The first contact
Nobody hires you on the phone. They only decide whether to stop calling.
The short answer
In the first ninety seconds they are deciding whether to call the next number, not whether to hire you. Say you do this, here; say roughly when; then ask about the job; then give them a time.
Picture the other end of it. Somebody has a problem, a bit of paper and three numbers on it. They are not shopping and they are not enjoying this. They want to stop having to do it.
That is the whole situation, and it is not the one most people answer the phone for. They answer as though the caller is choosing between tradesmen. The caller is deciding whether they still have to call anybody else.
The usual opening is efficient and wrong
Most calls start with the job. How big is it, what sort of fence, when were you thinking. Sensible questions, and every one of them is asked before the caller knows the two things they rang to find out.
They do not yet know whether you do this kind of work, or whether you come out to where they live, or whether you have any space for weeks. Until those are settled they are answering your questions while still holding the bit of paper.
Four things, in this order
The order matters more than the words. Each step removes one reason to call the next number, and they have to come off in the order the caller is holding them.
| The step | What it sounds like | What happens if you skip it |
|---|---|---|
| You do this work, here | “Yes, fencing is what we do, and we are out your way most weeks.” | They answer all your questions and then ask the thing they rang about, and you have spent two minutes on a job you were never going to take. |
| You can fit it in | “I am about three weeks out at the moment — does that work for you?” | You measure up, write the quote, and lose it to somebody who could start on the Monday. The date was the whole decision. |
| Now the job | “Right — tell me what you are looking at.” Then listen. | Nothing. This is the part everybody does. It is just in the wrong place. |
| What happens next, with a time | “I will come and measure Thursday morning, and you will have the price the same evening.” | They put the phone down still uncertain, which feels exactly like not having called you, so they call the next number anyway. |
Uncertainty is what makes them keep dialling
This is the part worth holding on to. People do not stop looking because they were impressed. They stop because the uncertainty stopped. A caller who knows the day, the time and what they will have by the evening has nothing left to resolve, and calling anybody else has become work for no reason.
It also means the most valuable sentence in the call is the least salesy one in it. Not what you are good at — what happens next, and when.
When you genuinely cannot talk
Half these calls arrive while you are on a roof, under a floor or in traffic with the radio on. Having a proper conversation then is not possible and pretending otherwise makes it worse than not answering.
The move is a fifteen-second call that buys a time. “I am up a ladder — can I call you back at four thirty?” That is not a brush-off, because it contains the one thing the caller wanted: a moment when this gets resolved.
| What the caller gets | What they conclude | What to do instead |
|---|---|---|
| It rings out | Busy, or not in business any more. Next number. | Anything that answers and names a time. A voicemail that says when you pick messages up beats a phone that rings forever. |
| Answered, shouted over a saw | I have interrupted this person and I am in the way. | Fifteen seconds and a named callback time. Then actually call. |
| “I will get back to you.” | So I am still looking, then. | A time. “Before six tonight.” Uncertainty is the thing you are there to remove. |
| A full price, over the phone, unseen | That number is a guess and it will go up. | A range with the reason attached: “between x and y depending on what the ground is like — I will know when I have seen it.” |
Calling back at the time you said is the whole thing in one act. It is the first promise you made them, it costs nothing, and it is the only evidence available at that stage that you do what you say you will.
The call you never heard
Everything above assumes you got to the phone. The more common case is that it was in the van, or in your jacket, and you find a missed call from a number you do not know at half past four.
The article has already told you what happened in the meantime, and it is not comfortable. They had three numbers. Yours did not answer, so they rang the next one, and if that one answered and gave them a day, the paper is already in the bin. You cannot undo that. What you can still be is the only one who came back with something definite.
So call back the same day, and if you cannot speak, send four lines rather than nothing: “Sorry — missed you, I was on a job. This is Dan, fencing. I am about three weeks out at the moment. If that is any use, I can come and measure Thursday morning.” Name, trade, lead time, an offer with a day in it. That message does the first three steps of the call above without either of you having to be free at the same moment.
One of those five is worth doing before the others, and it is the greeting. It is the only thing you own that works while you are under a floor, it takes twenty seconds to change, and almost nobody has ever heard their own. Call your number from somebody else’s phone and listen to what a stranger gets. On most trade numbers it is the network reading the digits back.
Search this and you will be sold software that texts the caller back automatically within thirty seconds. The tools work and the idea is sound — it is the greeting and the habit above, automated. What is not sound is the arithmetic those pages come wrapped in: percentages of leads permanently lost, a monthly figure your missed calls are supposedly costing you. Those are sales material for the product they sit next to, and we cannot see how any of them were measured. Fix the greeting and the habit first. They are free, and if a paid tool still earns its fee after that, buy it on what it does rather than on a statistic.
Say no early, out loud
Some of these calls are for work you do not want, at a distance you do not cover, on a timescale you cannot meet. Saying so in the first thirty seconds is a kindness and it is also the cheapest thing you will do all week.
“That is a bit far out for me, but try [somebody] — they are closer.” You have cost yourself nothing, you have kept the afternoon, and you have been the most useful call they had all day. Those get remembered and passed on.
The short version
- They are deciding whether to call the next number, not whether to hire you.
- Confirm you do this work, in their area, in the first ten seconds.
- Give a rough lead time before anything else. It is often the whole decision.
- Then ask about the job, and let them describe it badly.
- Finish with a named half-day and a time for the price.
- If you cannot talk, buy a time in fifteen seconds — then call.
- No price over the phone. A range with a reason, if pushed — said out loud, never typed.
- Say no early when it is a no.
- A missed call gets a callback the same day, or four lines: name, trade, lead time, a day.
- Listen to your own voicemail greeting. Then record one with a time in it.
None of this is a sales technique, and it should not sound like one. It is putting the two things the caller actually rang for at the start of the conversation instead of the end, and giving them a reason to put the bit of paper down.