18 | APRIL 2019
Hints & Tips
Read online at www.proinstaller.co.uk
5 WAYS TO INVEST FOR GROWTH
WHILE CONTROLLING COSTS
The Holy Grail for ambitious installers is to grow their business without too much cost
or risk. Benjamin Dyer of Powered Now looks at some of the best things to try first.
Make the most of
your quotes
My company, Powered Now,
surveyed over 1,000 homeown-
ers. 75% said that they were
frustrated, trying to get quotes
from trade companies. 11% were
frustrated “to a large extent”.
Winning quotes is critical to
growing any installer business.
One of the easiest ways to do
this is to respond quickly to re-
quests for quotes. If you do, you
will often win the business with
relatively little competition. Some
of the fastest growing trade busi-
nesses turn around their quotes
within a day.
You shouldn’t worry about
your availability as having too
much work is a good problem.
After a customer decides to go
with you it’s then time to negoti-
ate the start date. A lot of people
will wait for their chosen option.
This is especially true when you
explain that you won’t compro-
mise on quality or job length by
starting before you can devote
yourselves to the job.
Winning more work is not just
about growth. When you have
more work, you can turn down
less profitable opportunities as
well as gently increasing prices.
With more work you can afford
to lose a few quotes on price. All
of this provides more funds for
growth.
Do good work
One of the most straight for-
ward ways for installers to grow
their business is to have happy
customers. With 70% of residen-
tial business coming from word
of mouth, this is the single best
way to get low cost growth. Elec-
trical contractor Mark Goodchild
of electric-call.net puts it pithily:
“We make sure the job is done
properly so we don’t have to go
back.”
Of course, there is more to this
than just doing good work. We
all make mistakes and there are
also misunderstandings. The re-
sponse has to be to do your best
to satisfy customers, even when
they are unreasonable. Typically,
customers are more likely to tell
their friends about bad experi-
ences (in their eyes) as good.
Happy customers make the job
more pleasant too.
Think about your
marketing
Word of mouth is important,
but years can elapse between
major projects for a particular
customer and their friends. That’s
why helping them to remember
your name is vital.
Many ways of doing this are
cheap – certainly in comparison
to Checkatrade, Rated People
or My Builder. Here are some
simple ideas:
• Have your business name,
number and what you do on
every van.
• Give a business card to every
prospect and customer. You
can get them for almost
nothing online.
• Put up a board outside the
premises where you do the
job.
• Consider a company uni-
form, which has several ben-
efits. These include looking
smart and professional, re-
inforcing your name in your
customers mind and being a
walking advert, just as a van
can be a moving advert!
Another not so obvious way of
helping get your message across
is specialisation. Again, Mark
Goodchild of electric-call.net has
this philosophy: “We don’t cover
all types of electrical installation
as it’s impossible to be good at
everything”. It is tempting to
chase every opportunity, espe-
cially if you are keen to grow.
But being particularly good in
one or two areas makes sense.
Specialisation will make you
more efficient at doing the work
and also mean you should hold
less parts. If you specialise and
have your own website, you
are more likely to get a decent
stream of leads from people
searching.
Be efficient
Having your materials ready
on site before the job starts
saves time and money. It’s easy
to waste an hour driving to the
plumber’s merchant, finding the
right stuff, paying at the till and
driving back. Plus, you may pay
full whack and not get any cred-
it. This is bad for cash flow. The
key to avoiding this is planning.
Computer systems based on
smartphones, tablets and desk-
top computers cost money. But
increasing numbers of installers
are finding that this is a fraction
of what you can save by from the
resulting efficiency.
In the past installers, particular-
ly the smaller ones, haven’t used
systems because they didn’t like
the idea, they weren’t mobile and
the systems weren’t particularly
designed for the trade. That’s now
all changing with the new genera-
tion of smartphone and tablet-based
systems. The field trade industry is
less computerised than almost any
other business area and that’s been
for good reasons. Those reasons are
now gone and installers have the
chance to share in the benefits that
other businesses have been enjoy-
ing for years.
A single business system can now
manage everything. This includes
staff schedules, team tracking,
keeping details of customers and
communicating with them, project
management, raising gas safety
documentation, generating quotes
and invoices and more. The result is
less time spent on paperwork, faster
quoting, quicker invoicing and not
having piles of paper everywhere.
Optimise your staff
Having great people is the
biggest predictor of success in
business. Without them, you can’t
grow.
That’s why the first rule is to
recruit good staff. When there is
pressure to try and recruit quickly,
it can be tempting to settle for me-
diocre people, or even worse.
That’s always a bad idea as
having to dismiss people and then
find replacements takes much
more effort than getting it right
in the first place. Bad staff upset
customers and their work ends up
with refunds and disputes. They
are less productive. Even if they
are cheap it’s a bad deal. They
demotivate others as well, who
tend to wonder why they bother
when poor work is tolerated and
they have to cover for it. They
need constant watching and man-
aging else they will create endless
problems. Don’t recruit them in
the first place.