Operations
Why electricians lose quoted work (and the follow-up system that wins it back)
6 July 20268 min readRead
Emergency local
How electricians get clients: a 90-day plan
How your buyer buys: The buyer has a problem now and is searching now. Whoever answers first wins.
An electrician has three buyers, and two of them are not homeowners. A landlord needs an EICR before a tenancy starts, or before the five-year date runs out. A letting agent needs twenty of them a year and wants one number to ring. The homeowner with a tripping fuse board, or a new car that needs a charger, is the third. They search once and ring whoever answers.
All three check the same things. Is the scheme registration real, is the insurance stated, and did the quote arrive on the day of the survey. Landlords and agents read Google reviews from other landlords before they read anything else. The homeowner looks at the fuse board photos and the price on the page.
So the phone and the registration number come first, because a missed call and a missing NICEIC or NAPIT number lose jobs the same day. Then the reviews, the quote follow-up and a page per service, so the EICR and charger searches you already appear in land with you. Then the letting agents, the certificate diary and the landlord letters, which turn one certificate into five years of repeat work.
Step zero
The free checklist, before the plan.
The checklist repairs what you already have: the phone, the profile, the booking path. This page is the plan for new work on top of it, and the two are different jobs.
The Electrician's DIY Growth Checklist
The free checklist for electricians: every repair to the phone, the profile and the booking path, as step-by-step actions. Sent by email.
Where they look
Where your customers actually look.
NICEIC(opens in a new tab)
Landlords and agents search the register to check a number before they book. The listing has to carry the trading name and phone number from your quotes, or the check fails and the job goes elsewhere.
NAPIT(opens in a new tab)
The other scheme most domestic electricians register with. The same rule applies: name, number and area match your site, and the registration number sits beside your phone number on every page.
Registered Competent Person Electrical
The single search across every scheme. A homeowner who was told to check that their electrician is registered usually lands here, so the entry has to be current.
Checkatrade(opens in a new tab)
Paid, and it sends fuse board and rewire enquiries in towns where homeowners use it. Judge it monthly on jobs booked against what your own pages bring in, and set a review date in advance.
Which? Trusted Traders(opens in a new tab)
Assessed rather than self-listed, so it carries weight with the homeowner planning a rewire or a consumer unit change who compares three quotes.
Google Business Profile(opens in a new tab)
Primary category Electrician, with EICR, fuse box replacement and EV charger installation listed as services in the customer's words. A fuse board before-and-after each week keeps the profile live.
Your year
Steady all year, so start now.
Faults rise a little when the clocks go back, and EICR renewals follow each certificate's five-year date rather than the calendar.
- Jan
- Feb
- Mar
- Apr
- May
- Jun
- Jul
- Aug: quiet
- Sep
- Oct
- Nov
- Dec: quiet
Amber months are the peak, grey months are quiet, and "start" marks the month the visibility work has to begin in.
Electrical work has no peak season. Fault calls rise a little when the clocks go back in late October, and August and December are the quiet months, but the real rhythm is the five-year EICR cycle. Every certificate you issue sets a renewal date, and that date is yours to hold if you diary it. The year is run by your own records, not by the calendar. Use August and December for the slow work: the letting agent conversations, the landlord letters and the service pages. From late October, keep the phone covered on dark evenings, when fault calls come in after work.
The 90-day plan
Four phases, in the order that pays back fastest.
Each step names its channel, its cost band from the technique register, the effort it takes, and how long until the first enquiry or booking.
Week 0
Answer the phone, text back missed calls
Have every missed call text back asking for the job and the postcode, and ring back between jobs
- Cost: £
- Low effort
- First result within a week
Google Business Profile, complete
Set Electrician as the primary category, list EICRs, EV chargers and fuse box upgrades as services, and post a fuse board photo weekly
- Cost: Free
- Low effort
- About 30 minutes a week
- First result in 4 to 12 weeks
Credentials a buyer can check
Put your NICEIC or NAPIT number and your insurance cover at the top of every page and quote
- Cost: Free
- Low effort
- First result in 1 to 4 weeks
Month 1
Ask every client for a review
Text your Google review link within 24 hours of the certificate going out, to landlords and agents as well as homeowners
- Cost: Free
- Low effort
- About 30 minutes a week
- First result in 4 to 12 weeks
In the kit and the bundleSame-day quote, then follow up
Send EICR and charger quotes on the day of the survey, then follow up on days 2, 5 and 12
- Cost: Free
- Low effort
- First result in 1 to 3 weeks
In the kit and the bundleA page per service and per town
A page each for EICRs and landlord certificates, EV chargers, consumer units, rewires and fault finding, with the town in the title
- Cost: ££
- Medium effort
- First result in 8 to 16 weeks
In the kit and the bundle
Months 2 to 3
Sharpen the offer
Diary every EICR you issue, and at four years eleven months text the landlord the date and the slots you have open
- Cost: Free
- Low effort
- First result in 1 to 4 weeks
In the kit and the bundleGatekeeper partnerships
Offer three letting agents a fixed EICR routine: keys from the branch, tested within the week, certificate emailed that day
- Cost: Free
- Medium effort
- First result in 8 to 16 weeks
Google Search ads
Run call-only ads on EICR, fuse box and EV charger searches in your town, each pointing at its own page
- Cost: £££
- Medium effort
- About 1 hour a week
- First result in 0 to 2 weeks
Cold email to limited companies
Email limited-company letting agents and landlords an EICR price per property, with one named contact for every renewal
To limited companies only: identify yourself, give an opt-out address, keep a suppression list.
- Cost: ££
- Medium effort
- About 1 hour a week
- First result in 2 to 8 weeks
Limited companies only
Month 3 onward
Addressed letters
Post each landlord you have certified one letter listing their properties and EICR dates, with one number to book them all
- Cost: ££
- Low effort
- First result in 2 to 6 weeks
Ask for the referral at the high point
When the new consumer unit is in, ask who else has a board like the old one, and ask landlords which landlords they know
- Cost: Free
- Low effort
- First result in 2 to 8 weeks
Reciprocal trade partners
Agree reciprocal referrals with two plumbers and a kitchen fitter
- Cost: Free
- Low effort
- First result in 4 to 12 weeks
The cost of waiting
What doing nothing costs electricians.
The leaks below are the ones the electricians page already names. Put a figure on each, see what the fix gets back a month, and how many weeks the kit or the bundle takes to pay for itself.
Industry estimates, not client results
Industry-typical ranges for a small domestic electrical firm: small jobs and EICRs in the low hundreds blended with EV chargers and partial rewires, quoted work winning a little under half the time, and landlord repeat work from a minority of customers.
Every number below is prefilled from that estimate and editable. Put your own figures in and the leaks, gains and payback recalculate as you type.
Where it leaks
Drains close rate
Quotes go out and nobody follows up unless the customer chases
- Leaking now
- £1,569 a month
- Gain from the fix
- £785 a month
- The fix
- Quote follow-up automation (about £700 one-off)
- Pays back in
- 3.9 weeks
Drains enquiries
EICR and EV charger enquiries go to whoever replied first
- Leaking now
- £1,569 a month
- Gain from the fix
- £785 a month
- The fix
- Lightweight CRM setup (about £2,000 one-off)
- Pays back in
- 11.0 weeks
Drains repeat purchases
Landlord and letting agent repeat work lives in your head, not a system
- Leaking now
- £87 a month
- Gain from the fix
- £43 a month
- The fix
- Lightweight CRM setup (about £2,000 one-off)
- Pays back in
- 199.7 weeks
Drains enquiries
Your website is one page and does not rank for anything
- Leaking now
- £2,093 a month
- Gain from the fix
- £837 a month
- The fix
- A website built around your money work (about £1,750 one-off)
- Pays back in
- 9.1 weeks
On these figures
£5,318 a month leaking
Fixing every leak above gets back about £2,450 a month, with each leak counted on its own against the same baseline.
- The Quote-to-Job System (£2,795)
- Pays back in 4.9 weeks
- The Electrician Growth Kit (£49)
- Pays back in under a week
Inside the 90-day window on these figures. Change any field above to test it against your own numbers for electricians.
What matters most
The levers that carry the most weight here.
For an electrician the plan rests on four moves. Answering the phone, with a text back on every missed call, because the fault and the charger enquiry both go to the first electrician who replies. The certificate diary: text each landlord at four years eleven months with the date and the slots open, which is the cheapest repeat work there is. Letting agent partnerships, with a fixed EICR routine from keys to certificate, because one branch sends more work than a year of ads. And addressed letters to the landlords you have already certified, listing every property and its date. The cold email step, to limited companies only, sits behind those, and Google ads only once each service has its own page.
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If you would rather we did this for you
The same plan, built and run for electricians: the phone, the profile, the pages and the follow-up, priced up front.
See what we build for electriciansNot sure which step comes first for your business?
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