We call about 100 contractors at a time. Roughly 85 don't pick up.

We call a lot of home service businesses. Here's what happens when we do. Out of about 100 calls, roughly 15 people pick up.

That means about 85 owners missed a call from someone they didn't know. That time it was us. Next time it could be a homeowner with a wet crawl space and a checkbook.

Why good owners miss calls

Let's be clear. This isn't laziness. Most of the owners we call are the opposite of lazy.

They're under a house. On a ladder. In a basement with no signal. Sitting at a kitchen table with a customer, trying to be present instead of staring at their phone. One contractor on the call said it simply: "you can't be answering your phone all the time."

He's right. You can't. And it shows up in the data. Invoca, a call tracking company, reported in 2024 that 27% of calls to home services businesses go unanswered.

That's exactly why the phone can't depend on you.

The calls come when you're not looking

Here's something that surprised us. For one crawl space company we work with, the data showed most calls came in around 8 PM. The office closed at 6.

Think about that. The busiest hour for new business was two hours after anyone was there to answer. The homeowner gets home, finally goes down to look at the problem, and picks up the phone. If nobody answers, they don't wait until morning. They call the next name.

You can't know when your calls really come in until you look. Most owners have never looked.

You are the phone

On our Growth Ladder, there's a tier we call "Off the phone." It's where a lot of good owners get stuck: under $150K net income and 60 plus hours a week. The line we use to describe what holds them there is short.

You are the phone. Every lead lives or dies on whether you can reach your pocket.

The job at that tier isn't more ads. It's making sure no lead waits more than five minutes, whether or not you're reachable. Ads before that are like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it.

What it looks like when it's fixed

Here's the setup we build first for an owner stuck on the phone:

• One main number, with tracked numbers for the website, the Google profile, ads and yard signs, all forwarding to it.
• Missed call text back. Any missed call gets a text within sixty seconds with your name, the business and a way to book.
• A voicemail in your voice, under twenty seconds, promising a text back within minutes.
• After hours covered. The caller at 8 PM still gets a text and a way to book.
• A simple screen. Press 1 for a new estimate, press 2 if you're an existing customer, so new jobs reach the right person fast.
• A monthly test. We call from a number nobody knows, at a random time, and time the response. Then we report it.

None of this replaces you. It holds the door open until you can get there.

The relief part

Every owner we talk to knows the feeling. You finish a job, check your phone and see three missed calls from numbers you don't recognize. You call back. Voicemail. You text. Nothing. They already booked someone.

That feeling isn't about one job. It's the slow drip of knowing good work is slipping past you while you're busy doing good work.

Fixing it doesn't take a big system. It takes a few simple pieces set up right, so the next homeowner who calls at 8 PM hears from you before they hear from anyone else.

Want to know how many calls you're really missing? Take our free Growth Ladder assessment. It takes about four minutes, and the findings are yours whether we work together or not.

Written by AKFounder of Momentum. Former Executive Sales Coach Lead at Google.