What are we doing ABOUT THIS PROBLEM

Smoothe

My big problem is why cant they make sure the customers only contacted 1 pro at a time , that way its easier for a pro to win the job its real bad and sad at the same time, LETS TAKE IT TO TIKTOK

MarcNH

I haven;t had a legitimate lead since April. 90% of the leads I get never answer the phone or a text message…Starting to wonder if all the leads are legitimate…

DustiO

@Smoothe It's up to the customer if they'd like to get more than one bid (pretty common for folks to get 2-3 bids for a job, no matter where they are going to find their contractor). Thumbtack does limit the number of pros a customer can reach out to within the first few hours, however. That being said, having been a Thumbtack pro myself for several years, I know it can be really frustrating when a customer reaches out and then ends up going with another pro! I wanted to take a look at your account to see if I could offer any tips, but the email address attached to your Community login leads to a customer account and not a pro account - if you want to DM me your pro account email address I would be more than happy to take a look! But, some basic pointers would be:

• Be sure you are responding quickly, as this greatly increases your chance of winning the job
• Get as many reviews as you can - you are able to have 10 reviews from outside Thumbtack appear on your profile, which is a great way to boost that number and help your profile stand out to potential customers
• Add a lot of pictures - especially before and afters if you have them. And, add them to your featured projects section too
• Complete all of the FAQ section on your profile and also make sure that your intro, especially the first couple of sentences, is really on point - since that shows up in the initial search results too, and it's a great way to make a good first impression

You can hear a lot of great tips from some of Thumbtack's top pros who were on a panel at our Pro Summit last week. The recap post is here and the full panel is linked there as well.

@MarcNH ugh I am so sorry to hear this, I can imagine this must be so frustrating. I was able to take a quick look at your profile and first of all, amazing to see that you have been on Thumbtack for a really long time! I can offer a few suggestions (feel free to ignore me if you've already tried these things!)

• We recently added this personalized performance page, which offers a lot of great insights
  • You can look at things like where you are ranking and how to improve that, and how you compare to other pros in the area
• You could try playing around with your max lead prices, even if just bumping them up slightly to see if that impacts your visibility and the number of leads you see coming in
• If you receive a lead which you believe is not legitimate/you believe it to be a scam/spam lead, be sure to report it. We have systems in place to catch these, but they are not 100%. You do that right in the messenger in your Thumbtack app - it's the three dots in the thread (screenshot below).

• We also had a great discussion around the topic of non-responsive customers in a recent CommuniTEA session and the group of pros had some really amazing tips for how they have been able to get customers to respond. Here are all of the tips they shared:
  • Refresh your profile intro once a month using chatgpt, to mix it up and test what resonates more with customers (from @1_gold_hands, a handyman who has grown to 7 locations using Thumbtack)
  • Reach out via the Thumbtack messenger, and then text and call - different pros suggested different timing that works for them like text immediately, call after 1 hr or 2 hrs, etc (several pros suggested this one)
  • Leave the message on a positive note and follow up with "nurture campaigns" - reaching out to customers every 30 days/60 days/etc with a refresher message (both @ShaquealThomas and @SOUNIQUE007 use this tactic and have multiple customers hire them at later dates)
  • Try a contest/sweepstakes - tell them even if they have used another pro and don’t need your services they can gift it to someone else! But put a deadline on it to add some urgency
  • Leave on a positive note, leave all of your contact info if they come back later (from @ShaquealThomas)
  • Message people during off time like evenings and weekends, when they will have time to respond to the message right when they see the notification, vs if they are at work) (from @AR2i, who has had a lot of success using this tactic)
  • Send them a note with all of the services you offer, in case they have already figured out that job, they can return later to hire you for other things (also from @1_gold_hands)
• Last, but certainly not least, we did just have the Pro Summit with a lot of great tips, especially during the pro panel. The recap post is here and the full panel is linked there as well (linked above, but figured I'd add it here too).

Hope some of this will help, even if just a little! Let me know!