The work dries up somewhere around the middle of December and does not properly come back until February. You spend January doing jobs you would have turned down in June, for people who want three quotes, and wondering whether this is the year it does not pick up.
It is not you. It is the calendar. But some of it is fixable, and the fixing has to happen now rather than in January, because being found takes a few weeks to work.
What actually goes quiet, and what does not
“Winter is quiet” is one of those things everybody repeats, and it is only half true. It depends entirely on what you do.
What genuinely slows down. Anything outdoors and weather-dependent. Roofing, rendering, external painting, landscaping, driveways, groundwork. Short days, frost, and materials that will not go off properly. Big planned projects also stall, because people do not want the house open in February and they have just spent the money on Christmas.
What holds up. Indoor work. Bathrooms, kitchens, rewires, decorating, flooring, tiling, plastering. People are stuck inside looking at the things that annoy them, which is why January is a good month to be a plasterer and a bad one to be a landscaper.
What actually goes up. Emergencies. Boilers fail when they are finally asked to work hard. Pipes burst. Roofs leak when it rains sideways. Gutters block. Heating packs in on the coldest night of the year, which is the night everybody else’s does too.
What ignores the season completely. Landlord compliance. A gas safety check is due every twelve months and an electrical report every five years, whatever the weather is doing. Those renewal dates fall evenly across the year, including the dead weeks in January.
So the useful question is not “how do I survive winter”. It is which of those four buckets does my work sit in, and can I move some of it.
The mistake almost everybody makes
When it goes quiet, the instinct is to spend less. Cancel things. Stop paying for anything that is not immediately producing work.
That is understandable and it is usually backwards, because being found has a lag on it. Whatever you set up today starts working in a few weeks. If you wait until the phone has already stopped in January, you are fixing it for March.
Which is why the middle of October is the moment to do this. You still have money coming in and you still have time for it to take effect.
Winter searches are different, and better
Here is the bit worth understanding properly.
In summer somebody searching for a tradesperson is usually planning. They are getting prices, thinking about it, maybe booking for the spring. They will compare three quotes and take a fortnight to decide.
In winter a lot of searching is panic. No hot water on a Sunday. No heating with a baby in the house. Water coming through the ceiling at ten at night. That person is not comparing quotes. They want somebody who answers, and they will take the first credible result they find.
That makes winter the single best time of year to be easy to find, and the worst time to be invisible. A customer who finds you at eleven at night in February is not price shopping, and they remember you afterwards.
Be findable at the moment it matters
Four things, none of which need a budget.
Check your Google Business Profile hours are honest. If you genuinely answer the phone at nine in the evening, your hours should say so, because Google filters by “open now” when somebody searches in a panic. If you are listed as closed at 5pm you are removed from exactly the searches that are worth most to you. If you have not set the profile up at all, start with getting your business onto Google Maps.
Say the word “emergency” if you do them. People search for it. If your site never uses the word, you are not in that conversation. Same for “same day”, “out of hours” and “callout” — use the words your customers actually type.
Make the phone number tappable. It sounds trivial. Somebody standing in two inches of water is not copying a number out by hand.
Spell out your winter work. Customers do not assume. A landscaper who also does fencing repairs and storm clear-ups in winter needs to say that, or the January search for “fence blown down” goes to somebody else.
The cheapest work you will get all winter
If you only do one thing from this article, do this one.
Go through last year’s jobs and text the customers. Not a mailshot, not a newsletter — a normal message from the person who did the work.
“Hi Sarah, it is Dave who fitted your boiler last March. Just a reminder the annual service is due. I have got space the week of the 10th if that suits.”
That is it. These people already trust you, already have your number, and are not comparing you to anybody. The hit rate on this beats every form of advertising there is, and it costs nothing but an hour with your phone.
Anything with a yearly cycle is a gift here: boiler services, gas safety certificates, alarm checks, gutter clearing, chimney sweeping. If your trade has one, build a list and work it every autumn.
Use the quiet weeks on the thing you never get round to
The jobs that actually cost you work are the ones you have been meaning to sort for two years. You will not do them in June when you are flat out. January is when you can.
Take proper photos of your finished work while you still have the jobs fresh. Get the website saying what you do and where. Collect the reviews you have earned and never asked for — how to get more Google reviews has the wording for asking without it feeling awkward.
If you cannot currently find yourself on Google for what you do, that is the real reason winter hurts, and it is a cheaper problem to fix than most people think. We went through why that happens in why your business is not showing up on Google.
Do not drop your prices
This is the big winter trap and it is hard to resist when the diary is empty.
The trouble is that a price is a signal, and you cannot quietly put it back up in April. The customer who booked you in January because you were cheap tells their friends what you charged, comes back next year expecting the same, and was never going to be a good customer anyway.
If you genuinely need to move something, move the terms rather than the number. Offer a slot this month. Offer to split payment. Throw in something small that costs you little. Protect the rate.
January is the worst month to start buying leads
It is also the month most people do it, which is not a coincidence.
The problem is that everybody else is quiet too, so more tradespeople are bidding on fewer jobs, and the customers who are about in January are the most price-sensitive of the year. You pay for leads shared with four competitors, into the most competitive, cheapest end of the market.
That is not an argument for never using them. It is an argument for doing the maths before you buy a credit pack in a panic, which we set out in Bark, MyBuilder or Rated People: which lead site is actually worth it.
What to do this week
Check your Google profile hours match when you actually answer the phone.
Write the list of past customers with anything on a yearly cycle, and start texting.
Add the winter version of your services to your website, in the words people search for.
Ask your last three customers for a review while the job is still fresh.
Do those four in October and November and January looks different. Leave them until the phone stops and you are fixing it for spring.
If you would rather we sorted the website side
We build the site, write the words and set up the Google listing, and we are on the High Street in Slough if you would rather come in and talk it through than do it over email. Ten minutes on the phone and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth doing before the winter or whether you are fine as you are.
Our prices are on the site, and what the different price points actually get you is set out in cheap website design: what £0, £199 and £2,000 buy.