The Two-Month Window

The average person starts calling moving companies about 8 weeks before their move date.

This isn't a guess. I looked at inquiry data from dozens of moving companies across different markets. The pattern is consistent: people call in early February for an April move. Late March for late May. They're planning ahead.

What's interesting is what happens after that initial call.

The Death Rate

Moving companies track their close rate: the percentage of inquiries that turn into bookings. The average is around 20-25%. Some companies do better, some worse, but most fall in that range.

Which means 75-80% of leads don't convert.

At first, that sounds like a competition problem. They went with someone else. But when you dig into the data, something else shows up.

Most leads - over half - just go silent. They don't say no. They don't book a competitor. They request a quote, maybe ask a few questions, then disappear. No response to follow-ups. No callback. Just gone.

The assumption is they're not interested anymore. But here's what's actually happening: they haven't decided yet.

The Timeline Problem

Think about how people shop for movers. They start early because they're planners. They get 3-5 quotes. They compare prices, read reviews, maybe ask friends for recommendations. This process takes time.

But moving companies operate on immediate sales cycles. Lead comes in, you quote them, maybe follow up once or twice, then you move on. If they don't book within a week, they're marked as "dead" and you focus on new leads.

The mismatch is obvious: the customer is on an 8-week timeline, the company is on a 1-week timeline.

So what looks like a dead lead is often just a lead that's still in research mode. They got your quote. They're comparing it to others. They'll decide in 4-6 weeks. But you've already moved on.

The Re-Engagement Problem

Some companies recognize this and try to stay in touch. The owner or a dispatcher manually reaches out to old leads. "Hi, just checking in. Still planning that move?"

This works sometimes. But it's inefficient for a specific reason: you don't know which leads are still available.

If you get 50 leads in January and 40 of them go silent, some percentage have already booked with someone else. Maybe 20. The other 20 are still deciding. But you don't know which is which. So if you're going to re-engage, you have to contact all 40.

Now imagine you're doing this every month. January's 40 silent leads, February's 40, March's 40. By April, you're trying to manage 120+ leads manually, tracking who you've called, when to call them back, what they said last time. It's not sustainable.

So most companies don't do it. They focus on new leads because new leads are easier to track and more likely to convert immediately.

The Window

But there's an opportunity here. A big one.

If someone inquires 8 weeks before their move and over half go silent without booking, that means there's a 2-month window where they're still in the market. They're comparing options, thinking about it, probably getting distracted by the other parts of moving (packing, changing addresses, canceling utilities).

During that window, they're reachable. A well-timed message - contextual, relevant, not pushy - can bring them back. "Hey, your move is coming up in 3 weeks. Do you still need help? Here's a link to book a time to talk."

The question is: how do you do that for 100+ leads without hiring someone full-time to manage it?

Why Humans Don't Scale Here

Let's say you hire someone to handle re-engagement. Their job is to call or text old leads at the right intervals. Week 3, week 5, week 7.

Here's what their day looks like:

They pull up a spreadsheet with 150 leads. Each lead has an inquiry date and a move date. They filter for leads where the move is 3 weeks away and the lead hasn't responded in a while. They call or text each one. Most don't answer. Some do, and now there's a conversation: "Are you still looking?" "Yes, but I'm comparing prices." "Okay, let me check with the team and get back to you."

Now they have to follow up with the team, check availability, send updated pricing, schedule a callback. Meanwhile, the next batch of leads is waiting.

It's a lot of manual coordination. Tracking who to call, when to call them, what was said, what needs to happen next. You could hire someone for $3,500/month to do this. But the ROI is unclear, and when they're on vacation or sick, the whole system stops.

What Automation Looks Like

The alternative is a system that tracks every lead, knows when they inquired, knows when their move is, and reaches out at the right time automatically.

Not with generic emails. With contextual messages: "Hi Sarah, you reached out 4 weeks ago about your move on March 15th. Just wanted to check in - have you finalized your plans yet? If you'd like to chat, here's a link to grab 15 minutes on my calendar."

If Sarah responds, the system flags it and puts a callback on your calendar. You talk to her when she's ready, not when you randomly remember to follow up.

If she doesn't respond, the system tries again 2 weeks later with a different message. If she books with someone else, she stops getting messages. If she's still undecided, she keeps hearing from you at reasonable intervals.

The key difference: you're not managing the process. The system is. You just take the calls when leads re-engage.

Why Re-Engagement Works

Here's something most moving companies don't know: re-engaged leads convert at about 75% higher rates than cold leads.

Think about why. A cold lead has never heard of you. You're interrupting them. They might not even be planning a move. You're starting from zero.

A re-engaged lead already called you. They requested a quote. They know who you are. They're definitely moving - they told you when. You're not starting from zero. You're picking up a conversation that already started.

The difference in conversion rates reflects this. If your close rate on cold outreach is 8%, your close rate on re-engaged leads is closer to 14%. Same effort, 75% better results.

This is why lead re-engagement has such high ROI. You're not paying to acquire a new lead. You already paid for that. You're just paying to remind them you exist. The acquisition cost is sunk. The re-engagement cost is marginal.

The Economics

Here's the math that matters.

Let's say you get 60 leads per month. Your close rate is 20%, so you book 12 moves. The other 48 go silent.

If even 15% of those silent leads would re-engage with proper follow-up, that's 7 additional bookings per month. If the average move is worth $1,500, that's $10,500 in additional monthly revenue. Over a year, $126,000.

But here's the key: you already paid to acquire those 48 leads. If you spent $50 per lead, that's $2,400 in acquisition costs for leads that went silent. By re-engaging them, you're squeezing revenue out of money you already spent.

Compare that to cold outreach. Getting 7 new bookings from cold leads means you need to contact maybe 50 cold prospects (at a 14% close rate). At $50 per lead, that's another $2,500 in acquisition costs.

Re-engagement: $2,400 already spent, extract $10,500 in revenue.
Cold outreach: $2,500 in new costs, extract $10,500 in revenue.

The ROI on re-engagement is effectively infinite because the acquisition cost is already sunk.

The cost of a human doing this manually: $40,000-50,000/year. The cost of an automated system: a fraction of that.

But the bigger point is this: the manual version doesn't actually work at scale. You can't track 200+ leads in a spreadsheet and remember to call each one at the right time. Something gets missed. People fall through the cracks. The system is fragile.

Automation doesn't forget. It doesn't get busy. It doesn't skip follow-ups because there's a lot going on this week. It just runs.

What Changed

This wasn't possible five years ago. Automated messages sounded robotic. Customers could tell. It felt like spam.

What changed is that AI got good at narrow tasks. It can't manage your whole business. But it can write a contextual follow-up message that sounds human. It can detect when someone responds and route that to your calendar. It can track timelines and trigger the right message at the right time.

These are bounded problems. The inputs are clear: inquiry date, move date, last contact. The output is predictable: a short, relevant message and a way to re-engage.

Automating this well is now trivial. The technology exists. The cost is low. The only question is whether businesses see the window for what it is: a 2-month opportunity to recapture half the leads they're currently losing.

Why This Matters

Moving companies aren't losing leads because their prices are too high or their service is bad. They're losing leads because the customer is on an 8-week decision timeline and the company is on a 1-week sales cycle.

The leads aren't dead. They're just slow. And slow leads need a system that works on their timeline, not yours.

That's the insight. The window is there. The question is whether you have a way to use it.