Start with a shared definition of each stage
A contractor can track marketing from lead to sold job by keeping a source, owner, stage and next action on each opportunity. Give each job a stable identifier. Connect the CRM record to the estimate and payment record so one homeowner is not counted as three separate sales.
The goal is to see where opportunities stop moving. An ad platform can report an inquiry, but your office must confirm whether it was valid, whether an appointment happened, and whether the business collected payment.
- Source: the known campaign, referral partner, repeat-customer relationship or other origin. Keep unknown as unknown.
- Total leads: all incoming inquiries before quality checks.
- Valid leads: inquiries that meet your written service-area and service-type rules, with duplicates and spam removed.
- Contacted: a two-way conversation happened. An unanswered call or sent text is an attempt, not contact.
- Qualified: the homeowner and project meet the agreed service, location and timing criteria.
- Booked: an appointment is scheduled. Showed: the appointment actually occurred.
- Estimated: a priced proposal was delivered. Sold: the client’s documented acceptance condition was met.
- Collected: payment was received and reconciled. A signed contract is not collected revenue.
Build one practical pipeline
A roofing company could use New inquiry → Contact attempted → Contacted → Qualified → Inspection booked → Inspection completed → Estimate sent → Sold → Collected. Keep a lost or deferred status with a reason and a next review date.
This is a hypothetical pipeline, not an Aurex client result. Your service may need fewer stages. Emergency plumbing and a planned kitchen remodel have different buying cycles. Keep definitions stable long enough to compare periods, and document any changes.
Store first source and latest source separately. The first tells you where the relationship began; the latest may explain what brought the homeowner back. Neither alone proves a campaign caused the sale.
Calculate rates with named denominators
Contact rate = contacted valid leads ÷ valid leads. Booking rate = booked appointments ÷ qualified leads. Show rate = completed appointments ÷ booked appointments. Estimate-to-sale rate = sold jobs ÷ delivered estimates.
A hypothetical week with 40 valid inquiries and 24 two-way conversations has a 60% contact rate. If 12 qualified homeowners book and 9 attend, the show rate is 75%. These calculations describe different steps. Do not label all of them conversion rate.
Cost per sold job = agreed acquisition costs ÷ sold jobs attributed under your stated method. Estimated gross profit = collected revenue × documented gross-margin estimate. Gross profit excludes some business expenses and is not net profit. Use actual job costs when available.
Use a weekly scorecard and a monthly reconciliation
Review new leads, valid leads, contacted, qualified, booked, showed, estimated and sold every week. Add spend, collected revenue, estimated gross profit when known, and open opportunities without a next step. Break out new, recovered, repeat and referral activity without counting the same job twice.
The office owns contact and booking status. Estimators own proposals and lost reasons. The owner or finance lead reconciles sold and collected values. Give every missing field an owner before adding another dashboard.
Compare cohorts as well as calendar totals. A job sold this week may come from an inquiry six weeks ago. A monthly cash report and a lead-cohort report answer different questions.
Catch errors before you change the campaign
Check duplicate submissions, test leads, cancellations, refunds, inconsistent time zones and imported records with no source. Keep original timestamps when moving data. Do not replace an unknown source with the campaign you hope produced the job.
Audit a small sample from ad click to payment record each month. If the CRM shows a sale but the accounting record does not, resolve the difference before publishing revenue. Use the results methodology to distinguish tracked, collected and influenced results.
A Revenue Leakage Audit helps map this process and identify which three improvements deserve attention first.
Continue with the Aurex Revenue Capture System or read our results methodology.