Where your work actually comes from
Most electrical firms cannot name the source of their last ten jobs. Here is how to find out, and why the answer usually stings.
2 min read
Ask most electricians where their work comes from and you get the same answer: word of mouth, mostly. It is usually true. It is also not a plan.
| The job | Open the calendar and write down where the last ten jobs came from. |
|---|---|
| The finding | Recommendations, repeat customers, a directory you pay for. Nothing you own. |
| The fault | You caused none of it, so when the schedule empties there is nothing to pull. |
| The fix | One route into the business that belongs to you. |
Try this instead.
Finding out where your last ten jobs actually came from
- Open your calendar and go back over the last ten jobs.
- Beside each one, write down how that customer found you. Not how you think they found you — how they actually did.
- If you cannot remember, ring them and ask.
It takes an afternoon on paper, or a couple of minutes in the tool — it does the counting and tells you which rows were under your control.
The list nearly always looks the same
Somebody recommended you. A customer came back. A directory you pay for sent one over. And then, right at the bottom, the row that matters: something you own. Your own website, your own list, your own following.
For most one-van firms that last number is zero.
Why that is the problem
Look down the list again and ask a second question of each row: was that under your control?
A recommendation is not. It is somebody else’s decision, made in a conversation you were not part of, at a time you cannot influence. A repeat customer is partly yours — you earned it by doing the work well — but you still cannot make it happen in a slow week. A paid directory is not yours at all; you are renting attention, and the rent goes up.
That is the whole fault. It is not that the work is bad, or that there is not enough of it. It is that every route into your business is controlled by somebody else, so when things go quiet there is no lever to pull.
What “something you own” means
It does not mean a brochure site nobody visits. It means anything that brings enquiries in because you decided it should:
- A page that answers the question people actually type before they hire an electrician.
- A list of past customers you can contact directly, without asking a platform’s permission.
- A reason for somebody who is not ready to buy today to stay in touch until they are.
None of that is quick. All of it compounds. The firm that started two years ago has a schedule that fills itself; the firm starting today is where that one was.
The uncomfortable bit
If your list came back as ten jobs from other people’s decisions, that is not a failure. It is how nearly every trade business begins, because doing good work is the only thing you have time for at the start.
But it does explain why the quiet months feel like they arrive from nowhere. They do not. They arrive because nothing in the system was ever under your control, so nothing changed when you needed it to.
Do the exercise. The list is only ten lines. What you do about it is the interesting part.