Most of what follows is ordinary trade language. A few of them belong to this firm, and it says which. Precision matters here for one reason. A company cannot count something it has no word for.
Turnover
The moment a service technician hands a replacement opportunity to somebody else in the company, usually verbally, usually by phone. Trade term. Nearly every replacement sale begins as one.
Comfort advisor
The person who runs replacement presentations. Not a service tech. Usually commission paid, usually capped at three or four appointments a day by drive time and the length of a presentation. Trade term.
The board
The day’s dispatch schedule, and the thing being reshuffled every time a job runs long. Trade term.
Unresolved
Ours. A written estimate that is neither won nor lost in the record. It is not the same as unsold and it is not the same as lost. It means the company has no answer, which is a finding rather than an outcome.
The unsold book
Ours. Every estimate written and not sold, held as a ledger with dollars attached rather than a list in date order. The sold side of a company already has bookkeeping. This is the same discipline applied to the other side.
Explained and unexplained dollars
Ours. The unsold book split into dollars with a useful reason on record and dollars with none. The unexplained share is the number this firm cares about most, because it measures what a company does not know about its own losses.
The handoff
Ours, in this use. The two minutes after an estimate does not close, when the advisor records what stopped it, how alive it is, what happens next, when to go back, and who owns it. Small on purpose, so it actually happens.
The three endings
Ours. A sale, a useful reason, or a documented inability to get one. Every meaningful unsold estimate reaches one of the three. There is no fourth ending called nobody knows.
Recovery credit
Ours. The record that keeps the original advisor attached to a quote he documented well when it closes later through somebody else’s follow up. Kopikat Research writes the record. The company decides what it is worth.
Second contact coverage
Ours. The share of estimates in a period that got any deliberate contact after the quote went out. Measured by age, it is usually the clearest single picture of whether follow up is a process or a memory.
Reason lost
The specific, recorded cause an estimate stopped. Competitor, price, financing, timing, spouse, no response, never contacted again. Not a status. A status says where a record sits. A reason says what to do next.
Aging
How long ago an estimate was written. This firm reads piles by age because contact coverage tends to fall off a cliff on a schedule, which is the signature of a memory task rather than a bad crew.
Dead
An opportunity that has genuinely ended and should be left alone. Marking work dead is part of the job. A company that chases confirmed losses is training its own people to ignore the follow up list.
The three ceilings
Ours, loosely. Service capacity, install capacity and sales capacity are separate limits. Which one a company is touching decides what its old work is worth to it.