Junk removal calls: answer fast, hold a slot, follow up

For a crew that is already getting calls, winning customers is a conversion problem. A caller with a deadline is looking for somebody to say yes, and the work is making sure somebody is there to say it.

What to take away

Count what you are actually losing

Before changing anything, measure four numbers for a month: calls received, calls answered live, quotes given, and jobs booked.

The gap between the first two counts is usually larger than owners expect, and it is the cheapest gap in the business to close. The monthly numbers article shows where these counts sit among the others worth tracking.

Then look at the gap between quotes given and jobs booked, split by how the quote was given. Phone quotes and on-site quotes convert very differently, and knowing which is failing tells you where to work.

Who answers, and what happens after hours

Everything else depends on somebody picking up the phone. Decide who answers during your stated hours, and what happens outside them.

An answering service that can take the four questions is better than voicemail. Voicemail returned within the hour is better than voicemail returned tomorrow. Nothing beats a person.

If you are the person and you are also on a truck, that is a real problem rather than a personal failing, and it is usually the first thing to fix with a hire or a service. Who to hire and how to find them is in the article on hiring reliable staff.

Evening calls are a fair test. In a deadline trade they are often worth answering, so try it for a month and count what arrives after five o'clock before deciding.

What the answerer has to ask

The caller has a problem with a date on it and very little patience. Answer as a person, confirm you cover their area, and start asking.

Question four sounds like scheduling and is actually qualification, because a caller with a date is buying availability rather than shopping on price. Whoever answers, a person or a service, has to be able to take all four.

What the answerer says about price

Give a range and say what would put the job at the top of it. Say that the crew confirms the price before touching anything. The way a crew builds that range is in the eight-step quoting method.

Callers accept this readily when it is said plainly and resent it when it appears as a surprise in a driveway. The one thing that loses the job on the phone is refusing to give any indication at all, because the next company will.

Whatever you advertise has to be able to deliver what it implies. The FTC's small-business advertising answers say the same standards for truthfulness apply to price claims such as price comparisons and "sale" prices.

The same-day slot

A same-day slot costs you something real, and it is the strongest conversion tool in the trade.

Hold one slot a day unsold. When a caller with a deadline reaches you and hears that you can come today, the price conversation usually ends. When they hear a date three days out, they call the next listing.

Track two counts to know whether the balance is right: same-day requests received, and same-day requests accepted. Accept everything and you are holding too much capacity. Turn away most and you are losing the best work available to you. How that slot survives a real route is covered in the operations and workflow guide.

When they look you up before calling

The caller with a deadline searches once and calls the first two or three results they trust. An accurate listing with real photographs of your own jobs, honest hours, and an explicit statement of what you refuse does most of that work.

Google publishes its own guidance on what improves a local business listing's ranking, which is the authority on its own product.

Reviews carry weight in a service people buy nervously. Ask everybody, in the same way, at the same moment, and offer nothing in exchange. The Federal Trade Commission's guidance on soliciting online reviews says how you get them affects whether consumers see a true and accurate picture.

The follow-up nobody makes

Almost nobody in this trade follows up an unconverted quote. That makes it cheap and effective.

Two days after a quote that went nowhere, send one message: a reminder of the price, the fact that you can still come, and nothing else. No discount, no pressure. A meaningful share of those jobs are still undone, because the customer got busy rather than because they chose somebody else.

Do the same after a completed job, once, three months later, for customers whose situation suggests more work: a renovation, a downsizing, a property manager.

Common questions

Should I discount to win a job?

Rarely, and never on the phone. Most price objections in this trade are scope confusion, and explaining what is included wins more work than cutting the number.

What is a good conversion rate?

No figure means the same thing across markets. Measure your own for a month, calls answered, quotes given, jobs booked, and improve the weakest of the three. That is the only comparison that matters.

Do I follow up more than once?

Once is polite and effective. Twice starts costing you the goodwill that produced the enquiry.

How do I handle a caller who only wants the cheapest price?

Give the range, say what it includes, and let them go if they want. A job won purely on price in this trade is usually the one that turns out to be dense, awkward and unprofitable.