Conversion optimization for window and door dealers, one step at a time

Set, showed and sold are three separate rates with three separate causes

A dealer reporting one conversion number cannot tell a phone problem from a scheduling problem from a selling problem.

The set rate is how many inquiries turn into a booked appointment. It is a phone and follow-up question, and it responds to speed, persistence and who is doing the calling.

The show rate is how many booked appointments actually happen with the right people present. It is a confirmation and expectation question, and it has almost nothing to do with sales skill.

The close rate is how many consultations produce a signed contract. It is the one everybody watches and frequently the one that is fine.

Averaged together, a dealer with an excellent sales team and a poor show rate looks the same as one with the reverse, and they need opposite interventions. Hiring a better closer will not fix a confirmation problem.

Splitting them costs nothing but bookkeeping and it is usually where the surprise is. Most dealers who do it for the first time find that their weakest number is not the one they had been working on.

The confirmation sequence is the cheapest appointment you will ever save

Appointments booked several days out are lost between booking and arrival more often than most dealers realize, and almost all of it is preventable.

A homeowner who booked on Monday for Thursday has had three days to have second thoughts, forget, double book, or decide it is a bad week. Nothing happened in between to keep the commitment alive.

A confirmation sequence fixes most of it. A message shortly after booking that names the day, the time and who will be there, a reminder the day before, and a short note on the morning itself.

The content of those messages matters. Confirming who needs to be present, roughly how long it takes, and what will happen during the visit prevents the two most common failures: one spouse absent, and somebody expecting a ten minute look.

Making it easy to reschedule rather than cancel is worth building in. A homeowner with a genuine conflict will silently no-show if the only alternative on offer is calling to cancel.

This is the highest return process change available to most dealers, and it costs a set of templates and somebody to make sure they go out.

Pressure pricing wins the evening and costs the year

A price good only tonight raises the close rate on the appointment and lowers almost everything else in the business.

The technique works in the room, which is why it survives. Somebody facing a discount that disappears at the door will sign more often than somebody told to take their time.

The costs land elsewhere and later. Buyer's remorse and cancellations during the rescission period, reviews that specifically describe the pressure, and a market that becomes progressively harder to sell into as the reputation spreads.

It also loses the customer who was going to buy and wanted a week. That person is frequently the better job, and pushing them produces a no rather than a delay.

The alternative is not to give up urgency. Genuine reasons exist: material lead times, install schedules filling, a price that really is changing. Real urgency is defensible and it does not need to be manufactured.

Worth knowing your own cancellation rate before deciding. If a meaningful share of signed contracts do not survive the week, the close rate is measuring something other than sales.

Leave something the homeowner can hold

A consultation ends and the customer is left with a number and a memory, which is a poor position from which to defend a large decision.

After the appointment the homeowner has to explain the decision to somebody, compare it against another quote, and remember what made your product different. Most of what they were told is gone within a day.

A physical sample does a disproportionate amount of work in this category, because the difference between products is genuinely tactile. Weight, frame construction, how the glass units are built. A homeowner who has handled two cutaways understands the price difference.

The written material should be legible without you. What is being installed, what happens to the openings, how long the work takes, what the warranty covers and what is not included.

Photographs of comparable installs help more than product literature. Manufacturer brochures show ideal houses, and homeowners are trying to picture their own.

The test is whether somebody who was not at the appointment could read what you left and understand the decision. If not, the quote is going to lose to whichever competitor's document is clearer.

Measure a sale that takes months without pretending it takes weeks

Deliberation in this category routinely runs past any reporting period, which makes short-window measurement actively misleading.

A quote given in March and signed in July is normal. Judged in March the appointment was a failure, judged in July it was the year's best lead, and nothing about the work changed in between.

That has a specific consequence: a dealer measuring monthly will conclude the wrong things about which sources and which salespeople are working, and will make changes on the strength of it.

The workable approach is cohort based. Take the appointments from a given month and follow them for as long as your sales actually take, then read the result once it is complete.

It also means the follow-up window has to match the deliberation. Most dealers stop chasing a quote long before the customer has finished deciding, which converts a slow yes into a lost sale.

Track what proportion of your sales close after the first appointment against later. If most close later, then the follow-up process is the business, and it is usually the least designed part of it.

Scripts, timelines and what you can promise are local

The steps above are portable. What the phone says and what the schedule can commit to are not.

Permit and approval timelines, install lead times, which jurisdictions add an inspection step and how far a crew travels all change what an appointment can honestly promise, and those are market questions.

We publish them a city at a time, because a timeline written for one county is wrong in the next one and a homeowner will remember the number they were given.

If your metro is published, that is the more specific read. If not, the three rates above are still the place to start, and we are happy to work through your own numbers with you.