Most field service companies do not have a sales process. They have a phone that rings, a person who quotes, and a hope that the customer calls back. When it works, it is luck. When it stops working, nobody knows why.

A sales process is a written set of steps that every lead moves through, with a clear definition of what has to happen at each step. It does not need software to start. It needs a page of decisions and the discipline to follow them.

This article builds one from zero. Ideal customer, lead sources, speed to lead, quote follow-up, close, handoff to ops, review request, referral ask. By the end you will have pipeline stages you can put in Jobber, a CRM, or a whiteboard tomorrow.

Step 1: Define your ideal customer

Before you sell, decide who you are selling to. Write down the customer you want more of. Not everyone with a checkbook. The one you make money on and enjoy working for.

Be specific.

  • Residential HVAC: homeowners in a 20-mile radius, homes over 15 years old, who want a maintenance plan rather than one-off repairs.
  • Pressure washing: property management companies with 5 or more communities, each with 100 or more units, that budget annual exterior cleaning.
  • Dryer vent cleaning: apartment communities with in-unit laundry, 150 or more units, where the regional manager signs off on preventive maintenance.

Then write down who you do not want. The customer who shops five quotes and calls on price. The building that needs work you cannot do. Saying no to the wrong customer is part of the process.

If multifamily is part of your picture, what property managers want from vendors explains how that buyer thinks.

Step 2: Pick your lead sources and own them

List every way a lead reaches you. Google Business Profile, website form, referrals, door hangers, cold outreach, past customers, vendor marketplaces. Then rank them by two things: how many leads they produce and how often those leads close.

Most companies find that two or three sources carry the business. Put your effort there. Drop or fix the rest.

For each source you keep, decide one thing: where does the lead land? A form that emails the owner’s personal inbox is not a lead source. It is a place leads go to die. Every lead should land in one system, with a name, a phone number, the service they asked about, and a timestamp.

Step 3: Speed to lead

This is the step where most of the money is lost. A lead that gets a response in five minutes is worth several times more than one that waits until tomorrow. Not because of a study. Because the customer called three companies, and the first one to pick up usually wins.

Set a standard and measure it.

  • Phone calls: answered live during business hours. If you cannot staff that, a virtual assistant or an answering service is cheaper than the leads you are losing. See virtual assistants for trades companies.
  • Web forms and texts: reply within 15 minutes during business hours, and an automatic acknowledgment outside them.
  • Missed calls: an automatic text within one minute. “Sorry we missed you, this is Noah at [company]. What can we help with?”

Write the standard on the wall. Check it weekly.

Step 4: The quote and the follow-up cadence

Quoting is not the sale. Following up is the sale. In our experience, a quote with no follow-up closes at around a third the rate of one with a real cadence, and the gap grows as the ticket size goes up.

Here is a cadence that works for residential and small commercial work.

  1. Day 0: quote sent within 24 hours of the visit, ideally before you leave the driveway. Text and email.
  2. Day 1: text. “Did the quote come through okay? Happy to answer questions.”
  3. Day 3: call. Ask what they are weighing. Offer to walk through options.
  4. Day 7: email with one useful thing. A photo of the problem, a note on what happens if they wait.
  5. Day 14: last call or text. “Want me to keep this open or close it out?”
  6. Day 30 and day 90: a check-in if the job was seasonal or deferrable.

Every touch is logged. If your quoting tool has automatic follow-ups, use them for days 1 and 7 and do the calls yourself. If you want to hand the whole cadence to software, automate quote follow-up covers how.

For larger commercial and multifamily quotes, stretch the timeline and add a step: ask when their budget or approval cycle closes, and follow up against that date.

Step 5: Close

Closing is asking for the decision. Most technicians and owners never ask. They send the quote, follow up politely, and wait.

A close for a trades company is simple.

  • “We have Tuesday or Thursday open next week. Which works better?”
  • “Do you want to go with the standard option or the one with the maintenance plan?”
  • “I can hold this price through Friday. Want me to get you on the schedule?”

Ask, then be quiet. If the answer is no, ask why. Price, timing, trust, or a competitor. Each one has a different response, and you only learn it by asking.

Step 6: Handoff to operations

The sale is not done when the customer says yes. It is done when the job is scheduled, the tech knows what was promised, and the customer knows what to expect.

Handoff checklist:

  • Job created in the system with the exact scope that was quoted.
  • Site notes: gate codes, parking, pets, where the equipment is.
  • Customer told the date, the arrival window, and the name of the tech.
  • Deposit or payment terms confirmed.
  • Any promise made verbally is written in the job notes.

The number one source of bad reviews is a gap between what sales said and what ops did. This checklist closes the gap.

Step 7: Review request

Ask for the review the day the job is done, while the customer is happy and the truck is still in the driveway. A text with a direct link to your Google review page works. If your software sends one automatically on job completion, turn it on.

If you are not getting reviews, it is almost always because nobody asks. Not because customers do not want to.

Step 8: Referral ask

Thirty days after the job, when the customer has lived with the result, ask for a referral. One text.

“Hi Sarah, it’s Noah from [company]. Glad the gutters are holding up. If you know a neighbor who could use us, we give $50 off their first job and a $50 credit for you. Just have them mention your name.”

Referrals are the cheapest leads you will ever get. Most companies never ask for them. Put the ask in the process so it happens without anyone remembering.

The pipeline stages, with what done means

Here is the pipeline. Put it in whatever tool you use. What matters is the definition of done at each stage, so two people looking at the same lead agree on where it is.

Stage Done means
New lead Lead is in the system with name, phone, service, and source. Responded to within the standard.
Contacted You spoke to a human or exchanged texts. Need and timeline are noted.
Site visit scheduled Date and time booked. Customer confirmed.
Quoted Quote sent within 24 hours of the visit. Follow-up cadence started.
Following up Touches logged on schedule. Objection, if any, is written down.
Won Customer said yes. Job created, handoff checklist complete.
Lost Reason recorded. Re-contact date set if the reason was timing.
Job complete Work done. Review request sent.
Referral asked 30-day referral text sent.

Review the pipeline once a week. Every lead sitting in “Quoted” or “Following up” for more than 14 days gets a decision: push, close as lost, or set a date.

Teach, train, or run

There are three ways to get this built.

Teach. You learn the process and build it yourself. Cheapest, slowest, and it works if you have the time. This article is the starting point.

Train. Someone builds it with you and trains your office person or your first rep to run it. You own it, but you do not have to figure it out alone.

Run. Someone runs the sales function for you on a retainer plus commission, and you stay in the truck or in ops. This is the fractional model, and fractional sales manager vs hiring a salesperson compares it to a full-time hire.

Any of the three beats what most companies do now, which is nothing.

Where Intrepid fits

Intrepid builds sales processes for field service companies and then either trains your team to run them or runs them for you. We have done it for dryer vent, pressure washing, gutter, and similar companies selling both residential and property management work. See the sales page for how the engagements work, or book a call if you want a second set of eyes on your pipeline.