How to get work from builders when none of them know you yet

A builder with a kitchen fitter he trusts does not go looking for another one. That is the whole difficulty of getting work from builders: the good ones already have their trades, and the work goes round the same few phone numbers for years.

There is one kind of builder that has nobody yet, and that is a building firm which has only just been set up. It has jobs coming and no regular electrician, no scaffolder it has used twice, no kitchen fitter it would ring first. Every one of those firms is published on the public record on the day it is registered. This guide is about finding them, waiting for the right moment, and writing something they will read.

The film above shows the whole thing running for a kitchen fitter in Stockport. The rest of this page is how to do it, with or without us.

Why new building firms are the ones to write to

A new building firm has not chosen its trades yet, and that is the only time the choice is open. Once a builder has used somebody twice and the job went fine, a better price from a stranger rarely moves them.

There are more of these firms than most trades expect. The Office for National Statistics counted 423,000 active construction businesses in the UK in 2024, and the sector's birth rate was 10.6%, which works out at roughly 45,000 new construction businesses in a single year. More opened than closed. The detail is in UK construction by the numbers.

Not all of them are general builders, and not all are in your area. But in most towns a handful appear every month, and almost nobody writes to them.

What the public record tells you about a builder

Every limited company in the UK files with Companies House, and what it files is public, free to read and updated daily. For a new building firm that gives you five useful things:

• The company name and number, so you know it is real.
• The date it was registered, which is the reason you are writing.
• Its trade codes, the SIC codes the founder picked to describe the work.
• The registered office, which for small firms is often the accountant's address rather than the yard.
• The directors' names, so your email starts with a person and not "Dear Sir".

What it does not give you matters just as much. There is no email address, no phone number and no website on the public record. Closing that gap is most of the work, and what Companies House data gives you and what it leaves out covers it properly.

The trade codes that mean builder

Three codes cover most of the firms a trade wants to hear from:

• 41202, construction of domestic buildings: house builders, extensions and conversions.
• 41201, construction of commercial buildings: shops, offices, units and fit-outs.
• 41100, development of building projects: the developers who hire a main contractor, and sometimes the trades directly.

Founders pick their own codes and often pick loosely, so a joiner may sit under a building code and a builder under a finishing one. Which SIC codes actually describe your customers shows how to check a code against the firms really filed under it, and the guide to searching like a builder covers the trade codes in more detail.

Wait until they can be reached

The honest catch is that a company registered this month usually has no website and no working email address yet. The founder is still choosing a bank. Writing on day three mostly means writing to nobody.

So the useful window is not the first week. It is the first months: after the firm has a site and an address that accepts mail, and before it has settled on its regulars. That is why our own system holds a newly registered firm back until its website opens and its email address has been tested, and only then puts it in front of you. For some firms that is a few weeks. For many it is longer.

If you are doing this by hand, the same rule applies. Keep a list of new firms by month, and check back on each one until a website appears.

What to say in the first email

Say why you are writing to them, today, in the first line. For a new building firm the reason is simple and true: you saw that they have just set up, and you would like to be considered before they have a regular.

A first line that works looks like this:

I saw you registered Specimen Builders on 14 August. The first few jobs are usually when a builder settles who fits what, so I wanted to be early rather than polished.

Then two lines that are yours: what you do, where, and how fast. Then one question they can answer in a word. No brochure, no price list, no attachment. There are more worked examples, one for each kind of filing, in cold email first lines written from a company's own filings.

How many to send, and how often

Few, and steadily. A mailbox that suddenly sends fifty emails in a morning looks like spam to the systems that decide where mail lands, and once a domain is flagged it takes weeks to recover.

Five a day from your own mailbox is a sensible start, on weekdays, in working hours. That is the pace our own sending starts at, climbing by five on each active day, and it cannot be switched off for exactly this reason. If nobody answers, one follow-up after four days and a last one after nine is plenty. The moment somebody replies, the chasing stops.

The setup behind this is covered in email warm-up for UK cold outreach.

Doing it by hand, and doing it with Leadistry

By hand, the search is free. Companies House has an advanced search that filters by SIC code, registration date and the town of the registered office, and it will list every new building firm that matches. What it will not give you is a website, an email address, or any sign of which firms can be reached yet. Expect to give it an evening a week.

With Leadistry you describe what you sell in one sentence, something like "I fit kitchens for builders around Stockport", and it proposes the watch for you to accept. From then on it runs every morning at half past six without you. Each firm that arrives has been matched to its filing, had its website opened and its email address tested, and comes with a first line already written from the filing. You change any line you like, put your own logo and links under your name, and approve the ones you want sent. Areas are set by town and postcode.

The Feed is where those cards land, and the page for trades and builders shows the same idea for other trades.

Is it legal to email a building firm you have never met?

For limited companies, yes, within rules. UK marketing law treats a limited company as a corporate subscriber, which means you may email it without prior consent as long as you say who you are and make it easy to opt out. The director's name is still personal data, so you need a legitimate interest and a relevant message, which a kitchen fitter writing to a builder has.

Sole traders and ordinary partnerships are treated as individuals, and the rules for them are stricter. What legitimate interest actually requires and whether you can email sole traders go through both. This is practical guidance, not legal advice.

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