Leads fall through the cracks
Enquiries arrive by phone, email, web form and chat. Some get an answer within the hour, some next week, and some never get one.
Typical in: Construction and installation, real estate, logistics, B2B wholesale, service firms
What it looks like
Most companies don’t lose leads because nobody cares. They lose them because there is no single place where a new enquiry lands and stays until someone deals with it.
A web form goes to a shared inbox that three people read, and each assumes someone else replied. A salesperson takes a call on their mobile and writes the number on a notepad. A returning customer messages the owner on WhatsApp. Portal and partner leads arrive in yet another inbox. There may be a CRM, but it’s half filled, because typing leads into it is extra work after the real work.
How many of these sound familiar?
- The first reply is slow. The buyer asked three suppliers, and the first to answer usually sets the terms.
- Follow-ups depend on memory. The quote went out, and nobody called back a week later.
- Nobody can say how many enquiries came in last month, from where, or how many became work.
- Leads leave with people. When a salesperson is on holiday or quits, their open conversations go too.
What the research says
Three companies, same problem
Kalnciems Windows
Enquiries come in through the website, two phone numbers, Facebook and the showroom. The office manager copies them into an Excel sheet every Friday. In the spring peak, measurement visits get booked twice or not at all, and roughly one enquiry in five never gets a call back. The owner only hears about it when a lost customer mentions they went elsewhere because “nobody called”.
Dunte Freight
Quote requests arrive at sales@, in six personal inboxes and by phone. Each forwarder keeps their own list. When someone is on holiday, their requests wait a week. Management can’t see how many requests came in per route or which customers actually book.
Liepa Property
Leads come from two property portals, the website and phone calls. Agents copy them into a shared sheet and then into the CRM. Duplicates mean two agents call the same buyer, while another buyer hears from no one. Nobody knows which portal brings deals and which only brings clicks.
Illustrative examples. The companies are fictional; the situations are typical of the industries we work with.
How we fix it
- 01
One intake for every channel.
Web forms, inboxes, call logs, portal leads and chat land as one lead record with source and time. Duplicates are merged automatically.
- 02
A clear owner and a clock.
Each new lead is assigned by rule (region, product, rota). If nobody acts within the agreed time, it escalates or goes back to the shared pool.
- 03
Follow-up that doesn’t rely on memory.
Next steps and reminders are created automatically when a quote goes out, and simple sequences catch the leads that go quiet.
- 04
A pipeline you can read.
A live view of enquiries by source, reply time, conversion and value in the pipeline.
What changes
Before
After
A typical first project
Lead intake from all channels, assignment rules and a pipeline view. We build around your current CRM (Pipedrive, HubSpot, Twenty and others) or set up a light one if you have none. First working version in about four weeks. It starts with a free Process Mapping session.
Apply for a free Process MappingFind out what’s slowing your business down.
Start with a free analysis to identify your biggest bottlenecks and discover where improvements will have the greatest impact.