Maintaining a contractor business is hard. You could say that about pretty much any business, that’s true, but there is a particular way a contractor operates that requires more specialized advice. That is to say: running a contractor business isn’t the same as being the manager of your local McDonald’s, for example.
While some of these tips may apply to other businesses as well, I want to highlight the most important things for contractors. They need agility, productivity, quick decision-making, and ambition, but how do you get all that in a way that’s easy to understand?
These are the most essential tips for your contractor business that will help you improve greatly:
Learn from feedback
As obvious as it might seem, many contractors fail to learn from feedback. And that’s not exclusive to this line of business, it’s a simple human characteristic – whether it’s because of ignorance, ego, or hesitance, we have a hard time listening to critics and embracing change. Especially when your current setup seems to be working fine enough. Why change what isn’t broken, right?
If you’ve offered ways for clients to give you honest feedback, it’s time to listen to them. And if you don’t often get feedback, encourage clients to leave reviews, testimonials, or gently ask them to answer a few questions anonymously.
Then, set your ego aside and dive deep. This is one of the best ways you can find your weak points and improve on them.
Understand your target audience
Target audiences are not always a point of discussion for contractors, because most believe that by simply adopting a certain specialty, the target audience will present itself.
That is true to an extent. If you specialize in large-scale building, you most likely won’t be contacted by college-age young adults. If you specialize in plumbing, then you have a much wider target audience than most because everyone needs plumbing work at some point.
However, you can do a lot to bolster your business when you understand your target audience.
For example, when marketing your services online, you should know who you want to attract. Going for the widest possible demographic will get you visibility for sure, but there’s no point to it if most of this audience is unlikely to engage.
It’s a simple trick once you understand the basics and it does wonders for your marketing efforts!
Learn to save time where possible
I believe that not everything has to be about productivity. After all, we’re not robots.
But if you find yourself wasting a lot of valuable time doing something, then it may be smart to find a more productive way to do it. For example, a lot of contractors spend a lot of time writing down estimates and sending invoices.
For estimates, you can create a basic template that allows you to make only the necessary changes – particularly useful for simpler jobs. As for invoices, the same applies, but there are also apps solely dedicated to that.
Sometimes, using technology to be more productive can save you tons of time.
Build a team
Working with freelancers and subcontractors is necessary, but it’s always a good idea to have a long-term plan to build a proper team. If you enjoy working with certain pros, it might be a good idea to try and get them on board.
Slowly but surely you will have an actual team that works with you and that you can rely on, instead of having to constantly look for new freelancers that may or may not follow your standards.
Be the best in your field
The contractor market is incredibly large, which leaves a lot of room for niches. It’s a daunting task to think about being the best contractor of all time, but being the best at what you do? That’s way easier and something that you can feasibly achieve.
Some fields are more competitive than others. For example, a single city may have hundreds of painters, so how can you be the best of them?
Well, look at what the best are doing. No one is perfect and with a bit of research, you can identify what they lack. And that’s not from a lack of skill or experience, perhaps they just excel in other areas. Therefore, you can stand out by doing something they’re not.
Read books
The fastest way to learn is to get information from people who know more than you. When an entrepreneur or business person writes a book, that’s essentially all the knowledge they’ve accumulated over the years summarized in a few hundred pages for you.
Want to make it even easier to keep up? Get yourself a portable reader to use almost anywhere or subscribe to a service like Audible, where you can listen to books while doing something else. There’s so much knowledge out there!
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