Every tradie knows the feeling. You are under a sink, the phone buzzes in your back pocket, and by the time your hands are clean the caller is gone. Most of us shrug it off. The numbers say we should not.
Start with what a job is worth
Pick your average job. For a plumber doing residential work that might be a $350 callout. For a builder quoting a bathroom it might be $18,000. Write the number down, because everything below scales from it.
Now think about who calls a trade business during the day. It is rarely a mate. It is almost always one of three people: a new customer who found you online or was referred, an existing customer with a new job, or a supplier. Two of the three are revenue.
How many calls go unanswered
Industry surveys of Australian small businesses put the unanswered rate for sole traders and small crews at somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of inbound calls during working hours. That sounds high until you count the hours you spend driving, on a roof, or talking to another customer. If you cannot answer within about 20 seconds, the call is missed.
Call it 50 percent to keep the maths easy.
What callers do when nobody answers
This is the part most people underestimate. Studies of consumer phone behaviour consistently find that around 80 percent of callers who reach voicemail do not leave a message. They hang up. Most of those people then ring the next business in the search results.
Of the 20 percent who do leave a message, a good share leave one that is useless: "Hi, it's Dave, give me a call back." No suburb, no job, no idea whether it is urgent.
Put it together
Say you get 20 enquiry calls a week.
- 10 are missed.
- 8 of those hang up without leaving a message.
- Of those 8, perhaps half would have booked. That is 4 jobs a week.
At $350 a job that is $1,400 a week, or roughly $70,000 a year. At $18,000 a job, even one lost bathroom a month is more than $200,000 a year in quotes you never got to give.
You will not win every one of those. But you do not need to. Winning one extra job a month pays for almost any fix.
Three ways to stop the leak
Answer more calls yourself. Cheap, but you already know why this does not work. You cannot hold a phone and a drill.
Hire someone. A part-time receptionist or a family member on the phone works well if you can afford it and if calls arrive during their hours. Most trade enquiries come at lunch, late afternoon and after hours, which is when the office is empty.
Have something answer for you. A live answering service will pick up and take a message for a per-call or per-minute fee. An AI receptionist like AfterTone answers with a natural voice, asks the caller the questions you would ask (what is the job, what suburb, how urgent, what budget), and emails you a summary within a minute. It costs a flat monthly fee and works at 9pm on a Sunday.
What good looks like
Whatever you choose, the test is simple. When a stranger calls at 4:45pm on a Friday about a blocked drain in Marrickville, do you know about it by 4:47pm, and do you know enough to decide whether to call back tonight?
If the answer is no, you are paying for it already. You just do not see the invoice.
Want to hear what an AI receptionist sounds like on a real call? Build one free and we will ring you.