Which trade phone calls turn into won jobs?

Yes, with one exception. A long call is partly a sign of a real job, and partly where the job gets won: the customer describes it, the business prices it, and a time gets booked.

• For electricians and other home-service trades, calls with two minutes or more of conversation became won jobs more often than shorter calls in nearly 9 in 10 businesses. In the typical business those calls carried about 90% of the won revenue that came by phone.
• For plumbers, calls of three minutes or more became won jobs about 1.9× as often as shorter calls.
• For cleaners, calls of three minutes or more became won jobs about 3× as often as calls under a minute.

Exhibit 1. Longer calls and won jobs, by trade

Rubbish removal was the exception. A quick booking call is normal there, and short and long calls converted at about the same rate.

Short calls are not all the same

Outside rubbish removal, calls under a minute were about a quarter of trade calls and brought in about 1% of call revenue. Cleaning was different: calls under a minute still produced about 13% of call revenue. In plumbing, around half of call revenue came from calls under three minutes. So do not count every short call as a lead, and do not throw them all out either. Set the call length that counts as a conversion from your own calls, as our guide to short calls and the 60-second rule explains.

Yes. Where first calls were classified from the conversation, callers booked in on that first call became won jobs about 40% of the time. Callers who asked for, or were promised, a callback became won jobs about 11% of the time: a 3.4× gap. The gap stayed large with the largest business left out, and bookings beat callbacks in every business with won jobs in either group.

First-call bookings were about 41% of classified first calls but brought in 88% of their won revenue.

Exhibit 2. What happened on the first call

A booking is not yet a won job, but a callback leaves room for the customer to ring the next business on the list. Whoever answers should ask about the job, give a time window, and book the visit or quote before hanging up. When a booking cannot be made on the call, the callback should go out while the customer is still waiting by the phone.

Fewer than the ring count suggests. About 28% of first calls were not a new job opportunity: existing customers calling about a booking or an invoice, work or areas the business does not cover, wrong numbers, sales calls and spam. The share was about the same with the largest business left out, and every business had them. Only about 1 in 100 of those calls became a won job, and together they brought in 0.4% of won revenue.

Exhibit 3. First calls by kind

Counting every ring as a lead overstates what the ads deliver. Judge campaigns on qualified calls and won jobs, and use the other calls to tighten the set-up: out-of-area callers point to location settings, callers after work you do not do point to ad wording, and existing customers ringing the ad number are worth sending to the office line, so they stop counting as new enquiries.

Yes. About 1 in 6 trade phone enquiries involved the same customer calling two or more times. Those enquiries became won jobs about 1.7× as often as single-call enquiries and carried about 24% of call revenue. The gap held with the largest business left out, and repeat callers converted better in most businesses with enough of them to compare.

Exhibit 4. One call or more

Some second calls come after a booking is made, but either way a repeat caller is a hot lead. Put missed and repeat callers at the top of the callback list, and count each caller once as an enquiry so the second call does not inflate the lead count.

Mostly calls, but forms close too. For electricians and other home-service trades, calls were about 74% of enquiries and 80% of won revenue, and calls were the bigger source of revenue in most businesses. Whether a call or a form is more likely to become a won job depended on the business, and in some businesses forms brought in more revenue than calls.

The other trades show the same split from different angles. About 3 in 4 plumbing enquiries were calls, yet plumbing web forms became won jobs about as often as calls. Cleaning runs the other way: quote forms brought in 56% of the won-job revenue traced to the ads.

Exhibit 5. Calls and forms by trade

Make calling easy, with a call button in the ad and a number in reach on every page, and answer forms just as fast. Our guide to a trade website that converts calls and forms covers the page side.

The best-converting trade businesses won about 3.6× as many of their ad enquiries as the weakest: roughly 25% against 7%, with the typical business at about 11%. The spread held among electricians alone, with the largest business left out, and among businesses with at least 30 days of ads.

Exhibit 6. Ad enquiries that became won jobs

Part of that gap is what happens after the phone rings: how fast it is answered, whether the job is booked on the call, and how quickly callbacks go out. Part is record keeping: a business that never marks enquiries won or lost looks worse than it is. So the first fix is the cheapest one. Mark every enquiry won or lost, with the agreed price, and the call findings above can be checked against your own phone.

Seven changes, most of them for whoever answers the phone.

1. Mark every call enquiry won or lost, with the agreed price.
2. Book on the call. Ask about the job, give a time window, and lock in the visit or quote before hanging up.
3. Call back missed and repeat callers first. A customer who rings twice is a hot lead.
4. Listen to a sample of short calls and set the call length that counts as a conversion from what you hear.
5. Sort the calls that were never jobs and fix the cause: location settings for out-of-area callers, ad wording for work you do not do.
6. Answer web forms as fast as calls.
7. Judge the ads on qualified calls and won jobs, not on how often the phone rang.

This is how SoudCoh Compound treats the phone: as part of the marketing, run in the same plan as the ads and the website and judged on won work. See it in practice in the case studies for Aussie Electrical (calls and forms for an electrician), RAKS Quality Plumbing (calls that end with a visit booked) and Champion Plumbing (where phone calls started most of the won work), and in our marketing for electricians.

The figures come from SoudCoh's analysis of tracked calls and won-job records from Australian trade and home-service businesses running Google Ads: electricians and other home-service trades, alongside separate analyses of plumbing and cleaning businesses. Each figure is an aggregate across businesses.

• Call enquiry: a tracked phone call traced to Google Ads. Calls linked to the same enquiry are grouped, so a customer who rings twice is one enquiry with two calls.
• Won job: an enquiry the business marked as won in its job records, valued at the agreed job price. Won-job value is revenue, not profit.
• Call length: conversation time for the electrical and other trades figures; the duration of the tracked call for plumbing and cleaning.
• First-call outcome: each first call was classified automatically from the conversation as a booking made, a callback requested, or not a new job opportunity.
• Windows: each business is measured from its own first day of ad spend.
• Checks: each finding was recalculated independently and tested with the largest business left out. Findings that did not hold up, including several about time of day and search wording for these trades, were dropped.

Do longer phone calls mean more jobs for tradies?

Usually. For plumbers, calls of three minutes or more became won jobs about 1.9× as often as shorter calls; for cleaners, about 3× as often as calls under a minute. Rubbish removal, where a quick booking call is normal, was the exception.

What share of trade calls are not real leads?

About 28% of first calls in SoudCoh's analysis were not a new job opportunity: existing customers, work or areas the business does not cover, wrong numbers, sales calls and spam. Only about 1 in 100 of those became a won job.

Should a tradie book the job on the first call?

Yes, wherever possible. Callers booked in on the first call became won jobs about 3.4× as often as callers left waiting for a callback, and bookings beat callbacks in every business with won jobs in either group.

Is a customer who calls twice more likely to book?

Yes. Enquiries where the same customer called two or more times became won jobs about 1.7× as often as single-call enquiries, so repeat callers belong at the top of the callback list.