If I called and wanted to give you money, wouldn’t you call me back?
It’s a “sales lead.” It means, Here’s a customer who wants to spend money with your business. Well-run businesses follow up promptly.
Lately, I’ve had a run of small businesses that don’t get back to me. Makes me crazy.
Nail Taxi: I’ve made three phone calls to their central number to set an appointment for in-home pedicures as a treat for Tom and I. Each time I’m told that the Atlanta scheduler will call me back. Nothing.
Dry-B-Lo Deck Drain System: Put in for an estimate on the website over the weekend. As of now, Tuesday night, no one has contacted me yet. (When I filled out an online form about a mortgage re-fi a couple years ago, I got phone calls in less than a minute.)
Cleaners: It took five rounds of messaging to get the manager to set a date, and two more rounds to confirm it.
Handyman: He flaked out on me twice, cancelling at the last minute AFTER I contacted him to confirm, then I had to wait for him to reschedule.
You might wonder why I don’t just blow these people off. Well, the cleaners and the handyman are people I’ve hired before, and they do good work and are reasonably priced. In both cases, they finally got back to me on the very day that I had mentally set as a deadline.
Nail Taxi – I liked their menu of services, and frankly there aren’t that many choices for in-home nail technicians.
Dry-B-Lo is a low priority. I’ll give ’em a few more days.
What amazes me is how these folks stay in business when they don’t respond better to customers. Dry-B-Lo started in 1992, and Nail Taxi has been in business since 2003.
The cleaners have been in business a few years, but recently downsized (so wouldn’t you think they would be especially eager to get back to me?).
This is why the Small Business Administration offers classes to entrepreneurs in the basics of business.
Today’s penny is a 2003. That’s the 50th anniversary of the founding of the SBA. And the year that Nail Taxi started.
We are trying to have some dead trees removed, and I put out calls to 7 different companies to get bids. One called immediately. One almost 2 weeks later and still haven’t heard from any others. We are going with the first one.
It seems epic some days, doesn’t it??
I don’t know how reliable Yelp is out where you are, but here in SoCal I find it an excellent way to find responsible businesses–and comment on businesses that are responsive (or not).
The predicures sound fun. You’ll have to keep us posted!
Man I wish I could fix the typos! LOL.
What exactly does the Dry-B-Low do? I didn’t know that a deck needs a drainage system.
If you have one deck on top of another one, you get rainwater running onto the bottom deck from the top deck. Dry-B-Lo is just a slanted piece of metal with grooves that is installed on the ceiling of the lower deck so that the water from the upper deck runs down and away from it.