How to get work as an electrician when the phone goes quiet

The diary looked fine on Monday. By Wednesday two jobs have moved, one customer has gone quiet and Friday has nothing in it at all. You are sat in the van with a cold coffee wondering whether to drop your price, sign up to another lead site, or just tell yourself it is the time of year.

Every self-employed electrician gets quiet weeks. What separates the ones who worry about them from the ones who do not is having somewhere to go when it happens, decided in advance, instead of inventing a plan while the panic is on.

Here is the order I would work through, cheapest and warmest first.

Start with the people who already know you

Your phone is full of people who let you in their house and paid you without arguing. They are the warmest work you will ever get and most of them have not heard from you since the invoice.

Pick twenty from the last two years. Not a pitch, just a straight message. How is the consumer unit behaving, are the outside lights still doing what they should, and by the way I have a couple of days free next week if there is anything on the list. You will fill a day out of twenty messages more often than not, and it costs you nothing but the twenty minutes.

While you are in there, look at what those jobs were. Anybody you did an EICR for five years ago is due one. Any landlord you certified is on a clock. Any board you flagged as tired is a year tireder. That is not cold calling, that is telling somebody something useful about their own house.

Then the people who send you work

Every electrician has a handful of trades who could put work their way and mostly do not, because they forgot you exist. Kitchen fitters, bathroom fitters, plumbers, builders, letting agents, estate agents, the bloke who does the boilers.

Ring three of them. Not “got anything for me”, which sounds like begging. Tell them you have space next week and ask what they have got coming up that needs a spark, then offer them something first if you can. I got more work out of a builders’ café and a BNI table than I ever got out of adverts, and the ones that worked were the relationships where I turned up before I needed anything.

That is the R in the S.P.A.R.K.S. Blueprint. Relationships are built in the quiet weeks you plan for, not the quiet week you are having.

Do something local and visible the same day

When my mate Paul had three grand due to the bailiffs on the Monday, we printed leaflets at home on the Thursday, walked them round the right streets, and he had over £5,000 in deposits by the Saturday. No website, no ad budget, no clever funnel. A good offer, a deadline, and it went in front of the right people.

You can still do that this afternoon. A hundred doors around the last job you did, so the van has been seen on that street. A postcard offering something specific with a date on it, not “electrical services, no job too small”. A note through the doors either side of every job you finish. Local Facebook groups, answering the electrical questions properly rather than posting your logo.

Specific beats general every time. “EICR for your rental, £X, booked in before the end of the month” gets calls. “Qualified electrician, free quotes” gets nothing, because it is what everybody else already said.

Fix the thing that made the week quiet

All of the above will fill Friday. None of it stops it happening again, and that is the bit most sparks skip because the work comes back in and everybody forgets.

A quiet week is almost never bad luck. It is a marketing gap from two months ago showing up in today’s diary. You were flat out in July, so nothing went out in July, so September has holes in it. Then September panics you into a price drop that you are still living with at Christmas.

• An hour a day on marketing, whether you are busy or not. Not certs, not quotes, not invoices, not Facebook. Marketing only. I did five until six in the morning, four days a week, and it was the single change that turned my second business around.
• Keep the list. Every customer, every job, one place, so a quiet Tuesday is twenty messages instead of a scroll through your phone.
• Something out every month. Same thing, same time, whether the diary is full or empty. The month you skip is the month you will be paying for in November.
• Know your numbers. How many enquiries you need a week, what you convert, what a job is worth on average. Once you can see the gap coming you can fill it while it is still small.

What not to do on a quiet week

Do not drop your price. A cheap job on Friday costs you more than an empty Friday, because it sets what that customer expects to pay forever and they will tell their neighbour what you charged.

Do not sign up to another lead site in a panic. You will be buying the same customer as four other electricians, at your worst negotiating moment, and you will still be paying for it in six months.

Do not sit in the van. Use the day. A quiet day spent ringing past customers, sorting your list and getting a hundred leaflets out is the most profitable unpaid day you will ever have.

Where domestic electricians get work, in order

If you remember nothing else, remember the running order. Past customers first, because they already trust you. Other trades second, because they already have the customer. Local and visible third, because it works fast and costs almost nothing. Paid leads last, if at all, because you are renting somebody else’s customer at full price.

Most electricians do that list backwards, starting with the most expensive strangers and never getting to the warm end at all.

If you want the messages, the timings and the local stuff already written and tested, that is what we build inside My Electricians ToolBox alongside around 300 other electricians. Tools, training, mentoring and real support, not another folder of videos to watch on your own at ten at night.

One question before you go. If Friday emptied tomorrow, who are the first twenty people you would message?