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Answer your dang phone
Posted by on January 27, 2026 at 1:56 pmThis goes out to home service business owners. Plumbers, HVAC, roofers, electrical…
If you want a better ROAS:
- Answer your phone.
- Follow-up on leads.
You’re paying $$$ for leads.
Why are you letting calls go to voicemail?
Why aren’t you following up on unresponsive or “not ready” leads?
In my experience, what separates high-ROAS clients from low-ROAS clients is their ability to turn leads into sales.
And an alarming amount of business owners don’t seem to care.
Case Study
* plumber pays $150/call
* answers 65% of calls
* converts 70% of calls into appts
* closes 80% of appts
* $1,000 AOV
That’s $230 per answered call. And $328 per appointment. $410 CAC. And 2.4X ROAS. These numbers are actually better than some I’ve seen.
If you improve the numbers to:
* answer 95% of calls
* convert 80% of calls into appts
* close 80% of appts
That turns 2.4X ROAS into 4X ROAS. Adding over 16 points of margin. Turning breakeven into profitable.
Answer your phone. Use a system to follow up with leads.
Rant over.
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P.S. I say this as someone who’s managed $19 million in home services Google Ads spend. I hope that adds some weight.
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1 Reply
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When I was moving recently I submitted requests for two quotes to two different moving companies on a Saturday.
The first one sent me a confirmation email and that they would get back to me.
The second followed up immediately, with a real person, who gave me a quote and answered my questions. I ended up having to call because I had a few more questions and wanted to confirm a real person on the other line. On that call they even offered to forward me to the manager if I wanted more clarification.
I paid for the deposit that day and scheduled.
The first company’s sales team didn’t get back to me until Wednesday. 4 days later.
It’s not hard to see why some of these service businesses fail and as a ppc manager it’s extremely annoying.
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Preach 📢
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If you’re not going to answer your phone, don’t pick it up to ask why you haven’t got any leads.
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Where did you get the conversion and closing numbers from?
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Last month watched a roofer client spend $42k on Google Ads generating 284 calls… dude answered 89 of them… literally let $28.7k in paid traffic ring into the void because he was “too busy on job sites”… meanwhile complaining his ROAS was garbage.
Brother in Christ you’re paying me to drive calls and then ghosting people like it’s Hinge… ran the math for him –> if he hired a $6.5k/month answering service booking those 195 missed calls at even 55% conversion with his $8.4k average job value he’d net an extra $898k in revenue… instead he wanted to pause campaigns because “ads don’t work”… the ads work fine my guy your phone just goes straight to voicemail while your competitors are picking up on ring two.
Funniest part is watching Clarity heatmaps where prospects click the phone number 6-8 times thinking the button’s broken before bouncing to the next search result… for HVAC clients I literally make them screenshare their call logs during our weekly calls because half the “lead quality is bad” complaints disappear when I show them 187 missed calls from zip codes they’re targeting.
Commercial HVAC client at $165k monthly was missing 40% of inbound calls during business hours then wondering why cost per booked job sat at $890 instead of the $340 we projected… you’re not running a lead gen problem you’re running a receptionist problem… answer the damn phone or hire someone who will LOL.
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You have to build a system
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I seen the same issues with many mom and pop businesses. A proper small business has the proces/structure to handle calls from paid ads. This is a symptom the client may not be at the point to scale if calls are not being answered.
Know what happens when you dont answer a service call? The customer moves on to a plumber HVAC who will.
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Yep!
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I’ve actually found a decently easy way to get this through to clients:
“One of the primary ranking factors for GMB profiles and LSA’s, is how quickly you answer the phone.”
So if you want those to rank and help your Google Ads, you need to work on picking up the phone.
Furthermore, Google Ads tracks:
* Call connection rate
* Call length
* Missed callsIf you are weak in those areas, Google may show your Call Extension less & hurt smart bidding over time.
But ultimately for hard-headed clients who don’t understand marketing, you can just say generally that: “Answering the phone quickly and not missing calls helps us show our ad higher on the page and more often.”
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I’ve met owner-operators halfway and have given them a stronger VM script that’s better than “The caller you were trying to reach is unavailable…” which increases the likelihood of the prospect at least leaving a message and waiting to get a return call before calling the next guy.
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maybe you can set up an appointment system with the potential customers so they’re not completely lost
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I checked out my Callrail stats for my business last year. I always argue we should focus on the things we can easily control, and picking up the phone is a simple one. We didn’t answer 60% of the phone calls. The often ask me ways to grow the business. How about just answering the phone I say.
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