After the job

The cheapest job you will ever win is the second one.

Published 2026-08-07 9 min read

The short answer

The people who paid you once are the only ones who have proved they will. Writing to them costs nothing — but the message has to be about their fence, not about your empty diary.

A slow two weeks, and the thinking turns to where the next job comes from. Adverts, maybe. Somebody calling about search engines. A leaflet drop.

Meanwhile there is a folder on the van seat, or a shoebox, or a spreadsheet somebody started, with the name of every person who has ever paid you. Nothing on earth in your business is worth more than that list, and it has never been used once.

The only people who have proved anything

A stranger who fills in a form might pay you. These people did pay you. That is not a small distinction dressed up — it is the only piece of hard evidence anywhere in the business, and it sits in a shoebox.

It goes further than the money. Everything that made the first job hard is already done. They know what you are like to have in the garden for a week. They know you turn up. They know what you charge and they thought it was fair enough to pay it. A stranger knows none of that and has to be convinced of all of it.

The whole thing is one missing segment. Everybody does the top half; almost nobody does the bottom half, which is the half that costs nothing.

The reason to write has to be theirs, not yours

This is the same rule as any follow-up, and it is the reason most attempts at this feel grubby. “Hope you are well — any work coming up?” is “just checking in” in a different coat. It contains nothing, and it asks them to invent a job for you.

A message that is about their fence, at a moment when something about their fence is actually true, is a different object entirely. It is somebody who built the thing telling them something about it. That is worth reading.

Written by us to show the pattern, not quoted from anybody. Only send these when they are true — if there was no storm and you are not on that road, you have nothing to write, and that is fine.
When to write	What you actually say	Why it lands
Three years after a timber fence	“The fence I did for you in the spring of 2023 will be about ready for another coat. I am in the area on the 12th if you want me to do it.”	It is about their fence, you are the person who built it, and there is a date attached.
After the first proper storm	“Wind was bad on Tuesday. If anything has moved on yours, send me a photo and I will tell you whether it needs doing.”	You are offering to look, not to sell. The answer can be “all fine, thanks” and you have still been useful.
When they mentioned something and never did it	“You said at the time you might do the side gate eventually. Still on the list?”	They raised it, not you. You are just the one who wrote it down.
When you are working on their road anyway	“I am on your road on Thursday doing number 40. Want me to have a look at your gate while the van is there?”	It costs them nothing and costs you ten minutes. This one wins small jobs more than anything else on the list.

Referrals: hand them something, do not ask for a favour

“If you know anybody who needs a fence, send them my way” asks a customer to do your selling. Nobody does it, not because they would not recommend you, but because there is nothing to act on and no moment to act in.

What works is giving them something concrete to pass on. “If anybody on the road asks who did it, tell them I will hold the same rate for a neighbor until the end of the month.” Now they are handing over a fact rather than a recommendation, and it is an easy thing to say over a fence.

That is an offer to the neighbor, not a payment to your customer. Paying somebody for introductions turns their recommendation into an advert, and the moment anybody works that out it is worth less than nothing — the same trap as paying for reviews.

The list, and one message a year

Write down what you already know: name, road, what you did, roughly when, and what they said they might do later. A notebook is enough; this does not need software.
Add to it the day you get paid, not later. Later never comes, and this is the exact point where the loop breaks.
Once a year, go down the whole list and write to the ones where time alone has made something true — the coat is due, the three years are up.
The other three reasons do not wait for a yearly round, and the best of them least of all. Glance at the list the evening you book a job on a road, and again after a storm. That is thirty seconds, and it is where “I am on your road on Thursday” comes from — the message the table above calls the one that wins small jobs.
Two lines each. No newsletter, no offer, no attachment. Somebody who built your fence texting you about your fence.
Give them a way to say “not now” that costs them nothing: “no reply needed if it is all fine.”
Write down who replied and who did not. Next year, the ones who replied get written to first.

Ask once, on the day, and the rest is easy

One thing has to be said plainly, because getting it wrong is genuinely expensive and almost every article about this leaves it out. Having somebody’s number because they booked a job is not the same as having permission to send them a message about work later. In most places a text is treated more strictly than a letter, and the person sending it has to be able to show they were allowed to.

The fix costs one sentence and belongs at the end of the job anyway, at the same handover where you asked whether they were happy: “Alright if I drop you a line if I am ever on your road, or when it is due another coat?” Almost everybody says yes, because it is obviously in their interest. Write the answer on the job sheet with the date. That is the whole thing done.

It also improves the message you send a year later, which is the part that surprises people. You are no longer somebody who kept a number; you are somebody they told to get in touch, doing what they said. And if they said no, you have saved yourself writing to somebody who did not want to hear from you.

What an afternoon of this is worth

Say you have forty past customers, which is a couple of years of work for one person. One message each, two minutes to write because you know these people, so eighty minutes for the lot.

Our own arithmetic on forty past customers at two minutes a message — illustrative figures, not measured averages. The rates are assumptions; the eighty minutes is not.
If this many of the forty come back	Jobs from the list	What it cost you
1 in 10	4	80 minutes
1 in 20	2	80 minutes
1 in 40	1	80 minutes

Look at the bottom row, because it is the pessimistic one. Even if thirty-nine of the forty say nothing at all, you have won a job for eighty minutes of typing, from people you already know, with no quote to write and no stranger to convince.

Why it feels like begging, and why it is not

The same instinct that stops people asking for reviews stops them doing this, and it is worth naming. It feels like turning up at somebody’s door because you are short of work.

It only feels that way when the message is about you. Rewrite it so it is about the thing you built for them — the coat that is due, the gate that has dropped, the storm on Tuesday — and it stops being a request and becomes what it actually is: the person who did the work, still paying attention to it.

The short version

Everybody who paid you once has proved something no stranger has.
The list gets added to the day you get paid, or it never exists.
Write when something about their job is true, not when your diary is empty.
Two lines. No newsletter, no offer, no attachment.
Give them a way to say “not now” for free.
For referrals, hand them a fact to pass on — never a payment.
Once a year is enough. Twice is a mailing list.
Ask at handover whether you may write later, and write the answer down.

None of this is marketing, and it should not look like it. It is the ordinary consequence of having built something for somebody: you know it is out there, you know roughly what state it is in, and you are the person best placed to say so.