The 3-question rule — how to qualify a trade job in under 30 seconds

A tradesman's day has a finite number of minutes. Every minute spent on a job that won't happen — wrong area, no budget, not the right trade — is a minute that's gone. Multiply by a year of enquiries and the productivity gap between a tradesman who qualifies well and one who doesn't is enormous. The well-qualified tradesman gets six hours of actual paid work a day; the badly-qualified one gets three.

The good news is qualifying well takes 30 seconds. Three questions, asked in the right order, will filter out around 80% of unsuitable enquiries before any pricing or detail has been exchanged.

Question 1 — what's the job?

Don't ask 'how can I help?'. That's an open question that gives you 'I need a plumber' — which tells you almost nothing. Ask 'what's the job?' — and follow with what makes it specific.

Examples by trade:

• Plumber: 'What's the job — leak, boiler, blockage, install?'
• Sparky: 'What's the work — fault, install, EICR, EV charger?'
• Joiner: 'What are you after — kitchen, fitted wardrobe, repair?'
• Gas: 'Is it a service, breakdown or install?'

The specific options anchor the customer. They pick one and the conversation becomes concrete. Compare that to 'tell me about your project' — which gets you a five-minute story with no actionable information.

Question 2 — where?

Ask for postcode. Not town, not 'area' — postcode. The reason is precision: 'south London' could be anywhere from Wandsworth to Sidcup, and your service area might cover one but not the other. A postcode is unambiguous.

Phrase it lightly: 'What's the first half of your postcode?' or 'Are you nearby — what's the area?'. Customers volunteer it readily. If they don't know it (it happens), accept a town name and look up the postcode silently.

The reason this is question 2 (not 3) is that out-of-area is the single biggest reason enquiries waste time. Find out now, before you've invested attention in the job details. If they're outside your patch, you can decline politely in 20 seconds instead of 20 minutes.

Question 3 — when?

Ask urgency before price. 'When do you need this done?' splits enquiries cleanly: today (emergency rate), this week (premium rate), flexible (standard rate). It also tells you whether to keep talking now or call back later.

Don't ask 'when's convenient?'. That's a scheduling question, not a urgency question. They'll answer with 'evenings' and you'll have no idea whether they need you tomorrow or in three weeks.

Specific options work best: 'is it an emergency / this week / this month / no rush?'. Most customers pick one without hesitation.

Why this order matters

Job → location → urgency, in that order. Reversing them costs you. If you ask urgency first ('when do you need it?'), you'll get answers that depend on what they think you'll quote ('depends on price') — meaningless. If you ask location first, the customer feels qualified-by-postcode before any rapport is built, and bounces.

Job-first is empathetic — it shows you care about what they need. Location-second is logical — once you know the job, knowing where it is comes naturally. Urgency-third is decisive — by now the customer has invested two answers and they want a path forward.

What you can deduce in 30 seconds

After three questions, you know: whether the job is something you do, whether the location is in your patch, and whether the timing is realistic. If any of those is a no, you can politely decline now. If all three are yes, you've earned the right to talk price — and the customer has earned the right to a real quote.

Where most tradesmen go wrong

The most common qualification mistake is talking price too early. Customer says 'how much for a kitchen?'. Tradesman gives a range. Customer asks more questions. Tradesman is now invested. Twenty minutes later, the postcode turns out to be 90 miles away.

Hold price until you've passed all three filters. 'Happy to talk price — can I just check, what's the postcode and when did you want it for?'. Almost no customer pushes back. Most are relieved to feel they're talking to someone organised.

How chatbots do this automatically

If you use a website chatbot, the three-question rule should be baked into its opening flow. Voxinly does this by default — every conversation starts with 'what's the job, what's the postcode, when's it for' before any pricing is offered. This filters time-wasters before they ever land in your inbox.

On the phone, the same discipline applies — ask all three before quoting. It feels slightly slow at first; you get over that in a week.

What the data shows

We A/B tested the three-question opening against a free-flowing 'how can I help?' opening across 1,200 chat conversations. Numbers:

The customer-satisfaction improvement surprised us. Counter-intuitively, customers prefer feeling efficiently qualified to feeling 'chatted at'. They came to enquire, not to talk.

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