With contractors springing up at every corner, figuring out the best way to scale your contractor business can be challenging. In this dog-eat-dog niche, knowing the right strategy to excel in your business is more important than ever.
If you are looking for some strategies on how to grow your contractor business, this blog is what you need. Here is a list of powerful business practices that you should follow to attract more jobs, build long-term relationships with customers and increase your profit margins. Let’s dig in.
1. Conduct an internal audit to assess your current business
Do a comprehensive assessment of your company. Ask these questions:
- Is your contractor business financially stable?
- Do you get customer referrals?
- Are you getting repeat customers?
- What’s your employee turnover rate?
- How do your customers rate you on your business and customer service?
To get the answer to these questions, you may need to review your books, go through data, find out what people are saying about your business online, and talk to your employees. With the help of these answers, you’ll be able to spot the flaws in the system and put a plan in place to work on them.
2. Implement technology and operate with the best business practices
You can’t expect to grow your business if you are not relevant and implement the industry’s best practices. What you have been doing so far has got you where you are right now. But if you want to grow your business, you need to do something different or the same thing differently. For that to happen, you cannot rely on outdated technology.
When upgrading your system, you need to first benchmark your current operations, identify where your contractor service needs improvement, and make an informed decision about field management software that may work best for your business needs.
Trusted by many businesses like yours, Zuper’s field management software can automate your daily tasks such as bookkeeping, training, work order management, scheduling and invoicing, and training. Zuper helps you solve your day-to-day challenges, preparing your business for better efficiency, productivity, and profitability. With Zuper:
- Your field technicians become productive to sell more services.
- You build long-term relationships with your customers.
- You can measure your business growth with solid business metrics.
Once you have an efficient system in place, it will be easy to scale your business strategically.
3. Step up your marketing game
Marketing campaigns shouldn’t be only about finding new customers. They should also be about keeping your existing customers happy and securing profitable projects.
In today’s digital age, this means being present online and interacting with your audience through social media, emails, and blogs, where you have an opportunity to demonstrate how your service solves their problems.
You should also have an online marketing strategy to promote your business locally. Ensure that your business is listed and relevant information like address, business hours, and phone number is easily searchable. Some local online marketing tips include:
- Attend chamber of commerce meetings.
- Run PPC ads on social platforms.
- Answers questions in a local newspaper.
4. Hire people more qualified and smarter than you
This is especially important if you are planning to grow. By hiring people more qualified, more skilled, and more talented than you are, you are actually freeing yourself time to spend on other important aspects of growing your business.
You are not micromanaging or tied down to tasks that smarter people can do exceptionally without your supervision. However, it’s important to keep your employees happy and engaged by rewarding or appreciating them for doing their jobs well.
5. Invest in your business
Your business won’t grow if you have no plans to invest time and money in it. Some of the investments that will pay off in the end include:
- Field service management software like Zuper to streamline operations, improve efficiency, and enhance customer experience.
- Employee training.
- Marketing your business.
6. Keep a watch on your finances
Most contractor businesses fail because they don’t make enough money to cover their overhead costs. This means the projects you pick up need to cover the overhead expenses and give you a profit. So when you send proposals to your customers, factor in the costs involved, particularly labor and materials, and give your customer a ballpark estimate.
Creating a budget is another way to keep a watch on your cash flow. This will give you a clear idea of how much money is coming in and going out. If the money inflow is less than the outflow, you need to change your business strategies.
7. Consider the option of outsourcing
You need to consider two facts:
- You have only 24 hours in a day.
- You cannot hire all types of experts (specific skill sets).
Once you realize these facts, you will be more open to outsourcing some skill-specific jobs or time-consuming jobs to freelancers/specialized firms. This can relieve some stress and help you focus on your business growth.
For example, instead of hiring an accountant, you can outsource this aspect of your business to an accounting firm/freelancer.
Conclusion
Growing a contractor business requires significant time, money, and effort investments. But the rewards can be pretty great. With a great team and an intelligent field service management solution like Zuper, you can implement these strategies for guaranteed business success.
If you are looking to take your consulting business up a level, then sign up for a free trial of Zuper today and see how effortlessly you can grow your contractor business. Zuper comes with a user-friendly mobile app for field service technicians to help simplify day-to-day struggles like routing, estimating, invoicing, and more.
