Clearview National February 2020 - Issue 219 | Page 77

BUSINESSNEWS
normally easy to use again and again. If
people are spending a lot of money, they will
feel more comfortable when the quote is more
substantial, with pictures of previous work
and so on.
Make sure that you don’t under-price the
job. Probably the biggest cause of business
failure is not charging enough. Remember
that doing all of the things to establish trust
will help you to win business, even when you
are not the cheapest quote.
MOVING BEYOND BEING
A SOLE TRADER
Taking on your first employee is both the
hardest and the most risky step that you will
ever take. Suddenly you have PAYE, Pension
auto-enrolment, statutory sick pay, paternity
and maternity leave and holidays all to think
about. And that’s before you consider that
you may need to double the amount of work
coming in as you now have two mouths to
feed!
This could be one of the reasons why so
many installers settle for being sole traders.
There are a number of ways that you can
overcome the difficulties of that first hire.
The first is to build up your business using
subcontractors before you hire anyone
permanently. This means you take a lower
risk even though you may have to settle for
making less profit. The only complication
is that you must get to grips with the
Construction Industry Scheme (CIS).
Eventually you will need to take on one or
more employees. With a good bookkeeper
to run the payroll and an HR advisor to
avoid the employment tank traps this can
all be made much easier and smoother. You
may not want to pay out the money for
these experts, but it’s much better to focus
your time on the key business issues. You are
much more likely to be successful that way.
SCALING
Once you have the right formula for
growth, there are a whole new set of challenges
to do with scaling your business.
There are a number of points to think about:
• When a larger and more established
business does their work, people expect
and will be prepared to pay a bit more
• You will need to invest in various areas.
Recruiting the right people, spending on
training, premises, tools and vans are some
of the areas that you will need to address
The balance is not to be too tight with
money but not to be too loose either.
CONTROL AND EFFICIENCY
Of course, if you grow your business you
need to reap the financial rewards. To do
this, you must keep control of your business
as it grows and manage things efficiently.
Some of the pointers to achieve this are:
• Watch the cash. You need to know how
much you have, what’s due to go out
e.g. tax, VAT, payroll and when money
will be coming in. There is nothing
more frustrating than going bust in a
growing, profitable business because
you run out of cash. It does happen.
• Focus on people management. A happy,
hard-working team makes a huge
difference.
• Implement the right system. A good
system will vastly influence your ability
to stay in control and grow efficiently.
CHANGING YOUR ROLE
As a hands-on manager that deals with
most quotes and still gets on the tools,
you can grow your business quite a bit.
However, there comes a time when if you
don’t radically change what you do, you
become the cork in the bottle that prevents
further growth. It’s simple, once there is too
much for one person to do in dealing with
customers, delegation becomes the critical
skill. Among the skills that you need to focus
on to move from being successful to being
very successful are:
• Recruitment – avoiding mistakes and
getting good people.
• Managing managers – you mustn’t
micro-manage or you will discourage
anyone who is really capable. This is a
different skill than direct management.
It’s about setting goals and motivating.
• Delegation – letting go of some control
is part of managing managers
• Envisioning – deciding and then
communicating the overall company
strategy. This must be about talking
about quality as well as outlining what
type of jobs you will focus on and
which geographies you will and won’t
serve
The difficulty with making this transition
is that the very skills that helped you to
succeed previously can become a hindrance.
Sometimes being really good at what you
should no longer be doing will actually
prevent you from moving to the next stage.
It’s why so few companies can manage it.
THE BOTTOM LINE
For competitive people that like to win,
running a successful business can be good
fun. But you will get a lot of hassle in
growing your business so there should be
financial rewards as well. I hope that there
has been some useful food for thought
in this article. Please just make sure that
you are profitable enough to make it all
worthwhile.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Benjamin Dyer is CEO and co-founder of
Powered Now. Powered Now’s apps specialise
in features supporting installers as well as
other trades in order to help them manage
their teams and businesses.
www.powerednow.com
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