--- title: "Contractor KPIs: Find What Is Stalling Your Growth" description: "Compare five weekly contractor KPIs to find where leads, bookings, sold jobs, job value, or crew capacity may be holding back growth." url: "https://www.novatori.us/field-notes/contractor-kpis-find-growth-bottleneck/" source: "Markdown twin of https://www.novatori.us/field-notes/contractor-kpis-find-growth-bottleneck/ — generated for AI agents." --- Field notes # Contractor KPIs: Find What Is Stalling Your Growth Compare five weekly contractor KPIs to find where leads, bookings, sold jobs, job value, or crew capacity may be holding back growth. Published October 13, 2026 If growth has stalled, write down five numbers before changing your marketing, prices, or schedule. Compare last week with a similar earlier week. Start at leads and investigate the first meaningful drop. This points to what to check first; it does not prove a cause. A job sold last week may have started as a lead weeks earlier. ## Write down five numbers 1. **Leads received:** New qualified inquiries that came in that week. 2. **Appointments booked:** Inquiries that became a scheduled visit or call. 3. **Jobs sold:** Estimates or proposals the customer accepted. 4. **Average sold job value:** Total value of sold work divided by the number of jobs sold. 5. **Available crew hours:** Hours the crew could realistically spend on scheduled work. Pull these from your calls, messages, calendar, estimates, and job records. Count each number the same way in both weeks. If leads often take longer than a week to book, compare older weeks that have had the same amount of follow-up time. ## Compare similar weeks Choose two ordinary weeks with roughly similar conditions, rather than a holiday week and a full working week. Put the five numbers side by side in a phone note. Look for a change in your business, not an industry target. If leads fell, later counts may fall with them. If leads held steady but bookings fell, check the path from inquiry to appointment. If sold jobs fell, check how many estimates were presented before judging the sales step. ## Example: leads hold steady, bookings fall In this **hypothetical** small-crew example, one week brought in 20 leads and booked 14 appointments. A comparable week brought in 20 leads but booked 9. Available crew hours stayed steady. Bookings are the first number to investigate. Check missed calls, unanswered messages, and how long replies took. **One action this week:** Assign one person to return missed inquiries promptly. Compare bookings again next week before changing another process. ## If a different number breaks first **Leads received fell:** Check lead counts by source. **Next action:** Identify which source changed before adjusting marketing spend. The [marketing budget guide](https://www.novatori.us/field-notes/how-much-should-a-contractor-spend-on-marketing) helps connect leads with paying jobs and job value. **Appointments booked fell:** Check missed calls and unanswered inquiries. **Next action:** Give one person responsibility for returning missed inquiries for a week. For a stalled callback handoff, use the [job-records guide](https://www.novatori.us/field-notes/turn-job-records-into-weekly-decisions). **Jobs sold fell:** Check how many estimates were presented and what happened after each one. **Next action:** Review that week’s unsold estimates and choose one repeated point to address. **Average sold job value fell:** Check whether the mix of jobs or discounts changed. **Next action:** List each sold job, its value, and any discount before changing prices. The [marketing budget guide](https://www.novatori.us/field-notes/how-much-should-a-contractor-spend-on-marketing) also covers what paying jobs are worth on average. **Crew capacity is tight:** Compare scheduled work with the hours your crew can actually provide, including your own time if jobs depend on you. **Next action:** Check next week’s scheduled work against available hours before accepting more work for that week. The [systems guide](https://www.novatori.us/field-notes/systems-to-scale-past-1m) shows how to compare job hours with revenue from those jobs. If cash or profit is the concern, use the [financial health checklist](https://www.novatori.us/field-notes/trades-business-financial-health-checklist) to review profitability, cash flow, the balance sheet, receivables, and payables. ## Recheck next week Keep one note on your phone: “What slipped first? What one process did we change? Did that number improve?” Review the same five numbers next week, allowing for the time it takes a lead to become a sold job. Keep going ## Want to talk through what you just read? Tell us how your business runs today, and we’ll talk through how this applies to it. [Talk to us](https://www.novatori.us/contact)