Quoting electrical work without seeing the job

For your trade 6 min read

How to handle the inquiry that wants a price for a job nobody has looked at, what to publish instead of a number, and which photo actually helps.

The message says: how much to put in a ceiling fan. That is the whole message. There is no address, no photograph, no mention of whether there is a box up there or a light fitting on a switch loop or nothing at all but plasterboard and hope.

You know the honest answer is that it depends. You also know that if you reply with the words "it depends", the next electrician on the list gets the job. This is about what goes on your website so that neither of those two things has to happen.

What a photograph of a panel does not show

People believe a price should be knowable from a picture, because that is how everything else they buy works.

The fan is not the job. The job is what is above the ceiling, whether the circuit can carry it, whether the switch has a neutral, whether the attic can be crawled in July, and whether the wiring is the age where touching one thing means touching four. None of that is visible from a doorway, let alone a phone photo. Saying so on your website is the most useful thing you can tell somebody who is about to collect three numbers and assume they are comparing like with like.

Say what a visit costs, and stop apologizing for it

If you charge to come out and look, put that on the page as a plain sentence with your own number in it. If it comes off the job when they go ahead, say that too.

Electricians lose more money to the unpriced diagnostic visit than to almost anything else, and the reason is usually that it never got written down anywhere. Written on the page, it is a term. Said on the phone for the first time, it sounds like something you have just invented. And there is a real filter in it: somebody who will not pay for an hour of a licensed electrician's time was probably never going to be an easy customer.

Publish ranges for the jobs that actually have ranges

Some work does have a shape you can share. A panel replacement, a car charger, a fan, a set of recessed lights: each one has a lower end and an upper end that you already know from doing them.

Put both numbers on the page, in your own figures, and say in one line what puts a job at the top of the range. Do not use a starting-from price, which everybody reads as the price and nobody gets. A homeowner who sees a real range stops treating the cheapest quote as the true one, which is the whole reason ranges are worth publishing even though they look like you are giving something away.

Name the four things that move the number

Under the range, list what changes it. For most electrical work it is a short list and it stays the same from job to job:

The age and condition of what is already there. Whether anything has to be opened up and made good afterwards. How hard the run is to get to, meaning attic, crawlspace, or a finished wall. And whether the job needs a permit and an inspection.

Written once, that paragraph does more work than any amount of assurance. It gives somebody a reason for a difference between two quotes that is not "one of these electricians is greedy".

Ask for the photograph you can actually use

If your form asks for a photo, tell people which photo. Left alone, they send you a picture of the room.

Ask for the inside of the panel door where the labels are. The breaker in question. The ceiling from directly underneath. The meter. Whatever your trade actually needs to narrow the guess. Three specific requests get you three usable pictures. One vague request gets you a photograph of a sofa. And check that the photos are arriving at all, because a form that quietly stops sending looks identical to a quiet two weeks.

Write the sentence that says you have to see it

You need one paragraph, on the site and in your replies, that turns "it depends" into something a person can act on. It goes roughly like this:

Here is the range for this job. Here is what would put yours at the higher end. I cannot give you a firm number until I have looked at the panel, and the visit costs this and comes off the work if you go ahead.

That is four sentences. It is the true thing said in an order that makes sense. The person reading it now knows what you know, what you do not know, and what the next step costs.

Give a firm price for the jobs that really are the same every time

Some jobs do not vary. Swapping a like-for-like fitting, adding an outlet on a wall you have already opened, replacing a known socket type: you have done them enough times to know the number.

Where that is true, put the number on the page and honor it. It costs you nothing you were not already going to charge, and it means a person who wanted to buy one small definite thing can buy it without a phone call.

A short checklist

• One paragraph on why a price for unseen electrical work is a guess
• What a visit costs, in writing, and whether it comes off the job
• Two numbers for each of your common jobs, not a starting-from price
• The four things that move a quote, named
• Three specific photo requests on the inquiry form
• A firm price on the handful of jobs that never vary
• A test inquiry sent from your own phone to prove the form and the photos arrive

Questions people ask

Will publishing a range lose me work

It will lose you the inquiries that were only ever going to the cheapest number, which you were unlikely to win and unlikely to enjoy. What nobody can tell you is the exact trade, so treat it as a judgement rather than a guarantee.

What if I quote from a photo and get it wrong

Then you either eat the difference or have an awkward conversation on someone's kitchen floor. That is the argument for the visit fee, and for wording every remote number as a range rather than a price.

Should I let people book a quote visit online

It works well when the visit is a real appointment with a real cost attached. The same problem in another trade, booking work that has not been looked at yet, is worked through in the piece on garage appointments.

Can I just put my hourly rate up instead

You can, and for some electricians that is the simpler business. It moves the vagueness rather than removing it, though: an hourly rate with no idea of hours is still a number the customer cannot use.

How much detail should the inquiry form ask for

Enough to reply usefully, which is usually make of panel, what the job is, what the property is, and the photos. Long forms lose people, and you can ask the rest when you call back.

Do I need a website for this at all if the phone works

If the phone is working and you are booked, you may not. What a page you own gives you is somewhere to put these answers once instead of saying them forty times, which is most of the argument.