Intake Questions That Filter the Wrong Customers

A bad customer costs more than they pay. They pay late, so you spend unbilled hours chasing the invoice. They expand the job after you’ve quoted it, so your real hourly rate drops with every “while you’re at it.” And when you finally push back, they hold the one-star review over your head. The profit on the job was never there — it just took six weeks to find out.

The fix is not a tougher contract or a better collections process. It’s a filter, and the filter is the intake conversation — the five minutes on the phone before you quote anything. Once you’ve driven out, measured, and written a quote, you’ve invested too much to say no. Before that, saying no costs you nothing.

The five questions

Write these in your own words and keep them next to the phone:

1. Tell me about the job — walk me through what you're picturing.
2. When do you need it done?
3. What budget range are you working with?
4. How did you find us?
5. Have you worked with someone like us on this before? How did it go?

Each one is doing a specific job.

The job. You’re listening for whether they can define what they want. A clear answer means a quotable job. “Some stuff in the kitchen, and maybe a few other things” is the seed of scope creep — pin it down now or it pins you down later.

The timeline. Separates a real deadline from a panic. Both can be fine; they’re priced differently.

The budget range. Owners skip this one because it feels rude. It isn’t — it’s the most respectful question on the list, because it stops you from wasting an hour of their time on a quote that was never in range. The script:

"So I don't waste your time quoting something that's out of range —
what budget did you have in mind? Even a rough range helps. If we're
not the right fit, I can usually point you toward someone who is."

Most people answer. A customer who refuses to discuss money before the work starts is showing you exactly how the invoice conversation will go.

How did you find us. This one doubles as your entire marketing tracker. Keep a tally — after three months you’ll know whether your work comes from referrals, Google, or social, and that tally is the data that decides whether posting earns its hours on page 3.6.

Have you worked with someone like us before. The serial-firer tell. You’re not asking to be polite — you’re listening for what they say about the last person.

The red flags, as rules

Don’t trust your judgment in the moment; you’ll be optimistic. Decide the rules now and follow them later:

• “The last three people were terrible” → decline. The common factor in all three stories is on the phone with you, and you will be the fourth story.
• Haggling before scope is settled → decline, or take the job with full payment up front. Negotiating a detailed quote is normal. Haggling before you’ve even defined the job is a preview of every invoice.
• Urgency plus vagueness (“I need it ASAP, I’m not sure exactly what”) → your deposit doubles. Urgency is fine. Urgency that can’t define the job is how you end up rebuilding the scope for free at 7 p.m.
• Won’t give any budget range at all → quote at the top of your range, in writing, with the scope nailed down line by line. Or pass.

The decline scripts

Declining doesn’t require reasons, debate, or honesty about why. Two scripts cover everything.

The busy decline:

"Thanks for thinking of us. We're booked out right now, and I don't
want to commit to a timeline I can't hit. If anything opens up,
I'll reach out."

The not-a-fit referral-out:

"I don't think we're the right fit for this one — it's outside what
we do best. [Name] at [company] handles exactly this kind of job.
Tell them I sent you."

Neither burns a bridge. Neither invites negotiation. And “booked” is true the moment you decide your remaining hours belong to better work — which is what you’re deciding.

Why declining feels impossible in year one — and the math of why it isn’t

In year one, every lead feels like rent. Turning one down feels like setting money on fire. So run the actual numbers on a bad project once, and keep them where you can see them.

Say you take an $1,800 job you had doubts about. You quoted it at 12 hours — $150 an hour, on your floor. The “while you’re at its” push it to 18 hours. The invoice goes 6 weeks late, and running the full chase sequence from page 2.2 costs another hour and a half of reminders and one awkward call. At the end, they argue $200 off “for the inconvenience.”

Final score: $1,600 for 19.5 hours. That’s $82 an hour — close to half your rate — before you count the energy tax: the carefully worded texts drafted at 9 p.m., the dread when their name lights up your phone, the attention that didn’t go to your good customers that month. A declined lead costs you the quote you never wrote. A bad customer costs you the margin on the next two good ones.

The 30-minute setup

Write your five questions in your own words. Add your three red-flag rules. Tape it next to where you answer the phone, and run every new lead through it before you quote. The whole system is 30 minutes once, and from then on it removes work — the quotes you don’t write, the invoices you don’t chase, the reviews you don’t have to talk anyone down from.