A response routine for leads from trade directories

What you are actually buying

Trade directories and job platforms sell access to people who have said they want work done. Depending on the platform you might pay a membership, pay for each lead you unlock, or both. In most models the same enquiry is visible to several local firms. That changes how you should treat it: a platform lead is not a customer who has chosen you, it is a short-listing contest that you have paid to enter.

Most firms in the trades are too small to have someone waiting by the screen. Of the UK's employer businesses in electrical, plumbing and other installation work, 88.9% are micro firms with one to nine employees^[1]. In practice the owner or one office person handles leads between jobs, so the routine has to be simple enough to run from a van.

The response routine

The aim is to be the first firm that sounds like it has understood the job, not just the first to send a generic message. A short acknowledgement buys you time to make a proper call.

1. 01

   Acknowledge within minutes

   During working hours, send a short, personal message through the platform or by text as soon as you unlock the lead. Use the customer's name and repeat one detail of the job.

2. 02

   Call within the hour

   Ring to ask the two or three questions that decide whether the job fits: address, scope, timing and access. Keep it under five minutes.

3. 03

   Book the next step on the call

   Offer a survey slot, a video call or a written estimate by a stated day. Do not end the call with "I'll be in touch".

4. 04

   Planned second and third attempts

   If there is no answer, text after the first call, try again the same evening, and make a final attempt the next working day with a message that closes the loop politely.

5. 05

   Close and record

   Mark every lead as booked, quoted, won, lost or unreachable, with the reason. This is the data that tells you whether the platform pays.

Outside working hours, decide in advance what happens. If evenings are when you lose leads, either block twenty minutes after the last job for platform replies or arrange cover. An unanswered lead that sits until morning is often already booked elsewhere.

Scripts that sound like a person

Write these once, adapt them to your trade and keep them in your phone's text replacements so they take seconds to send.

• First message: "Hi Sarah, it's Dan from Hilltop Electrical. Thanks for your request about the outside socket and garden lights in Didsbury. I'm on a job until 3, can I ring you at 3.15 to ask a couple of quick questions?"
• Call opener: "I've read your note about the garden lights. Before I give you a figure I'd like to check three things: how far the lights are from the house, whether you know where the consumer unit is, and when you'd like it done."
• Voicemail: "Hi Sarah, Dan from Hilltop Electrical about your garden lights. I'll text you a couple of times you can pick from. No need to call back if text is easier."
• Final attempt: "Hi Sarah, I haven't been able to reach you about the garden lights, so I'll assume you've sorted it. If not, just reply here and I'll pick it up."

Let your profile do half the work

Customers compare profiles before they answer the phone. Make yours specific: the postcodes you really cover, the jobs you want more of, recent photos of your own work and every registration you hold. In a Censuswide survey of more than 10,000 UK adults for NICEIC, 83% said it was important that the electrician they use is registered with a competent person scheme^[2]. If you are registered with NICEIC, NAPIT, Gas Safe or another scheme, say so near the top, and put your registration number where a customer can check it.

Remove the jobs you do not want. A profile that claims everything attracts leads you will turn down, and you may still pay for them.

Track what each won job really costs

The figure that matters is not the price of a lead but the cost of each job you win from that platform. You need four numbers per platform per month: what you spent, how many leads you received, how many you quoted and how many you won.

In this Example, Platform B looks cheap per lead but produces the most expensive jobs, because most leads were outside the firm's patch or were price-shopping. Platform C sends few leads, but they convert. Add the average value of a won job from each source and the picture becomes clearer still.

You do not need special software. A shared spreadsheet with one row per lead is enough, and many small firms run it that way: only 61% of UK construction SME employers used technology or web-based software to manage the business in 2025, against 82% to 89% in the leading sectors^[3]. What matters is that every lead gets a row, every row gets an outcome, and someone looks at the totals each month.

Covering the hours you cannot reply

Most lost platform leads are not lost on price. They are lost in the gap between the lead arriving and anyone being free to respond: the hour on a roof, the afternoon in a loft, the evening with the children. Decide in advance who covers each of those gaps.

• Set phone notifications for new leads to a sound you will notice, and turn them off for everything else during working hours.
• Agree a lunchtime and an end-of-day check, even on the busiest days, when every unanswered lead gets at least the acknowledgement message.
• If a partner or part-time administrator helps with the books, give them the scripts and the tracking sheet so they can make first contact.
• Use the platform's own auto-reply only as a holding message; a real reply from a named person should follow the same day.
• Turn off lead buying for the days you know you cannot respond, such as holidays and long install jobs, rather than paying for leads you will reach too late.

When to pause or drop a platform

1. Give each platform at least two full months before judging it; one bad week tells you little.
2. Pause if your cost per won job is consistently higher than the margin on the jobs it brings.
3. Pause if more than a third of leads are outside your area or for work you do not do, after you have tightened your profile.
4. Keep a platform that wins few jobs only if they are large, repeat or bring referrals you can trace.
5. Ask for credits on leads that were clearly fake or unreachable; most platforms have a process for this.

The same routine works for leads from your own website and social media. That matters because platforms often fill a gap: in 2025, 70% of UK SME employers used software to manage the business but only 29% sold to customers online^[4]. Once every source runs through one process, you can compare them fairly and spend where the work actually comes from.