An owner weighing revenue leak work tends to want to know one thing before anything else: what actually happens? Not the promise, the calendar. Who needs to be in the room, what gets looked at, when something changes, and how anyone will know if it helped.
This is how we would approach the first ninety days. It is a plan, not a record of past engagements, and every business will bend it. But the order matters more than the details, and the order is worth explaining.
The principle: count before you fix
The temptation at the start is to fix things. The owner already suspects where the problems are, and some of those suspicions are right. But a fix made before the counting has two problems. You cannot tell afterward whether it worked, because there is no before. And you may fix the leak you noticed rather than the one that was costing the most.
So the first weeks are deliberately dull. We count. Then we fix the leak nearest the phone, because that is where a lead is newest and most valuable. Then we work outward, one step at a time.
Weeks 1 to 2: counting
The first two weeks are about getting numbers the owner believes. Most of them already exist in the phone system, the field software and the ad accounts; nobody has put them side by side.
What we would ask for:
- The call log for the last few months: every inbound call, with time, duration and whether it was answered.
- Form and message submissions from the website, Google Business Profile and any lead platforms.
- The job list from the field software: booked, completed, canceled, with sources where they exist.
- Estimates: sent, followed up, accepted, declined.
- Ad spend by channel for the same period.
- Half an hour with whoever answers the phone, because they know things no report shows.
At the end of week two, the owner gets a plain summary: calls answered and missed by hour and day, how quickly forms get a reply, how many estimates were sent and followed up, and how many booked jobs slipped off the board. Every figure is labeled with where it came from and how sure we are of it.
Weeks 3 to 4: sizing and choosing
Counting shows where leads fall out. Sizing shows which fall-outs matter most. For each leak, we put the count next to the owner’s own numbers: average ticket, close rate if they know it. Where they do not know the close rate, the figure is described as revenue at stake, not revenue lost, because nobody can honestly say how many of those leads would have become jobs. The revenue leak calculator does the same arithmetic in the open, and the owner can check it.
Then we pick. Usually one leak, occasionally two, rarely more. The criteria:
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| How large is the count? | Small leaks are not worth disrupting the office for |
| How close is it to the phone? | Earlier in the chain means fresher, more valuable leads |
| Can the team sustain the fix? | A fix that depends on someone heroic will not last |
| Can we measure it? | If we cannot count before and after, we will not know |
In many businesses we would expect the first choice to be one of three things: missed calls during business hours, slow response to forms and after-hours calls, or estimates that are sent and never followed up.
Weeks 5 to 8: the first fix
This is where things change in the business. What changes depends on the leak, but the shape is the same.
- Write the new process down in plain language. One page. Who does what, by when, and what happens when they cannot.
- Change the fewest tools possible. Often the fix is a setting in the phone system, a report in the field software, or a list someone works every morning. New software is sometimes right, but it is rarely the first answer.
- Train the people who will do it, with them, not at them. The office manager and the front desk usually know why the current process breaks, and the new one has to fit their day.
- Run it for real, for at least three weeks, with a weekly check on the count.
Say the first leak is missed calls at lunch and after four on Fridays. The fix might be an overflow rule that sends those calls to a second person or an answering service, a simple script for them, and a daily list of anything that still went to voicemail, to be called back before a set time. The measure is the same count we took in week one.
Weeks 9 to 12: measuring and the next leak
By week nine, there is a before and an after for the first fix. We look at it honestly with the owner. Did the count move? Did bookings from those calls move? Are there reasons unrelated to the fix, like a season change or a new ad campaign, that could explain the difference?
Sometimes the answer is clearly yes. Sometimes it is “probably, but a month is a small sample”. Sometimes the fix did not hold, and the question is why. We would rather report a result as uncertain than claim a win the numbers do not support.
Then we pick the next leak, with the same criteria. Often it is the next step down the chain: if calls are now being answered, are the resulting estimates sent promptly? If estimates are being sent, are they followed up? If jobs are booked, do they stay on the board? We wrote about that last one in booked is not done.
What the owner should expect
A few things, stated plainly:
- Their time. An hour or two in the first two weeks, and a short weekly check-in after that. The office manager’s time matters more, and we would plan around it.
- Access, not handover. Read access to the phone system, field software and ad accounts. Nothing needs to move to a new system to start.
- No big-bang change. One leak at a time, each measured, so the office is never asked to change everything at once.
- Honest numbers. Every figure shows its source and its uncertainty. No industry averages standing in for the business’s own data.
Ninety days will not fix every leak in a business. It should leave the owner with a clear count, one or two fixes that have been measured, and a list of what to tackle next, in order. More on how the work is structured is on our revenue leak remediation page, and if you want to talk about your own shop, get in touch.