Most permanent lighting installers spend more time on quoting and scheduling than they do installing. The end-to-end onboarding flow has six discrete steps, and each one has a "manual way" and an "automated way." This guide walks through both so you can spot the friction in your own workflow.
Step 1: Lead arrives
A lead in permanent lighting typically arrives one of three ways:
- Mailed design quote scan. A homeowner receives a postcard showing their actual house rendered with permanent lighting, scans the QR code, and lands on a personalized customer portal. This is the highest-intent lead source — the homeowner has already seen the visual.
- Referral. A past customer or neighbor refers the homeowner. High intent, no marketing cost.
- Inbound web form. Lower intent — the homeowner is researching, not necessarily buying.
The mailed design quote is the highest-leverage source for new installs — the average Light Launch installer returns $32 in install revenue for every $1 spent on the channel.
Step 2: Show the price tiers
The customer portal — auto-generated for every Light Launch render — shows the homeowner three things in one place:
- The rendered photo of their actual house with permanent lighting installed.
- The trim-only price (front-facing roofline only).
- The whole-home price (full perimeter plus garages and gables).
Both prices are auto-calculated using instant property measurement — no installer time spent quoting. The homeowner self-selects the tier they're comfortable with. Always offer both tiers — homeowners who would have said no to a single $9K quote often say yes to a $4K trim-only quote.
Step 3: Collect the deposit
The Light Launch customer portal includes a "Pay deposit" button that charges 50% via Stripe Connect, with funds going directly to the installer's connected Stripe account (Light Launch takes a small platform fee). This step is critical for three reasons:
- Filters tire-kickers. Homeowners who won't pay $2K–$4K up front weren't going to close anyway.
- Funds the material order. Cash flow improves dramatically when deposits arrive before install day.
- Eliminates no-show risk. A deposit-paid homeowner is showing up for the install.
See how to collect deposits from homeowners for deeper detail on the deposit step.
Step 4: Schedule the install
When a deposit is paid, the lead moves to the "Deposit Paid" stage in the Light Launch CRM and a "Schedule install" action appears on the lead card. Drag the lead onto an open date in the calendar — the appointment auto-fills with:
- The rendered photo (so the install crew knows what they're delivering).
- The selected pricing tier (trim-only or whole-home).
- The linear footage (auto-calculated, ready for materials ordering).
- The deposit-paid amount (so the balance-due math is automatic on install day).
- The homeowner's name, phone, and email (no double-entry from the CRM).
For multi-house batching, the CRM's map view shows clustered deposit-paid leads on the same street so the dispatcher can book three installs on one day — the biggest single margin lever in permanent lighting. See scheduler for lighting installers.
Step 5: Install day
The install day workflow:
- Crew opens the appointment on their phone and sees the rendered photo + linear footage + materials list.
- Crew confirms on-site measurement matches the auto-calculated linear footage (adjust if a section was hidden from satellite view).
- Install completes — typically 4–8 hours for trim-only, 1–1.5 days for whole-home.
- Homeowner sees the install live, signs off.
- Final balance is collected (either at the door via Stripe payment link, or invoiced through the customer portal).
Step 6: Post-install workflow (automated)
The last and most underutilized step. Three things should happen automatically when an install completes:
Review request
An email goes to the homeowner asking for a Google review and a referral. Fresh installs generate the highest review rates — capture them while the lighting is still new.
Final-payment confirmation
The balance is collected and the customer's record updates to "Install Complete" — the install becomes a sales-asset for the rest of the block.
Neighbor follow-up postcards
This is the single highest-converting follow-up move in permanent lighting. Light Launch's neighbor follow-up workflow auto-mails postcards to the rest of the block 1–2 weeks after the install completes. Same-block neighbors convert 2–4× higher than cold neighborhood mailings because they can drive past a freshly lit house every night.
The fully automated path vs the manual path
The same six steps look very different depending on the tools:
- Manual path: Phone call to homeowner → schedule estimate → drive out → measure → email quote → phone follow-up → schedule install → manual invoice → manual referral ask → manual neighbor mailing. ~10+ hours of installer time per closed lead.
- Light Launch path: Homeowner scans postcard → sees portal → pays deposit → install scheduled (with full context) → install day → automated review + neighbor follow-up. ~1–2 hours of installer time per closed lead.
The time-savings compound. An installer running the manual path can handle ~20–30 leads a month before quoting/admin overhead caps growth. The same installer running Light Launch handles 100+ leads in the same time. That's a different business.
The customer onboarding workflow shipped out of the box.
Renders, customer portal, Stripe Connect deposits, scheduler, automated neighbor follow-up. Free account, $1 per mailed design quote.
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