How to quote for a job you have not seen

The message says: "Hi, how much to fix a leaking shower?" No photo, no address, no idea how old the place is or where the water's coming from. You can't answer it honestly, and you know from experience that saying "I'd need to come and look" loses about half of them on the spot.

So you're stuck between two bad options. Give a number you might regret, or give no number and watch them go to whoever did. Most owners pick the second and then wonder why the phone's quiet.

There's a third way, and it isn't a trick. It's just being precise about what you can and can't know from here.

Why "I'd have to see it" costs you the job

It's true, and it's the right instinct, and it still reads badly at the other end.

The person asking has no idea what a leaking shower costs. It could be £80 or £800 for all they know, and that uncertainty is uncomfortable enough that they'd quite like to resolve it before committing to a stranger coming round. When you decline to give any figure, you haven't protected yourself — you've handed them a reason to keep asking other people.

Worse, it sounds evasive even when it isn't. In their head, the question "how much?" has an answer you're choosing not to give.

Quote a range, with the thing that moves it

The honest answer to almost every unseen job is a range plus a reason. That's not a hedge. It's more information than a single number, and it teaches them how your pricing works.

For a shower leak it's usually between £90 and £250. At the low end it's a seal or a waste connection, which is an hour's work. At the top end the tray's had to come up, or there's damage underneath. I can normally tell which from a couple of photos.

Look at what that does. They've got a figure to hold on to. They know what makes it cheaper or dearer, so the top end no longer feels like a trap. And you've asked for photos at the natural moment, as the next step in helping them rather than as a hurdle.

Ranges should be wide enough to be true and narrow enough to be useful. If your honest range is £90 to £2,000, that's two different jobs and you should name them as two.

Ask two questions, not eight

The instinct when you can't see the job is to ask for everything. Age of the property, make of the unit, when it started, whether it's on the ground floor, has anyone looked at it before.

Eight questions is a form, and people abandon forms. Pick the two that actually move your number, and ask for a photo, which is usually worth more than all of them.

For most trades there are genuinely only two or three things that change the price bracket. Work out what yours are — you know them, you just haven't written them down — and ask only those.

Name the conditions out loud

Whatever range you give, attach the conditions in plain words. This is the part that protects you, and it works far better than a disclaimer.

That assumes the tray's sound and we can get at the pipework from the cupboard. If it turns out the floor's gone underneath, that's a different job and I'd give you a fresh price before doing anything.

You've now said the uncomfortable thing before it happened, which means that if it does happen you're the person who warned them rather than the person springing a surprise. That's a very different conversation to have in somebody's bathroom.

Say what happens next and when

End with the sequence, not the number. When you'll come, what the visit costs if anything, whether the quote's fixed after that.

"Send me two photos and I'll narrow that down today. If it looks straightforward I can come Thursday, and I'd confirm the price before starting." Three sentences, and the customer now knows exactly what's coming.

The same three questions, forty times a month

Here's what's really going on. You're answering the same handful of unseen-job questions over and over, at speed, usually while you're on another job, and slightly differently each time depending on your mood and how busy you are.

The ranges are in your head. The conditions that move them are in your head. The two questions you need to ask are in your head. None of it is written anywhere a customer can reach at eight in the evening, which is when most of these messages get sent.

That's the gap hailera was built for: you write the ranges and the conditions down once, check them yourself, and publish them as an agent, so your website and the AI apps people now ask can give the same honest range and the same caveats without you stopping what you're doing. A page on your own site headed "roughly what things cost" does a decent share of that for nothing, so if you've never written one, that's the first move.

The jobs you should refuse to price from here

Some things genuinely can't be ranged, and pretending otherwise ends badly. Structural work. Anything where the cause is unknown and could be several things. Anything involving a building you haven't seen and a customer who's already had two people fail to fix it.

For those, be direct about why, because the reason is reassuring. "I'm not going to guess at that one — I've seen it be £300 and I've seen it be £3,000, and the difference is what's behind the wall. The visit's £60 and comes off the bill if I do the work."

That's not evasive. That's somebody who knows what they don't know, which is what people are hoping for when they let a tradesperson into the house.

Today: write down your three most common enquiries and the honest price range for each, with the one thing that moves it. Put them somewhere you can copy from, and use them next time instead of typing a fresh answer.

Written by the team at hailera — we help small businesses answer customer questions without being there.