Your service menu is a filter, so build it like one

Quick answer: Take what each job earned you and divide it by every hour it ate, driving and quoting included. Keep the winners, put a floor under the losers, and write the whole menu down where customers see it before they call.

Start with twenty invoices

Pull your last twenty. Next to each, write two numbers: what you charged minus materials, and the hours from the moment the customer called to the moment you sent the bill. Door to door. Drive time counts. So does the text thread about when you can come by.

Divide the first number by the second. That's what the job really paid per hour.

Here's an example, with invented numbers, for an electrician:

• Ceiling fan swap: $140 charged, customer supplied the fan, two hours door to door. $70 an hour.
• Outlet or switch repair: $120 charged, $10 in parts, one hour forty-five. About $63 an hour.
• Whole-house surge protector: $450 charged, $150 in parts, an hour and a half. $200 an hour.
• Panel upgrade: $4,200 charged, $1,300 in parts, fourteen hours including the permit and the wait on the inspector. About $207 an hour.

Same guy, same truck, same week. Two of those jobs pay three times what the other two do.

The annoying part is that you probably already knew. You just never put it on paper, because the fan swap felt productive. You were busy, someone said thank you, and the whole morning vanished into a $140 invoice.

Set a target before you judge any of this. If you haven't worked out what an hour of your time has to bring in, start with this piece on why $45 an hour is a pay cut when it's your own truck. Say yours comes out at $100. Everything below $100 is a job to fix or drop.

Sort the menu into three kinds of work

Once you've got the numbers, your jobs fall into three buckets.

Anchor jobs. The three to five things you're best at, that pay well per hour, and that customers need done right. In the example, that's panels and surge protection. These go at the top of your menu, and they're what you want the phone to ring for.

Add-ons. Small, high-margin items you offer while you're already on site. A surge protector next to a panel upgrade. Smoke detector replacement while you're in the hallway. No second drive, no second quote. These are where the margin hides.

Small jobs. The fan swaps and outlet fixes. Some of these you'll keep. None of them should be priced as if your drive were free.

Put a floor under the small stuff

A minimum charge does most of the work here. Say your service minimum is $190, which covers the drive and the first hour on site. That fan swap now costs $190, or three small things for $190 if the customer bundles them.

Some people will grumble. Let them. The ones who grumble about a $190 minimum are the ones who'd have haggled the invoice, paid it late, and called back in a week about something you did "wrong." The ones who say "fine, I've got a few things" are your future customers.

Price the small job to pay what it costs you, or politely don't take it. That's not rude. That's a business.

One honest caveat: small jobs aren't always the enemy. In a slow January they fill a gap, and now and then one is the door to a big job with a good customer. Keep them for existing customers and referrals. Just don't run them as your front line for strangers who found you by searching "cheap electrician."

Write down what you don't do

Every menu needs a short list of the things you pass on. Crawl-space work in July. Anything that needs a second license you don't hold. Jobs more than forty minutes out. Landlord-style "quote me on fourteen units" requests that eat three evenings and never close.

Then do the part that sets you apart. Have a buddy in the trades you can send them to. Tell the customer, "That's not my lane, but call Dale. He does it right." Dale will send you his overflow in return, and customers remember the guy who sent them to the right person instead of taking the money and doing it badly.

Serve people first. But you're allowed to say no, and you should say it plainly.

Let the menu do the screening

A menu you keep in your head screens nobody. Write it out:

• On your website or even a one-page PDF: your anchor jobs, your service minimum, your service area, and what you don't do.
• In the first text you send back to a new inquiry: a two-line version of the same thing, plus the next opening on your calendar.
• On every estimate: scope in writing, what's included, what isn't, and a deposit on anything big enough to hurt if the customer vanishes. Check what your state allows on deposits and contract terms, and ask a local attorney if you're unsure. Rules vary.

Then use it. Your best leads are already in your invoice file. Call the people who already paid you before you pay for leads, and send them the menu with a line like "if you've got a panel or surge-protection job coming up, I've got room in March." Good customers know other good customers. They don't know that you've got room unless you tell them.

And leave every house cleaner than you found it. Floor swept, drop cloth folded, old parts hauled out, a text the next day asking if anything looks off. That habit is cheap, and it's the reason a customer sends you their brother-in-law with a $4,000 job.

Change it in stages

Don't gut the menu in a week. You've got a mortgage and maybe a helper, and cash flow doesn't care about your spreadsheet.

1. Raise the price on your lowest-margin jobs first. Some customers will leave. Fine. Some won't, and you just got a raise.
2. Put the minimum in place on all new inquiries.
3. Make room on your calendar for one more anchor job each week. Don't fill it yet. Let the better phone calls find it.
4. Check your numbers again after sixty days. If a bad job has moved up to $95 an hour, it can stay.

If you're working seventy hours a week and still feel behind, the problem is probably sitting in that bottom third. Your seventy-hour week is a pricing problem, and a menu is how you fix it without working eighty.

The fan swap you pass on Tuesday is the slot a better customer books on Thursday.