Glossary
Terms worth knowing
Plain definitions for the words that come up around estimate recovery and lead follow-up. No jargon for its own sake.
- Database reactivation
- Working a business's own list of past, unclosed leads to book new appointments, instead of buying fresh ones. For a contractor, the database is the pile of estimates that never closed. Reactivation is the practice of contacting those people again with a reason to move.
- Dead estimate (dormant estimate)
- A quote a contractor wrote that never turned into a job and has gone quiet. Most shops write far more estimates than they close, and the unclosed ones usually sit with no follow-up scheduled. A dead estimate is not always a lost sale. Often it stalled on one fixable thing.
- Holdout group (control group)
- A share of a list, chosen at random, that is deliberately not contacted so the results of the contacted group can be measured against it. Without a holdout, you cannot tell the jobs a campaign caused from the jobs that would have closed anyway. Second Swing holds back 20% as standard.
- Objection category
- The reason a sale stalled, used to decide how to follow up. Common categories in HVAC replacement are price, financing, timing, comparing quotes, spouse or partner decision, repair versus replace, and already bought elsewhere. The category, not a generic script, drives the message.
- Speed to lead
- How quickly a business responds once someone shows interest. Interest fades fast, so a callback in minutes tends to close far better than one hours later. In recovery work, speed to lead is why a booked callback has to reach a salesperson while the person is still warm.
- A2P 10DLC
- Application-to-person messaging over standard 10-digit long-code numbers. US carriers require a business to register its brand and campaign before it can send these texts reliably. Registration, along with quiet-hours limits and opt-out handling, is what keeps business texting compliant.