Sample, for an invented company
A check-up for Crest & Grove
This is what we make for a business before anything is designed. Crest & Grove is an invented company, so every finding and figure here is made up to show the form. A real one is written from your own records.
What a check-up involves
A check-up starts with a 30-minute call. We ask for the names of your closest competitors and whatever you already keep: enquiries or bookings from the last month, and your site’s statistics if you have them. Within five working days you get one written page like this one: what is costing you customers, ranked, with the evidence, and what fixing each thing would involve. It costs $500, agreed in writing before it starts, and the $500 counts toward the first build if you go ahead.
What we looked at
- Customers
- Who asks Crest & Grove for work, and how each of them gets in touch.
- Competitors
- Four firms that bid for the same properties.
- Numbers
- Twelve months of emails and web requests, and a tally of calls the office kept for four weeks.
What we found
In the order we would fix them.
The firm looks smaller online than it is
22 crews and 180 properties appear nowhere on the old home page. Two of the four competitors lead with their own numbers.
A property manager comparing bidders sees the smaller firm first.
Requests arrive without what the office needs
Of 214 enquiries we could trace across the year and the four-week call tally, 131 came by phone or by a blank email.
The office calls back for the property, the scope or the timing before it can answer.
Everyone is answered the same way
A contractor with a bid due in a week and a manager planning next year reach the same contact page.
The urgent request waits in the same line as the patient one.
Existing clients call for everything
About four in ten calls to the office were service requests from properties already under contract.
Crews are sent from memory and nothing is written down.
Nobody can say which enquiries became work
No record ties an enquiry to a signed job.
The firm cannot tell which effort brings in business.
What we left alone
The name, the list of services and the family history. They were clear and true already, and changing them would have been work for its own sake.
What it led to
- Lead with the record
- The home page now opens with years, crews and properties.
- One request form that sorts itself
- It asks who is asking, what the property needs and how soon, then hands the office a request it can act on.
- A separate path for existing clients
- A property under contract says what needs attention and how soon, so the request is written down before a crew is sent.
- A way to see what becomes work
- Not built yet. It is the first thing on the list for the next check-up.
The next check-up
Three months after launch we look again, at two things: whether requests arrive complete, and how many became work.
Want one for your business? It starts with a free look. If the note finds something worth going further on, the check-up comes next. Ask for a free look