How to get jobs without Checkatrade or MyBuilder

Paid directories work, in the sense that they produce phone calls. The problem is what they cost — a monthly fee, or a per-lead charge, or a cut, and often a lead sold to three or four of you at once so you're bidding against each other on price before anyone's seen the job.

Plenty of trades do fine on them. But relying on them entirely is a business built on rented land: the price goes up, the algorithm changes, and your work dries up.

Here's how to build lead sources you own. None of it is quick. All of it compounds.

1. Google Business Profile — the free one that beats the paid ones

If you do one thing, do this. When someone searches "plumber near me" or "bathroom fitter Newcastle", the map results at the top are Google Business Profiles, and they're free.

For local trades this is usually the highest-intent traffic available anywhere. Someone searching "emergency electrician" plus a place name has a problem right now and is picking from what they can see.

The basics that move you up: complete every field, pick the right primary category, set your service area honestly, post photos of real work regularly, and get reviews consistently. There's a full breakdown in Google Business Profile for trades.

The reason this beats a directory: the lead is yours, it's exclusive, and it costs nothing per job.

2. Reviews — the thing that makes everything else work

Reviews are the currency of local trade work. They feed your Google ranking, they're what people read before ringing, and they're what makes a stranger choose you over the two other numbers on their list.

Most trades have far fewer than they've earned, for one reason: they never ask.

The habit: ask every satisfied customer, on the day, in person, then follow up with a link by text. Not "please leave a review sometime" — a direct ask and a link that takes ten seconds. How to do it without feeling awkward is in how to ask customers for reviews.

3. Other trades — the best lead source there is

The most consistent, highest-quality, cheapest work most trades get comes from other trades. A kitchen fitter who trusts a sparks will send them every job for years. Nobody's paying anyone a fee; it just works, because both sides need the other and the referral is pre-trusted.

How to actually build it:

• Be the reliable one. Turn up, answer the phone, don't leave a mess for the next trade. That's the whole qualification.
• Refer out first. Send work to people before you expect any back. It comes back.
• Cover the trades you meet on site. Plumber ↔ electrician ↔ tiler ↔ plasterer ↔ joiner ↔ kitchen fitter ↔ roofer.
• Be findable. Save your number in their phone with your trade in the name — "Dave Sparks" not "Dave" — so you come up when they search their contacts on site.
• Keep the relationship warm. A text every couple of months costs nothing.

Adjacent to this: local builders, letting agents, estate agents and property managers. Letting agents in particular have a constant flow of small reactive jobs and are perpetually short of someone who actually turns up. The work is less glamorous and more reliable than almost anything else — but expect longer payment terms, so price for it and check what to put on an invoice so their accounts department has no excuse.

4. Repeat customers — the work you already earned

The cheapest job you'll ever win is the second one from someone you've already done work for. They know you, they trust you, and they're not comparing prices.

Most trades lose these by accident, simply by having no way of staying in touch:

• Keep a customer list. Name, address, phone, what you did, when. A spreadsheet is fine. Not having one is the mistake.
• Follow up. A boiler service reminder a year later. A "how's that bathroom holding up" text. Low effort, remarkably effective.
• Sell the next thing. You fitted the bathroom; mention the downstairs loo. Not pushy, just visible.
• Leave something behind. A card on the boiler, a sticker inside the consumer unit door, a fridge magnet. When something goes wrong at 7pm, the number they can see is the number they ring.

5. Your own website, doing one job

You don't need a big website. You need a small one that says clearly what you do, where you do it, and how to get hold of you — plus photos of real work and your reviews.

What matters:

• Loads on a phone, fast
• Trade and town in the page title — "Bathroom fitter in Durham"
• Phone number visible without scrolling, and tappable
• Real photos, not stock images of a smiling man in a hard hat
• A page per main service, so each can rank for its own search
• Linked to and from your Google Business Profile

The point isn't a beautiful site. The point is that when someone's been given your name, they'll Google you — and finding a decent page beats finding nothing.

6. Your van and your local patch

Old-fashioned, still works, particularly for domestic:

• Van signage. Trade, town, phone number, big enough to read from behind. Your van is parked outside a job in the target street for a week.
• Boards outside jobs, where the customer's happy for one.
• Leaflets on the street you're working in. "We're working at number 14 this week" converts far better than blanket drops, because it's local and it's proof.
• The merchants. Cards on the counter, and be known to the staff — they get asked for recommendations constantly.
• Local Facebook groups. Not spamming, but being the person who answers a question helpfully. Community recommendation threads are a big source of domestic work in most towns.

7. Answer the phone — or make sure something does

Here's the one that costs the most and gets the least attention.

Every lead source above ends in the same place: somebody rings you. And you're a tradesperson, so you're frequently up a ladder, under a floor, or driving. That call goes unanswered, no voicemail gets left, and they ring the next name on the list.

You cannot answer every call. What you can control is whether the caller gets nothing. A text back within a minute — "Sorry, I'm on a job. What do you need and where are you? I'll ring you back before 5" — recovers a large share of them, because you're the first reply they've had and their problem is urgent.

It's the cheapest lead source you've got, because these are people already ringing you. More on it in why you're losing jobs to missed calls.

8. Quote fast, and quote well

The other half of the same problem. Two trades see the job; one sends a tidy quote that evening, the other sends a text with a number in it three days later. The first one wins more often than the cheaper one does.

Speed signals reliability. If you're slow before they've paid you anything, what are you like when you've got their deposit? How to write a quote that wins the job covers the rest.

What a sensible mix looks like

You don't need all eight. A realistic, resilient spread for a one-van trade:

Source	Effort	Cost	Speed to results
Google Business Profile + reviews	Medium, ongoing	Free	Weeks to months
Other trades	Low, constant	Free	Months, then permanent
Repeat and referral	Low	Free	Builds over years
Website	One-off + occasional	Low	Months
Van, boards, local	Low	Low	Immediate, small
Directories	Low	High per job	Immediate

Directories aren't the enemy — they're a legitimate way to fill a gap while the free channels build. The mistake is being on them for five years and still having no reviews, no customer list and no trade network, because the leads kept arriving and you never needed to.

Build the ones you own. Then the directory becomes a choice instead of a dependency.

---

Every one of these channels ends with the phone ringing while your hands are full. QuoteSnap texts back every missed call automatically and turns the conversation into a quote in about a minute — so the leads you worked for don't go to whoever picked up instead. Try it free for 14 days.