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Dolores Ferrante of Ferrante Floor and Tile in Toledo, Ohio found out that nobody ever called back a third of her quotes. We lay out the fix: one list of open quotes, an automatic follow-up trigger and a clear owner.
Dolores Ferrante runs a four-person flooring company. She found out that a third of her quotes never got a follow-up call, and a competitor won a big hardwood job just by calling the homeowner back. This episode explains why that happens and the simple system that fixed it.
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Eric: ...wait, back up. You found out how?
Dolores Ferrante: My nephew. He was cleaning up the spreadsheet, and he just... started asking me about jobs. "Hey, what happened with this one? What about this one?" And I kept saying, "I don't know. I don't know." It was a LOT of "I don't know."
Eric: How many is a lot?
Dolores Ferrante: About a third. A third of the quotes we sent out, nobody ever called those people back. Not me, not anybody.
Eric: Oof.
Dolores Ferrante: And one of them, okay, this is the one that keeps me up. Twenty-two hundred square feet of hardwood. Whole first floor. Beautiful house. I measured it myself, I wrote it up, I was SO sure we had it.
Eric: And?
Dolores Ferrante: And I ran into the homeowner a while later. Nice lady. She says, "Oh, we went with the other guys. They called us back." That was it. That was the whole reason. They called her back.
Eric: Not price.
Dolores Ferrante: Not price. Not quality. They picked up a phone. I wanted to crawl under my own subfloor.
Eric: Okay. So let's do this properly. Tell people who you are, because I think a lot of folks listening are gonna see themselves in this.
Dolores Ferrante: Sure. I'm Dolores Ferrante. I own Ferrante Floor and Tile in Toledo, Ohio. It's four of us. Hardwood, tile, LVP, some backsplash work. I took it over from my dad fourteen years ago.
Eric: Fourteen years. So you know how to run this business.
Dolores Ferrante: I know how to install a floor. Running the business... that's an ongoing discussion.
Eric: Fair. Walk me through it. Somebody calls you, they want a quote. What actually happens?
Dolores Ferrante: Depends where I am. If I'm in the truck, I've got a carbon pad, like the old-school two-copy kind. I write it up right there, tear off the top sheet, hand it to them.
Eric: And the bottom copy?
Dolores Ferrante: Stays in the pad. In the truck. Under, probably, a coffee cup.
Eric: Okay. And if you're not in the truck?
Dolores Ferrante: Then it's my phone. Notes app. I type up the measurements, I text them a number, or I email them something cleaner later.
Eric: And the spreadsheet?
Dolores Ferrante: The spreadsheet is the one my nephew built. It's actually good! It's got columns and everything. But it only knows about the jobs I remember to put in it.
Eric: Right. So you've got three places a quote can live.
Dolores Ferrante: Three places. And none of them talk to each other.
Eric: Here's what I want to say first, and I mean this. This isn't a "you're lazy" problem. I hear this story ALL the time from owners who work really hard.
Dolores Ferrante: It feels like a lazy problem.
Eric: It's not. What's actually breaking is that you don't have one list of open quotes. There's no single place where you could look and say, "these twelve people are waiting on me." So the follow-up depends entirely on your memory.
Dolores Ferrante: And my memory is full of grout colors.
Eric: Exactly. And the second thing. Nothing tells you when to follow up. There's no trigger. A quote goes out and then it just... sits there. Silently. Nobody gets a nudge.
Dolores Ferrante: Yeah.
Eric: And third, nobody owns it. Is it you? Is it whoever's in the office? Is it your nephew?
Dolores Ferrante: Honestly? Everyone kind of assumed it was me. And I assumed it would just... happen.
Eric: So that's the diagnosis. One list, a trigger, and an owner. You fix those three, and the follow-up mostly takes care of itself.
Dolores Ferrante: See, when you say it like that it sounds simple.
Eric: The idea's simple. Doing it in a busy week is the hard part. That's why we don't rely on willpower for it.
Dolores Ferrante: Okay, so what did you actually have me do? Because I'll be honest, when you first mentioned "software" I almost hung up.
Eric: I remember. You said, "I am not learning a computer program at fifty-whatever."
Dolores Ferrante: I did NOT say my age.
Eric: You didn't. I'm protecting you. So. We set you up on the platform we use. It's the all-in-one ops platform we run our agency on. Contacts, texting, email, a pipeline, reminders, all in one spot.
Dolores Ferrante: And the pipeline is the part that changed things.
Eric: Yeah. Explain it how you'd explain it to another contractor.
Dolores Ferrante: Okay. So it's basically a board with columns. Every quote is a card. First column is "Estimate Sent." Then "Followed Up." Then "Thinking About It." Then "Won" or "Lost."
Eric: And every quote, no matter where it started, has to end up as a card.
Dolores Ferrante: Every one. That was the rule.
Eric: So, the carbon pad. That was the big question. You're not giving up the carbon pad.
Dolores Ferrante: I'm NOT giving up the carbon pad. Customers like it. They like getting a piece of paper from a person.
Eric: Totally. So we didn't fight that. We just added one step. Before you pull out of the driveway, you take a photo of the bottom copy and fill in a really short form on your phone.
Dolores Ferrante: Name, phone, what the job is, rough number. Takes me, I don't know, a minute? Less?
Eric: And that creates the card.
Dolores Ferrante: That creates the card. And the photo's attached, so if I need the measurements later, they're right there. Not under the coffee cup.
Eric: Not under the coffee cup. And then the notes app quotes?
Dolores Ferrante: Same form. I just stopped typing quotes into my notes. If it's a quote, it goes in the form.
Eric: And the spreadsheet?
Dolores Ferrante: My nephew imported the whole thing. That was actually the scary day, because we had to look at all the old ones at once.
Eric: How'd that feel?
Dolores Ferrante: Bad! Bad for about an hour. And then kind of good, because suddenly it was just... a list. A list I could do something about.
Eric: That's the thing people don't expect. Seeing it all in one place is uncomfortable, but it's the first time the problem is actually solvable.
Dolores Ferrante: Yeah.
Eric: Okay, so that's the list. Now the trigger.
Dolores Ferrante: This is my favorite part.
Eric: Why's it your favorite?
Dolores Ferrante: Because I don't have to do it.
Eric: Fair enough. So when a card lands in "Estimate Sent," the platform waits a couple days and sends a short text from the business number. It's written in your voice. Something like, "Hi, it's Dolores from Ferrante Floor and Tile. Just checking you got the estimate okay. Happy to answer any questions."
Dolores Ferrante: And it's not salesy. I was really firm about that. I didn't want it to sound like a robot trying to sell them a car.
Eric: No, and it shouldn't. It's a courtesy. It just says, "I'm still here, I remember you."
Dolores Ferrante: And people TEXT BACK. That surprised me. People who would never call me back will answer a text in like five minutes.
Eric: That's really common. A text is low pressure. They can answer from the couch.
Dolores Ferrante: And when they answer, it comes into one inbox. Not my personal phone. So my guys can see it too if I'm on a job.
Eric: Then if there's no reply after a few more days, what happens?
Dolores Ferrante: Then I get a task. It literally says, "Call this person." With their number right there. I tap it, I call.
Eric: And that's the owner piece. The task lands on a specific person. In your case, you.
Dolores Ferrante: It's me. And honestly, I like it that way. I'm the one who measured their house. They want to hear from me.
Eric: So, now you've got one list, an automatic first touch, and a reminder that tells a real human to pick up the phone.
Dolores Ferrante: The list, the trigger, the owner.
Eric: You were listening!
Dolores Ferrante: I was taking notes! On paper.
Eric: Of course you were. Now, you also mentioned you use Notion for some stuff?
Dolores Ferrante: Yeah, my nephew talked me into that too. We keep our install checklists in Notion. Like, what to check on the subfloor, moisture readings, transition strips, all that. That stayed separate. The platform is for customers and quotes, Notion's for how we actually do the work.
Eric: I like that split. Don't make one tool do everything just because it can.
Dolores Ferrante: Right. My guys don't need to see the sales stuff. They need to know what's going down Tuesday.
Eric: So, okay. Be honest with me. What actually changed?
Dolores Ferrante: Honestly? The biggest thing is I don't have that feeling anymore. That "who did I forget" feeling. Every quote has a next step now. If I open the board, I know exactly who's waiting on me.
Eric: That's huge.
Dolores Ferrante: And I had a customer, a tile job, bathroom, who texted back and said, "Thank you for following up, I'd honestly forgotten I even asked." And she booked.
Eric: See, that's the one that would've just disappeared before.
Dolores Ferrante: Completely. She'd have been one of the third.
Eric: Did anything not work?
Dolores Ferrante: Oh, sure. The first week, I forgot the driveway form like three times. I'd get home and go, "Ah, shoot." So now I just... I don't start the truck until it's done.
Eric: I love that. You tied it to something you already do.
Dolores Ferrante: Key in the ignition, form's gotta be done. That's the rule.
Eric: And the "Lost" column. People don't love that one.
Dolores Ferrante: I hated it at first. But it's actually useful. When I move something to Lost, I write down why. Price, timing, went with somebody else. And now I can actually see patterns instead of just guessing.
Eric: Without making it a big analytics thing.
Dolores Ferrante: No, no. I just scroll through it sometimes. It's like... a little reality check.
Eric: Okay, so I want to make sure people walk away with something they can actually do. Not "go buy software." Something for THIS week.
Dolores Ferrante: Can I say it?
Eric: Please.
Dolores Ferrante: Get every open quote into ONE list. Doesn't matter if it's a notebook, a spreadsheet, whatever. Go through your truck, your phone, your email, all of it. Every quote you haven't heard back on, write it down in one place.
Eric: And then?
Dolores Ferrante: And then pick a follow-up date for every single one. And actually call them. Or text. Just reach out.
Eric: That's exactly it. Before you automate anything, you have to see the whole list. You can't follow up on what you can't find.
Dolores Ferrante: And it's gonna feel bad. I'm warning you. It's gonna feel bad for an hour.
Eric: And then it gets better.
Dolores Ferrante: And then it gets better. I promise.
Eric: Dolores, this was great. Seriously. I think a lot of owners are gonna go dig through their truck tonight.
Dolores Ferrante: Check under the coffee cup.
Eric: Check under the coffee cup. Thanks for being so honest about the hardwood job, too. That takes guts.
Dolores Ferrante: Ah, it still stings a little. But if it helps somebody else get their callback in first, okay. Worth it.
Eric: For everybody listening, if this one was useful, subscribe so you catch the next one. We'll keep bringing you real owners fixing real stuff.
Dolores Ferrante: And call your people back!
Eric: And call your people back. Take care, everybody.
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