Free resources
Everything you need to fix this yourself.
Guides, working tools, and videos for finding the money loss in your own business and closing the biggest gaps by hand. Nothing gated behind a sales call. If you would rather we did the counting, the review is free.
Or book the free reviewThe five guides
Five expensive challenges, one guide each.
Written for home service owners. Not sure where to begin? Start with Stop the Bleed. It shows you the profit waste you are most likely sitting on right now.
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Stop the Bleed
Find the profit waste hiding in plain sight.
- Download PDF
The 5-Minute Window
Answer leads fast enough to win the job.
- Download PDF
Off the Tools
Get yourself out of the field and into the business.
- Download PDF
Kill the Slow Season
Fill the dips you brace for every year.
- Download PDF
The 24-Hour Close
Turn fresh leads into booked work before they cool.
Four working tools
Use them in this order.
These work for any business that books from the phone. Each one takes under an hour, and none of them needs new software.
Tool one
The twelve-question self-audit.
Each of these is a place where a customer who already decided to call you ends up somewhere else. Tick the ones that are true. Nothing is stored and nobody sees it but you.
Tick the ones that are true and the result appears here.
Tool two
Where your real numbers live, and what to do with them.
Most owners guess at this and guess low. The real figures are in systems you already pay for, and pulling them takes about twenty minutes. Pick where your calls come through.
Most business phone systems
- Call log or call history, last 90 days, exported.Every system has this. Look under Analytics or Reports rather than the dashboard summary.
- Filter for missed, abandoned, and voicemail.Abandoned is the one people forget. That is a caller who hung up while it was ringing.
- Look at the time-of-day breakdown.You will usually find a spike right after close and another during your busiest hour.
Then do this
- Count total inbound and count unanswered.Unanswered means missed plus abandoned plus anything that went to voicemail.
- Cross out repeat numbers calling back within an hour.Those are the same person trying twice. Do not count them twice.
- Multiply what is left by your booking rate, then by your average job or appointment value.Use your real booking rate on answered calls. That is the monthly number.
Free, and most owners have never opened it
- Google Business Profile, then Performance, then Calls.Shows calls placed from your listing by day and by hour for the last six months.
- Compare that count against what your phone system logged as answered.The gap is real demand that never reached anyone.
- If you run Local Services Ads, open the lead log too.Every charged lead should have a matching answered call. Any that do not are money spent twice.
Then do this
- Find the calls outside your open hours on the hourly chart.That block is your after-hours demand, and it is usually bigger than owners expect.
- Check that your listing hours match when somebody actually answers.If the listing says open until six and the phone stops at four, Google is sending you calls nobody catches.
Field service, practice management, or CRM software
- Booked jobs or appointments by source, last 90 days.You want the count that came from an inbound phone call specifically.
- Estimates, quotes, or consults, filtered to sent and not accepted.Anything past fourteen days with no logged activity has gone cold.
- Average invoice or case value across completed work.Use the real average rather than the number in your head. They are rarely the same.
Then do this
- Divide bookings from calls by total inbound calls.That is your true booking rate, and it is the multiplier for everything else.
- Total the cold quotes and multiply by five percent.Five percent recovery on quotes nobody followed is conservative and defensible.
If everything comes through a mobile phone
- Your carrier bill or account portal, last three months.Most carriers show inbound call detail. It is tedious, but it is real data.
- Your phone's own recent calls list.iPhone and Android both flag missed calls. Scroll back and count.
- Your Google Business Profile call history.Works whatever phone you use, and it is the fastest source here.
Then do this
- Count missed calls for one full week and multiply by four.A single clean week beats a fuzzy quarter.
- Note how many you called back and how many you never got to.The ones you never got back to are the number that matters.
Doing this properly means reconciling three sources, and the first time through you will undercount, because the misses that never logged anywhere are invisible. That is what the free review is for.
Tool three
The after-hours rule, written down.
Most businesses have never told anyone what happens when the phone rings at 4:47 on a Friday. Not because nobody cares, but because it never got decided. Copy this, fill in the brackets, and hand it to whoever answers.
WHEN THE PHONE RINGS AND THE OFFICE IS CLOSED 1. Somebody answers. Every call, every time, including weekends and holidays. Voicemail is not a plan. 2. Get these five things before anything else: name, callback number, address, what is happening, and whether it can wait until [normal hours]. 3. Say the fee out loud before you offer a time: "Our [visit type] is [amount]. That covers [what it covers], and it comes off the work if you go ahead. Does that work?" 4. If it can wait, book it. Offer two windows, not a list. Confirm it back to them before you hang up. 5. If it cannot wait, it goes to [on-call name] at [number]. Call and text. They have [X] minutes to confirm they got it. 6. If [X] minutes pass with no confirmation, it goes to [backup name] at [number]. Same rules. 7. If neither confirms, call [owner] directly. Every time. Nobody gets in trouble for waking me up over a real one. 8. Write down who you called, when, and who confirmed. If it is not written down, it did not happen. The only mistake is a call nobody answered.
Steps five through seven are the part almost nobody writes down. Sending a message and knowing it was received are two different things.
"Last month, how many times did the phone ring and nobody got to it? I am not looking to get anybody in trouble. I want a real number, because I do not think we have ever told you what to do with those, and that is on me."
Ask it exactly that way and take the blame in the same breath. Any other phrasing gets you zero as an answer.
Tool four
The quote follow-up cadence.
A quote that gets one touch closes at your one-touch rate. The same quote across five touches over eighteen days closes far higher, and almost nobody runs five. Put this on one person's desk with their name on it.
- Day 0
Send it, and say when you will call
"I will give you a call Thursday to walk through it, and if you have questions before then, just hit reply." Naming the next contact is what makes the next contact normal.
- Day 2
The call is about their situation, not the number
"Did that come through okay? I wanted to make sure the part about [what is actually going on] made sense, because that is the piece that decides the timing."
- Day 6
Something useful, not a nudge
A photo from the visit, a note on what happens if it waits, or the difference between the options. Give them a reason to reply that is not yes or no.
- Day 11
The scheduling question
"I have Tuesday or Thursday next week open. Do you want me to hold one while you decide?" Holding a slot is a smaller yes than buying.
- Day 18
The close-the-file message
"I am going to close this one out so I stop bothering you. If it is still on your list later, the number holds through [date] and you can just reply here." This one gets more replies than the other four combined.
If you take one thing from this page, take Day 18. It feels like giving up, and it is the message that gets the most people off the fence.
Watch
Weekly breakdowns, for owners.
Plain-talk videos on where work goes missing between the phone ringing and the job getting booked, and what to write down to stop it. Language you can act on Monday.
Coming after final review
Building an AI First Business.
A thirty-step process guide for running a business that operates alone or with a small team, in four parts, with a proof-to-move-on check at the end of every step. It is the same process I use on my own business.
It is in final human review now. If you want it before release, ask for early access on your Booked Work Review.
Want it on paper
The Missed Call Checklist.
Everything above in one printable PDF: the twelve questions, where to pull your real numbers, the after-hours rule, and the follow-up cadence. One email, and no sequence you cannot get out of.
Run it yourself, or let us hand you the number.
Everything on this page is what I would do in your business. If you would rather not spend a weekend on it, the review is free and takes twenty minutes.
Book the free Booked Work Review20 minutes with John Reay. Free, and no obligation.