A lead follow-up process for small service businesses (with a free Google Sheets tracker)

A first reply is a single event and you usually remember to do it. Follow-up is a sequence with no natural trigger. Nothing arrives in your inbox to remind you that Priya has not answered the quote you sent on Tuesday. The only thing that would remind you is a list you look at, and most small businesses do not have one. They have an inbox, and an inbox sorts by what arrived last, not by whose move it is.

The other reason is that following up feels like nagging, so it gets postponed. It is not nagging. An enquirer who asked for a quote and went quiet has almost always been distracted, not put off. A short, friendly nudge is a service to them: it saves them digging back through their email to find you.

Not a CRM, not a sales methodology. Four things, and a spreadsheet can hold all of them.

• One list. Every enquiry, whatever channel it came through, on the same list the moment it arrives. If web-form enquiries live in one place and email enquiries in another, the follow-up you miss will be from the one you check less.
• A stage for each lead. Whose move is it? New (nobody has replied), action required (yours), with client (theirs), booked, lost. Five is enough. More than five and you will stop keeping it accurate.
• A next date. For every lead that is not booked or lost, the date you will next do something. This is the part an inbox cannot give you, and it is the whole point of the process.
• A cadence you do not think about. How many days after a quote you nudge, how many days between nudges, and when you stop. Decide once, write it down, and let the list apply it.

Everything else, the templates, the tracker, the twice-a-day habit, exists to make those four things happen without willpower.

The cadence below is what we use for event and activity enquiries. Corporate enquirers need a few days to get sign-off, and parents planning a party are deciding over a weekend, so the gaps are a little longer than a sales team would use. Shorten them if your jobs book faster.

• Day 0: the reply. A human reply inside the hour, and the full quote the same business day. If you want the reasoning, read our guide on the 5-minute rule for leads.
• Day 3: first nudge. Short, friendly, and with something useful in it: a reminder of the date you are holding, or one detail you left out of the quote.
• Day 7: second nudge. Ask a direct question that is easy to answer with one word. "Is the 24th still the date you are working to?"
• Day 14: close the loop. Tell them you will release the held date and that they are welcome to come back. This message books a surprising number of jobs, because it turns a vague decision into a deadline.
• Day 21: mark it lost. Not deleted. Lost leads in an events business come back next quarter, and they belong in your enquiry-to-booking ratio so the number stays honest.

Three nudges over two weeks. More than that and you are the one being remembered for the wrong reason. Fewer and you are leaving bookings on the table that one more message would have won.

Each message has one job. The first nudge reminds. The second asks. The third closes. Keep them short enough to read on a phone without scrolling, and always include the date and the price so the enquirer does not have to find your earlier email.

Subject: Re: Team activity for ~20 on 24 October

Hi Priya,

Just checking this reached you. I'm still holding the 24th for you at $1,100 for 20 - happy to keep holding it until Friday.

One thing I forgot to mention: we can run it in your office if the weather turns, so the park is not a risk.

Nick

Day 7, the question: "Hi Priya, is the 24th still the date you are working to? If another date is easier I can check it. Nick." One question, answerable with one word.

Day 14, closing the loop: "Hi Priya, I will release the hold on the 24th at the end of this week so someone else can have it. If you would still like it, just reply and it is yours - and if the timing is wrong for now, no problem at all, we would love to hear from you next quarter. Nick." Warm, specific, and finished.

The tracker is one workbook with four sheets. It works in Google Sheets and in Excel, uses only formulas both support, and has three example rows so you can see the expected format before you delete them.

• Leads: one row per enquiry. You fill in the white cells: when it arrived, who, what they want, the date, size and location, your quote, the stage, when you first replied, and the last contact. The grey cells do the rest.
• Response time: hours between the enquiry arriving and your first reply, per lead. The Summary sheet turns that into a median and the share you answered inside an hour.
• Next follow-up and Flag: the sheet works out when your next nudge is due from the cadence on the Settings sheet, then flags each row REPLY NOW, OVERDUE, DUE TODAY or MARK LOST. Rows change colour so the ones that need you stand out.
• Summary: total leads, leads by stage, enquiry-to-booking ratio, response time, what needs attention today, and leads and bookings by source, so you can see which channel actually books rather than which one is loudest.
• Settings: the cadence in days, the stage list and the source list, all editable. Change the cadence once and every row updates.

The tracker deliberately has no automation. It will not send the nudges for you, and it does not need your email password or a signup. It gives you the list and the dates. The habit is yours.

A tracker only works if the rows are accurate, and the rows are only accurate if updating them is quicker than not. Two habits make that true.

Capture at arrival, not at reply. The row goes in the moment the enquiry lands, even if all you type is the name and the timestamp. A row with three cells filled is a lead you will not forget. An enquiry sitting unread in your inbox is one you might.

Two fixed times a day. Open the Leads sheet at, say, 8am and 4pm. Sort by the Flag column. REPLY NOW first, then OVERDUE, then DUE TODAY. Send the messages, update Last contact, and close it. On most days this takes ten minutes, and it replaces the background anxiety of wondering whether you have forgotten someone.

When you have sent the day-14 message and heard nothing by day 21. The tracker flags the row MARK LOST at that point. Set the stage to Lost and leave the row where it is.

Two exceptions. If the enquirer replied at any point, even to say "still deciding", the clock restarts from that message, because they are engaged. And if the job date passes, mark it lost immediately, whatever the cadence says. Chasing someone about a party that has already happened is the one kind of follow-up that genuinely annoys people.

Honestly, later than most software companies will tell you. The tracker above ran Battle Archery for a long time. It stops being enough at three specific moments, and you will recognise them when they arrive.

When enquiries arrive faster than you can type them in, so the capture-at-arrival habit breaks and rows go missing. When a second person needs the calendar, and the address for Saturday lives in a spreadsheet cell rather than on the calendar entry they are looking at on their phone. And when you find yourself copying the same details from the email into the sheet, then into the calendar, then into the invoice, for every single booking.

That third moment is why Leadesi exists. An enquiry that arrives by email or through your web form becomes a lead with the date, location and group size already pulled out of the message, sitting in a board with the same five stages as the tracker. When it books, it goes on the staff calendar with the address attached, the confirmation and reminders go out, and the invoice is drafted for Xero. You still send the follow-ups yourself, from Gmail, because a human nudge is the part that works. But nothing has to be typed twice, and nothing can sit unseen.