Missed call text back for fencing contractors: the quote request you never saw.

Fencing is priced by the metre after somebody has looked at the site, so nearly every enquiry is a genuine job rather than a question. There is very little noise in a fencing phone line.

That is unusual. Plenty of trades field calls that turn out to be nothing, so a missed one is a coin toss. A fencing enquiry is somebody who has decided they want a fence and is now choosing who measures it.

The other side of it is that the customer is collecting quotes rather than booking. They will speak to three businesses, and the sequence in which they do that shapes the outcome more than most contractors realise.

Meanwhile you are on a site with a post driver running, which is not a place anybody takes a phone call.

The first quote becomes the reference point. Whoever measures first sets the scope and the price the other two are compared against, and that is a real advantage.

A customer with no quotes has no idea what a fence costs. The first contractor to walk the boundary explains the options, the materials and why it costs what it does, and everything afterwards is judged against that explanation.

Arriving third is a weaker position even with a better price, because by then the customer has a fixed idea of the job and is asking you to price somebody else's version of it.

Being first is largely a function of who replies first, which is a function of what happens when your phone rings out.

In clusters. After storms, at the start of the warmer months, and after a neighbour has a fence done, and almost never spread evenly.

Storm weeks are the extreme version. Half a suburb needs the same work at once, everybody rings everybody, and the contractors who answer take the season.

The clustering also means the quiet-month call log understates the problem. Judge it on the busiest month you have had, not on this one.

What is specific to fencing

• The enquiries are real.

  Almost every call is a job, because nobody idly researches fencing.

• They cluster after weather.

  A storm week produces a season's worth of calls in days.

• The first quote anchors the job.

  Order of contact matters more than in trades that book rather than quote.

A call that rings out triggers a text within seconds saying you are on a job and asking where the fence is and roughly how long, so you can plan quoting runs rather than lose the enquiry.

The practical benefit for fencing is the batching. Knowing the addresses means you can quote four jobs in one afternoon in one part of town instead of driving across the city for each one.

It quotes nothing. Fencing cannot be priced without a look, and anything that implies otherwise creates an argument later.

What it does not do

• It does not answer the phone.

  Somebody who wants to talk it through right now still cannot.

• It cannot text a landline.

  Those calls alert you directly instead.

• It does not price the job.

  It gets you the address and the rough scope so the visit is worth making.