.
Renata Kowalczyk: We weren't even busy! That's the worst part. I had a gap in the schedule that month.
Eric: And that wasn't the only one, right?
Renata Kowalczyk: No. That's what really got me. After that I started... I guess you'd call it investigating. I went back through my notebook and called a few people I'd quoted who'd gone quiet. Two more said the same thing. Basically, "We liked you, we just went with whoever called us back."
Eric: So three jobs. Not because of price.
Renata Kowalczyk: Not because of price. Not because of quality. Because nobody picked up the phone. And that nobody was me.
Eric: Okay. Let's actually start at the beginning, because I think a lot of people listening are going to recognize themselves in this. Tell me about the business.
Renata Kowalczyk: Sure. So I run Kowalczyk Hardwood and Tile, here in Toledo. It was my dad's company. I took it over about eleven years ago when he retired... well, "retired." He still shows up on job sites with opinions.
Eric: They always do.
Renata Kowalczyk: He does! But yeah, it's four of us. Me, two installers, and a guy who does mostly tile and finish work. We do hardwood, refinishing, tile, some luxury vinyl plank because people want it now, whether I like it or not.
Eric: And where do you spend your time? Like, in a normal week.
Renata Kowalczyk: Honestly? Half on job sites, half in people's living rooms. I do about fifteen in-home estimates a month. I measure, I talk through options, I bring samples, and then I go home and write up the quote.
Eric: And then what happens?
Renata Kowalczyk: That's the question, isn't it. Then... nothing happens. I email the quote, and I sort of hope.
Eric: Okay, so walk me through it. Where does the estimate live after you send it?
Renata Kowalczyk: In my sent folder. And in a spiral notebook in my truck.
Eric: The truck notebook.
Renata Kowalczyk: Every contractor has one, Eric. Don't judge me.
Eric: I'm not judging! I'm not. I've seen agencies doing six figures in ad spend run on a sticky note on somebody's monitor. It's the most common system in small business.
Renata Kowalczyk: Oh good, I'm in excellent company.
Eric: You are, actually. But here's what I want to dig into. When you think about why those three people slipped through, what do you think the problem was?
Renata Kowalczyk: I mean, my first answer was "I'm bad at follow-up." Like it was a personality thing. I'm not a salesperson. I don't like calling people and feeling pushy.
Eric: Yeah. I hear that a lot. And I'd actually push back on it a little.
Renata Kowalczyk: Okay.
Eric: I don't think you have a follow-up problem. I think you have a memory problem. And I mean that in the nicest way possible.
Renata Kowalczyk: What do you mean?
Eric: So think about it. You do fifteen estimates a month. Each one's at a different stage. Some people want to think about it, some are waiting on their spouse, some are getting two other quotes, some are waiting to hear back from their insurance. And all of that is living in your head and a notebook, while you're also running crews and, like, physically installing floors.
Renata Kowalczyk: Right.
Eric: Nobody can hold that. The follow-up didn't fail because you're not pushy enough. It failed because there was nothing that TOLD you, "Hey, today's the day you call this person."
Renata Kowalczyk: Huh. Yeah. I mean, I'd think of it at like ten at night. "Oh, I should call that couple on... whatever street." And then by morning it's gone.
Eric: Exactly. And the other half of it is, the homeowner is reading your silence as a message.
Renata Kowalczyk: That's what the grocery store lady said. "We figured you were busy."
Eric: Right. They're not thinking, "Renata forgot." They're thinking, "If she can't call me back about a quote, what's it going to be like when there's a problem with my floor?"
Renata Kowalczyk: Oof. Yeah. That one stings.
Eric: So the fix isn't, "Become a more aggressive salesperson." The fix is, "Build something that remembers for you, and does the polite stuff automatically."
Renata Kowalczyk: Which is where you came in.
Eric: Which is where I came in. So, okay, at my agency, we run everything on one all-in-one ops platform. CRM, texting, email, calendar, pipelines, the whole thing in one spot. It's what we set up for a lot of service businesses, and that's what we put you on.
Renata Kowalczyk: And I'll be honest, when you first showed it to me I was nervous. It looked like a LOT.
Eric: It can be! That's the thing. These platforms can do a hundred things. We used, what, like four of them?
Renata Kowalczyk: Maybe four. Which was the right number for me.
Eric: So let's go through them. First thing we did was build a pipeline. Just a board with columns. And every estimate becomes a card that moves left to right.
Renata Kowalczyk: Can you say what the columns are? Because I think that part actually changed how I think.
Eric: Yeah. So it was: Estimate Booked. Estimate Done. Quote Sent. Following Up. Won. Lost. That's it.
Renata Kowalczyk: And the "Lost" column was weirdly important to me.
Eric: Why's that?
Renata Kowalczyk: Because before, I never knew if I lost a job. They just... evaporated. Now if someone says no, I drag them over and I write down why. Price, timing, went with a cousin, whatever. And it's way less painful than not knowing.
Eric: That's a great point. A "no" is information. Silence is just anxiety.
Renata Kowalczyk: That should be on a T-shirt.
Eric: Okay, so second piece. The moment you move a card into "Quote Sent," the platform kicks off a follow-up sequence. And this is where people get worried it's going to sound robotic.
Renata Kowalczyk: That was my BIGGEST worry. I didn't want to send people some corporate "Dear Valued Customer" thing.
Eric: Right. So we wrote it in your voice. Tell people what the first text says.
Renata Kowalczyk: The first one goes out the next morning. It's something like, "Hi, it's Renata from Kowalczyk Hardwood and Tile. Just making sure the quote came through okay. Happy to answer any questions, even small ones." That's it.
Eric: Short. Human. No pressure.
Renata Kowalczyk: And people REPLY to it. That's what surprised me. They'll text back like, "Got it, still talking it over with my husband," and now I know where they're at.
Eric: And then a few days later?
Renata Kowalczyk: A few days later, if they haven't replied, I get a task. Not an automatic message, an actual reminder to me that says, "Call this person." With their name and the job right there.
Eric: And that's on purpose. I think this matters for anybody listening. Don't automate everything. Automate the reminder, and the easy, friendly touches. But a real phone call from the owner? That's what wins a job like flooring. You're going to be in their house for days.
Renata Kowalczyk: Yeah, it's a trust thing. They want to know who's walking on their subfloor.
Eric: Exactly. And then what's the next touch?
Renata Kowalczyk: About a week out, there's an email. And this one I actually like a lot. It's got a few photos of a similar job we did, and a little note about what to expect on install day. Like, "Here's how we handle furniture, here's how we keep the dust down." Stuff people actually worry about.
Eric: Which isn't a sales pitch, really. It's just being useful.
Renata Kowalczyk: Right. It answers the questions they're too polite to ask.
Eric: And then there's a last one, a couple weeks out.
Renata Kowalczyk: The breakup text.
Eric: The breakup text!
Renata Kowalczyk: It says something like, "Hey, I don't want to keep bugging you. If the timing's not right or you went another way, totally fine, just let me know so I can close out your file." And honestly, that one gets the most replies of anything.
Eric: It almost always does. Because it gives people permission to say no. And a lot of them, instead, say, "Oh, no, we're still interested, we just got busy."
Renata Kowalczyk: Yes! That literally happened. A family I would've TOTALLY given up on. They'd had a kid, newborn, everything went sideways for them. They saw the text and said, "Please don't close the file, can we talk in a month?"
Eric: And did you?
Renata Kowalczyk: We did their whole upstairs.
Eric: That's awesome.
Renata Kowalczyk: And before, I would never have contacted that family again. Never. They'd have been a grocery store story.
Eric: Right. So that's the follow-up. The third thing we set up was the missed-call text.
Renata Kowalczyk: Oh, this one is so simple and it fixed SO much.
Eric: Explain it.
Renata Kowalczyk: So if I'm on a job and somebody calls and I can't pick up, because I'm on my knees with a nail gun, they get an automatic text right away. "Sorry I missed you, this is Renata, I'm on a job site. What can I help with?" And they just text back.
Eric: And before?
Renata Kowalczyk: Before, they got voicemail. And I'm guessing most of them just called the next guy on the list.
Eric: Probably, yeah. People don't leave voicemails anymore. They just move on.
Renata Kowalczyk: My dad still leaves voicemails. Long ones.
Eric: Of course he does.
Renata Kowalczyk: He signs them. "This is your father."
Eric: I love that. Okay, and the fourth piece was where you keep the actual job info.
Renata Kowalczyk: Right. So, the platform handles the customer side. The texts, the pipeline, the reminders. But all my job notes, measurements, what species, what finish, what the subfloor looked like... that lives in Notion now.
Eric: And why split it that way?
Renata Kowalczyk: Because my installers need the job details, but they don't need to see my sales stuff. So I've got a Notion page for each job, and the crew can pull it up on their phones. No more, "Hey Renata, what stain did they pick again?" at seven in the morning.
Eric: Which, I'm guessing, used to happen a lot.
Renata Kowalczyk: Every week. Usually while I was driving.
Eric: So, okay. Let's talk about how it's going. And I want to be careful here, no big numbers, just what actually changed for you.
Renata Kowalczyk: Sure. The biggest thing is, I don't lose people to silence anymore. If someone says no, I know they said no. If someone's thinking about it, I know that too. Nobody just disappears.
Eric: That's a huge shift.
Renata Kowalczyk: And honestly, the second thing is more of a feeling. I sleep better. That ten-o'clock-at-night "oh, I forgot to call somebody" panic? It's mostly gone. Because if I forgot, the platform didn't.
Eric: That's the part people underestimate. It's not just the jobs you win back. It's the mental load you get to put down.
Renata Kowalczyk: And customers have actually commented on it. A couple have said something like, "You're so organized." Which, if you saw my truck, you'd laugh.
Eric: Is the notebook still in the truck?
Renata Kowalczyk: The notebook is STILL in the truck. I just don't depend on it anymore. It's more of a... security blanket.
Eric: Fair enough. Okay, so let's give people one thing. Somebody's listening right now. Maybe they're a contractor, maybe a landscaper, maybe they do kitchens. They've got the notebook in the truck too. What's the ONE thing they should try this week?
Renata Kowalczyk: Can I answer, or do you want to?
Eric: No, you answer. You lived it.
Renata Kowalczyk: Okay. Go back through every quote you've sent in the last month. Every single one. Write them on a list. And then send each person one short, friendly text. Just, "Hey, it's so-and-so, checking in on that quote. Any questions?"
Eric: That's it?
Renata Kowalczyk: That's it. Don't buy anything yet. Don't build anything yet. Just do it once, by hand, and see what comes back. Because I promise you, somebody on that list is waiting to hear from you and figured you were busy.
Eric: And then, if that works, THEN you think about building a system so you don't have to do it by hand every time.
Renata Kowalczyk: Right. Feel the pain of doing it manually first. Then you'll actually want the system.
Eric: That's very honest advice.
Renata Kowalczyk: I'm a flooring installer, Eric. We're honest people. We tell you when your subfloor is bad.
Eric: Renata, this was great. Thank you for being so open about the grocery store story. I think a lot of people needed to hear that.
Renata Kowalczyk: Thanks for having me. And thanks for, you know, fixing my mess.
Eric: You fixed it. I just gave you the columns.
Renata Kowalczyk: I'll take it.
Eric: And to everybody listening, if this one was useful, go ahead and subscribe so you catch the next one. We talk to real owners about the stuff that's actually breaking in their business, and what fixed it. Go send those texts this week. We'll see you next time.
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