A 20-minute weekly check that shows small business owners how many of their enquiries are real customers.
We recently went through 62 enquiry notifications that one Ontario renovation company received through its websites, phone lines and text lines. Every one of them looked like a customer. Twenty-seven were.
The rest weren't fake in any dramatic way. Eleven came from numbers outside Canada. Six came from one finance company that called the same eavestrough line most weekdays and asked for the owner by name. Eleven more were other kinds of noise: an estimating firm offering its services, a voicemail with three words and no message, a form filled in with a made-up 555 number, a sales dialler working through three trade lines in one afternoon. Two had no phone number or email at all. And five were the same customer counted twice.
None of that is unusual. What matters is what the owner does with the count.
Why the count matters
If you decide where next month's marketing money goes by counting notifications, that number is steering you. A channel that produced 30 "leads" and one that produced 12 look very different, until you find out 20 of the 30 were cold calls and repeats. Then the smaller channel may be the better one.
The same goes for anyone you pay per lead or on a monthly fee. If you can't say how many real enquiries came through, you can't say whether the price is fair, in either direction.
The weekly check
It takes about 20 minutes. Do it on the same day each week, before you look at any marketing report.
Pull your last 10 enquiries. Calls, voicemails, texts, web forms and contact-page emails, all in one list, oldest first. If you get more than 10 a week, do every one for the first month.
Group the repeats. People call, hang up, text, then fill in the form. That is one person and one job. Match on phone number first (the last 10 digits, since "+1 519" and "519" are the same caller), then email, then name and street. Keep the first contact and mark the rest as repeats. One exception: the same person asking about a different job is a new enquiry.
Set aside the pitches. Read what was actually said, not just who it came from. The signs are consistent. They ask for the owner by name instead of describing a job. They talk about your business, your website or your Google listing instead of their own house. They offer something: financing, SEO, ads, estimating, staff. They call from outside the country, or from a number that turns up on your other lines too. A voicemail with no job and no callback request goes here as well.
Check that a real person can be reached. A genuine request with a fake phone number and no email can't be quoted. Note it, but don't count it as a lead.
Record what happened next. For everything left, write down whether someone spoke to the customer, whether they got a quote and whether they booked. Most owners have never seen this column filled in, and it's the one that tells you which channel is earning its money.
At the bottom, write four numbers: total notifications, repeats, pitches and unreachable, and real enquiries. Divide real enquiries by total notifications. That's your real-lead rate, and the first time you work it out it's usually lower than you expect.
What the example looked like
- Notifications received (62): Calls, voicemails, texts and web forms across several trade lines
- Numbers outside Canada (11): Callers and form fills from out-of-country numbers
- One repeat cold-caller (6): A finance company calling the same line most weekdays, asking for the owner by name
- Other pitches and junk (11): An estimating firm, a blank voicemail, form spam, a fake 555 number, a sales dialler on three lines
- No phone or email (2): A request with no way to reply
- Same customer counted twice (5): One person reaching out more than once about the same job
- Real enquiries (27): 44% of what arrived
That company's 62 notifications became 27 enquiries worth calling back. If the owner had judged the month on 62, every cost-per-lead figure would have looked less than half of what it really was.
What to do with the result
Three things tend to come out of the first month.
You'll find a pattern in the noise. In the example, one caller produced six of the 62. Once you know the number, you can block it. Most phone systems and form tools let you block a number or filter a phrase.
You'll find gaps in how fast enquiries get answered. The "what happened next" column often shows real customers who were never called back because they arrived between a cold call and a spam form. That's lost work, not bad leads.
You'll have a fair number to judge your marketing with. Take it to whoever runs your ads, your website or your lead service and ask them to report against the same definition. If they won't, that's worth knowing too.
The blank worksheet below is the version we use. Print it or copy it into a spreadsheet, and fill in one row per notification.
Weekly enquiry check (blank worksheet)
Week of: ______________
- Date and time
- Channel (call, voicemail, text, form, email)
- Name or number
- What they asked for
- Repeat of #
- Pitch or junk? (Y/N)
- Reachable? (Y/N)
- Spoke to them? (Y/N)
- Quoted? (Y/N)
- Booked? (Y/N)
Totals
- A. Total notifications
- B. Repeats
- C. Pitches, junk and unreachable
- D. Real enquiries (A minus B minus C)
- E. Real-lead rate (D divided by A)
- F. Real enquiries that got a quote
Quick sorting rules
- Same last 10 digits of a phone number = same caller.
- Same person, same job, different channel = one enquiry.
- Same person, different job = a new enquiry.
- Asks for the owner by name, or offers you something = a pitch.
- No job described and no way to reply = not a lead.
