Getting inquiries but not booking jobs? Most contractors answer this by gut — and the gut is usually wrong. Here's the honest test.
If your phone isn't ringing, you have a marketing problem. If it rings but the jobs don't close, you have a sales problem. But for most contractors it's neither one cleanly — it's a system problem, where marketing and sales are managed separately and revenue leaks in the gap between them. The fastest way to tell which is to follow one month of leads from first contact all the way to a signed, installed job, and find the single stage where the most of them fall out.
The five-question test
Walk one month of leads through five stages. Mark each one honestly. The tool points to where the leak is — and whether "more marketing" would even help.
A guided self-check, not a verdict on your business. The stage that loses the most leads isn't automatically the one to fix first — your binding constraint is the one where a fix adds the most booked, profitable jobs.
Whichever stage you marked shaky, here's what it means and the first move — the plain-text version of the check above.
| Stage | If it's shaky, this is the problem | First move |
|---|---|---|
| Leads coming in | Not enough of the right inquiries — a marketing & demand problem. | Fix demand — the one case where more marketing is the answer. |
| Answered in minutes | Speed-to-lead leak; intent decays while leads sit. | Contact every lead in minutes; automate the first touch. |
| Set & shown | Follow-up and appointment-setting leak — leads never become shown visits. | Book on the first call; confirm and re-confirm. |
| Estimates close | Sales-process and close-rate leak — you sit but don't sign. | Rebuild the estimate and its after-visit follow-up. |
| Could deliver more | Capacity is the constraint — you're already maxed out. | "Not yet" on marketing — build delivery first. |
When revenue is flat, "I need more leads" feels true — so you buy more leads. If the real problem was downstream, you just paid to widen the top of a bucket with a hole in the bottom. Activity is not progress.
Sales and marketing are one connected system, and the money usually leaks in the seam between them — the handoff nobody owns, where the marketing person says the leads are fine and the sales person says the leads are junk. You can't fix the number at the end by pouring more in at the front if the leak is in the middle. Measuring the whole system is how you find the constraint that actually moves revenue — not just the biggest drop-off — and everything upstream of the real constraint is wasted effort until it's fixed.
Here's the trap. Picture a shop whose ugliest number is appointments set, so it spends to fix that — more leads, more booking. But trace the dollars: the handful of estimates that do get run almost never close. Fixing setting makes the funnel look better and the bank account no different, because the real loss was at the close. The stage that leaked the most wasn't the one worth fixing first. That's why the biggest drop-off and the binding constraint aren't the same thing.
And sometimes the honest answer is neither. If your crews are already maxed, the constraint is capacity — and the smart move is "not yet" on marketing until you can install more work than you're already selling.
The stage that loses the most leads isn't automatically the one to fix first. The binding constraint is the stage where fixing it would add the most booked, profitable jobs — given everything else in your system.
The wrong diagnosis is expensive. Fixing a stage that isn't your constraint just buys you more leads to lose at the real leak. And we're a marketing agency telling you the answer might not be marketing — if your bind is the close, or your crews' capacity, then more of what we sell is the wrong spend. We'd rather tell you that in 20 minutes than bill you for it for six months.
The tool points to a stage. Here's how to recognize which of the four you're really dealing with — match the symptoms to your own month.
Not enough qualified people are finding you.
The inquiries are there; the jobs aren't.
Each half works; the handoff doesn't.
Sales and marketing both work — the crews don't have room.
The self-check points to a stage; a real diagnosis proves it — by following the same leads all the way through and watching exactly where they fall off. These are the eight figures most contractors can't line up in one place:
“Andrew was a huge help developing an in-depth marketing system for a window and door business we were working with. His process went way beyond a cookie cutter strategy. He took the time to learn about existing bottlenecks, how to identify new growth opportunities, and measure marketing effectiveness beyond traffic and leads. He even took into account the crew's installation capacity. Things we never would have thought of on our own. If you're in the contractor space and looking to expand into new markets, Andrew is your guy. Highly recommended!”
Twenty minutes. We follow your leads through the whole system and tell you the one thing to fix first — even when it isn't marketing.
Book the 20-Minute Gap Review →No form. No sales team. No callback queue. Every channel below goes straight to Andrew.
423-299-1718 · Johnson City, TN · The person you reach is the person accountable for your results.