Free contractor tool
See how much one happy customer is truly worth when you count repeat work and the referrals they send your way. No email required.
What one customer is worth to your business
Why this number matters
Most contractors think about the job in front of them. The average job value. What they bid. What they made. But a customer is worth more than a single job. When you count repeat work and the referrals they generate, even a modest contractor customer can be worth $10,000 to $20,000 or more.
That changes how you think about marketing costs. If a customer is worth $15,000 to your business over time, spending $500 or $1,000 to acquire them is not expensive. It is a return you can calculate.
The contractors who win long term are the ones who understand this math and invest accordingly. Want to go deeper?
Real result, not a projection
per month running the full system: website, Google Ads, and content, all pulling in the same direction.
Common questions
Customer lifetime value is the total revenue one customer is expected to generate over time, including their own repeat jobs and the jobs they send you through referrals. For contractors, a single customer may hire you once for a large project and then again for a smaller one, and send one or two friends your way. When you add those together, the real value of one customer is often 2 to 3 times the value of their first job alone.
This calculator adds a referral value on top of the direct lifetime value. Referral value is calculated by multiplying the number of referrals a customer typically generates by the average value of a referred job. For example, if a customer sends 0.5 referrals on average and those referred jobs are worth $8,000 each, the referral value per original customer is $4,000. The defaults (0.5 referrals per customer) are estimates based on typical industry ranges, not guaranteed outcomes.
If you know a customer is worth $15,000 over their lifetime rather than just $8,000 from the first job, you can justify spending more to acquire them. A $500 or $1,000 acquisition cost looks very different against a $15,000 LTV than against an $8,000 single-job value. Contractors who understand their LTV can outbid competitors on ad spend while still being profitable, which is a real competitive advantage.
Enter your average job value, the average number of repeat jobs per customer, the average number of referrals each customer generates, and the average value of a referred job. The calculator computes: Direct Lifetime Value (Average Job Value x Repeat Jobs), Referral Value (Referrals x Referred Job Value), and Total LTV (Direct LTV + Referral Value). All numbers update in real time.
More free tools
This is one of several free tools built for residential contractors. Browse the full contractor marketing tools library or get a custom strategy video that uses your real numbers.
Ready to run the real numbers?
The calculator gives you a benchmark. A strategy video gives you a real plan: which campaigns to run, what budget makes sense, and what results we would actually target for your market. No cost, no obligation.
