How to quote electrical work so the client says yes

The quote that wins is usually the one that arrives first, reads clearly, and makes saying yes easy, not the cheapest one. Domestic clients in particular are choosing between two or three tradespeople they cannot technically evaluate, so they decide on the signals they can read: how fast you responded, whether the quote says exactly what they get, and whether accepting it takes one click or a week of phone tag.

Price from what the job actually is

Bad quotes start with bad information. Before numbers, pin down: what the client thinks they are buying, what the installation will actually demand (the survey, or at minimum good photographs of the board and the relevant areas), access and parking realities, and whether certification or notification rides on the work. A "couple of extra sockets" conversation becomes a different job when the board turns out to have no spare ways.

Then build the price from its parts rather than gut feel:

• Labour, at a day rate that reflects what your time genuinely costs once the van, insurance, tools, calibration, scheme membership and the unpaid admin hours are loaded in. Most underpricing in the trade is not generosity, it is an honest day rate calculated over a dishonest cost base.
• Materials, at supplier prices plus a stated or built-in margin. You carry the risk of the trip back for the thing that was missing; the margin is what pays for it.
• Certification and notification as real line items where they apply. They cost you time and scheme fees; free paperwork is a discount you never agreed to give.
• The awkwardness premium. Occupied houses, third-floor flats, chased walls in finished rooms. If it will slow you down, it belongs in the price, not in your resentment three days in.

Write it so a non-electrician can say yes

The quote is a sales document and a contract in waiting. The structure that works:

1. A plain-English summary of the work. Two or three sentences the client would use to describe it to their partner. This is the part they actually read.
2. Itemised lines where itemising helps the decision (options, phases, alternatives), one line where it does not. Nobody needs your cable schedule.
3. What is included: making good, waste removal, the certificate. And, more importantly, what is not: redecoration, builder's work, anything behind walls nobody has seen inside. Every dispute you will ever have lives in the unwritten assumptions.
4. The commercial terms: price, VAT position, validity period, deposit and payment terms.

Send it the same day as the survey if you can. Response time is the one competitive lever that costs nothing.

Make accepting it one click

A quote that has to be printed, signed and scanned, or answered by working out what to write in an email, sits in the client's guilt pile. A quote the client opens on their phone and accepts with a button gets answered the same evening. This is exactly how quoting works in Pascal: the quote goes out as a link and a PDF with your insurance and qualifications attached, the client accepts or declines online, you can see it was opened, and an accepted quote becomes a booked job on your diary without retyping anything, paper trail already made.

Follow up like it is part of the job

Most unanswered quotes are not rejections; they are inertia. One polite follow-up a few days in, and a second near the validity date, converts a meaningful slice of the pile, and the validity date you wrote gives the second nudge its reason. Track what happens next, too: if you know your acceptance rate and which jobs you lose, you know whether the answer is your pricing, your speed, or the work you are choosing to quote for. That is a report, not a feeling, and it is exactly the kind of figure that should fall out of the system your quotes already live in.