Contractor Slow Season: What to Do When the Phone Stops Ringing

Every trade has a dead stretch. For roofers and painters and landscapers it's usually winter. For HVAC guys it's the shoulder months in spring and fall. For remodelers it might be right after the holidays. The calendar changes by trade, but the feeling is the same. The phone goes quiet, the crew starts asking about hours, and you start doing math on how many weeks the bank account can handle.

Most guys handle this one of two ways. They panic and drop their price to grab anything, or they sit and wait for the phone and tell themselves it'll pick up. Neither one works great. Here's what actually does.

Quick answer

Slow season is the best time to collect work you already earned. Go back through every quote you sent in the last six months and follow up on the ones that never got a yes or a no. Call past customers and ask what else needs doing. Book spring and summer jobs now with a small deposit. Raise your rates for the busy months instead of discounting the slow ones. And fix your follow-up so the next slow season is shorter than this one.

Start with the quotes sitting in your truck

Pull up every estimate you sent since spring. Not just the recent ones. All of them.

Odds are good you've got a pile of quotes where the customer said "let me think about it" or "we'll get back to you" and then nothing. Maybe you followed up once. Maybe you never did because the busy season ate your time.

Some of those people hired somebody else. Some of them got scared off by the price and are still thinking about it. Some of them hit a snag, a money problem or a spouse who wasn't sold, and the job is just parked. A real percentage of that pile is still alive. You only find out by asking.

We wrote a whole post on this, how to re-engage old quotes. The short version is a text like this:

"Hey Mike, it's Dan from Dan's Roofing. I sent you a number back in July for the garage roof. Slow time of year for me so I've got room on the schedule if you're still thinking about it. No pressure either way."

That text costs you nothing and it's honest. It's slow, you have room. A lot of people reply to that who never replied to the first three messages, because the timing changed for them too.

Call the people who already like you

Your cheapest customer is the one who already paid you and was happy. There's no trust to build and no price shopping. They just need a reason to think of you.

Go through last year's and this year's finished jobs and call or text them. Don't open with "do you need anything." Open with something specific.

"Hey Sarah, it's Dan. Been thinking about your deck from last year. Wanted to see how the stain is holding up and if you want me to take a look before winter hits."

Maybe nothing needs doing. Maybe they say "now that you mention it, the gutters on the back have been dripping." That's a job. We've got more on this in how to get repeat work from past customers.

While you're on the phone, ask for a name. "Know anybody else who's been putting off work like this?" Slow season is when people actually have time to chat, and a referral from a happy customer closes easier than any ad. There's more on asking in how to ask customers for referrals.

Book the spring work now

A lot of homeowners start thinking about spring projects in January and February, then panic in April when every contractor is booked for six weeks. You can get ahead of that.

If you quoted someone who said they want to wait until spring, now is when you lock it in. Offer a start date in the spring and a small deposit to hold it. Something like 10 percent usually feels fair to customers and it makes the job real for both sides. If you haven't got a good way to ask, how to ask for a deposit walks through the wording.

And if somebody already told you they want to wait, you've probably got a few of those sitting in your notes. We covered what to say in customer wants to wait until spring. The trick is to follow up before spring, not in the middle of it when they've already called three other people.

Don't drop your price

This is the one that hurts the most. You're slow, you're nervous, a customer says your number is high, and you knock 15 percent off just to get something on the books.

Here's the problem. That customer now knows your real number is lower than what you quoted. And when the busy season comes back, you'll have a calendar full of jobs you priced like you were desperate, right when you could have been picking the good ones.

If you need to offer something, offer timing. "I can do it for the number I quoted, and if you're flexible on the dates I can start it next week while I have the open schedule." That gives them something real without cutting your margin. Flexible dates are worth money to you in a slow stretch, so trade for that, not for a discount.

Slow season is also the right time to think about raising your prices for the busy months. You have the time to sit down and figure out what you really need to charge. Do it now, write down the new numbers, and use them on the first quote you send in spring.

Keep the crew and yourself paid

If you have guys, the slow season is when you find out if you've got a business or just a busy summer. A couple of things help.

Look for work that doesn't depend on the weather or on new customers. Punch lists on old jobs, warranty callbacks, small repairs, maintenance contracts. Interior work for an exterior trade, if you can do it. Shop time to build things ahead, like cabinets, trim packages or fence panels.

Think about whether you can offer a small maintenance or inspection package. A roofer who walks a roof twice a year for a flat fee has income in the winter. An HVAC company with maintenance agreements has the same thing, and that's why the good ones push them so hard.

If it's just you, this is a good time to do the stuff you've been putting off. Fix the truck. Reorganize the shop. Update your estimate template. Get your insurance paperwork in order. None of that makes money today, but all of it saves time when you're slammed.

Use the quiet time to fix what lost you jobs

Pull up your numbers for the year. How many quotes did you send? How many turned into jobs? Where did the others go?

A lot of contractors find the same thing when they look. Plenty of those jobs weren't lost on price. They were lost because the customer went quiet and nobody followed up. Three or four weeks went by, the customer picked someone who called back, and that was that.

If that's you, the cheapest fix for next slow season is to stop leaking in the busy one. Write down a simple rule. Every quote gets a follow-up the next day, again after three days, again after a week, and once more after two. You can read how to space those out in how many times to follow up on a quote.

It sounds like a lot when you're slammed. That's exactly why it doesn't happen.

A short version

Pull every unanswered quote from the last six months and text them. Call past customers with something specific. Book spring work early with a small deposit. Hold your price and trade on timing instead. Keep the crew busy with callbacks, repairs and shop work. Then look at where quotes died this year and fix it before next busy season.

The part that slips

The reason slow season hurts so much is that the quotes you sent in June and July got lost in the rush. You meant to follow up. You had a roof to finish.

That's the gap QuoteChaser is built for. It follows up on every quote automatically, in your own voice, a day later, a few days later and a week later, and it keeps going on the ones that go quiet. When someone writes back, it pings your phone so you can take it from there. Your pipeline stays warm all year, including the months when you're too busy to think about it.

Join the QuoteChaser waitlist and stop finding out in January which quotes you forgot in July.