~by Haley Lynn Gray~
My hardest client was one I eventually fired.
They were absolutely convinced that to double their business, they needed to spend more on marketing. More ads, more reach, and a flashier website with more movement and animation.
Then I looked in their CRM.
What the data actually showed
They didn’t have a marketing problem. They had a phone problem.
Leads were coming in — plenty of them. But they were missing a great many of them, and the ones they did catch weren’t being booked for an estimate. Instead, they were waiting days to call people back.
By then, of course, the leads were gone. Someone who needs a quote reaches out to three companies, and books whoever gets back to them first. Waiting until “the morning” — or until Thursday — meant handing that customer to a competitor.
More marketing would have poured more leads into exactly the same leak.
Speed is the whole game
This isn’t just my opinion. In 2011, researchers writing in the Harvard Business Review examined how quickly companies responded to online sales enquiries. Firms that contacted a lead within an hour were roughly seven times more likely to qualify it than those that waited even an hour longer — and dramatically more likely than those that waited a day or more.
The same study found the average company took well over a day to respond. Many never responded at all.
The fix for my client was straightforward, and nothing to do with marketing:
- Have someone answering the phone and booking estimates — around the clock, not just office hours.
- Respond to every lead instantly, however it arrives: phone, form, message, email.
- Book the estimate on the first contact, while the person is still interested.
That alone would likely have done more for their revenue than any ad budget. The customers were already arriving. They just needed someone to answer.
The website argument
They also wanted a flashier site. More moving parts, more animations, more visual excitement.
I know from experience that this reduces conversions — and not by a little. Heavy animation distracts people from the one thing you want them to do, and it slows pages down. Speed matters more than most businesses realise: research commissioned by Google and carried out by Deloitte found that shaving just a tenth of a second off mobile load times measurably increased conversions for retail sites.
What actually improves profitability is the opposite of flashy:
- Simple, elegant design, with restrained animation used sparingly.
- A clear call to action — one obvious next step.
- Making it easy to get in touch, on every page, in whatever way the customer prefers.
Not flashier marketing. A clearer path to talking to you. That’s a hill I will die on.
Why I fired them
They were convinced the answer was more spending and more spectacle, and I couldn’t move them off it.
I could have taken their money and run the bigger campaign. It would have looked busy and it would have billed well. But it wouldn’t have worked, because the problem was never the number of leads. It was what happened after each one arrived.
Taking money for something I knew wouldn’t help isn’t how I want to run a business. I’ve been on the receiving end of that, and I promised myself I’d never do it to a client. So we parted ways.
It’s never comfortable letting a paying client go. But saying no to the wrong work protects both of you — them from spending on the wrong fix, and you from being blamed when it doesn’t work.
What to check in your own business
Before you spend another dollar on marketing, answer these honestly:
- How fast do you respond to a new lead? Not your intention — the actual average, from your records.
- What happens to leads that arrive after hours or at weekends?
- What proportion of leads become a booked conversation?
- Can a visitor to your website see, in a few seconds, how to contact you?
If the answers are slow, unclear or unknown, you almost certainly don’t need more leads yet. You need to stop losing the ones you already have.
That’s usually cheaper, faster and far more profitable than any campaign.
