We understand small businesses, because we've run them.
Cobalt is not anybody's first business.
My name is Leon Smith. I have spent about twenty-five years running small companies. A career in recruitment first, then a construction company, then haulage. I have built some and I have lost some, and I have started again more than once.
What I know about missing enquiries, I know because I missed them. Not occasionally. Regularly, for years, while believing I was on top of it.
There is no team of consultants behind me and I am not going to pretend there is. It is me, and software I have built and tested on my own businesses first.
Why now. Because the tools finally got good enough that one person can build the sort of system that used to need a department.
None of that is a technology problem. It is a Tuesday problem. You were busy.
Where the twenty-five years went
- RecruitmentA career of it. Learned what happens to a business that lives or dies on returning a phone call.
- ConstructionQuotes, variations, materials, margin. And the ones that never got sent.
- HaulageJobs booked and forgotten, paperwork on a van dashboard, invoices raised weeks late.
- CobaltBuilt to close the three holes that were in every one of them.
Built from problems I hit over and over in my own businesses, and tested on our own systems before it goes near yours. The receptionist you can ring on this site is the same one you would get.
If you want to know whether I understand this.
Three that I lost. Not to a competitor, and not on price.
The dashboard
Receipts and job sheets on the dashboard of my van, somewhere around eight thousand pounds of finished work waiting to be invoiced. I still cannot tell you the exact number.
The pickup
I agreed a pharmaceutical collection, then got pulled onto a forty-eight hour emergency and forgot it. They rang. They messaged. I never heard from them again.
The terrace
Two thousand pounds of tiling. He chased the quote twice and both times I said I was waiting on the tile price. I wasn't. I just hadn't written it.
Nobody outpriced me on any of those. I lost them to disorganisation, and that is the only kind of loss you can fix with a system.
More leads won't fix a leaking bucket.
Stop losing the enquiries you already get, then decide whether you need more.
More leads at the top.
Exciting, expensive and slow to prove. If enquiries fall through today, doubling them doubles what falls through.
Fixing the leak first.
Cheaper, faster, and you can actually prove it happened, because the enquiry either got answered or it did not. Then, if you still want more leads, at least they land somewhere that holds them.
The scarce thing isn't hours. It's attention. The problem isn't that you haven't got time. It's that the business is running in your head all day, on a Saturday, and on holiday.
That is what we are actually selling. Hours saved is a side effect.
You don't have to take our word for any of it.
Everything below can be tried or read before you speak to anybody.
What you can check today
- A receptionist you can ring right now and test
- A check that gives you a figure out of your own numbers
- Prices on the website, in public
Stop carrying your business around in your head.
Fifteen minutes, free, and you watch the thing running rather than hear about it. If it looks useful you can go further, and if it doesn't you have lost a quarter of an hour.
Or take the two-minute check first. If you would rather go through your own numbers properly, the longer forty-five minute audit is free as well. Or ring 07401 200177 and speak to the receptionist yourself.