Sacramento, California · exterior remodeling · 18 days · system first, ads as proof
Exterior Improvement Incorporated created $189,000 of pipeline in 18 days from the Meta ads channel alone.
Meta ads alone. It counts nothing from Yelp, the website or the phone, and the owner had a defensible number long before the ninety days you are usually asked to wait for one.
Under $1M, and still the only person who writes an estimate? We are the wrong call: put every open bid on one list and decide who owns each. Below assumes estimators in trucks and more inquiries than the company can answer.
$189,000
of pipeline, from the Meta channel and nothing else
$56,700
of that booked, at their existing 30% close rate
27
Meta leads carrying budget, timeline and service
$7,000
average package value
What this looks like in practice
One channel, eighteen days, and a number nobody had to take on faith.
Exterior Improvement Incorporated
Sacramento, California
Leads arrived from four directions at once: Yelp, a paid search form, the office line, and referrals texted to the owner’s personal phone. Someone had to notice each one and retype it into the CRM. Nothing decided who owned a new lead, so good inquiries sat unclaimed while everyone assumed somebody else had them.
Yelp was the worst of it. The photos a homeowner had carefully taken of her failing siding stayed stranded there, so the estimator drove to the site visit knowing nothing about the job he was pricing.
What we built
- Before: inquiries sat stranded inside Yelp, which is genuinely hard to connect to anything. Now: the estimator prices from the homeowner’s own pictures without leaving his desk, because a custom integration pulls every inquiry across intact: the photos, the video and the full set of questions and answers.
- Before: their Meta ads were run by an agency that could not show what the channel was worth. Now: the owner can see what a lead is worth before anybody spends a morning on it, because every lead arrives with budget, timeline and the specific service captured on the way in. We run that channel ourselves.
- Before: a new lead belonged to nobody until somebody claimed it. Now: no good inquiry dies of neglect, because an owner is assigned automatically off the service requested and every lead has a name against it the second it lands.
- Before: calls came into a personal phone and whoever answered, answered. Now: a homeowner ready to book reaches somebody who can price her job, because the company has a line of its own and the menu on it sends siding calls and full-remodel calls to different people.
- Before: the CRM was a place leads got retyped into. Now: the owner can see every open bid and what it is worth without asking a single rep, because opportunities, pipeline stages and the sales process run in one system built around the way they sell.
- Before: the source of a lead died the moment it was retyped. Now: he knows which channel is paying for itself and which is not, because every contact carries its source through to signed work. Old contacts were backfilled too, so that answer was available in week one rather than a year from now.
- Before: follow-up happened when somebody remembered. Now: the proposals that used to go quiet come back signed, because a defined cadence runs across the weeks a remodel decision takes and shuts off the second she replies.
18 days
to prove the channel, against the ninety they were used to
27
qualified leads from Meta only, none from Yelp or the phone
$189,000
of pipeline out of Meta, with nothing else counted
$56,700
booked, at their existing 30% close rate
Where the contracts actually go
Nobody owns the middle of your sales cycle.
Count the proposals you sent in the last ninety days that never got a second answer, and multiply by your average job. Nobody in your company owns the stretch between the inquiry and the signature.
A new lead belongs to nobody
An inquiry lands and three people half-see it. By the time anyone checks it is Thursday and she has had two other contractors out. That is not a people problem. Nothing assigns a name to a lead.
Your Yelp leads are stranded where they landed
A homeowner takes eight photos and a video of her failing siding, writes out exactly what she wants, and it all sits in Yelp. Somebody retypes two lines into the CRM, if they get to it.
The proposal goes out and then nothing happens
A homeowner deciding on a $40,000 project needs three or four touches across as many weeks. Most contractors manage one, then quietly file her as a tire-kicker. She was a signed contract that needed a fourth call nobody made.
Change orders get agreed in a driveway
The homeowner asks for the better tile while your crew is already cutting. It reaches paper a week later, or never. You find out at final invoice, and by then the choice is eating the difference or having the argument.
Six weeks of work and the homeowner is in the dark
She is living in the middle of your job site and has no idea what happens tomorrow. It has nothing to do with the quality of your work, and it is how a well-built job ends in no referral.
What we build for remodelers and exterior contractors
The whole path from inquiry to signature, built once and run for you.
Built around the way your estimators already write bids and the way your reps already chase them. Every piece of it should take a step out of somebody’s day: a drive that decides nothing, a lead retyped by hand, a fourth phone call nobody made.
Every lead lands in one place, with everything the homeowner sent
Your estimator walks into the site visit already knowing what he is pricing. Yelp, Meta, web forms, calls and referrals arrive in one pipeline, and the Yelp integration carries the photos, video and answers across intact.
Every lead gets an owner the moment it arrives
The inquiries you already paid for stop dying of neglect. An owner is assigned automatically off the service requested, so a roof inquiry and a full remodel do not land in the same pile, and nothing sits unclaimed.
Proposals follow themselves up for as long as the decision takes
The bids you had quietly given up on start coming back signed. A structured cadence runs across the weeks a remodel decision takes, so the fourth touch happens on its own and shuts off the second she replies.
Change orders get captured before the crew starts the work
The margin stays on the job it belongs to. A scope change raised on site becomes a documented, priced item with an approval attached, instead of a driveway conversation that surfaces on the final invoice.
Subs and material lead times share one schedule
You stop paying a crew to stand on a slab. Trade availability and delivery dates are modeled against each other, so a slipped window order moves the drywaller before anyone has driven out.
Homeowners stay informed without anyone writing updates
The referral survives the build. Milestone updates go out as the job moves, telling her what happened, what is next and who is coming, so the complaint that drives the worst reviews in this trade stops happening.
FAQ
Questions remodelers and exterior contractors ask us.
Start here
Find out where your contracts are leaking.
Forty-five minutes, no preparation and no software to look at. Pick one lead from last month and we will follow it to the signed contract or to wherever it stopped, naming the three points where contracts fall out.
Book my free ops auditP.S. The $189,000 above came out of the Meta channel on its own. It counts nothing from Yelp, nothing from the website and nothing from the phone, and all three of those now run through the same system sitting underneath it. The channel proved itself in eighteen days rather than ninety. If somebody is asking you right now to give something another quarter before you find out whether it works, that is probably the thing worth looking at first.
Not your trade? See how Castalin works for tree service, or read about operations as a service for home service businesses.