Working with contractors, we’ve gotten to know the ins and outs of the home improvement business. One particular problem that we run into with many of our partners is that they don’t pick up their phones. Sales leads are going to voicemail, or more likely, leads are dying in voicemail, because that customer then contacts a competitor who promptly schedules a demo and steals your sale.

I encountered this firsthand when my house had an electrical issue. We decided that we’d call some contractors in the area and see who responded and how quickly. So, I contacted the first five electricians listed on Google and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Then I called a sixth electrician, who did pick up and promptly booked a time for a salesman to come out. For the other five voicemails, the response time ranged from two days to never calling back. Of course, none of those slow remodelers got my business. But the real question I had was why did so many different companies miss my call in the first place? Are phone staff nowadays that unreliable or was I missing something?

After doing some research on what time of day customers are calling into remodeling services companies, we found that most customers love to call during lunch hours. So it isn’t that your phone team is neglecting their duties, it’s that your phone team doesn’t realize they are missing your calls because they are simply on break! And even though your staff may do a great job of returning voicemails after their lunch break, the fact of the matter is, the best way to close the sale is to simply answer the phone call.

So how do you deal with this unavoidable issue?

Well, you can start by counting the number of voicemails you receive versus successful phone calls. If the ratio is not good, think about staggering your phone staff’s lunch breaks so that someone is always available to book appointments from incoming phone calls.

Don’t have the right software or tools to accurately track all of your phone calls and voicemails?

Here at Spectrum, we have state-of-the-art lead tracking software for our remodeling partners. If our account managers see that phone calls are going to voicemail during business hours, we can automatically alert our partners that there is an issue and work together to solve it. With hundreds of data points and insights into the world of home remodeling, we can provide you with just the right information on how to turn your phone calls into successfully converting leads. Learn more of those insights with our eBook below!