A customer decides they need something done and starts looking. They will typically contact three businesses, and they will do so in a short burst - a form, a message, a call, within a few minutes of each other. What happens next is not usually a careful comparison. The first business to reply with a real response from a real person has an enormous advantage, and in a great many cases the customer simply stops looking, because the need is now being dealt with and continuing to shop is an effort with no obvious payoff. The other two businesses receive no signal at all. They will never know they were in a race.
This is uncomfortable because it means a great deal of work is won and lost on something that has nothing to do with being good at the job. A business that is better, cheaper and more experienced can lose steadily to one that answers the phone. And it explains an experience most owners will recognise: the sense of being busy, doing good work, and yet somehow not converting enquiries, with no evident reason why. The reason is not visible from inside, because the enquiry that went elsewhere looks identical to the enquiry that was never serious.
What counts as replying is worth being precise about, because the instinct is to wait until you can answer properly. A full answer is not required and waiting for one is the mistake. What matters is that a person responds, acknowledges the specific thing they asked about, and says what happens next and when. I can come and look on Thursday morning, or I will have a price for you tomorrow, or I do not do that but this is who does. Any of those ends the customer's search. A silence of two days, followed by a detailed and carefully prepared quote, frequently arrives after the decision has been made.
The practical version does not require being available constantly, which is neither possible nor healthy. It requires a decision about when enquiries are checked and answered - twice a day at fixed times is enough for most trades, and is very much better than whenever there is a gap. It requires that the reply come from a person rather than an automatic acknowledgment, which customers correctly read as no response at all. And it requires accepting that a short reply now beats a complete one later. That is the whole of it, and it is worth more than most of what gets spent on finding new customers, because these ones had already found you.