How To Streamline Your Business and Increase Plumbing Sales
The goal of every business is to grow by making more profit. What stands as the major difference between a flourishing business and one that isn’t is that one is making sales. This is why every plumber tries to do everything possible in order to increase plumbing sales.
As a home service business tech or owner, you need more than just technical skills to increase plumbing sales. In fact, making profits is a combination of so many factors but top on the list is:
- Efficient service delivered with the most cost and time effective approach
- The best tools and equipment
- Great business management acumen.
Although there are factors that affect business that might be far beyond your control, putting in your best to make your business grow and improve sales depends primarily on how well you have been able to manage your growth.
A plumber that runs a successful plumbing business and makes as much plumbing sales as possible must be a combination of brains and brawns; combining technical skills with sufficient knowledge of all that it takes to run a successful business. Here are some key ways to increase plumbing sales and grow your home service business.
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Improved Service Delivery
The very first step to making more sales is to deliver excellent services. This goes far beyond being the best at clearing clogs or fixing broken sinks and sewers. The process of service delivery for your company begins the moment your customers walk into your doors or place a call to your dispatcher. In fact, we can even take it a step further by saying effective service delivery begins even before your prospective customers find you.
Be visible: you might not know this, but in reality, great service delivery begins with how easy your prospective clients are able to find you. It will do you a lot of good to recognize that customers, being human are looking for the most convenient and not always the most efficient. So even if you are efficient, you will realize that you are closing fewer deals if no one can see you. Excellent service delivery begins from how easy it is for your customers to find you from a long list of others providing the same service. Here are some important tips to note when trying to increase plumbing sales:
- Are you online? It’s the 21st century and the very first place people turn to when they are in need of every service isn’t a hardcover directory anymore. It’s online. So you should ask yourself the all-important question. Is your business online?
- How visible are you online? Being online isn’t all about having a nice website with no attractive content. In fact, we are in a world where having good content on your website isn’t even enough for you to be visible. You have to push your business online on so many fronts. You need to use social media, review websites, among other ways to improve your business visibility online.
- Your image: of course of primary importance when striving for visibility online is your image. do you have good content on your website, what do your online reviews say about you. this part of your online visibility will depend partially on your own input and partly on how great your service delivery since your online reviews and ratings will depend to a large extent on people’s perception of your business and how you serve them.
Customer satisfaction: one of the biggest secrets to making more sales, is to get it right with your customers. From the moment they put in the request through the work being completed, you need to impress them. Impressing your customer will not only make sure you are the one they call the next time they need a plumber, it also means you will be getting great reviews from them and they will be your unpaid advertisement agents. This will help to increase plumbing sales in the long run. Satisfying your clients is a multistage affair:
A. Pre-service: even before your customer decides to hire you, you have to do enough to make them want to make that decision. Whether they call to make inquiries, come directly to you, or fill out a form online, being there to answer all their questions satisfactorily is key. Don’t be the plumber who never picks up the call and never calls back. Also, their first impression of your company matters a lot. Have a front desk that is sufficiently skilled and knowledgeable to respond to customer inquiries is very important. Potential customers will trust you enough to hire you if you show that you know enough about their problem and how to solve it. Take a customer-first approach and you will increase plumbing sales and develop trust in the community in no time.
B. Service delivery: be the plumber that arrives on schedule, and even when you can’t you should be responsible enough to cancel or request for a change in the schedule if you will not be available. It is damaging to your reputation to leave a customer hanging for any reason at all. The importance of delivering quality on every job is something most plumbers are familiar with.
When you arrive at a work site, you should take the time to diagnose the problem and explain to your clients what exactly is wrong with their plumbing. Give them your expert recommendations and your opinion on which of your alternatives is best for them, taking their budget into consideration. Never compromise quality for lower prices as it will come back and bite you if your cheap solution doesn’t fix the problem.
You should try to work as efficiently as possible. the less time you spend on a single plumbing, the more deals you can close per day. But never be in too much of a rush that you deliver less than standard to your clients. Plumbing can sometimes be a messy job, but it will impress your customers if you can do your work on time and leave little or no mess when you are done.
C. Post service: while may plumbers ignore this, keeping in touch with your clients is a very great habit for business. Offering your customers warranty on installations, and sending them emails and updates about your services will keep you at the top of their recommendation lists the next time they need a plumber.
Effective Business Management
You are a plumber but you must also be a businessman. Some people might be great at plumbing but still, make little profit because they have terrible business practices that cost them a lot in the long run. As a plumber, you already know how bad a leak or clog in the pipe can affect the flow of water. In the same way, you must learn to fix every leak and clear up clogs that affect cash flow in your business.
A. Manage inventory: knowing what you have and what you don’t is one of the essentials of business. Don’t be a businessman that is always flying blind. Knowing what you have at hand, what you don’t have, and what you need to get is key to running a successful plumbing business.
B. Balance your books: this is another area many plumbers have issues. But hate it or not, you have to learn to balance your books if you will move your business forward and increase plumbing sales. You should be able to
tell if you are making a profit or loss so that you will learn what you are doing wrong and avoid it. At the same time, it will help you to identify the things you are doing right and keep at it. Being able to manage your company’s accounts is one of the most fundamental skills you need to learn. Even if you have a team of qualified experts handling it, you should at least know the basics of account management which will guide your decision-making process.
C. Manage your staff: this is of prime importance especially if you are operating a large plumbing business with hired technicians. The people working for you will be responsible for your company’s image. You cannot increase sales if your technicians are incompetent. Asides being skilled, your staff must understand what your company stands for and must learn to relate to customers correctly. Your company cannot go far with rude technicians even if they are skilled and experienced. Thus you must hire the right people that will not only align with the interest of your company but will work hard to push your business forward. You should also learn to motivate them and reward them regularly too.
The Best Plumbing Tools and Equipment
How’s your plumbing equipment? This is another aspect of you must pay close attention to if you want to increase plumbing sales immediately. In fact, using the right tools and equipment is pivotal to every other point mentioned so far. You need tools for effective service delivery, and there are important business management tools that you can employ to push your business forward. It goes beyond just screws and bolts even though this is also important as well.
A. State of the art technical tools and equipment: first, your customers are able to trust you better to handle their plumbing when they know that you will be using the latest tools out there to get the job done. The efficiency of your technicians will also be improved to a large extent and you can be rest assured that they will spend less time on every job when they have the best plumbing tools at their disposal.
B. Business management tools: apart from tools that make the technical aspect of business easy, you can also leverage several tools that will help improve other aspects of running your business as well. There are several tools for example that will help improve your online visibility and presence. You can make use of various Customer management tools to manage your clients and prospective clients. By using CRM tools, you are able to monitor your leads and convert them into customers in the long run.
C. Field Service Management Software: one of the best ways to keep your plumbing business in constant motion and maintain top-notch service is to make use of an affordable plumbing software. A field service management software helps you automate all aspects of your business from start to finish, making it easy to improve service delivery and manage your business effectively at the same time without stress.
Why FieldSurf?
With a field service management software like FieldSurf, you can organize your schedule and manage your dispatching effectively.
You can stay on top of inventory, manage your accounts and get reports relating to your plumbing business all in real time and the best thing about it is that you need little or no knowledge of accounting or business management to do this effectively. FieldSurf delivers every tiny and large detail of your business into the palms of your hand.
It increases the efficiency of your staff in the field and improves the overall efficiency of your business organization. With this plumbing software, we empower you to deliver fast and efficient service while automating your business behind the curtains. Your ratings and reviews will improve and you will see sales skyrocket thanks to the advantage that this software gives you over your competitors. Check out our customer Mr. Speedy. These Los Angeles plumbers have used FieldSurf to grow their business while remaining a 5 STAR plumber on Yelp!
And if you are wondering if such a versatile tool will not cost you a fortune, you will be pleased to know that FieldSurf is America’s most affordable field service management software. It is simple and easy to install and use and the number one way to increase plumbing sales. Want to see it in action? Simply click the button below to have your 15-min, free demo scheduled!
