- Most firms lose more work to missed calls and unanswered enquiries than to a lack of demand — plug the leaks before buying anything.
- The fastest wins are free: answer every call, chase every old quote, and make your Google Business Profile complete and reviewed.
- When you do pay for growth, price it per outcome. Higher-quality leads are exclusive, qualified and followed up — not a name sold to four firms.
Start with the leaks, not the taps
When work dries up, the instinct is to buy more leads. But for most plumbing and heating businesses the problem is not the amount of demand coming in — it is how much of that demand leaks away unanswered. Calls that ring out while you are under a boiler. Enquiries answered the next day, after the homeowner has already booked someone who replied in five minutes. Quotes sent and never chased.
Fixing leaks is faster and cheaper than generating new demand, because the enquiries already exist. So this list is ranked by speed to results: what pays off this week, this month, and this quarter.
This week: answer everything, chase everything
Fix one: answer every call. If you are on the tools all day, that means someone or something else picks up — a family member, an office hire, an answering service, or AI automation that answers, qualifies and books while you work. Speed matters more than polish: the firm that responds first usually wins the job.
Fix two: text back every missed call within minutes. A simple message — sorry we missed you, how can we help — rescues a surprising share of enquiries that would otherwise go straight to the next Google result.
Fix three: chase every quote you have sent in the last three months. Homeowners delay for a hundred reasons that have nothing to do with choosing a competitor. A polite follow-up call or text costs nothing and regularly revives jobs you had written off.
This month: make your owned channels work
Fix four: complete your Google Business Profile — every service, real photos, service areas, and a steady flow of reviews. For local trades it is the highest-leverage free asset on the internet, and most profiles are half-finished.
Fix five: ask for a review after every completed job, while you are still on the doorstep. Review count and recency move you up the local map results that homeowners actually call from.
Fix six: make sure your website answers the questions homeowners ask — prices from, areas covered, emergency availability — and loads properly on a phone. It does not need to be fancy; it needs to be clear and reachable.
This quarter: paid growth, priced honestly
Fix seven: directories. Checkatrade, MyBuilder and the rest do produce work, but the leads are shared — the same homeowner is sold to several firms, so you are paying to race. If you use them, track your real cost per booked job, not the membership fee.
Fix eight: run your own ads, or hire someone to. This builds a channel you control, but you pay for activity — clicks and form fills — whether or not they turn into jobs, and every enquiry still needs qualifying and chasing by someone.
Fix nine: pay for the outcome instead. An exclusive, outcome-priced model generates demand in your area alone, qualifies each homeowner, follows up by phone, SMS and email, and charges when a survey is actually booked in your calendar. That is what higher-quality leads really means: exclusive, qualified, and chased until they book — not a phone number sold four times.
The honest order of operations
Plug the leaks first: answering, text-back, quote chasing. Then build the free assets: Google Business Profile and reviews. Only then spend on demand — and when you do, price it per outcome so an unqualified enquiry costs the provider, not you.
Across our clients, over 70% of booked surveys convert into jobs overall — because by the time a survey reaches the diary, the homeowner has already been qualified on timing, job type and intent. That is the difference between buying leads and buying outcomes.
Frequently asked questions
The fastest gains come from demand you already have: answer every call (or have AI automation answer for you), text back missed calls within minutes, and chase every quote from the last three months. All three can put jobs in the diary this week without spending anything on marketing.
Build owned channels first — Google Business Profile, reviews and a clear website. Then, if you want paid growth, choose between running ads (you pay for activity) and outcome-priced models (you pay per booked survey). Exclusive demand generated for your business alone removes the shared-lead race entirely.
Quality means three things: exclusive (not sold to other firms), qualified (timing, job type and intent checked before it reaches you), and followed up (chased until it books or says no). A cheap shared lead that never answers the phone is the most expensive kind there is.
Paying for demand makes sense once your free channels are working and you can measure cost per booked job. What rarely makes sense is paying per shared lead, where you fund the race whether or not you win it. Compare every option on what a booked, qualified appointment actually costs you.