Ask an owner what the open enquiries are worth and you get a pause, then a guess. The guess is the problem, not the answer.
Part of the series Managing solar enquiries: from first contact to a signed quote.
The week that runs on memory
Monday morning, three surveys booked and a scaffolder to chase. You know roughly what is in the pipeline because you put it there yourself. Roughly. There is a quote from July nobody has heard back on, an enquiry that was waiting for planning permission, and two that went to another firm for reasons nobody wrote down. Somebody asks whether the firm can take on more work next month, and the honest answer is that you do not know.
Nobody in this story is idle. What is missing is a view of the whole of the work: what it adds up to, which parts have stopped moving, and what the last few losses had in common. Without that view, every decision about the pipeline is made from memory, and memory favours the customer who rang this morning over the one who went quiet in June.
Nobody hid the stalled enquiries. Nobody could see them either.
Trace the guess back and you find one of these.
- The pipeline had no single view. Enquiries lived in an inbox, a spreadsheet, a notebook and two people's heads. Adding them up meant asking everyone, so nobody did.
- Stalled looked the same as busy. An enquiry that had sat at "quote sent" for nine weeks and one sent on Tuesday were both "quote sent". Nothing showed how long each had been there.
- Losses were never written down. The customer said no, or said nothing, and the record was left where it was. Ten losses later there was no way to tell whether the firm was losing on price, on speed, or on roofs that were never suitable.
- Nobody had a fixed time to look. The review was something the owner meant to do on a quiet Friday. There were no quiet Fridays.
The daily call-back routine keeps each enquiry moving. It does not show what the whole pipeline is worth or where it is leaking. That takes a step back once a week.
Thirty minutes, five questions, the same order every week
This is the routine. It needs the list of open enquiries with the stage, the owner, the value and the date each one entered its stage. The first week it can run on a printed sheet and a highlighter.
1. Fix the half hour
Same day, same time, every week, in the diary like a survey. The owner runs it with whoever takes enquiries and whoever sends quotes. Half an hour is the limit, not the target. Anything that needs longer than a minute becomes a task for a named person, with a date.
2. What is open work worth?
Count the enquiries at each stage and add up their values. Write the total down next to last week's. One number on its own tells you little. Six weeks of them tell you whether the pipeline is filling or draining, before the diary goes quiet. For a more honest figure, give each stage a chance of winning, low for a new enquiry and high for a quote under negotiation, and multiply.
3. What came in this week, and where from?
New enquiries since the last review, each with a source: the website, a referral, a phone call, a directory listing. An enquiry with no source gets one now, while somebody still remembers. Over a few months this tells you which of the things you pay for bring work.
4. Stage by stage, oldest first
Take each stage in turn, starting with the enquiry that has sat in it longest. Every stage has a number of days an enquiry is allowed to sit there. If you have not set them, this is the week to do it. Anything past its number gets a decision, out loud, in the meeting: a date or a reason. "Survey rebooked for the 14th" is a date. "Sold the house" is a reason, and the enquiry is closed with it. What is not allowed is a third option, where the enquiry stays put because somebody will get round to it. Carry on until you reach the first enquiry still inside its number of days, then move to the next stage.
Oldest first matters. Start with the newest and the half hour goes on the enquiries that are fine.
5. Why did we lose the last ten?
Read out the reason recorded against the last ten enquiries closed as lost. The last ten, not last month's, so the question works in a quiet spell too. Put them in groups: went with another firm, no answer from the customer, roof or budget never suitable, we were too slow. One group larger than the rest is the thing to change before next week's review. If the reasons were never written down, the answer to this question is "we do not know", and writing them down is the week's one change.
6. Who is carrying what?
Open enquiries per person. One person with forty and another with six is not a performance problem, it is a queue, and the customers at the back of it are the ones going quiet. Move some. Then close by reading back the decisions: the dates set, the enquiries closed, the one change. That list is next week's first check.
The review gets skipped the week it matters most
A busy week is exactly when the pipeline stalls unseen, and exactly when the half hour feels like a luxury. Two things keep it in the diary. The first is that the review needs no preparation: the daily routine keeps the list up to date, so the meeting reads it rather than builds it. The second is that the five questions never change. Nobody has to decide what to look at, only to look.
Installa does the half hour for you
- Stop adding it up. The sales board is the pipeline, one column per stage with the count and value at the top of each, and the open total across the top. Drag an enquiry to the next column when it moves.
- Stop guessing what will land. Each stage carries a chance of winning, set in your stage settings, and the board shows the likely total beside the raw one.
- Stop hunting for the stalled ones. The home screen lists every enquiry that has sat past its stage's target, longest first, with the days it has been there and when anyone last spoke to the customer.
- Stop reviewing everyone at once. Filter the board by owner, by source or by the dates enquiries came in, and the enquiry list by stage and owner as well, and take the review one person at a time.
- Stop losing the reason. Dropping an enquiry into the lost column asks for a reason before it moves, from a list you keep in settings. The closed enquiries screen shows each one with its reason, and any can be reopened when the customer comes back.
- Stop working out the last ten by hand. The reports count lost reasons across enquiries and rejected quotes, show enquiries and value by stage, and won and lost by source and by person.
Half an hour, five questions, oldest first, and a date or a reason for every enquiry that has stalled. That is the whole routine, and the sales board and reports in Installa are built to run it.