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A Corpus Christi tile contractor juggling 20-30 leads a week on a legal pad learns his real problem isn't a CRM — it's response time. How one inbox, a 90-second automated first text, and a quote follow-up sequence stop leads from going cold.
The owner of Trevino Tile and Stone in Corpus Christi is drowning in 20-30 leads a week from Instagram, Angi, his website form, and the "cousin channel" — and tracking them on a legal pad in his truck. Eric explains why three failed CRMs weren't the answer: the real leaks are first-response speed and post-quote follow-up.
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Eric: ...twenty to thirty a week. Between everything.
Marisol Trevino: Between everything. Instagram, Angi, the website form, and then whatever my cousin's neighbor texted me about a backsplash.
Eric: The cousin channel.
Marisol Trevino: The cousin channel is REAL, Eric. And I love it, I do. But by Thursday I have a legal pad on the dash of my truck with names I cannot read anymore because I wrote them at a red light.
Eric: So tell me about the business first, real quick. For folks listening.
Marisol Trevino: Sure. Trevino Tile and Stone, out of Corpus Christi. Flooring, backsplash, some shower work. Five of us. I started it nine years ago after I left a bigger contractor because I wanted to actually pick up the phone when a customer called.
Eric: And now you can't pick up the phone.
Marisol Trevino: Now I cannot pick up the phone. That's the whole problem in one sentence.
Eric: Okay. So walk me through a lead. Somebody DMs you on Instagram Tuesday morning. What happens?
Marisol Trevino: Best case? I see it in about an hour, I respond, we book an estimate for Saturday, I drive out, I measure, I quote them from my truck if I can, or the next morning if it's a bigger job.
Eric: And worst case.
Marisol Trevino: Worst case, I see it Wednesday night at nine, I say "hey so sorry, when works for you," they don't answer, I forget, and two weeks later I see they posted a finished backsplash from somebody else.
Eric: Oof.
Marisol Trevino: Yeah.
Eric: How often is it worst case?
Marisol Trevino: More than I want to say on a podcast.
Eric: Fair.
Marisol Trevino: I tried three CRMs. Three. One was too expensive, one wanted me to build my own pipeline from scratch and I don't have a Saturday to sit and do that, and one just... it just sat there. I paid for it for four months and opened it twice.
Eric: Okay so here's what I want to say, and I want to say it before we get into any tools. Because I think this is where a lot of small operators get it wrong, myself included, years ago.
Marisol Trevino: Okay.
Eric: The problem you're describing is not a CRM problem.
Marisol Trevino: It's not?
Eric: It's a response time problem. The CRM is a symptom. You're looking at it going, "if I just had the right database, I would remember these people." But the leads aren't going cold because you forgot them. They're going cold because nobody talked to them in the first four hours.
Marisol Trevino: ...huh.
Eric: Think about it. When somebody fills out your website form at eight PM on a Tuesday, what are they doing? They're sitting on the couch, they just decided tonight is the night they're going to redo the kitchen, they're excited, and they filled out four forms. Yours and three other people.
Marisol Trevino: Yeah. Yeah, that's true.
Eric: Whoever gets back first, in a real way, not an auto reply that says "we got your message," whoever actually engages with them first usually wins that job. Not always. But usually.
Marisol Trevino: And I'm getting back to them Wednesday night.
Eric: You're getting back to them Wednesday night. And by Wednesday night they've already had a guy come measure.
Marisol Trevino: Okay. So it's not that I need to remember them better. It's that I need to touch them faster.
Eric: Faster and consistently. Because here's the other piece. Even the ones you DO respond to, what happens after the estimate visit?
Marisol Trevino: Nothing, usually. I mean, I send the quote. And then I wait.
Eric: You send the quote and you wait.
Marisol Trevino: If they don't answer I might text them once. Maybe.
Eric: Right. So you've got two leaks. The front of the funnel, first response, and the back of the funnel, follow up after the quote. And the legal pad is just where the leaks show up.
Marisol Trevino: The legal pad is the evidence.
Eric: The legal pad is the crime scene.
Marisol Trevino: Okay. So what did you do? Because I know you run an agency, you must have had a version of this.
Eric: Oh yeah. For years. We had leads coming in from four or five places and I had a spreadsheet, I had a Notion doc, I had sticky notes on my monitor. Same disease, different symptoms.
Marisol Trevino: What broke you out of it?
Eric: Honestly, consolidating. We moved everything, and I mean everything, onto one all-in-one ops platform that we run the agency on now. Every form on our site, every DM, every call, every text, all funnels into one inbox. And then the automations sit on top of that.
Marisol Trevino: One inbox for all of it.
Eric: One inbox. Instagram DM shows up in the same place as a website form as a missed call. And the second something comes in, the platform fires a text back to that person within, we set ours at ninety seconds.
Marisol Trevino: Ninety seconds.
Eric: Ninety seconds. And it's not a "thanks for reaching out." It's a real question. "Hey it's Eric, are you looking at a specific project or just exploring?" Something they can actually answer with their thumb.
Marisol Trevino: Wait but that's you? Or is that a bot?
Eric: It's the platform sending it, but it sounds like me because I wrote it. And the reply comes back to my phone like a normal text. So the CUSTOMER thinks they're texting me. And they are, kind of. The first message is automated. Everything after that is me.
Marisol Trevino: Okay. Okay. That's... that's actually the piece I was missing. Because I was thinking, if I automate it, they're gonna feel like they got a robot.
Eric: They will if you write it like a robot.
Marisol Trevino: Right.
Eric: If you write it like you'd text your neighbor, it lands like you texting your neighbor.
Marisol Trevino: Okay so first response, ninety seconds, one inbox. What about the back end. The after the quote piece.
Eric: So this is where it gets fun. Once someone becomes a quoted lead, the platform drops them into a follow up sequence. For us it's a text at day two, a text at day five, an email at day nine, and then a task pings my phone at day fourteen that just says "call this person."
Marisol Trevino: A task on your phone.
Eric: On my phone. Because the fourteen day call, I don't want that automated. That one's a human call. But the platform makes sure I actually see it, because otherwise, same as you, it evaporates.
Marisol Trevino: Yeah. Same as me.
Eric: And each of those touches has a real reason. Day two is "did you have any questions on the quote." Day five is "wanted to make sure this didn't hit your spam." Day nine is a short case study. Day fourteen is the call.
Marisol Trevino: Not just "checking in."
Eric: Never "just checking in." "Just checking in" is the worst text in sales. It puts all the work on them.
Marisol Trevino: I have sent that text so many times.
Eric: We all have. We all have. But if you give them a reason, even a small one, the reply rate goes way up.
Marisol Trevino: Okay. So the platform. Where does Notion fit in? Because I heard you mention Notion.
Eric: Notion is where the humans live. So the platform handles the customer facing stuff, the messages, the automations, the pipeline. Notion is our internal workspace. It's where we write the SOP for what happens when a lead comes in, it's where the team looks up how we handle a specific type of job, it's the brain. The platform is the hands.
Marisol Trevino: The platform is the hands. Okay.
Eric: For a five person shop I'd say you probably don't even need Notion day one. You need the hands first. Get the response times fixed. The brain can wait a month.
Marisol Trevino: That's helpful. Because every time I try to set up a new system I try to set up the WHOLE system.
Eric: Yeah. And you burn out on Saturday and never open it again.
Marisol Trevino: Correct. Exactly correct.
Eric: So what I'd tell you, honestly, if you and I were sitting in your truck. Don't try to do everything. Pick the ninety second reply. Just that. Every lead, every channel, gets a real sounding text within a couple minutes. That alone will change your close rate.
Marisol Trevino: Even without the follow up sequence?
Eric: Even without it. Because you'll be catching people while they're still on the couch. The follow up sequence is the second unlock. First unlock is speed.
Marisol Trevino: Speed.
Eric: Speed to a human sounding message.
Marisol Trevino: Okay so let me ask you the thing I'm nervous about. What happens when I'm on a job site. I can't reply. I'm on my knees with a wet saw.
Eric: Right. So this is the beauty of the automated first touch. It buys you time. The customer got a real feeling reply in ninety seconds. They think you're on it. You've now got four hours, six hours, till lunch, whatever, to actually respond as yourself. You're not racing them anymore.
Marisol Trevino: I'm not racing them anymore.
Eric: You're not racing them anymore. The platform bought you the runway.
Marisol Trevino: Huh.
Eric: And the second thing, when the reply comes in, it hits your phone as a notification. So when you break for water, you glance down, you see "Hey I'm looking to redo about sixty square feet of backsplash in my kitchen," you can voice to text back in twenty seconds.
Marisol Trevino: While I'm drinking Gatorade.
Eric: While you're drinking Gatorade.
Marisol Trevino: Okay. That's... yeah. That's doable. That's actually doable.
Eric: What's your gut telling you? Where's the resistance?
Marisol Trevino: Honestly? Setup. Every time I've tried this I've spent a weekend on it and given up.
Eric: Yeah, and I want to be honest with you, there IS setup. It's not zero. But the piece I'm describing, the ninety second reply on inbound leads, that's an afternoon. Not a weekend. An afternoon. You pick your channels, you connect them, you write ONE message, you turn it on.
Marisol Trevino: One message.
Eric: One message. Don't try to write fifteen variants for fifteen scenarios. Write one that works for eighty percent of your leads and let the twenty percent be handled by you when you reply.
Marisol Trevino: Okay.
Eric: You can always add more later. But you gotta ship the first version.
Marisol Trevino: I have a legal pad full of first versions I never shipped.
Eric: I know you do.
Marisol Trevino: So what happened for you? Like, when you flipped this on at the agency, what did you actually see?
Eric: Honestly the biggest thing wasn't a number. It was that the top of my head stopped hurting.
Eric: I stopped waking up at four AM going, "did I text that guy back." Because I knew that the first touch had already happened. And I knew that if he had replied, it was sitting in the inbox waiting for me. Nothing was falling through anymore. That was the win. The revenue stuff followed, but the sanity came first.
Marisol Trevino: The sanity came first.
Eric: Yeah. And that matters when you're the owner. Because you're the one carrying the leaks. Nobody else is losing sleep over the leads that didn't get called back. Just you.
Marisol Trevino: Just me.
Eric: So if you take one thing from this conversation this week, and this is what I tell everybody, pick your highest volume lead channel. For you it sounds like Instagram DMs or the website form. One of the two.
Marisol Trevino: Website form, probably. The DMs I at least see because I'm on my phone.
Eric: Perfect. Website form. This week, set up one thing. When somebody submits that form, they get a real sounding text from your number within a couple minutes that asks them a specific question. That's it. That's the ONE thing.
Marisol Trevino: One channel, one message, one automation.
Eric: One channel, one message, one automation. Live by Friday.
Marisol Trevino: Okay. Live by Friday. I can do that.
Eric: And then next week, you do the second channel. And the week after, you build the follow up sequence for the ones who got quoted. But this week, just the front door.
Marisol Trevino: Just the front door.
Eric: The legal pad will start getting shorter. I promise.
Marisol Trevino: I would like that. I would really, really like that.
Eric: Marisol, thanks for being honest about all of this. Most people don't wanna admit the legal pad.
Marisol Trevino: Oh, everybody's got a legal pad. Everybody. Mine just has grout stains on it.
Eric: Alright. If you're listening and you're nodding along, you know who you are. Go fix your front door this week. One channel, one message, one automation. And if this was useful, subscribe so the next one finds you. We'll catch you next time.
Marisol Trevino: Thanks, Eric.
Eric: Thanks, Marisol.
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