JANUARY 2020 | 43
Business
Read online at www.proinstaller.co.uk
Benjamin Dyer, CEO of Powered Now, looks at
how to grow your business from a one-man
band to having employees. Then to grow on
further from a small to a larger company.
There’s a lot to be said for a life-
style business. You can deal with the same
pleasant customers that you have always
had. Your overheads and risks are low.
You can make time to pick up the kids or
grandkids if you want to. But lifestyle busi-
nesses aren’t for everyone.
This article is written for people who
don’t want to be sole traders or even run
small installer businesses all of their lives.
Instead they want to grow their compa-
nies and see themselves really prosper.
The first thing to ask yourself is wheth-
er you will make it if you try to expand. In
reality, it’s hard. Certain skills are pre-req-
uisites. One of these is a skill at estimating
and pricing. A critical capability is to be
good at knowing how much effort jobs
will take. Another is building rapport with
customers. If you’re no good at either of
these, it will be very hard to succeed.
Marketing
It’s easy to think that the first priority
when it comes to growing your business,
assuming that your company does good
quality work, is to find new customers.
Recommendation is still the prime way
that new business is won, at least in the
residential market. But 30% of business
comes from other routes. It’s exploring
these that will really make a difference.
A lot of this 30% now comes from the
internet, but it’s complicated. Some will
arrive from having your own web site,
although most likely not a huge amount.
As you probably know, most people
report Yellow Pages as a complete dud.
Instead, Facebook, Google, Rated People,
My Builder, Checkatrade and more are
all trying to corner the market for people
searching for installers and other trades.
There is no magic wand for marketing
and trying out some of these different
channels to see what works for you may
be your best approach.
Sales
Marketing is hard. However, when sell-
ing to the leads that have come your way
there are a lot of obvious and easy things
to do. These should be a higher priority
than marketing as they generally cost little
or nothing. So, converting a higher propor-
tion of leads into orders will grow your
business at a lower cost and risk.
The first rule is to remember that people
buy from people they trust. So, the first
time you meet a new prospect, you should
do everything possible to build up that
trust. Here are some points to consider:
• Be totally professional.
• Offer to take off your shoes when you
arrive at the house, it shows that you
care.
• Have a smart, clean van and make
sure you look smart too.
• Try to reference your experience,
qualifications and so on when you are
talking to the customer, but without
being too pushy.
• Try to establish in the customer’s
mind the likely ballpark cost – people
tend to react badly if your quote is in
a different league to what they were
expecting.
• Make sure you produce your quote
really quickly – either the same day
or the next day. This alone will grow
your business.
• Always honour what you promised.
Turn up when you said and produce
the quote when you said you would.
The effort you put into creating a good
template for quotations will pay off hand-
somely over time. Once it’s set up, it’s
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 previ-
ous 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 busi-
ness 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 com-
plication 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 chal-
lenges 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 hap-
py, 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. How-
ever, 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 con-
trol is part of managing managers
• Envisioning – deciding and then com-
municating the overall company strat-
egy. 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 tran-
sition 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 spe-
cialise in features supporting installers as
well as other trades in order to help them
manage their teams and businesses.
www.powerednow.com