Note to Luis
This is the full version. Cut anything that reads as too much detail for the client. The one section not to trim is What we need from the client, because that is the part that decides whether we hit ten business days or twenty five. The build itself takes three days. Everything after that is carrier approval and client dependencies.
01
What happens, in plain terms
Zoom Lab turns on the demand. Our system makes sure not a single one of those leads goes cold, gets forgotten, or ends up calling the next roofer because nobody answered fast enough.
From the day we start to the day it is running is ten business days. The system itself is built in the first three. The rest of the window is US carrier approval for text messaging, which every business has to go through and nobody can rush. If approval comes early, so does the client.
The client is personally needed at three points across the whole thing. Everything else happens in the background.
That includes the parts most agencies push back onto the client. We file the carrier registration, we chase it, and we test the entire system end to end ourselves. The owner does not see it until it already works.
1
Discovery call
Before anything is built
One call with the owner. We are not pitching on this call. We are mapping exactly what happens today when a lead comes in, so we know what to fix and so we have a starting number to measure against in thirty days.
We will ask about:
- Service area, type of work, average job value
- What happens right now from the moment a lead comes in, and who touches it
- How many calls come in daily, and roughly how many get missed
- How long it currently takes for a human to reply to a web or Facebook lead
- What happens after hours and on weekends
- Where leads are stored today
- Close rate on estimates given, and no show rate
At the end of the call we fire a live text to the owner's own phone, so he sees the exact thing his customers would get, in under sixty seconds.
Owner time 45 min
2
Setup pack
Day 1
We send one form. The client fills it in once. The full list is in the next section.
Owner time 30 min
3
Build
Days 1 to 3
We build. The client hears from us in writing every day with a short update on what shipped, what is next, and anything we are waiting on.
The client does not need to do anything during this stage except answer the occasional question.
Owner time None
4
Testing, training, handover
Days 3 to 10
We do the testing, not the client. We run the whole system end to end ourselves first, every path, including the ones that are supposed to fail. Wrong numbers, out of area enquiries, people who never reply, no shows. Nothing goes in front of the owner until it already works.
Only once it passes do we book the acceptance call. On that call the owner runs five checks himself while we watch:
- Submits a lead through the real form on his own phone. Watches the text arrive. Notes the time.
- Calls his own business line and hangs up. Watches the missed call text arrive.
- Replies to the text, gets qualified, and books an appointment.
- Sees the appointment land on the estimator's calendar.
- Opens the dashboard and finds his own lead attributed to the right source.
That call should be uneventful, because it is a demonstration of something already proven, not the first time anyone has tried it.
Then a sixty minute recorded training for the owner and whoever runs the office, plus a private documentation site with written step by step guides.
Owner time 90 min
After handover
Thirty day watch period. We monitor real traffic daily for the first two weeks and tune the messages that are underperforming. At day thirty we sit down with the before and after numbers.
03
What we need from the client
This is the whole critical path. If these arrive on day one, we finish on time. If they trickle in over two weeks, the project takes two weeks longer. Please push for all of it in one go.
Blocking. We cannot start without these four
| What | Why we need it |
|---|
| The company EIN, plus the legal business name and registered address exactly as they appear on the IRS EIN confirmation letter |
This is the one item the whole project waits on. US phone carriers will not let a business send a single text message until it is registered, and the registration cannot be filed without the EIN. We handle the entire registration, the paperwork and any follow up. We only need the details, because the registration has to sit under the client's own legal entity, not ours. Approval takes two to seven days and nothing can text until it clears. |
| Company website address |
Same carrier registration, plus landing pages. |
| Access to the domain or DNS settings |
So business emails land in the inbox instead of spam. |
| Existing business phone number and current phone provider |
To decide whether we forward calls or move the number across. |
Needed within the first few days
| What | Why we need it |
|---|
| Google Business Profile access | So calls, messages and review requests all run through one system. |
|---|
| Facebook Business Manager and ad account access | To connect Zoom Lab's lead ads directly into the system. |
|---|
| Existing customer and lead list, or CRM export | For the reactivation campaign, and so history is not lost. |
|---|
| Logo, brand colours, and three to five job photos | So every message and page looks like their company, not a generic template. |
|---|
| Service area, either ZIP codes or a radius | So out of area enquiries get filtered out automatically instead of wasting the team's time. |
|---|
| Business hours and after hours policy | So the system responds differently at 9am and 9pm. |
|---|
| Names, mobile numbers and emails for everyone who needs a login | Account setup. |
|---|
| Estimator availability, travel time between jobs, and estimate slot length | Calendar setup. |
|---|
| A payment method for platform and usage costs | Billed at cost, direct to the client, not marked up. |
|---|
How access is handled
Every account is created in the client's company name with the client's own billing. We take admin access to build and maintain it, never ownership. If the client ever walks away, the whole system, the number, the data and the contacts go with them. Nothing is held hostage.
Credentials go into a password manager or a shared secure vault. Never over chat or email.
04
The one thing outside anyone's control
US mobile carriers must approve a business before it can send text messages. This is a legal requirement called A2P 10DLC, it applies to every business in the US, and it is not something we or the carrier can rush.
We handle all of it. We write and file the registration, we monitor it, and if it is rejected we fix it and resubmit the same day. The client's only involvement is supplying the business details, because the registration must sit under their own legal entity.
What we need from the client for this
The critical one is the EIN, the company's nine digit federal tax ID. Everything else on this list has to match the IRS record tied to that EIN.
Required. Carrier registration details
| Field | Note |
|---|
| EIN, nine digits | The company federal tax ID. Not the owner's SSN, not a state licence number. |
|---|
| Legal business name | Exactly as registered with the IRS, including Inc, LLC or Corp. Not the trading name or the name on the truck, unless they happen to be identical. |
|---|
| Registered business address | A physical address. PO boxes are rejected. |
|---|
| Business type | LLC, S Corp, C Corp, Partnership or Sole Proprietor. |
|---|
| Company website | Must be live and must describe the actual business. |
|---|
| Authorized representative | Name, job title, business email and direct phone. Usually the owner. |
|---|
The most common reason a registration is rejected
A mismatch. If the IRS has the company as "Smith Roofing and Sheet Metal LLC" and we file "Smith Roofing," it comes back rejected and the clock restarts.
The safest thing the client can do is send a photo or scan of the IRS EIN confirmation letter, the CP 575, and we take every field from that. If they cannot find it, their accountant or bookkeeper will have it, and it also appears on their business tax return.
- Normal approval takes two to seven days
- Occasionally longer, and occasionally a first submission is rejected on a technicality and has to be resubmitted
We file on day one, before anything else, so the clock runs while we build.
One knock on effect worth knowing. Because carriers block text messages from unregistered businesses, the text messaging part of the system cannot be fully tested until approval lands. So we test in two passes: everything that does not depend on texting is tested while the clock runs, and the texting is certified the day approval comes through.
Set this expectation early
If approval is still pending at day nine, the owner still gets his acceptance call on schedule, run on everything that is working, plus a short second call for the texting the day it clears. Nothing waits.
This is much better heard on day one than on day fourteen.
05
How we work together during the build
| When | What |
|---|
| Daily | A short written update posted to a shared channel. What shipped, what is next, anything we are waiting on. |
|---|
| Weekly | One live call in a fixed slot that works across both time zones. We demo what is working, not slides about what is planned. |
|---|
| Anytime | Blockers go straight to Luis. |
|---|
Paul AI Solutions works from the Philippines, UTC+8. We will lock one recurring weekly slot that lands in the client's business morning, and everything else runs in writing so time zones never slow anything down.
Anything in the signed proposal is included. Anything outside it gets quoted separately as a change order before any work starts. Most commonly that means job and production management, material ordering, crew scheduling, invoicing, accounting integrations, aerial measurement tools, insurance supplement writing, or a website rebuild.
This is not us being rigid. It is how the ten days stays a real number.
Two checkpoints. We clear the first one on our own, before the client is ever scheduled.
Checkpoint one, our testing
Every one of these verified by us, with timestamped evidence, before the acceptance call is booked.
- 01A test lead from an unknown phone gets a branded text in under sixty seconds.
- 02A missed call to the business line triggers a text back in under sixty seconds.
- 03A booked estimate lands on the estimator's calendar with confirmations and reminders firing.
- 04A no show automatically triggers the rebooking sequence.
- 05Every failure path behaves. People who never reply get chased on schedule, out of area enquiries are closed out cleanly, and nothing sends outside legal contact hours.
- 06The dashboard shows which source produced the lead.
- 07Carrier approval is confirmed, or the fallback plan is agreed in writing.
- 08Every test record is deleted, so the client starts on a clean system.
Checkpoint two, the acceptance call
The owner runs his five checks and all five pass first time. Then training is completed and the documentation site is delivered.
All of checkpoint one, or the acceptance call does not get booked.