Don ’ t let the grass grow under your feet

If you want to push your business forward , you need to find new business opportunities above and beyond word of mouth . In the old days Yellow Pages or Thomson Local might have helped but Matthew Stevenson of Bespoke Outdoor Spaces dismisses these as “ useless in terms of getting new business ”. These dinosaurs have now been replaced and some of the alternatives that you might like to consider are :

• Becoming a member of Checkatrade or using Rated People or My Builder . This won ’ t work for everyone but they have been around long enough to show that they do add value for some people . You must be committed and give it a good go as without reviews you won ’ t get much work and you need to work hard to get to get your first reviews .

• Getting an excellent web site to showcase your work . This should have testimonials from satisfied customers along with before and after pictures . If people are going to spend serious money they want some reassurance .

• Using a system that lets you send regular reminders . Your installations probably need regular servicing for any

warranty to remain valid . So , make sure you remind your customers a few weeks before the service is due . Then there are Landlord Gas Safety certificates that need renewing . Remind your customers by text or email at the right time and you are sure to generate extra work . The big advantage is that this can be virtually free additional business .

Be laser focused

As a business person , you already know that there are loads of things that need doing and that can improve things . That ’ s why prioritising is so important . Without prioritisation , you will waste time doing the wrong things , or alternatively do nothing because the potential list of jobs is overwhelming .

The way to break this is to make a full list of everything . Then against each decide how much positive difference they might make on a scale of high , medium or low . Finally decide the effort to make them happen also as high , medium or low . This then gives the top ones as high impact and low effort , high impact medium effort and then medium impact low effort . You just have to also take into account some urgent things like your tax return . If you miss the deadline

you will need to pay a fine and continued non-compliance means escalating fines . So , sometimes things will move to the top just because they are urgent .

Being organised this way ought to help you to focus on the things that will have the biggest impact on your business . It should help you to , for instance , not spend too much time on driving down the price of parts when the amount of money to be saved is small . That could be while neglecting to find the best possible leasing deal for your van . This might save much more .

Time spent in planning can also make a big difference . Guy Hodgson of HandyGuy , former Screwfix Regional Winner of Tradesman of the Year had this to say : “ Planning carefully what materials are needed is very important . Additional trips to the builders ’ merchant can be a big time waster … make sure you buy all of the materials you possibly can in one go at the start of the week ”.

Speculate to accumulate

Running my previous business , we had tens of thousands of small businesses using our software . Many of these businesses started from nothing and some of them went on to make tens of

millions of pounds of sales . We did some research to find out their secrets . One thing that they all had in common was a willingness to invest for success .

As you first start in business , you absolutely must watch your costs or you will not last long . And this is something that is an important discipline even after you have successfully got going . However , you must be willing to invest when the time or opportunity is right . Else you will never get beyond being a small business scraping a moderate living . You need to invest in people , tools , training and marketing .

Without some investment and some controlled gambles , you won ’ t grow . Only you can know what the balance should be . And it ’ s probably true that you should say no to most people

trying to sell you something . But there is a big problem if you always say no even to things that can move you forward .

Of course , as my company is a software company I will be biased , but I genuinely believe that in this modern day and age , every installer should keep track of their business using apps .

Increasingly people are using smart phones and tablets in their day to day lives . They find them useful and easy to use . The same applies in the business realm . It just takes an investment of time to learn how software works . This will typically be fully repaid with time savings within a week or two .