You can’t beat that feeling when your business is booming – calls coming left and right, you’re sending out quotes like crazy, and setting so many meetings you can barely make it… and that’s where the problem lies.
Most who start on the home improvement business are not prepared for when this boom happens and end up feeling overwhelmed, risking losing jobs in the process.
So what can you do to deal with the sudden surge of new jobs without losing your mind?
Consider hiring help
The first and most obvious option, but not an easy one most of the time. Young entrepreneurs are often not in a comfortable financial position to hire a lot of help – money might be coming in, but who’s to say it will stay that way?
Regardless, you should consider either hiring an employee to fill a particularly time consuming role or branch out your service to subcontractors. For example, having someone to deal exclusively with the finances can free up a lot of your time. You could also hire subcontractors to take up some of your services, which allows you to take on more jobs and keep things flowing. Each option comes with it’s own set of pros and cons, so it’s worth studying before committing!
We went more in depth on this topic here!
Streamline your process for sending quotes
Figuring out prices, sending quotes, setting up meetings – all of these can be extremely time consuming if you don’t have a system. The ideal setup is already having all your prices figured out beforehand, so you can quickly reference them, and having a template for all your quotes so it’s easy to type and send them quickly.
This streamlining process works for anything that takes up too much of your time. You can always find a way to make things easier and faster for yourself.
Send quotes over the phone and email
Meeting potential customers is always a good thing for building trust and securing deals, but it also takes a lot of time and effort. With the help of a fair price, a nice presentation and timely follow up calls, you can secure deals by sending quotes via email or straight over the phone.
Pick your battles
This is not exactly easy to know when you’re starting out, but most veteran contractors will tell you certain jobs are not worth pursuing. There’s no sure fire way to tell, but with experience you will learn to recognize them.
One clear sign though is when a client is clearly just contacting you for budgeting purpose, with no real plan to start the job right away. In those cases, simply sending out your quote via email or phone is enough, since calling back and trying to force them into starting the job is a fruitless task.
Same goes for clients who will try to force you into respecting their imposed deadline when you inform them there’s a lot of jobs happening before theirs. If you cannot hire a subcontractor for this job, respectfully decline it and if possible refer them to another professional. Declining a job might seem counterproductive, but remember: if your business is booming to the point where you’re in a position to pick your jobs, you’re in a pretty good spot. Simply work on hiring help, managing the jobs you already have, and move on!
Figure out your maximum capacity
This also comes with experience, but it’s extremely valuable to know how many jobs you can take in a week, for example. Depending on your field, jobs can take as little as an hour to as long as a week – the more you know about how long they take, the better you’ll be able to plan your week.
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