AskAdodo

AskAdodo You are doing some amazing work and we'd love to be part of your team. We have a few ideas that we'd like to get your opinion on.

If you're up for that here's our calendar http://askadodo.link/meet or call us on 0800 849 3333.

Stop for a second and think about Saturday night. It's 8:17pm.You're finally off the clock, feet up, maybe halfway throu...
24/09/2026

Stop for a second and think about Saturday night. It's 8:17pm.

You're finally off the clock, feet up, maybe halfway through a film. Meanwhile, someone's boiler has just packed in, or they've spotted a leak coming through the ceiling.

They grab their phone and start searching. They find you.

They send an enquiry. And then...

nothing. Because it's Saturday night, and you'll get to it Monday morning.

So what do they do? They go straight back to Google and message the next business on the list.

By Monday, the customer you already paid to attract belongs to someone else. That's not a marketing problem.

That's a speed problem. And it's quietly costing SMEs a fortune.

Here's the good news. You don't need to hire night staff or chain yourself to your phone at midnight.

You just need to keep the momentum going the moment interest strikes. And the first reply doesn't have to close the sale.

Nobody expects a roofer up on the roof at 10pm. The job is much simpler than that.

Acknowledge the person. Ask a couple of quick questions.

Collect what you need. Agree the next step.

Look at the difference: Business A: 'We aim to respond within 24 to 48 hours.' Business B: 'Thanks for getting in touch.

Can I ask a couple of quick questions so we can get the right person to contact you?' Which one wins the job?

You already know. Now let's talk about the blind spot most owners never even see.

Missed calls. People don't leave voicemails any more.

They hang up and ring someone else. Your phone system just records two words: Missed call.

That could be a £100 job. It could be a £10,000 one.

You'll never know, because the conversation never happened. A simple automated message changes that.

'Sorry we couldn't answer. How can we help?

' Suddenly the door is open again. But speed alone isn't enough.

You also need to filter. Not every enquiry deserves a human straight away.

Tyre-kickers will happily eat your whole afternoon on quotes they'll never accept. Let technology handle the early questions, things like need, location, timing, budget, and how ready they actually are.

Save your expensive human hours for the people who are genuinely ready to buy. And then there's follow-up.

This is where revenue quietly dies. The difference between 'No' and 'Not yet' is enormous.

But without a proper process, both look exactly the same. Nothing happens.

A CRM isn't a follow-up strategy. Too often it's just a very sophisticated filing cabinet full of customers you didn't win.

Every opportunity needs a next action. Every quote needs a follow-up.

Every missed call should trigger something. People forget, not because they're incompetent, but because they're busy.

Picture the business that never forgets. Follow-ups go out.

Ageing quotes get chased. Missed callers get a message.

Review requests land at the right moment. All of it handled systematically, whether you're on the tools, in a meeting, or asleep.

That's the business I'd want to run. And it's closer than you think.

So here's your next step. Scroll back through last week's enquiries and count how many went cold because the reply came too late.

Just count them. That number is your opportunity.

Don't let another weekend of missed messages hand your hard-earned customers to a competitor. Let's make it happen.

Where did your last five customers actually come from? Not where you think.Not what your agency's report says. I mean wh...
21/09/2026

Where did your last five customers actually come from? Not where you think.

Not what your agency's report says. I mean which activity genuinely put money in your bank account.

Most business owners I talk to can't answer that question. And that's the problem.

Here's what I've learned after years of watching small businesses spend money on marketing. We get obsessed with the wrong numbers.

Clicks. Views.

Impressions. Engagement.

None of that pays your bills. You can't pay wages with impressions.

Your landlord won't accept LinkedIn engagement as rent. And I promise you, HMRC doesn't care that your last video got 12,000 views.

The only number that matters is whether it produced business. But here's where it gets interesting.

The problem usually isn't that you're missing data. It's that the data lives in ten different places and nobody's connecting it.

Google tells one story. Your website tells another.

Your CRM has its own version. Then there's the phone calls, the emails, the people who just walk in.

Without joining those dots, you're collecting statistics. You're not measuring marketing.

Now let me show you where the real money goes missing. Say you spend £2,000 on a campaign.

You get 20 enquiries. You convert four of them.

What's your first instinct? Probably: 'We need more leads.

' But hold on. What happened to the other 16?

Did anyone follow up? How quickly?

Were their calls answered? Are they sitting in a database somewhere, forgotten?

If you don't know why you're losing them, spending another £2,000 might just create another 16 disappearances. That's not growth.

That's an expensive leak. And it's usually the leak nobody checks.

We focus on getting found. We forget that the battle continues after someone raises their hand.

Think about your own behaviour as a customer. When you're ready to buy, who do you choose?

Usually whoever responds first. Speed matters.

Follow-up matters. These aren't just sales metrics.

They're marketing metrics. There's also the reputation piece.

Picture three businesses. One has 27 reviews.

Another has 143. The third has 286 recent reviews with an excellent rating.

Which one feels safer to you? If you serve 50 happy customers every month but only collect two reviews, you don't have a satisfaction problem.

You have a process problem. So here's what I'd do if I were you.

Grab a pen. Write down your last five new customers.

For each one, trace the path. How did they find you?

What made them reach out? How fast did you respond?

How many interactions before they bought? That exercise alone will teach you more than any dashboard.

Then pick a handful of numbers to track properly. Genuine opportunities.

Where they came from. Response speed.

Follow-up rate. Conversion rate.

Average customer value. Cost to generate.

That's it. That's your marketing measurement.

Everything else is noise. Don't let another month go by measuring activity while your bank account wonders where the customers went.

Start connecting the dots. Your marketing spend will thank you.

Let's make it happen.

"What is ONE new customer worth?If you don't know that number, it's very difficult to know what you should spend acquiri...
18/09/2026

"What is ONE new customer worth?

If you don't know that number, it's very difficult to know what you should spend acquiring one.

That's where proper growth planning starts.

Message VALUE."

Stop. Before you post that job advert, answer this question honestly.Is your team actually short-staffed? Or are you jus...
17/09/2026

Stop. Before you post that job advert, answer this question honestly.

Is your team actually short-staffed? Or are you just drowning in repetitive work that shouldn't need a human at all?

I've seen it happen in dozens of small businesses. You win a few new clients, the enquiries start rolling in, and suddenly everyone's running around like headless chickens.

The default reaction is always the same. "We need to hire someone.

" But here's the thing nobody wants to hear. Sometimes hiring is just making an inefficient process bigger.

Let me give you a real example. A while back I spoke to an accountancy firm where the senior partners were spending hours every week answering basic admin questions.

These are qualified accountants, mind you. People with years of training and expertise.

Answering questions about how to reset a password or where to find a specific form. That's expensive administration.

And it's not just accountancy. I've seen business owners chasing their own quotations instead of building relationships.

Sales teams doing manual data entry that could be automated in an afternoon. The work needs doing.

But it doesn't need to be done by that person. So here's a different question to ask yourself.

Instead of "where can we use AI?" try this one.

"Where are we paying people to do work that doesn't actually require a person?" That reframe changes everything.

Now, I want to be clear about something. This isn't about getting rid of people.

Far from it. The goal isn't to figure out how many jobs you can cut.

The goal is to figure out how much more valuable work your existing team could be doing. Let technology handle the repetitive stuff.

Let automation handle the predictable processes. Let AI handle the routine questions.

And let your people do what people do best. Build relationships.

Solve unusual problems. Negotiate.

Create. Advise.

Close business. Personal service is often the greatest advantage a small business has.

Technology should strengthen it, not replace it. But before you automate anything, simplify first.

Most small businesses I work with have accumulated software like clutter in a garage. A CRM over here.

Email marketing over there. A review system, a chat tool, a scheduling app, a reporting dashboard, a call tracking service.

Each one costs somewhere between £50 and £200 a month. Individually they seem reasonable.

Together they're a small fortune. And they create complexity through different logins, different suppliers, different contracts, and different data sets that never quite talk to each other.

If you can take three systems and make them one, you've just reduced your management overhead, your training time, your duplication, and your failure points. That's before you've automated a single thing.

Then pick one problem. Just one.

Measure what it currently costs you in time and money. Automate it.

Measure the results. Then move to the next one.

Don't launch a six-month "digital transformation programme" that nobody ever finishes. That's how you burn money and goodwill without changing anything that matters.

Here's a quick test you can run right now. Imagine your marketing suddenly works brilliantly.

Enquiries go up by 20%. Would you be delighted?

Or would everyone panic? If you couldn't answer every enquiry promptly, follow up every quotation, onboard new clients properly, and maintain your service standards, then your constraint isn't demand.

It's capacity. And spending more on lead generation before you fix that could actually make things worse.

So before you approve that next job vacancy, do one thing. Spend an hour examining your business.

Look for the sentence "we've always done it that way." That's often where the opportunity is hiding.

You might not have a people shortage. You might have a process problem.

And the good news? Process problems are usually cheaper to fix than people problems.

Don't let another week go by with everyone running at full speed on work that shouldn't need them. Take that hour.

Look at where the real bottleneck is. Then take action.

Let's make it happen.

Choose your biggest local competitor.Now ask: where exactly are they beating you online?Don't guess. Measure it.If you'd...
17/09/2026

Choose your biggest local competitor.

Now ask: where exactly are they beating you online?

Don't guess. Measure it.

If you'd like some in-depth analysis send me a DM with the word COMPETE.

100 visitors. 8 enquiries. 2 customers.The interesting question isn't: “How do we get 200 visitors?”It might be: “What h...
16/09/2026

100 visitors. 8 enquiries. 2 customers.

The interesting question isn't: “How do we get 200 visitors?”

It might be: “What happened to the other 98?”

That's a Growth Gap.

We've got an app for that. Message 'Website'

New enquiry arrives at 10:04. You reply at 4:30. Another company replied at 10:07.Guess who probably got the appointment...
15/09/2026

New enquiry arrives at 10:04. You reply at 4:30. Another company replied at 10:07.

Guess who probably got the appointment?

Marketing doesn't finish when the lead arrives.

Does your speed to lead need fixing? If so, we are here to help.

Someone rang me last week in a right flap. "We need more leads," she said."The pipeline's gone quiet." So I asked her a ...
14/09/2026

Someone rang me last week in a right flap. "We need more leads," she said.

"The pipeline's gone quiet." So I asked her a simple question.

How many people enquired last month? Silence.

Then: "I'd have to check." Here's the thing.

I've been that person. A few years back I threw a couple of grand at ads because I was convinced my problem was visibility.

The enquiries came in, sure. But the sales didn't.

I'd basically paid to find more people who wouldn't buy from me. That's what I now call a growth gap.

It's the leak between someone noticing you and someone actually handing over their money. And you can't see it if you're only staring at traffic, followers, and rankings.

Let me show you why more leads often makes things worse. Say 100 people find you.

10 get in touch. 3 buy.

Double your marketing and you get 6 customers, but you've also doubled your costs and your workload. Now imagine you'd spent that same energy working out why 7 of those 10 enquiries walked away.

You might get 5 customers from the same 10 enquiries. Same effort.

Better result. Most owners answer every problem with "we need more marketing.

" But there isn't one gap. There are at least five.

Can people even find you? If they do, do they trust you enough?

How fast do you reply? Do you chase the ones who said "let me think about it"?

And when you're finally talking, do they buy? Each one needs a different fix.

None of them is solved by a bigger ad budget. And before anyone mentions TikTok, no.

You don't need to be on TikTok. You need to know where your leak is.

Here's your job this week. Sit down for 30 minutes with a pen.

Write down one real number: how many more customers you want each month. Not "more.

" A number. Then work backwards.

How many enquiries does that take? How many of those do you actually follow up?

How many vanish without explanation? You don't need perfect data.

You just need enough to spot the biggest hole. If you can't say how many opportunities you generate, how many convert, or where the rest disappear, you don't have a marketing problem.

You've got a measurement problem. Fix the gap first.

Then go get more leads. In that order.

Don't spend another penny on marketing until you know which of the five gaps is costing you. Find the constraint before you buy the solution.

Let's make it happen.

Try asking ChatGPT: “Who are the best [your service] companies near me?”Does your business appear?AI is becoming another...
14/09/2026

Try asking ChatGPT: “Who are the best [your service] companies near me?”

Does your business appear?

AI is becoming another place where customers make buying decisions.

Message AI and we'll send over your FREE audit.

Your rating: 4.9Your competitor: 4.7Easy win? Not if you have 24 reviews and they have 327.Customers judge more than sta...
11/09/2026

Your rating: 4.9
Your competitor: 4.7

Easy win? Not if you have 24 reviews and they have 327.

Customers judge more than stars.

Comment REVIEWS.

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