Forum Discussion

WiringByron's avatar
WiringByron
Verified Community Coach
14 hours ago

How are you qualifying new clients?

This is something we’ve struggled with for a few years. How and when to really qualify clients before you do the estimate.

Right now our flow is typically people will call and speak to my Admin and she will book them in for a video call with myself. They can also book and schedule this online through the AI receptionist or online booking. 

Now because we’re just doing a video call we’re not driving all over. I don’t really have a whole lot of skin in the game. I’m wondering, should I not qualify them too hard? 

These are the qualifying questions that we’ve been trying to ask. 
1. When would you like to get this project done?
2. Do you have a budget for this project?
3. Have you got other estimates that we need to be aware of? 

Who is hard-core when you do this? If you didn’t like the responses you were getting would you literally stop the video call and say sorry we can’t give you an estimate for this?

I would love to hear how hard-core others are doing this? Thanks for your time.

3 Replies

  • We are old school in this area, so after trying to weed out the spam calls and scammers. I Lisa Harden (owner/Cleaner) take each call from potential clients myself. And because I have been cleaning for over 20 years I can just about give an decent estimate based on the amount of rooms bedrooms and bathrooms adding in the obvious kitchen living room possible dinninroom ect.. so I have not turned anyone away yet and cannot see us as a cleaning business doing that. We're not worried about other estimates people have given because really we're quite low priced. So it's not that hardcore * Thank you 

      Classic-Cleaning-Service LLC

    • WiringByron's avatar
      WiringByron
      Verified Community Coach

      Hey Lisa, thanks for the reply.

      I guess my question to you would be: how does that scale when you can't answer all the phone calls and do all the estimates? And if you don't want to grow it bigger then that's ok too. 

      In my case there is no way for me to answer all the calls / do all the quotes.

  • mims01's avatar
    mims01
    Contributor 5

    Coming from the detailing side, I’m still building my process, but I think qualifying is important even when the estimate doesn’t require a drive. For me, I’d look at the vehicle, what condition it’s in, what services they want, where they’re located, and when they actually want it done. I wouldn’t necessarily end the conversation because of one bad answer, but I’d rather know upfront if the customer and the service are a good fit than spend time quoting a job that was never realistic. As I grow, I’m trying to build that qualification process into my business from the beginning