Good question. The part that trips most businesses up is treating "they haven't replied" the same way whether it's hour two or week three — the contact cadence should change with how long the request has been sitting.
A few practical guardrails that have worked for other owners. First, the initial contact window. When a request lands, try to make first contact inside 2 hours on a business day. The form said name and phone, so a quick call is usually the fastest, and if it goes to voicemail you leave a short greeting that sets the expectation: "I just saw your request for [service], calling you back today to go over the details — please call or text me at [number] if that's easier."
Second, a 4-touch sequence before you close it out. Day 1 call plus voicemail. Day 3 follow-up text or email that gives them an easy way to reply (a two-line "Still looking to get this scheduled, or should I close this out for now?" tends to get a straight answer). Day 7 one more touch that includes a soft deadline, something like "I'm wrapping up my schedule for next week, so I'll close this on [specific day] unless I hear from you." Day 10 archive.
The reason to name the archive date is so the caller doesn't sit in a black hole; too many owners just disappear after a couple of weeks and the customer assumes the company ignored them.
Third, when you do archive, move them to a "closed — re-engage later" list instead of deleting, and pull it up seasonally for a single re-engagement message. That keeps your active New list useful.
Are you tracking whether the ones that come back after that first contact window were won because of the follow-up cadence itself, or because the original inquiry was a strong fit?
Good framework. In Jobber, the Day 10 step can be the built-in 'Automatically archive requests' automation, and tagging those requests 're-engage' makes the seasonal pull easy. On your question, I'd log the touch number in which each lead replied. That shows quickly whether the cadence is doing the work.
