A customer acquisition system for service businesses

Map the journey from advert to payment

Write the stages: advert → form → qualification → first contact → quote or survey → acceptance → payment. Give each stage an owner and decide what information must be recorded. Define when each stage is complete so an enquiry does not disappear between Ads Manager, email and the owner's notebook.

• Collect only useful information in the form.
• Assign someone to reply in an agreed timeframe.
• Connect quotations and payments to an enquiry ID.

Build a simple tracker in an evening

Start with ID, date, source, postcode, service, status, owner, next action, contact date, quotation amount, outcome and payment date. Avoid storing unnecessary private information. If a column is never maintained, remove it or explain why it matters before adding more.

Automate only after proving the manual process

An automatic notification can help, but it cannot fix a broken form or missing ownership. First run test submissions and confirm they arrive, are recorded and receive a response. Then consider automatic CRM entries, reminders and reporting. Monitor failures, duplicates and access permissions.

Monthly review: where is the bottleneck?

Each month compare advertising spend, suitable enquiries, quotations, accepted jobs and later payments. Mark missing data as unknown rather than zero. Ask which stage is limiting paid work and improve that stage before changing the entire system.