Customer Wants Extra Work on Your Quote? The Ladder Pause

2026-10-28

Halfway up the ladder

It's Thursday, a little after eleven. You're on the second rung of the ladder, one hand on the hedge trimmer, and the sun has finally come out over the back garden.

The quote said: cut the front hedge, clear the side border, take the green waste away. One day. You wrote the number on the back of a card in the customer's driveway, and she said "lovely, that's fine" before you'd finished the sentence.

Now she's at the fence with a mug in both hands.

"While you're here," she says, "could you do the back hedge as well? It's the same sort of thing. And that shed roof is full of leaves."

You look at the back hedge. It is not the same sort of thing. It's twice as long and leaning into the neighbour's side. The shed roof is a ladder, a bucket and an hour, minimum.

Your mouth says, "Sure, no problem."

Your stomach says something else.

The yes that costs you

You know this feeling. It's not about the work. You're good at the work.

It's the small, hot second where you have to choose between sounding generous and sounding like a business. She's friendly. She's already booked you for the autumn clear-up. She recommended you to the woman two doors down. Bringing up money now feels like spilling something on her carpet.

So you say yes, and you tell yourself you'll sort it out later.

Later is a Friday evening in the van, with a half-eaten sandwich and a quote card that says one number. The day took a day and a half. The extra bags needed a second trip to the tip, and the tip charges by the load. Your own petrol and your own time have gone into a job you never actually priced.

You don't send an invoice that's bigger than the quote. You send the quote. You say nothing.

And a week later, when a different customer asks for "just a quick look" at something, you feel that same tightness in your shoulders before they've even finished talking.

What you really fear

It isn't that she'll say no. Most people, when they're asked calmly, say "of course, what would that come to?"

The fear is quieter. You worry that mentioning a price will make you seem greedy, or that she'll think the first number was a trick. You worry she'll go off you and find someone cheaper, and that one slow month will turn into two.

So you swallow it. You call it being nice. You get home tired and a bit resentful, and you can't say exactly why.

The pause

Picture the same Thursday, a little different.

You're on the ladder. She asks about the back hedge and the shed roof. You come down two rungs, wipe your hands on your trousers and look at the extra work properly. You don't answer yet.

"Happy to," you say. "Let me have a look at how big the back one is, and I'll tell you what that adds before I start. Two minutes."

That's all. No speech, no apology, no hard word anywhere in it.

You walk the length of the back hedge. You look at the shed roof. You open the notes on your phone, where the original job is already laid out: the hours you allowed, the tip runs, the materials, the margin you wanted to keep. You add the new bits next to it. It takes less time than the tea she's drinking.

"The back hedge is about another half day, and the shed roof is an hour," you tell her. "With the extra waste, it comes to this on top of the original. Shall I add it to the same invoice?"

She nods. She says, "That seems fair, actually."

The worst part of it was never the number. It was the silence before it.

The Monday after

This is the part nobody tells you about.

On Monday you open one sheet and see the whole job: what you quoted, what you added, what the materials and the tip runs cost, what you really kept at the end. You don't have to reconstruct it from a card in your jacket and a receipt in the glove box.

The invoice goes out with the extra work on it, in plain words and in the same tone as the rest. Nobody is surprised, including you.

Then you go and do the next job. You are not thinking about the last one. Your shoulders are somewhere near where they belong.

Nothing dramatic happened. A customer asked for more, you said yes, and the extra work counted as work. It turns out you can be warm and be paid in the same sentence.

If you recognise the ladder

If you've ever said "sure, no problem" and then done the sums in the van, you're not bad at business. You were just doing the sums too late, with nowhere calm to put them.

There's a small Excel sheet made for exactly that moment: Quote It Right – Job Quote, Materials & Margin Sheet. It's for tradespeople who quote on site. You price the job, keep track of materials and receipts, see your real margin, and see who still owes you. There's a "Start here" sheet, so you can see your first job fill in within minutes. If it doesn't help, there's a 30-day money-back promise, no questions.

You can look at it here, whenever you're ready: Quote It Right – Job Quote, Materials & Margin Sheet

An illustrative story, written with AI assistance.