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A tile contractor named Marcy is losing a dozen kitchens a season after warm in-home quote visits. We unpack the memory leak between day one and day seven and walk through a one-inbox CRM, missed-call text-back, and scheduled follow-ups in her voice.
Marcy runs a tile and kitchen crew and keeps losing warm leads after the in-home quote. We diagnose the gap between the quote visit and day seven, and lay out the simple ops stack that plugs the leak without making her sound like a robot.
In this episode:
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Eric: ...so a dozen kitchens. This spring alone.
Marcy Halvorsen: At least. Maybe more, honestly. Those are just the ones I know about because the homeowner told me, "Hey Marcy, we really liked you, but we went with somebody else."
Eric: Ouch.
Marcy Halvorsen: Yeah. And the worst part is, every single one of those, I had already been to their house. I'd measured. I'd talked tile with them for like an hour.
Eric: So these aren't cold leads. These are people who already let you in the door.
Marcy Halvorsen: Exactly. Warm. WARM warm. And then I just... lose them.
Eric: Walk me through what happens after you leave the driveway. Like, literally, what do you do with that lead?
Marcy Halvorsen: Okay so, I've got my notebook. Spiral bound, beat up, lives in the truck. I write down the measurements, the budget range if they gave me one, what they're picking between. Sometimes I sketch the room.
Eric: Sure.
Marcy Halvorsen: Then I get back to the shop, and if I'm not on another job, I text them the quote. From my phone. My personal phone.
Eric: Your personal phone.
Marcy Halvorsen: I know.
Eric: And then?
Marcy Halvorsen: And then... that's kind of it? Like, I mean to follow up. I always mean to. But Tuesday I'm doing a backsplash in Hermantown, Wednesday a supplier didn't deliver, Thursday my installer calls in sick, and by the next Monday I genuinely cannot remember if I sent the quote or just thought about sending it.
Eric: Right.
Marcy Halvorsen: And then three weeks later somebody else has their floor.
Eric: Okay. So here's the thing I want to name, because I think you already know it, but it'll help to say it out loud.
Marcy Halvorsen: Go.
Eric: You don't have a lead problem. You have a memory problem.
Marcy Halvorsen: Yeah.
Eric: You're generating plenty of opportunities. You're great in the home. People LIKE you. That's the hardest part of the funnel and you've already nailed it.
Marcy Halvorsen: Okay.
Eric: The leak is between the quote visit and day seven. That's the whole gap.
Marcy Halvorsen: That's exactly the gap.
Eric: And the reason it's leaking is because the system holding those leads is a notebook in a truck and a text thread on a phone that also has your kids' soccer schedule on it.
Marcy Halvorsen: And the grocery list. And my mom.
Eric: And your mom. So when Thursday gets chaotic, the notebook loses. Every time. It's not a discipline problem, Marcy.
Marcy Halvorsen: I keep telling myself it is.
Eric: It's not. You're disciplined enough to run a crew for eleven years. You're not going to out-discipline a paper notebook into being a CRM.
Marcy Halvorsen: Fair.
Eric: So let me tell you what we did with another trades operator, similar size to you, and then we can talk about whether any of it fits.
Marcy Halvorsen: Please.
Eric: Same shape of problem. Quoting in the home, losing the thread after. What we set up was, basically, one place where every lead lands the second it exists. One inbox. One pipeline. One phone number that isn't her personal cell.
Marcy Halvorsen: Okay.
Eric: We use this all-in-one ops platform that we run our agency on. I'm not gonna get into the brand because honestly the brand matters less than the shape of it. What it does is it pulls your text messages, your missed calls, your website form fills, your Facebook messages, all of it, into one screen.
Marcy Halvorsen: One screen.
Eric: One screen.
Marcy Halvorsen: I would cry.
Eric: A lot of people do, actually. In a good way.
Marcy Halvorsen: So if somebody texts me, and somebody else fills out a form on my website...
Eric: They're both sitting there. Same place. With a little tag that says where they came from.
Marcy Halvorsen: Okay.
Eric: And then the second piece, which is the one that would have saved you those kitchens, is the follow-up doesn't depend on you remembering.
Marcy Halvorsen: How does that work.
Eric: So when you finish a quote visit, you open it up, you tap "quote sent," and the platform takes over from there. Day two it sends a text. "Hey, just checking you got the quote, any questions?" In your voice, you wrote it once. Day five, different message. Day ten, different again.
Marcy Halvorsen: And those go from the business number, not my cell.
Eric: Business number. Which, by the way, when they reply, the reply also lands in that same one screen. So you see it.
Marcy Halvorsen: Wait, so I'm still the one talking to them?
Eric: You're still the one talking to them. That's important. This isn't a bot pretending to be Marcy. This is Marcy's words, scheduled, so that when Thursday explodes, the follow-up still happens.
Marcy Halvorsen: Okay. Okay, that's the part I was nervous about. I don't want to sound like a robot, my whole thing is I show up at the house in my work boots and we talk about their dog.
Eric: And you should keep doing that. Don't change that. That's why they like you. The automation is just making sure you don't ghost them on day six because a pallet of subway tile got delivered to the wrong job site.
Marcy Halvorsen: That happened last week.
Eric: Of course it did.
Marcy Halvorsen: Okay so... one screen for everything, and a follow-up sequence that runs whether I remember or not.
Eric: That's the spine of it. Then there's a couple smaller pieces that matter a lot for your specific situation.
Marcy Halvorsen: Tell me.
Eric: One: missed call text back. You're on a job, hands in thinset, phone rings, you can't grab it. The platform sees the missed call, sends a text within like thirty seconds. "Hey, this is Marcy at Northshore, sorry I missed you, I'm on a job. What can I help you with?"
Marcy Halvorsen: That alone.
Eric: That alone. Because right now, what happens?
Marcy Halvorsen: They call the next guy on the Google search.
Eric: Yeah. So you've already lost them and you don't even know they called.
Marcy Halvorsen: I don't even know they called.
Eric: Second small piece. Pipeline view. Every lead is a card. New lead, quote scheduled, quote sent, follow-up, won, lost. You drag the card across as the relationship moves.
Marcy Halvorsen: Like a board.
Eric: Like a board. And the cards that are sitting in "quote sent" too long start to glow. Or whatever. The platform nags YOU instead of you having to nag yourself.
Marcy Halvorsen: I like that.
Eric: And then if you want to get fancier, we sometimes hang a Notion workspace off the side of it. That's where the long-form stuff lives. Your install checklists, your supplier contacts, the photos of past jobs you want to show people. Notion for the brain, the platform for the pipeline.
Marcy Halvorsen: I already use Notion for recipes. Not for the business.
Eric: Well now you've got a reason.
Marcy Halvorsen: How long does setting all this up take? Because I am one person. With four installers. I cannot disappear for a month to learn software.
Eric: Yeah, that's the right question. The honest answer is, the platform itself you could be functional on in an afternoon. The follow-up messages, the ones in your voice, that's where most people stall.
Marcy Halvorsen: Because you have to write them.
Eric: Because you have to write them. And if you try to write seven of them on a Sunday night you'll hate it and you'll quit.
Marcy Halvorsen: Yeah.
Eric: So what I tell people is, write ONE. Just the day-two check-in. Get that running. Then next week, write the day-five. Then the day-ten. Stack them in over a month.
Marcy Halvorsen: Oh. That feels doable.
Eric: Way more doable than "rebuild your whole business this weekend."
Marcy Halvorsen: Which is what I was about to commit to in my head.
Eric: I know. I could see it.
Marcy Halvorsen: Okay. So if I'm being honest with you, the part I'm still a little scared of is the transition. Like, I've got leads in the notebook right now. Today. What do I do with those.
Eric: Great question. Don't try to migrate the whole notebook. Just the live ones.
Marcy Halvorsen: The ones still in play.
Eric: The ones still warm. The kitchens you quoted in the last, what, six weeks?
Marcy Halvorsen: Six weeks, yeah.
Eric: Type those in as cards. Today. Just name, phone, what they want, what stage they're at. Twenty minutes of work.
Marcy Halvorsen: Okay.
Eric: Everything older than six weeks, leave it in the notebook. If one of them calls back, great, you'll add them then. Don't let the migration become the thing that stops you from starting.
Marcy Halvorsen: That's the thing I would do. I would absolutely make a giant spreadsheet of every lead since 2019 and then never start.
Eric: Yes. The spreadsheet of doom.
Marcy Halvorsen: The spreadsheet of doom. I have built that spreadsheet before, for taxes. It killed me.
Eric: Don't build it again.
Marcy Halvorsen: Won't.
Eric: Okay so let's talk about what changed for the operator I mentioned. Not numbers, because every business is different and I'm not gonna sit here and promise you anything. But the shape of what changed.
Marcy Halvorsen: Sure.
Eric: Before, she was in the same spot you are. Warm leads going cold because the week ate her. After about... I'd say six weeks of having the system actually running, the biggest thing she said wasn't about money. It was that she stopped waking up at 4 a.m. trying to remember who she hadn't called back.
Marcy Halvorsen: Oh.
Eric: Yeah.
Marcy Halvorsen: That's me. That's literally me. I have a note on my nightstand that says "Brenda - backsplash??" with three question marks.
Eric: Brenda deserves better.
Marcy Halvorsen: Brenda deserves so much better.
Eric: And the second thing she noticed was that her close rate on the warm ones went up. Not because she got better at sales. She didn't. She got the same at sales, she just stopped letting people fall off the table between day two and day ten.
Marcy Halvorsen: Because she was actually there on day five.
Eric: Because something was there on day five. Whether she remembered or not.
Marcy Halvorsen: Okay. Okay, I'm sold on the shape of it. If somebody is listening to this and they're me, basically, what's the one thing? Like if they do nothing else this week, what's the one thing.
Eric: The one thing this week. Okay. Here's what I'd do.
Marcy Halvorsen: Yeah.
Eric: Pick the five warmest leads in your notebook right now. Not all of them. Five.
Marcy Halvorsen: Five.
Eric: And just text them. From whatever phone, doesn't matter yet, we'll fix the phone later. Just text them today. "Hey, it's Marcy, wanted to check in on the quote I sent, happy to answer any questions, no pressure either way."
Marcy Halvorsen: That's it.
Eric: That's it. Because the system stuff, the platform, the pipeline, the Notion, all of it, that's the long-term answer. But the reason I'd start with the five texts is two things. One, you might literally save one of those jobs this week.
Marcy Halvorsen: Yeah.
Eric: And two, you'll feel, in your body, what it's like to actually follow up on day seven. And once you've felt that, you'll never want to go back. THAT is the motivation that gets you to set up the rest of it.
Marcy Halvorsen: Five texts.
Eric: Five texts. By Friday.
Marcy Halvorsen: I can do five texts by Friday.
Eric: I know you can.
Marcy Halvorsen: Okay. I'm doing it.
Eric: Good. Marcy, this was great. Thanks for being honest about the notebook, by the way. A lot of people in your shoes pretend they have a system.
Marcy Halvorsen: I mean, the notebook IS a system. It's just a bad one.
Eric: It's a system that worked for a smaller version of your business.
Marcy Halvorsen: Hm. That's a nicer way to say it.
Eric: It's true, though. You outgrew it. That's a good problem.
Marcy Halvorsen: I'll take it.
Eric: Alright. For everybody listening, if any of this sounded like your week, hit subscribe so the next one finds you. We do one of these every week, somebody running a real business, real problem, real fix. Marcy, thanks.
Marcy Halvorsen: Thanks Eric.
Eric: Go text Brenda.
Marcy Halvorsen: Going.
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