How do I add monthly recurring revenue to a trade business that only ever bills by the job?

The reason job-billing businesses feel precarious is that January always starts at zero. A plan converts a list of past customers — an asset most trades do not treat as one — into revenue that arrives whether the phone rings or not.

The plan should contain something you already do and can deliver cheaply: an annual service you are qualified for, priority response when something fails, a discount on call-out. The cost to you is one visit a year plus the option value of the priority promise; the price is monthly, so the customer compares it to a streaming subscription rather than to a repair bill.

Attach rates are highest at the moment of a completed job, when the trust is fresh, and lowest in a cold campaign to a list. The mechanical fix is to make the offer part of finishing the work rather than a separate marketing effort later.

The compounding matters more than the monthly figure. A plan customer calls you rather than searching, which removes the acquisition cost from every future job, and plan holders in trades typically produce more billable work per year than non-plan customers rather than less.