The Hidden Revenue Sitting in Your Pipeline
How much revenue is slipping away simply because no one is following up fast enough? A lot of contractors think they need more leads, when the real problem is what happens after a lead comes in. Missed calls, slow call backs, and weak estimate follow-up can quietly drain revenue from the pipeline without most owners realizing how much opportunity they are losing.
In this week’s episode of Cracking The Code, Ryan Fenn, Founder and CEO of CHIIRP, explains why follow-up is often one of the biggest missed growth levers in home services. He shares how faster response times, better automation, and more consistent communication can help contractors convert more of the leads they already paid for. Before spending more on marketing, make sure you aren’t letting easy revenue leak out of the pipeline.
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00:00:00:00 – 00:00:14:15
Man. I did $10 million last year and it cost me $10 million to do it. But you’re getting a lot of stress for getting nothing. You.
00:00:14:17 – 00:00:36:19
All right. Welcome back to cracking the code, man. Today’s conversation is one that hits right at the heart of what I believe is one of the biggest missed opportunities in the home service industry. Most contractors think they have a marketing problem, when in reality they’ve got a follow up problem. And today’s guest has built an entire company around solving exactly that.
00:00:36:22 – 00:00:59:02
We’re joined today by Ryan Finn, founder and CEO of chirp, a platform designed to help home service companies turn more leads, calls and estimates into booked jobs automatically. What I love about Ryan’s story is this he didn’t come from tech. He came from the trenches door to door sales, windshield repair. I mean, I heard this story last week and it blew me away.
00:00:59:08 – 00:01:23:29
We’ll talk more about that in just a minute. Figuring out how to survive as an entrepreneur. And through that experience, he uncovered something very powerful. Speed to lead and consistent follow up are often the fastest path to more revenue without spending another dollar on marketing. So today, Chirp is helping contractors automate conversations across text, email, voicemail, and now.
00:01:24:02 – 00:01:49:09
I know he’s excited to share that idea with us so they can scale relationships, not just transactions. So, Ryan, welcome to Cracking the Code. Thank you David. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Super happy to be here. Honored to be here. Really. It’s exciting. Thank you. It’s all good, man. It was great to see you last week. We were, kind of both in Scottsdale, Arizona, during a kind of a hot week in the in the month of March.
00:01:49:10 – 00:02:12:05
That’s pretty crazy. And you were, one of the sponsors and a participant in a little event we call raising goats. Man. How did that go? Man, that was one of the best events I’ve ever been to. Honestly, there’s kind of this point where we have to kind of look at the look at the landscape of the trades and say, like what?
00:02:12:07 – 00:02:35:26
There’s a lot of cool events, a lot of stuff going on. How much of it is a party and how much of it is actual, actionable material? And these smaller, more intimate events where you can actually learn from goats that are doing it, like Paul Kelly and that have done it, you know, these, really great operators where you can get really, you know, intimate in the room, you know, 40 people.
00:02:35:28 – 00:02:58:15
And it, you leave there with so much actionable content, just, in my opinion, are really good investment of time and, just allows for learning to happen at a really high pace. So it was just awesome. So yeah, actually it was 32 contractors, so we had 32. That’s the maximum number that we’re ever going to have.
00:02:58:15 – 00:03:15:09
And one of those groups and we’re already working on scheduling another one for November. So hopefully you guys will be able to join us again in November. And we’ll we’ll do it again with a whole new tribe of aspiring goats. It was, it was quite a quite an event. Appreciate your support on that, man. It was great.
00:03:15:12 – 00:03:36:24
So, in your, in your session, you shared some, some gold nuggets that absolutely, inspired some folks. I’m pretty sure you, if you haven’t already picked up some business, you probably will as a result. But certainly you said something that really grabs attention. You said home service businesses don’t have a sales problem. They have a follow up problem.
00:03:36:24 – 00:03:53:29
How about breaking it down for us? And what are contractors actually doing wrong when it comes to follow up? They don’t have a marketing problem. They have a follow up problem. The natural instinct of any owner is going to be more leads, more leads, more leads, more leads. Right? That’s no fault to anybody. That’s just how it is.
00:03:53:29 – 00:04:16:14
That’s like that’s the that’s the instinct. That’s the entrepreneur’s goal is more customers. Right. And we’ve heard it a million times. Everybody’s heard the fortune is in the follow up. Right. It’s it’s been said so many times that it has become a cliche. And we we stopped hearing it. I’m trying to come up with a new version of it so that it triggers people again.
00:04:16:14 – 00:04:34:25
But when we say fortunes in the follow up, they go, oh yeah, I need to follow for my leads. I’m literally saying the fortune that you’re looking for, the actual like fortune, the money, all the money that you’re looking for to make in your business sits in the follow up because and and here’s where. Here’s why I say that.
00:04:34:27 – 00:05:03:06
You know, we as owners, we we work really hard to build this great business. Right. And at the end of the day, we get to take home that small profit at the end of of what’s done. And if we are not efficient in every step of the business, what ends up happening is the market balances us out to where we become middlemen, where money comes into the business, and that same amount of money goes right out of the business.
00:05:03:06 – 00:05:34:25
Right. And and you’re going, man, I did $10 million last year and it cost me $10 million to do it. Like, what’s the point of this? I don’t understand, you get a lot. You you get a lot of stress from it. So like, that’s fun. But you’re getting a lot of stress for getting nothing. And what I my argument is that where you make your money as the owner is by dialing in the follow up process, and that’s where you can actually create really good margins in your business.
00:05:34:28 – 00:05:59:12
And that’s because, you know, everybody has the same challenge of generating leads. Everybody has to spend the same money on marketing. They have to do the same hustle. They have to do the Google thing. They have to do the billboards and the, you know, the signs. Everybody has to do that part where you can differentiate yourself is having a higher conversion rate on the leads that come in.
00:05:59:14 – 00:06:15:08
So we hear guys like, if we if we look into the digital marketing world and that’s where that’s where I’ve spent a lot of my time is in digital marketing, not necessarily just HomeServices, but just across the board. And I have a lot of a lot of people that I look up to in that space. And Gary Vaynerchuk is one of them.
00:06:15:08 – 00:06:42:08
Gary Vee, if you’ve heard of him, you know, his his famous line is he who can spend the most to get a customer wins. And the reason that’s true is because Google is happy to take your money, right? They’re happy to take the most money that somebody is willing to pay. And the reason that somebody is willing to pay more than you is because they have a better conversion process on the back end.
00:06:42:11 – 00:07:02:27
And so you may look at and go shoot $200 a lead. My conversion rate is only one and four. That cost me 800 bucks to get a deal. And then another guy is going, well, I closed 1 in 2, so it’s only cost to me 400 bucks to get a deal and so I can spend more than you because I have a better conversion process, you know?
00:07:02:27 – 00:07:28:07
And one of the things you shared to our, to our goats last week was you talked about how important it is to, act quickly. Right? I think you guys like to call it speed to lead. Right. And so if I’m a contractor listening right now, what what does good speed to lead actually look like today? So, you know, this was a study done, years ago, like five.
00:07:28:09 – 00:07:53:04
I’m probably even more now. Shoot, I’m getting old. Like, going on ten years, maybe somewhere to eight, ten. So. So Salesforce, a huge, platform. They, they did a, they did a study on form fill so internet form fields. And this is not home service specific. This is just across the board. And they found that conversion rates are happened the highest in the first minute of lead form submission.
00:07:53:04 – 00:08:18:18
So if I submit a lead on your website I the highest chance of me converting is, is if you contact me within one minute. And this is where it’s really important because you can say, well that’s fine. But you know, I’m 2 or 3 minutes. That’s okay, I’m close enough. The problem with that is that the difference between 1 and 2 minutes is is half.
00:08:18:21 – 00:08:43:26
And it’s this dramatic drop off that happens almost immediately when, when we cross that one minute threshold. And it’s because we have amazingly short attention spans. And I would argue that there it is much worse than it was when this study was done at when the study was done, we did not have reels or we did not have, TikTok.
00:08:43:28 – 00:09:09:22
We and what I would argue now is that I is is speeding things up even more. People expect so much to happen when they click a button, like when you go on ChatGPT right now and you ask it a question and it if there’s a lag, if there’s a even a slight delay in the response, you get a little bit frustrated, like, come on, hurry up.
00:09:09:22 – 00:09:35:05
And we’re literally we’re literally, complaining about the most amazing advanced system on the planet. But if we don’t get it just like that, we get frustrated. And so if we submit our information, if we raise our hand and say, I’m interested in XYZ product and we don’t have somebody respond and say, cool, I’m going to sell it to you very quickly.
00:09:35:08 – 00:10:02:28
We move on very, very fast and there’s just too many options right in front of us. So that first minute is incredibly important that you’re contacting leads when they come in. I, I use the example, I think I talked about this at the Raising Goats, but I recently, got a Dexa scan done. There’s, there’s one this way for my office and one that way.
00:10:03:00 – 00:10:23:28
They’re exactly a mile away. Both of them are exactly a mile away, and they both have, like, five star reviews in the 200. Like, almost if you look at if you look at their Google, you know, page, it’s almost identical apples to apples. Right. And the only difference is one is above the other when you search it. Right.
00:10:23:28 – 00:10:46:28
So I’m clicking that first one to column I call them and it goes to voicemail. And then I hang up and I just immediately go to click the next one. I click it, I call she answers. I go through the process of booking the Dexa scan. It takes about, I would say, a minute to two minutes. She says, okay, great, we can have you in tomorrow at 2:00.
00:10:46:28 – 00:11:01:08
Does that work? Yeah. That works. Okay, great. I’ve got you set up. What’s your name? That, that’s about a two, one, two, two minute process. And then I hung up the phone and right as I hung up the phone, I got a text message from the other one. Hey, I’m sorry I missed your call. Would you like to book your Dexa scan?
00:11:01:11 – 00:11:23:08
And it’s like, dude, the opportunity is past. It’s gone. And it was all within a two minute time frame. Yeah, I don’t need two of those scans. Thanks. Anyway. He your other guy, beat you to it because he or she answered the phone right. So so it’s it’s almost seconds now, not minutes versus hours. You know what?
00:11:23:08 – 00:11:47:04
I’m thinking about it as a contractor. I’m a former contractor myself. And you know, when you say I need to respond within a minute or less, I’m sitting there thinking, dude, that’s a full time job. Now for maybe somebody is going to fill out a form on my website or whatever. And your automation is there. Yeah, your automation is going to help solve that problem for me.
00:11:47:06 – 00:12:08:14
Well, I’ll compare that to another story. My son threw a baseball through our window. And, you know, just a typical thing. A parent deals with. He came into my room wide as a ghost. Dad just broke the window, you know, and I. You know, I try not to. I try to be very. I to do very calm parenting.
00:12:08:14 – 00:12:23:14
So no worries. Let’s figure it out. And we go down and we look and I say, cool. Well, we’re going to have to call a guy. Let’s I showed him what we’re doing is we’re going to call this guy. So I call he didn’t also answer the phone, but the moment that I hung up I got the text message.
00:12:23:16 – 00:12:44:04
So within seconds I got a text message that said, hey, I’m sorry I missed your call. I’m just finishing up another call. I’ll call you right back. And that was enough to stop me from clicking the next guy. It was enough. It was like this little intervention that happened, just this quick little slide writing, because I was ready to click the next guy.
00:12:44:04 – 00:13:06:28
Right. And then that text came in and I and it what it did internally is it made me feel like the problem was in the process of being solved, like it moved me to the next step where, you know, there’s steps that you’re you’re solving this problem. You’re going, number one, I need to call somebody. Number two, I need to book an appointment, get a quote or whatever.
00:13:06:28 – 00:13:28:21
Right. And then and so once the text message came through, I felt like number two was starting to happen. And it kept me from having to keep thinking about number one, you know, it’s. And it’s so true that when you’re, you know, when you’re in an urgent situation, you really want to know, kind of, you know, is there somebody is there anybody out there?
00:13:28:22 – 00:13:44:05
Right. Just like, is there somebody out there just going to actually help me here? Or did I just make a phone call to a guy who’s sitting in an attic somewhere and he’s going to be up there for the next 6 or 8 hours, and maybe I’ll get a call tomorrow. And, you know, it’s like, dude, I got rain coming in my window.
00:13:44:05 – 00:14:01:15
Now I need this taken care of, you know? So, yeah, I mean, I hear what you’re saying, that’s actually really powerful. Yeah. And so when we think about these things, we think in terms of the psychology of the sale, what’s happening and what step they’re trying to solve a problem. And we think in steps and we go, okay, now what’s the next step?
00:14:01:15 – 00:14:26:13
What’s next? Obviously this is like a subconscious thing. But if we can inject the right things at the right time, we can move them through that process using automation so that you’re not necessarily having, like you said, have to sit by the phone and answer every single call that comes in. And, and we can move them down that funnel, and pull them away from that first part, which is, who am I going to go with?
00:14:26:13 – 00:14:57:00
Let’s we’ve got the who taking care of. Let’s move on to the what. You know, what’s next. And so in the same in the same goes for, you know AI voice. When we’ll talk about that a little bit more people are kind of scared of AI and that’s totally I’m with you. I’m, I don’t actually like I, I’m an I sell AI and there are a lot of aspects about it and a lot of attitudes about it that I don’t like, but there are parts where it can be very, very helpful in turning you into a superhuman.
00:14:57:00 – 00:15:19:10
We’re not trying to eliminate humans. We’re trying to increase their capabilities and make them superhuman. So. So as we talk about, I kind of want the listener kind of think like we’re not trying to eliminate human jobs. We’re trying to make you give you better tools to to close more deals. Well, and you think about it, I mean, when we talk about, follow up.
00:15:19:14 – 00:15:38:17
Right, just as a general concept, I mean, follow up is even, like, the phone just acted like it rang and being able to get that text right away to a number that says, hey, sorry, I’m on another line, you know, that that actual stuff is very like doable right now. Today, today’s technology is easy, right? With caller ID and everything else.
00:15:38:17 – 00:15:59:29
I mean, you can do it right away. You’ve heard stories about companies generating hundreds of thousands or even millions just by reworking that process on existing leads. When we think about leads, we think about sometimes, we’ve already got a proposal in there and we’re trying to follow up on a sale, but it really is following up on the actual initial contact.
00:15:59:29 – 00:16:37:08
Even so, where is that hidden money typically sitting inside the contractors business. So so we’ll start we’ll still start at the beginning of the customer journey right there. We’ve had guys come along where they implement, you know, that speed to lead on a missed call. So let’s just use missed calls as one example. Missed call. Some people are having like I said, you can have AI voice answer and then you’re not missing the call or some people that, you know, if you’re like, I don’t want to use AI voice, and this is almost just as effective, or it can be just as effective to just get that text message instantly.
00:16:37:08 – 00:17:02:22
So we had, Aaron Gainer from Echo Plumbers, his first week in doing, this exact campaign. He did like $250,000 through the booking link. So what he did, we set up a text message to go out the moment that somebody that a columnist. So we had trigger that at abandoned call. Right. Text goes out. So sorry we missed your call.
00:17:02:24 – 00:17:23:12
We will call you back shortly. Or I like to say I will call you back shortly because it sounds a little more personal. I’ll call you right back in just a few minutes, and then. And then he puts. Or if you’d like, you can just book directly right here on our link. And he sends a link and they’re just going right through him booking right there on the link.
00:17:23:14 – 00:17:53:02
And so now even if you just had that one thing where cool, any missed call that happens, at least a text is going with a book link. You’re going to see more bookings than if you have nothing in place. And and that immediately is plugging a hole in. We can find lots of holes and we’ll talk about more holes in the business, but that’s one hole that you can plug where we I want you to think in terms of, I’m spending all this money to get the phone ring.
00:17:53:02 – 00:18:11:08
I’m spending all this money to get people to come in all these leads are coming in and we’re looking for these holes. And every time we plug a hole, my cost to acquire a customer just shrunk a little bit. And then. So each of these steps along the customer journey, we shrink the cost to get a customer a little bit more.
00:18:11:08 – 00:18:38:11
And now you become more powerful in spending in, you know, against your competitors. Because like I said, now you can say, cool, I can 200 bucks a lead. I can spend that much because, I’m closing at a high enough rate. And so one is missed call. That’s a huge one. Huge, huge. We see tons of, I don’t know, like, I’m sure, Dave, you’ve called a home service business and missed.
00:18:38:12 – 00:19:06:05
They’ve missed the call. Like it just everybody is like. Yeah, like I’m still shocked at how many calls are missed, in home service. So that’s a huge one. And then, another huge, leaky bucket is estimates. Again, this is still people you paid for. And this is you’ve paid a lot more money for now because you’ve actually been out to the house and you’ve given an estimate.
00:19:06:07 – 00:19:31:08
And so now you’ve paid for the lead, you’ve paid to roll the truck, you’ve paid your hourly to your guys, all the stuff to get to that point. And the estimate didn’t close. And you go, well, let’s just get the next one. Let’s just get the next one. Let’s just get the next one. And most of the guys that say they follow up, they’re following up 1 or 2 times on these, leads because they the natural human tendency is to say, well, if they want it, they’ll call me.
00:19:31:08 – 00:19:50:09
If they want it, they’ll call me. And that is if it’s important, then they’ll come. And that is 100% going to that. That mentality will kill your business because people don’t want to call. They don’t want to do this. They don’t want to have their Hvac fixed or they don’t want like I mean, they do, but they don’t want to pay the money, right?
00:19:50:14 – 00:20:17:09
Nobody wants to actually, like, nobody’s excited about this stuff. It’s not something like going to Disneyland. It’s all stuff that’s just like, another thing I got to pay for, another thing I got to do. And so they’re looking for any excuse to not do it. And sometimes that’s just living in discomfort or just putting it off or, and and it requires a, sales prowess to, to maximize that conversion rate.
00:20:17:11 – 00:20:40:05
And what we look at is, you know, we say 1 or 2 follow ups. That’s what most people are doing to get maximum conversion. We’re looking at or from 12 to 18 follow ups, to get maximum conversion. And no contractor is going to sit there and call all of it, all of the estimates 12, 18 times. You know, it’s just like way too much work.
00:20:40:07 – 00:21:10:04
Yeah. Well, that and I’ve got, you know, some live leads that I get to go run. So I don’t have time to follow up on those ones I already wasted all this money on. Yeah. And that’s what we say. It’s like it’s like that’s the big that’s always the big argument in any business. In my business, in every in every type of business, sales guys and owners always butt heads because the sales guys, they want the hot they’re they’re the guy that, you know, if he’s a good sales guy, he’s the guy that’s going after the hot stuff, is closing deals, and he’s excited and he’s super bored with follow up.
00:21:10:06 – 00:21:30:26
And then the owner is always like, hey, follow up, more of your leads fall in. They’ve they end up like battling because there’s just a natural, tendency for sales guys to go for the hot stuff. And then there’s a natural want for the owner to be like, hey, respect my leads that I paid for, and follow up appropriately and you’ll always battle that.
00:21:30:26 – 00:21:52:05
And so what I say is, instead of instead of like trying to force somebody to do something unnatural, just take it off their plate completely, put it in as a completely different process, respect it as a process, respect it as a as a part of your business that needs a lot of attention and invest into it. And you’ll and you’ll see huge returns from it.
00:21:52:05 – 00:22:15:06
Because now the sales guy is pumped because he’s closing deals and only dealing with the hot leads that are ready to go, ready to go. Your system is generating more hot leads for him because follow ups happening. And then when like for example, an estimate, let’s say an estimate seven days later, a text message goes out to that estimate and they go, yeah, I’m ready to go.
00:22:15:12 – 00:22:31:29
That’s now a hot lead again. And so it’s going to go to the sales guy and he’s going to be pumped like cool another hot lead. So now you’re getting more and more hot leads to your sales guys. So they’re more pumped. You’re getting more conversion because you have a system in place that’s doing the follow. Now you have two happy people.
00:22:31:29 – 00:22:53:17
You have a happy sales guy and a happy owner, and that’s when things can really scale. So Ryan, thanks for coming on, man. Sharing your story and helping our audience think differently about one of the most important levers in their business. And to everyone listening. If you got value from this episode, make sure you share it with someone in the industry who needs to hear it.
00:22:53:17 – 00:23:13:07
This is important. We’ll see you next time on cracking the code. Ryan. Last word. So thank you so much David. Appreciate it. If anybody wants to connect with me, add me as a friend on Facebook Ryan fan. And of course, if you’d like to check out chirp, head on over to trip.com with two eyes erp.com. Book a demo.
00:23:13:07 – 00:23:33:16
And what we do is we like to dive in and just find those leaks in your business and implement really easy automations to start so that we can, we can increase your conversion rate very quickly and find that low hanging fruit. So check us out. We’d love to. We’d love to help you out. So yeah, make sure when you do sign up for that demo that you tell them you heard about it on cracking the code.
00:23:33:16 – 00:23:39:04
We appreciate the opportunity, guys. Have a great day, man. We’ll talk to you soon. Thanks, Dave. We’ll see you.
