How To Plan For The Future of Your Business

The year of 2020 is turning out to be particularly rough in most areas. When it comes to the contractor business, it became a matter of adapting to the pandemic, branching out, and making new plans.

However, most contractors are still thinking of these changes as a temporary measure. Thinking that as soon as the pandemic is considered over, you could safely resume whatever momentum you had before. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

With how long this is lasting and how long it will continue to last for the remainder of 2020, we need to make more accurate long-term plans that encompass the future of your business on a whole, not just on a “temporary” scale.

With that in mind, let’s discuss some important tips and strategies to plan out your future and make sure your contractor business stays afloat from 2020 and beyond.

Lead generation

In 2020, lead generation can do a lot to help contractor businesses. The advantage of receiving high quality leads is that you can control the pacing and budget of your work at all times. Leads can help in this time of lower sales volume due to the pandemic since a lot of people still use(or even starting to use) the internet to look for services.

You should be able to receive leads for the services you want and in the area you service, so that you never lose track of your budget, meaning you will always have financial control and won’t run the risk of getting more than you can chew.

Combine that with a good online presence and knowledge of current sanitary practices (which we’ll get to below) and you can bounce back from this rough year.

Online presence

We bring this up often because it’s already important in general, but it’s even more now due to the current climate of 2020. Everyone is resorting to the internet for food and services, so you have to look presentable when potential customers find your business online.

Here are a few of our guides to help you perfect your online presence:

Provide virtual estimates and updates

Messaging, emails, and video calls – these tools are really showing their full potential now. And you don’t really have to be a tech wizard to take full advantage of them either, since nowadays creating a video call is as easy as pressing a button and you can do anything from a quick update or a full meeting with customers or partners.

In fact, many companies are resorting to video calls for meetings, since it’s fast, cheap, and still allows for everyone to talk and go through each topic with no major problems. The worst that can happen is having a hardware issue (like your laptop’s camera or microphone not working), but there are other ways to get the call done. A simple alternative is your smartphone, which also has camera and microphone and also allows for easy video calls.

If anything, make sure you have the hardware to make quick video calls (a decent mic and webcam aren’t particularly expensive) and use them to talk to clients “face-to-face”.

Demonstrate knowledge of current sanitary practices

After requiring your services, clients will immediately be concerned as to how well you’re committing to our current sanitary practices. Be sure to spend some time stating how you’re dealing with on-site services and educate them on how they can help in protecting themselves.

A nice touch, if at all possible, is to give clients a small bottle of gel alcohol or masks – might look simple, but it’s a great touch that helps them and you in respecting social distancing practices.

Be flexible and transparent

Everyone has their own agenda and during these times, we may have emergencies or important chores we can’t postpone – remember that people who are being careful are probably only going to the supermarket once a month if they can.

Because of that, be understanding when it comes to changing dates or even cancelations if it ever comes to it. At the same time, be transparent with homeowners about your own schedule.

Getting materials for certain projects might be harder now that deliveries are a bit unreliable, so a project that could start on Monday might have to wait another week. It’s rough, but as long as you’re transparent and honest, your clients should understand – after all, this is something you have no control over.

Be sure to warn clients of possible date changes if you’re expecting deliveries and update them on the process whenever possible. It helps in giving them some peace of mind and builds a reliable reputation for your business.

Take the first step towards growing your business today and start receiving leads that will make you money. — Sign up with homeyou!

Tags: