Alpha Hire: Deposit Paid 23 Minutes After Sending a Quote
Alpha Hire used to take days or weeks to get a deposit after a site visit. After switching to GoodEvent Business, Rhys took three site visits in a day and collected a deposit from all three clients before he got home. One booking closed 23 minutes after the quote was sent.
Before & After GoodEvent at Alpha Hire
Before
- Quoting required a specific office computer - no cloud access, no remote working
- Working from home during lockdown meant a screen share workaround that kept breaking
- After a site visit, clients had to wait days or weeks to receive a quote
- Deposits took days or weeks to come in after the quote was finally sent
- Saving quotes and stock data required huge local computer memory
After
- Quotes are built from any device, anywhere - in the car park between site visits
- Three site visits in a day - all three clients paid a deposit the same day
- One booking closed 23 minutes after the quote was sent
- Clients see product images inside the quote - no more photo request emails
- Clients pay online directly from the quote - no invoice follow-up needed
Alpha Hire: Quote in the Car Park. Deposit Before You Get Home.
Alpha Hire is a family-run clear-span structure business based in Gloucestershire, England. With over 20 years in the industry, they are a leading supplier in their area - the kind of company that has seen every way of doing things, good and bad, and knows the difference between a tool that sounds good and one that actually works on a busy day in the field.
Rhys has been using GoodEvent Business for 18 months. What he describes is not a marginal improvement. It is a fundamentally different way of running the commercial side of the business.
The Problem: Chained to One Computer
Before GoodEvent Business, Alpha Hire used software that was not cloud-based. Quotes could only be created on a specific computer in the office. That was manageable when everyone was on-site - until lockdown made it impossible.
"The software we previously used - it was not cloud-based. You could only use a certain computer to actually create quotes, create plans. We were hampered. We were literally just trying to do it via a screen share system, which meant having a computer run in the office, and then trying to screen share it with a laptop at home, which was not always very good. The computer needed an update, so it shut itself down in the office."
An office-bound quoting system means every hour away from that desk is an hour unable to respond to a client. In a business where being first to quote often means winning the job, that delay has a direct cost.
Beyond quoting, the old system needed significant local storage. Buying new hardware meant worrying about whether there was enough memory to hold everything.
"We needed a huge memory on a computer to save all the quotes or the actual items, stock list and stuff like that."
What Changed: GoodEvent Business
Quoting From the Car Park
The shift Rhys describes most vividly is not a single feature - it is a workflow. Three site visits in a day. First visit done. On the way to the second appointment, arriving early. Pull into the car park. Hotspot off the phone. Open GoodEvent Business. Update the quote from the previous visit and send it before walking into the next one.
"I have sat in the car park nearby and then just hotspot off my phone and updated that new quote, the quote at the previous job, and literally sent it over to him. And people love that."
Clients receive a professional, visual digital quote with images of the products they are being quoted for - not a PDF list, but an interactive quote they can view on their phone, share with a partner, and pay directly from using the online payments button. No invoice to wait for. No follow-up call needed. Just a link, a quote, and a pay now button.
The 23-Minute Booking
Rhys described a booking that closed the day before his interview. A client called needing a marquee on a short turnaround. The quote went out at 3:00 PM. By 3:23 PM, the deposit was in.
"We sent her off the quote at 3:00 PM. She was so pleased - I think it was 23 minutes past three - we had a deposit paid in."
That turnaround is not luck. It is the product of a system where the client receives a quote they can act on immediately - see the products, see the price, click to pay - without waiting for a follow-up email or a phone call to take card details.
Not Just an Admin Tool - a Sales Tool
Rhys makes a distinction that most hire business owners recognise once they hear it: GoodEvent Business is not just a system for managing jobs that are already booked. It is a tool for winning jobs in the first place.
"I think we coined the phrase - it is not only an admin tool. It also is a sales tool."
The mechanism is straightforward. When a client asks a question during a call - can we add another bay, what does the lining look like, can we see a floor plan - Rhys can make the change in the quote while they are still on the phone. The client refreshes the page and sees the updated version in real time. Images attached to items in the quote answer questions before they are asked. The back-and-forth of email chains asking for product photos disappears because the client can click through and see every item themselves.
The speed of initial response matters too. Weddings and events are no longer booked years in advance.
"Weddings are not being organised years in advance. It is more weeks and months in advance. Definitely having that quick back and forth and producing a plan that is not necessarily the final plan, but having some idea of what they are getting as a marquee - that definitely helps with clients and they love it."
A fast initial quote - even a provisional one with a rough floor plan - gets a foot in the door. When the client comes back, the relationship is already established. Most of those conversations convert.
The Sales Pipeline and CRM
Beyond individual quotes, GoodEvent Business keeps every lead, every conversation, and every job in one place via the sales pipeline and CRM. When a client calls back about a quote sent three weeks ago, the full history is there - the quote version, notes from the site visit, client details, where it sits in the pipeline. No hunting through email. No asking the client to remind you what they were after.
For a business running multiple enquiries across the season, that layer is what turns a busy inbox into a manageable commercial operation.
Building the Tool Together
Alpha Hire joined GoodEvent Business early. What Rhys values beyond the features themselves is the way the working relationship has evolved - a genuine back-and-forth where what the business needed in the field shaped what the tool became.
Features that Alpha Hire asked for - site visit pictures attached to jobs, profit and loss reporting, weights on items and load lists - were built and released.
"We must have been one of the early customers or clients of yours, and you have taken on our ideas as much as you have taken on how to use the system. We have given you our input from our experience."
For a business that has been doing this for over 20 years, being heard and seeing that feedback turn into working features is not a small thing. It is the difference between a tool that fits the job and one that almost fits.
The Result: Same Day, Every Time
Before GoodEvent Business, converting a site visit into a confirmed deposit took days. Sometimes weeks. The client went home, the quote sat in a draft, life got in the way on both sides, and the urgency cooled.
Now the quote goes out the same day - often within the hour, sometimes from the car park on the way to the next job. The client has everything they need to decide: the products, the price, the floor plan, and the ability to pay. The deposit comes back the same day.
Three site visits. Three deposits. One afternoon.
"Before Good Event it could take us days or weeks to get clients to pay after their site visit."
Start a free trial of GoodEvent Business and see what your site visit conversion rate looks like when the quote goes out before you get back to the office.