What in-home sales reps experience at the kitchen table
By recording conversations, we can uncover what a homeowner objects to first, and whether a rep tries to recover a stalled conversation or lets it go. This chapter of the In-Home Insider report looks at what happens inside the appointment itself:
Almost one third of appointments never establish if a decision maker is present at an appointment
69% of everything homeowners stall on fit within 7 objection categories, and objections related to pricing close the highest.
Top and bottom performing reps handle the same amount of objections, but top reps recover almost 2x more than bottom reps.
Almost one third of appointments fail to establish if a decision maker is present
In 30.9% of appointments, a rep never confirms who's actually in the room. Those appointments close at 23.0%, worse than the 36.7% close rate of appointments that do confirm all decision makers are present.
On making assumptions
“Reps assume they are talking to decision makers for a few reasons. Maybe they inferred through conversation or it was confirmed by the call center ahead of the appointment. But good reps do discovery regardless. ”
The seven main objection categories in home improvement
We clustered the language homeowners use when they stall, then grouped those clusters into seven categories. Together they cover 69% of all stalls across all recordings; the rest are too varied or too rare to generalize.
Can't afford to pay
The homeowner doesn't have the funds or financing lined up to cover the project as quoted.
Sticker shock
The homeowner reacts to the specific quoted price as higher than expected or unacceptable.
Can't commit
A flat delay with no more specific reason volunteered. The homeowner just isn't ready to decide today.
Wants to review proposal
Wants to see the proposal in writing, or take time to review the details, before deciding.
Waiting on insurance
The project, or part of it, depends on an insurance claim or adjuster approval that hasn't come through yet.
Needs to discuss with spouse/family
Another household member who wasn't on the call needs to weigh in before a decision can be made.
Wants to get more or compare quotes
Wants to see other bids or estimates before committing to this one.
When we look at the average close rate of each objection category, we see that objections about payment or price close above the 25.6% median rate.
"Can't afford to pay" (35.5%) and "Sticker shock" (32.2%), are the single highest-closing objection in every one of the nine trades we track.
The lowest-closing objection nationally is "Wants to get more or compare quotes" at 15.1%, which is the lowest-closing category in five of the nine trades too.
Top reps recover nearly twice as often as bottom reps
Top-tier and bottom-tier reps attempt to handle objections at nearly the same rate, but their ability to handle the objection well reflect a clear gap.
Both groups show up to try: attempt rates are 87.9% vs. 84.3% which is a small gap. What separates top and bottom performers are their actual recovery rates: top-tier reps convert nearly 1 in 5 stalls into a commitment, bottom-tier reps convert roughly 1 in 9, an ~1.8x gap.
On objections as buying signal
“Certain objections are actually buying signals. It makes sense that objections related to payment and pricing correlate to higher close rates because those homeowners are really thinking about the purchase.”
On objections toward price
“Sticker shock having a high close rate validates price conditioning. Don't be scared to quote a higher price because it gives you room to negotiate with the buyer, and likely you're not scaring them off. ”
What actually recovers a stalled deal, and what doesn't
We grouped every recovery attempt into six technique categories based on what the rep actually did to save the stall.
The reflexive move, creating urgency and offering discounts, is the most common technique and one of the weakest.
Reframing financing and reducing commitment risk both close above 32%, more than ten points above the urgency and discount reflex (21.7%), even though urgency and discount together make up a quarter of every recovery attempt reps make.
The "concrete next step" category, which means securing a real follow-up instead of resolving the objection same-day, closes lowest on the call itself (17.7%) but recovers the stall more often than anything else (22.1%): for a room that isn't deciding today, locking a specific next step is the honest win, not proof it's the best move for closing today.
Stop offering concessions before the homeowner asks
73.7%
of conversations include at least one concession
1.85
concessions given per appointment
44%
of concessions are given unprompted
Unprompted concessions only close a deal 18.8% of the time. Concessions given in response to something the homeowner actually said win 23.3% of the time. Waiting until a homeowner prompts a concession is a much more successful technique.
Share of all concessions
56%
44%
Close rate
23.3%
18.8%
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About this data
This report is based on 53,389 in-home sales consultations, recorded and analyzed between April and August 2026.
Every close rate here reflects Siro's own judgment of whether a conversation advanced toward a sale, not a signed contract or revenue figure.
Our outcome labels carry a small error rate that skews toward under-counting wins, so treat a two-point difference between two groups as noise and a twenty-point difference as real.
National and regional benchmarks are based on our full population of recordings (26.9% close rate). Every other figure in this report, including all trade and conversation-level data, comes from a geographically balanced sample of 53,389 calls, built so no single region dominates the results.