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Tile contractor Marcy closes great estimates but loses half her leads because follow-up never happens. Learn how a simple automated text sequence—no CRM chaos—converts warm leads into booked jobs.
If you're a contractor who nails the in-home estimate but watches leads go cold in a folder on your passenger seat, this episode is for you. We break down exactly why warm leads die—and the 90-second driveway habit that fixes it.
Eric: So you're driving home from Fort Wayne, it's what, seven at night?
Marcy Bollinger: Seven, seven thirty. Sometimes later if the last one runs long.
Eric: And you've got a truck full of samples, a notebook with a quote you scribbled at somebody's kitchen table…
Marcy Bollinger: And a coffee that went cold three houses ago. Yeah.
Eric: How many of those a week are you doing right now?
Marcy Bollinger: Five, six a week. Twenty plus a month. Kitchens, backsplashes, some shower remodels.
Eric: And of those twenty, how many turn into an actual job?
Marcy Bollinger: Honest answer? Maybe eight. Maybe nine on a good month.
Eric: Okay. And of the ones that don't, what happens?
Marcy Bollinger: Nothing happens. That's the whole problem. Nothing happens.
Eric: You don't call them back.
Marcy Bollinger: I mean to. I always mean to. I get in the truck, I say, Marcy, tomorrow you text the Hendersons, you text the lady with the herringbone thing…
Eric: And tomorrow you're on a job at seven a.m.
Marcy Bollinger: I'm on my knees on a subfloor by seven fifteen. And by the time I remember, it's Thursday, and the lady with the herringbone already hired somebody else.
Eric: Right.
Marcy Bollinger: And the worst part is, half of them WANTED me. Like, we clicked. They liked the samples. They said, we'll talk it over this weekend. And I just… vanished on them.
Eric: So let me play something back to you, because I want to make sure I heard the real problem.
Marcy Bollinger: Okay.
Eric: You said you lose about half your warm leads. You didn't say you lose them because your price is too high. You didn't say you lose them because a competitor is better. You said you lose them because you don't circle back.
Marcy Bollinger: Correct.
Eric: So the thing that's broken isn't your quoting. It isn't your work. It's the twelve inches between the kitchen table and the truck.
Marcy Bollinger: That's a really nice way of saying I drop the ball.
Eric: No, I'm saying you don't have a system. There's a difference.
Marcy Bollinger: Huh.
Eric: A dropped ball is a character flaw. A missing system is a fixable thing. And you're running a three-person install crew, you're the estimator, you're the boss, you're the bookkeeper probably…
Marcy Bollinger: And the one who buys the doughnuts.
Eric: And the doughnut lady. Of course you're not following up. There's no version of you that has time to follow up manually.
Marcy Bollinger: Okay. So say that's true. What do I do? Because I've tried the sticky notes. I've tried a spreadsheet. My nephew set me up on some CRM thing last year and I logged in twice.
Eric: Yeah, that's the other trap. People throw a tool at it and the tool becomes another chore.
Marcy Bollinger: Another chore. YES.
Eric: So here's how we think about it at the agency. We run everything on one all-in-one ops platform. Quotes, texts, emails, calendar, the whole thing. And the reason that matters is not because it has more features, it's because the follow-up happens without a human touching it.
Marcy Bollinger: Without me touching it.
Eric: Without you touching it. You do the part only you can do, which is sit at the kitchen table and be Marcy. The platform does the part you were never gonna do anyway.
Marcy Bollinger: Which is what, specifically?
Eric: Okay, walk me through what happens right now when you finish an estimate. Physically.
Marcy Bollinger: I write the number on a carbon-copy pad. I tear off the top, hand it to them. I keep the yellow one. I put the yellow one in a folder on my passenger seat.
Eric: And that folder goes where?
Marcy Bollinger: Eventually to my kitchen counter. Eventually to a drawer.
Eric: Right. So the lead dies in a drawer.
Marcy Bollinger: The lead dies in a drawer.
Eric: So step one of the fix, before any software, is the yellow slip cannot be the system. The yellow slip is a souvenir.
Marcy Bollinger: A souvenir. Okay.
Eric: What we did for a client who's basically you, but he does gutters, is we set it up so at the end of the estimate he pulls out his phone, opens one form, types the name, the number, the address, the quote amount, and one line of notes. Takes him ninety seconds in the driveway before he pulls away.
Marcy Bollinger: Before he pulls away. Not later.
Eric: Never later. Later doesn't exist. Later is the drawer.
Marcy Bollinger: Yeah.
Eric: The second he hits submit, the platform sends the customer a text. Something like, hey, this is so-and-so, really enjoyed meeting you, here's your quote in writing, no rush, let me know if you have questions.
Marcy Bollinger: And that goes out automatically.
Eric: Automatically. He didn't write it. He wrote it once, six months ago, and now it just goes.
Marcy Bollinger: Okay.
Eric: Then two days later, if they haven't replied, another text. Short one. Hey, just checking if you had a chance to look it over.
Marcy Bollinger: Wait, and that also goes without him doing anything?
Eric: Without him doing anything. And if THEY reply, the sequence stops. It's not gonna keep nagging somebody who already answered.
Marcy Bollinger: Because that would be the nightmare.
Eric: That would be the nightmare, yeah. Nobody wants to be the contractor who texts you four times after you already said yes.
Marcy Bollinger: I've BEEN texted four times after I already said yes. By my own plumber.
Eric: Right. So the platform's watching the conversation. If they reply, it hands the thread back to you on your phone, like a normal text message. You take it from there.
Marcy Bollinger: So it's not pretending to be me.
Eric: It's not pretending to be you. The first message is clearly a follow-up. And then the second something's actually happening, it's you.
Marcy Bollinger: Okay, that I can live with. Because I was worried you were gonna tell me to, like, build a chatbot named Marcy.
Eric: No. No no no. Nobody wants robot Marcy. People are hiring you because you sat at their kitchen table for an hour and told them about your grandkids.
Marcy Bollinger: About my grandkids, yeah.
Eric: The follow-up just has to exist. It doesn't have to be clever.
Marcy Bollinger: Huh.
Eric: And then here's the part that I think actually moves the needle for you. Five days out, seven days out, if they still haven't booked, the platform sends one more. And that one's a little different. That one says something like, totally understand if the timing isn't right, want me to hold this quote for you for thirty days or should I close it out?
Marcy Bollinger: Ohhh.
Eric: Because that question forces an answer.
Marcy Bollinger: That question forces an answer. Yeah. Because right now they're just ghosting me out of politeness.
Eric: They're ghosting you out of politeness. They don't wanna say no. So they say nothing. And you interpret nothing as no, and you move on, and then three weeks later they call somebody else because they thought YOU forgot about them.
Marcy Bollinger: Oh, that's the part that hurts. Because I know that's happened.
Eric: It's happened a lot. And it's not you. That's just what silence does in this business.
Marcy Bollinger: So the close-it-out text is the one that unsticks them.
Eric: That's the one that unsticks them. Half of them will write back and say, actually yes, hold it, we're deciding this weekend. Some will say, we went with somebody else, thanks. Which stings for a second but it's actually great, because now you know, and you're not carrying them around in your head.
Marcy Bollinger: Yeah. That's the mental load part.
Eric: That's the mental load part. Right now you're not just losing the jobs, you're carrying the guilt of twenty maybes in your head at all times.
Marcy Bollinger: Every single night. Every single night I lay in bed and I think, did I text the Hendersons.
Eric: And a system takes that out of your head.
Marcy Bollinger: A system takes it out of my head.
Eric: We keep everything else in a Notion workspace, by the way, just for our own notes and playbooks, but the actual customer-facing stuff, the texts, the calendar bookings, the quote tracking, that all lives in the one platform.
Marcy Bollinger: One place.
Eric: One place. Because the other trap is you end up with quotes in a notebook, texts on your personal phone, calendar in your head, and payments in a shoebox. And no tool can save you from four tools.
Marcy Bollinger: Payments in a shoebox is not far off, actually.
Eric: I figured.
Marcy Bollinger: Okay so, real talk. How hard is this to set up. Because I am not… I'm not a computer person.
Eric: You don't have to be. And I'm not gonna sit here and tell you it's fifteen minutes, because it's not. It's probably a weekend. Or you pay somebody a few hundred bucks to set it up once.
Marcy Bollinger: Once.
Eric: Once. You build the intake form, you write the three follow-up messages in your own voice, you plug in your phone number, and then it just runs. Forever. You don't touch it again unless you wanna change the wording.
Marcy Bollinger: And I write the messages in MY voice. Not some corporate…
Eric: In your voice. Please. Write them the way you'd text your sister. Because when that text lands, it should sound like Marcy from Bollinger Tile, not like Marcy from a call center in… wherever.
Marcy Bollinger: Yeah.
Eric: The homeowners can smell the difference immediately.
Marcy Bollinger: They really can. My whole thing is I'm the person who shows up.
Eric: You're the person who shows up. So the follow-up should sound like the person who shows up.
Marcy Bollinger: Okay. I'm actually kind of… I'm kind of excited about this.
Eric: Good. So let me give you the ONE thing to try this week. Because I don't want you to go home and try to build a whole system on Sunday night and burn out by Tuesday.
Marcy Bollinger: Which I would.
Eric: Which you would. Everybody would. So here's the one thing. This week, do not build anything. Just, at the end of every estimate, before you pull out of the driveway, send one text from your regular phone. One sentence. Hey, really enjoyed meeting you, quote's on its way, talk soon.
Marcy Bollinger: From the driveway. Before I leave.
Eric: Before you leave. Because if you can't build the habit of the ninety seconds in the driveway, no platform in the world is gonna save you. The tool automates the habit. It doesn't replace it.
Marcy Bollinger: The tool automates the habit.
Eric: The tool automates the habit. So prove to yourself for one week that you can do the ninety seconds. And I promise you, just that one text, this week, with zero software, you're gonna close two more jobs than you would've.
Marcy Bollinger: Just from the driveway text.
Eric: Just from the driveway text. And then next week we talk about automating it.
Marcy Bollinger: Okay. Driveway text. I can do driveway text.
Eric: You can absolutely do driveway text.
Marcy Bollinger: Alright. I feel like I owe you a backsplash.
Eric: I'll take it. Herringbone, please.
Marcy Bollinger: Herringbone it is.
Eric: Marcy, thank you. This was great. And hey, if you're listening and any of this sounded like your Tuesday night, do us a favor and hit subscribe. We do one of these every week, real operators, real fixes, no hype.
Marcy Bollinger: And send Eric a backsplash.
Eric: And send me a backsplash. We'll see you next week.
A daily 10-minute show for service business owners. AI tools, automated workflows, and the boring-on-purpose tactics that save you 5 hours a week. Each episode picks one niche, one workflow, and one tool — and walks you through it like a friend at a coffee shop.