Lead Generation for Electricians
Your best lead source has a van and a trade of its own
The enquiries that never reach a search engine
A full rewire is £3,990. An EV charger installation, £1,015. A consumer unit changeover, £710. A new lighting circuit, £581. An EICR, £266.
A large share of the electrical work in your town is never searched for by the person paying for it.
A kitchen fitter needs circuits moved. A builder needs a first fix on an extension. A bathroom firm needs zones and extraction done properly. A letting agent needs a void sorted before Friday. A property maintenance company needs somebody who will actually answer. A solar installer needs a certified electrical connection.
In every one of those cases the homeowner is not choosing the electrician. Another tradesperson or a manager is, and they are choosing from a very short mental list of people who answer the phone and turn up.
That is the most reliable, least contested lead source in your trade, and it cannot be bought because it is not for sale. It is built by being reachable, being predictable, and being easy for another busy person to work with.
Most electricians have one or two of these relationships by accident. Very few have built ten deliberately.
Why trade-to-trade leads behave differently
They repeat without marketing. A kitchen fitter doing two kitchens a month is a stream of small jobs indefinitely, with no acquisition cost after the first one.
They are not price-shopped in the same way. A builder mid-programme wants the job done on Thursday. Being fifty pounds cheaper matters considerably less than being available.
They arrive pre-qualified. The work is real, the site is ready, and somebody competent has already scoped it.
They compound. Trades talk to each other. A reputation for turning up spreads through a local network faster than any advertising.
And they decay quietly. The reason a fitter stops calling is almost never dissatisfaction — it is that somebody else was easier to reach on a Tuesday morning. That fragility is exactly why this needs to be a managed channel rather than an accident.
The ratio
A rewire is £3,990. Our Noticed package is £49 a month — £588 a year. One rewire covers more than six years.
On trade relationships: a kitchen fitter sending one job a month at an average of £450 is £5,400 a year from a single contact who never needs to be advertised to. Five such relationships is a substantial share of a small electrical business, built from a list and a quarterly phone call.
What we’d actually build
A trade contact list — builders, kitchen and bathroom fitters, joiners, property maintenance firms, letting agents’ contractors, solar installers — with who has used you and when.
A quarterly availability note, written one tradesperson to another: what your diary looks like, what you are after, where you cover.
A trade-facing rate position. What you charge for a first fix, a day on site, a callout. Other trades want a number they can price around, not a quotation process.
A response commitment you can keep. This channel is won on reachability more than anything else, so whatever you promise has to be real.
A reciprocal habit. You meet people who need a plumber, a plasterer or a joiner. Passing work back is what makes the relationship survive a quiet month.
Source tracking, so you can see which trades actually produce and which are talk.
What good looks like at twelve months
- Ten to twenty trade contacts on a list rather than in your head
- Five relationships producing work regularly
- A trade rate card that lets a builder price around you
- A quarterly note going out without anybody being chased
- A visible share of turnover arriving without a single search
The mistakes we see most
Treating trade work as filler. It is the most predictable revenue in the business and it deserves managing.
Being unreachable. The single reason these relationships end, and it is rarely about the work.
No rate a builder can price around. Quoting every small job slows them down and pushes them towards somebody simpler.
Never passing anything back. Reciprocity is what keeps you on the list when somebody cheaper appears.
The first ninety days
Weeks 1–4. The trade list built and the existing relationships mapped, including the ones that have gone quiet.
Weeks 5–8. The trade rate position written, and the first availability note out.
Weeks 9–12. Response commitments set up so the channel is defended, plus source tracking to see what is actually producing.
At ninety days the measure is how much work arrived from another trade rather than from a search. For most electricians that number is bigger than expected and entirely unmanaged.
Where this lands in Gaffer
Contacts sit under the company they work for, so a kitchen firm is one relationship with a history rather than a series of unconnected jobs.
Because job history shows who introduced the work, a trade contact who has gone quiet is a filter rather than a vague feeling.
And quote templates holding your trade rates mean a builder gets a number the same day, which is most of what keeps you on their list.
Getting onto a letting agent’s contractor list
The trade relationships above are one route. There is a second, entirely separate one, and it runs on process rather than on rapport.
Letting and managing agents maintain approved contractor lists. Getting onto one is not a sales conversation — it is an admission process, and it is why cold-calling agents so often goes nowhere while a properly assembled approach works.
What they check is consistent. Public liability insurance at a stated minimum, usually two million and often more. Registration with a competent person scheme. Proof of qualification. A written health and safety policy, even a short one. References from other agents or commercial clients. Sometimes DBS checks, because your people will be in occupied homes, sometimes alone with a tenant.
Then the operational questions, which is where most contractors fail: how quickly you attend, whether you hold keys, how you handle access when a tenant is out, how you invoice, and whether you can produce certificates the same week.
Assemble that once, properly, into a single document and the approach changes character entirely. You are not asking for work. You are submitting for approval, which is what they are set up to process.
It is also durable. Once you are on the list you are on it until you give them a reason not to be, and the work arrives without further marketing. A single agent with forty properties is the closest thing to recurring income available in domestic electrical work.
Questions electricians ask
Do I need to discount for trade work? A clear rate, not necessarily a lower one. Predictability is what they are buying.
How do I find these contacts? You already know most of them. The work is writing them down and contacting them deliberately.
What about lead platforms? They can fill gaps for domestic work. They will not build a relationship that sends work for five years.
How often should I be in touch? Quarterly is plenty, plus whenever you have genuine availability.
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