A simple follow-up cadence you can actually stick to
Most advice about follow-up gets complicated fast: multi-stage funnels, dozens of touches, branching logic. For an owner-operated service business, that's overkill and it never gets used. What you actually need is a short, repeatable rhythm that you can run on every lead without thinking about it. Here's one.
Start with the fast first response. The moment a lead comes in, get back to them within minutes if you possibly can. Greet them, answer the obvious question about whether you handle their kind of job, and try to get them onto a call or the calendar. This single step matters more than all the rest combined, because it catches the lead while it's hot.
If you don't close it on that first contact, wait two or three days and send a friendly check-in. Keep it short. Ask if they have any questions and let them know you can get them scheduled whenever they're ready. No pressure, no hard sell. You're just reminding them you exist and you're easy to work with. A lot of jobs close right here, on the touch most people never send.
About a week after the quote or first contact, send one more message with something useful in it. Maybe a note about timing, a common question customers ask at this stage, or a small reassurance about how you work. The goal is to be helpful, not to nag. You're staying present in their mind while they finish deciding.
Then send a final, soft close a week or so later. Let them know you'll be closing out their file for now, but they're always welcome to reach back out. Oddly, this last message often works the best, because it creates a gentle deadline and gives the person who kept meaning to reply a reason to do it now. After that, you stop. Four touches over two to three weeks is plenty.
The whole point of writing the cadence down is so you stop reinventing it for every lead and so it survives your busy days. The rhythm is fixed: respond fast, check in, add value, soft close, done. You just plug each new lead into it.
You can run this by hand with a calendar and discipline, and some owners do. Or you can let it run itself, with each message drafted in your voice, sent after a quick approval, and stopped automatically when the customer replies. That's how Cadrey handles it, so the cadence happens whether or not you remember. Either way, the lesson is the same: pick a simple rhythm and actually run it every time.