A Page for the Jobs You Do Not Take On

The same call, several times a week

Most businesses have a handful of requests they turn down over and over. A job too small, an area too far, a material they cannot work with, a deadline nobody could meet.

Each arrives as a phone call or a carefully written form. Someone stops work, listens and explains, and the caller leaves disappointed after ten minutes spent learning what the website could have said.

The website usually says the opposite. It lists everything the business does, in confident terms, and leaves visitors to assume the rest is included.

A short page on what you do not take on fixes that, and it does more good than most owners expect.

Why nobody writes it

Owners worry that saying no on the website will turn away work. Sales copy pulls the same way: "no job too big or too small" sounds generous and costs nothing to write.

And the list of refusals lives in people's heads. The owner knows it, the person answering the phone learned it in their first month, and nobody ever thought of it as content.

But a visitor who is going to be turned down will be turned down either way. The only question is whether it happens on the page, in seconds, or on the phone, at your cost.

What belongs on the list

• Jobs below a minimum, in size, quantity or price.
• Areas you do not serve, named rather than implied.
• Materials, brands or models you do not work on.
• Kinds of work you send elsewhere, such as emergencies or insurance jobs.
• Timelines you cannot meet, like same-day or weekend work.
• Ways of ordering or paying you do not accept.

The third is the one customers cannot know in advance. A minimum or a service area can be guessed at, but nobody outside the trade knows which materials, brands or models a business can handle.

Saying no makes the yes believable

A business that lists only what it does sounds like every other business in its trade.

One that also says what it does not do sounds like it knows its work. Specific limits are the kind of detail people only write when they are true, and readers sense that.

The customers you want feel they have found a specialist. The ones you cannot help leave with an answer and a direction, remembered more kindly than a call that ended in no.

Writing it politely

Tone decides whether the page reads as helpful or as a list of rules.

Start each item with the limit and follow it with the reason, in one sentence: "We do not coat plastic, because every part goes into an oven hot enough to melt it."

A reason turns a refusal into information. People accept a limit they understand far more readily than one that sounds like a preference.

Avoid capitals, warnings and phrases like "please do not ask". Write it the way your most patient staff member explains it on the phone.

Pointing people somewhere useful

Each refusal should end with where to go instead: the type of business that does that job, or the words to search for.

If you send this work to a particular firm and are happy to stand behind them, name them. If not, describe the trade, so the reader knows what to look for.

Some limits have a way round them: a minimum met by batching work, or an area you do not travel to that works if the customer brings the item in. Say so.

A worked example

A powder coating shop in an industrial park runs one batch oven and a sandblasting booth. It coats railings, gates, furniture frames, and car and motorcycle parts for homeowners, fabricators and restorers.

Its website had a colour chart, a gallery and a quote form, but nothing on what the shop could not do, and a gallery full of wheels suggested it handled anything for cars.

So the phone rang about chrome plating, a different process, and plastic bumpers, which cannot survive the oven. People asked for railings coated in place, a single wheel nut, and colours matched to a paint chip.

The shop added a page headed "What we do not coat, and where to go instead": five lines, each with a reason.

One explains the minimum charge. Heating the oven costs the same for one bracket as for a full rack.

A line above the quote form says every part must come to the shop, survive oven heat and arrive with rubber seals and bearings removed.

Those calls still come, but staff can send the link instead of explaining it all again.

Where the page belongs

The full list deserves its own page, linked from the services pages and the contact page.

A short version belongs right beside the contact or quote form, where people decide to ask. Two or three lines are enough there.

The page also answers searches. People type exactly these questions, such as whether plastic can be powder coated, and search engines look for plain answers.

Keeping the list honest

The list changes as the business does. A larger oven, a new truck or a second technician can turn a no into a yes.

Ask whoever answers the phone to note requests they turn down more than once a month, and review the page twice a year. Remove anything you now take on, or the page turns away work you want.

The counter-case

A new business still finding its work may not want a long list of refusals. Two firm limits and an invitation to ask about the rest are enough in the first year.

A business going through a quiet spell may take jobs it would normally refuse. Then soften the wording to "usually" and keep the reasons.

And a page like this should never be the first thing a visitor sees. It supports the services pages; it does not replace them.

For most businesses, though, a polite list of what you do not take on saves time on both sides and makes everything else on the site more credible.

Writing the page

1. Note every request you turn down this month.
2. Group them into five or six kinds.
3. Write each limit with a one-line reason.
4. Add where to go instead.
5. Put a short version beside the contact form.
6. Link the full page from your services pages.
7. Review it every six months.

Step three is where the page earns its keep. A limit with a reason reads as expertise; the same limit without one reads as a business that does not want the work.

Getting those explanations out of the person who gives them on the phone every day is covered in writing down what your best salesperson says.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.