Lead Leak Checklist
Enquiries do not disappear at one dramatic point. They drain at six small ones. Here are the 29 things to check across them, with your own site open.
Every item is something to do or verify, so you need your own website and a phone that is not on the office wifi. Work down it in order: the first stage that makes you uncomfortable is usually the one worth fixing.
Stage 1 of 6
The website
Somebody has arrived, which means the expensive part is already paid for. This stage is about whether the page gives them a reason to go further, in the few seconds they have decided to give it.
Open your home page on a phone, on mobile data rather than wifi, and count the seconds until you can read something.
When this is the leak: Past about three seconds people start leaving, and none of them tell you. The number of visitors who never saw your page is not in any report you receive.
Read only what is visible before scrolling. Can a stranger say what you sell and who it is for?
When this is the leak: A heading about your values, your years in business, or your commitment to excellence. All true, none of it answers the question the visitor arrived with.
Find one thing on the page a cautious person could verify: a named client, a photograph of real work, a review with a name attached.
When this is the leak: Everything on the page is a claim you made about yourself. A stranger has no reason to weigh that above the three other tabs they have open.
Ask somebody outside your business to look for five seconds and tell you what you do.
When this is the leak: They describe your industry rather than your offer. That gap is what your competitors are being chosen for.
Check that the pages people actually land on, not just the home page, have a way to get in touch on them.
When this is the leak: Somebody arrives on a service page from a search, reads to the bottom, and finds nothing there. Sending them back to a menu is a step most will not take.
Getting in touch
The quietest failure of the six. Nobody writes to say your form was too long, they close the tab, and nothing in your inbox records that it happened.
Send yourself a real test enquiry from a phone, on mobile data, using every route on the site.
When this is the leak: It never arrives, or lands in spam, or arrives at an address nobody has opened since last year. This is more common than it sounds and it is invisible until you test it.
Count the fields on your form and remove every one you do not need to write the first reply.
When this is the leak: Budget, company size, and how they heard about you, asked before a conversation exists. All of it can be asked in the conversation you have just made less likely.
Check there are at least two ways to reach you, and that one of them works outside office hours.
When this is the leak: A phone number as the only route. Someone comparing three suppliers at nine in the evening will use whoever can be messaged.
Look at what happens on screen immediately after somebody presses send.
When this is the leak: The page reloads, or says nothing much. The sender has no idea whether it worked, and some of them send it again, and some go elsewhere.
Check that a phone number on the site is tappable and an email address opens a mail app.
When this is the leak: A number typed as plain text. On a phone that is a number somebody has to select, copy and paste, and a fair number will not bother.
The first response
The part you control most completely, and the one that decides most often. Somebody who has sent four enquiries on a Saturday evening usually hires whoever answers first.
Time how long your last ten enquiries waited for any response at all.
When this is the leak: The average is fine and the worst case is four days. It is the worst case that people talk about, and the worst case that arrives during your busiest week.
Set up an automatic acknowledgement that says when a real reply will come.
When this is the leak: Silence between the send and the reply. During it, the sender is working down their list of alternatives, and every hour makes your eventual reply less relevant.
Decide the longest anybody should wait for a real reply, write it down, and tell whoever answers.
When this is the leak: Nobody has agreed a standard, so the response time is whatever the person's week allows. It cannot be improved because it was never defined.
Check that enquiries reach a person when the usual person is away or ill.
When this is the leak: Everything routes to one inbox that one person opens. A fortnight of leave is a fortnight of enquiries going cold.
Read your last five first replies as though you had not sent them.
When this is the leak: Every one asks a question and gives nothing. A first reply that answers something, even partially, gets a response far more often than one that only requests information.
An automatic acknowledgement worth sending
Thanks for getting in touch. This is an automatic message so you know it arrived. Someone will read it properly and reply by [end of the next working day]. If it is urgent, you can reach us on [number] during the day.
Three things make this work: it admits it is automatic rather than pretending to be a person, it names a time, and it gives a faster route for anyone who cannot wait. Replace the two bracketed parts with numbers you will actually hold to. A promise of two hours that you miss is worse than a promise of a day that you keep.
The follow-up
People who go quiet are rarely uninterested. They are usually busy, or waiting on somebody else, or the message arrived while they were driving. Almost nobody follows up more than once, so this is where the cheapest work in the business sits.
Write down what happens on day two and day seven after an enquiry goes quiet, and put it somewhere other than your memory.
When this is the leak: Follow-up depends on somebody remembering during a busy week. It happens for the enquiries that came in on quiet days and not for the others.
Count how many of your enquiries from three months ago were followed up more than once.
When this is the leak: A single chase and then nothing. The second follow-up is the one most businesses never send and the one that most often gets a reply.
Decide when to stop, and say so in the last message.
When this is the leak: Either following up forever, which annoys people, or stopping after one attempt, which loses them. Both come from never having decided.
Check whether your follow-ups add anything or just ask again.
When this is the leak: Three messages that all say "just checking in". A follow-up that includes something useful, an example, an answer to the obvious next question, reads as helpful rather than as chasing.
Look at whether anybody follows up after a quote is sent, as opposed to after an enquiry arrives.
When this is the leak: Quotes go out and nobody hears anything back. That is the most expensive silence in the list, because all the work has already been done.
A two-step follow-up
Day two: "Hi [name], following up on my message about [thing]. I have attached [the one useful thing] in case it helps. Happy to answer anything, and equally happy to leave it if the timing is wrong." Day seven: "Hi [name], last one from me on this. If it is still on your list I am here, and if the timing has changed I will leave you be. Either is fine."
Both are short, both give the person an easy way out, and the second says it is the last one, which removes the reason people avoid replying at all. Saying you will stop is what makes it comfortable to answer, and a surprising number of replies come to that second message.
The quote
The point where a warm conversation most often goes cold, usually for a reason that has nothing to do with the number.
Time how long a quote takes to go out after the conversation that produced it.
When this is the leak: Days. Enthusiasm has a short life, and a quote arriving a week later lands on somebody who has stopped thinking about it.
Read your last quote and check whether it says what happens next.
When this is the leak: A price and nothing else. The reader has to work out what to do to accept, and doing nothing is easier than working it out.
Check that the quote answers the questions people ask after receiving one.
When this is the leak: The same three questions come back every time by email. Each one is a delay, and each round trip is a chance for the whole thing to go quiet.
Make sure the quote can be accepted without a meeting.
When this is the leak: Accepting requires arranging a call. For a straightforward job that is a hurdle in front of somebody who had already decided.
Note whether you find out why you lost the ones you lose.
When this is the leak: No idea why. Asking, once, without arguing, is the cheapest research available and most people answer honestly.
After they say yes
Not strictly a leak, and it belongs here anyway. The cheapest enquiry you will ever get is from somebody who has already paid you once.
Check what a new customer receives in the first day after saying yes.
When this is the leak: Silence after payment. The gap between deciding and starting is where doubt arrives, and it is easily filled with one message.
Write down the steps between yes and starting, and see how many need you personally.
When this is the leak: Every new customer waits on the same person to send the same three things. That is the bottleneck that stops you taking on more work.
Ask for a review at the point the customer is happiest, not at the end of the invoice.
When this is the leak: Reviews only get asked for when somebody remembers, so the happiest customers are the least likely to have been asked.
Check whether anybody contacts past customers who have gone quiet.
When this is the leak: Nothing after the job ends. They are the warmest list you have and most businesses never use it.
What to do with what you found
Fix one stage. Take the earliest one that came out badly, because a leak early on wastes everything downstream of it. Change one thing there, then count enquiries for a month before changing anything else. If you were not already counting them, that is the first change.
Most of this is a morning's work and none of it needs a supplier. The two that usually do are the automatic acknowledgement and the follow-up sequence, which is what our AI & Business Systems work covers. Whether that is worth paying for in your case is what the AI Opportunity Check is for, and it is comfortable saying no.
What this checklist is, and is not
A list of things worth checking, written from the failures we see most often in small businesses. It is not a standard, nobody certified it, and there is no research behind the ordering beyond the fact that a stranger meets these stages in this order. Skip anything that does not fit how you sell.
If you would rather find out which stage to look at first, the Business Systems Check asks fifteen questions and names your weakest area in about four minutes. This page is the detailed version of what it points at.
Where to go from here
That is the final part.
Return to All ResourcesWant to go deeper?
Optional, and nothing here is part three of anything. These two articles cover the same ground as the stages above, at more length.
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