Every trade contractor knows the feeling. You're on a roof, elbow-deep in a furnace repair, or crawling under a house fixing a pipe — and your phone buzzes with a new lead from Angi. By the time you clean up and call back 45 minutes later, the homeowner has already booked someone else.
This isn't just frustrating. It's costing you real money. And the data behind it is staggering.
The Speed-to-Lead Research
A landmark study by the Harvard Business Review found that companies who respond to leads within 5 minutes are 100x more likely to make contact than those who wait 30 minutes. But in the trades industry, the window is even tighter.
buy from the first contractor who responds to their inquiry. Not the cheapest. Not the most experienced. The first one to pick up the phone.
When a homeowner's AC dies in July or their basement is flooding, they aren't comparison shopping. They're calling every contractor they can find and going with whoever answers first. Your five-star reviews and 20 years of experience mean nothing if you respond second.
What Happens After 60 Seconds
Here's a timeline of what happens to your lead conversion rate as response time increases:
- Under 60 seconds: 391% higher conversion rate compared to the industry average
- 1-5 minutes: Lead is still warm, but conversion drops by 40%
- 5-30 minutes: The homeowner has already called 3-5 other contractors
- 30+ minutes: Less than 10% chance of ever making contact
- Next day: The job is gone. Period.
The math is simple. If you're generating 100 leads per month and your average response time is 30 minutes, you're likely losing 40-60 of those leads to faster competitors. At an average job value of $500-$2,000, that's $20,000-$120,000 in annual lost revenue.
Why Most Contractors Can't Respond Fast Enough
It's not that contractors don't care about response time. They're just physically unable to respond while doing their actual work. Here are the most common barriers:
- 1Hands are literally dirty — you can't answer a phone while soldering a pipe
- 2No dedicated office staff — most small shops don't have a receptionist
- 3Lead notifications get buried in email or app notifications
- 4After-hours leads sit until the next morning
- 5Weekends and holidays mean zero coverage
You didn't start a contracting business to sit by your phone all day. You started it to do great work. The challenge is making sure leads get handled while you do what you do best.
Stop Losing Leads to Slow Response Times
Vertos AI captures and responds to leads from Angi, Thumbtack, and HomeAdvisor in under 60 seconds — 24/7, even while you're on a job.
How Automation Closes the Gap
The solution isn't hiring someone to watch your phone 24/7. It's automation. Modern AI-powered lead response systems can detect a new lead from Angi, Thumbtack, or HomeAdvisor and send a personalized text message to the homeowner in under 30 seconds — while you're still on the ladder.
Here's what that looks like in practice:
- 1A homeowner submits a request on Angi at 3:47 PM
- 2Your automation system detects the lead at 3:47:05 PM
- 3AI qualifies the lead and drafts a personalized response
- 4The homeowner receives a text at 3:47:22 PM: "Hi Sarah, this is Mike from ABC Plumbing. I saw your request about the water heater. I have availability tomorrow morning — would 9 AM or 11 AM work better?"
- 5The homeowner replies "9 AM works!" before any other contractor has even seen the lead
Real Results From Real Contractors
We've seen this play out dozens of times with our clients. One HVAC company in Texas went from a 45-minute average response time to under 30 seconds. Their lead conversion rate jumped from 12% to 38% in the first month. That translated to an extra $23,000 in revenue — from the same number of leads they were already getting.
“I was skeptical about automation. I'm a hands-on guy. But when I saw that we were booking 3x more jobs without me touching my phone, I was sold.”
— HVAC contractor, 12 employees
Getting Started
You don't need to overhaul your entire business to respond faster. Start with these three steps:
- 1Measure your current response time. Check your Angi or Thumbtack dashboard for your average.
- 2Set up instant notifications. At minimum, make sure lead alerts go to your phone as push notifications, not just email.
- 3Automate the first touch. Even a simple "Thanks for reaching out, we'll call you within 15 minutes" text can keep a lead warm while you finish your current job.
Or, if you want to skip straight to the 60-second response time that wins the most jobs, talk to us about setting up a fully automated lead response system for your business.
Sawyer helps trade contractors automate their lead capture and response systems so they never miss another job. He built Vertos AI after seeing firsthand how slow response times cost contractors thousands in lost revenue.