As a trade professional and small business owner, you’re always looking for ways to grow your business. Last week, we covered six free tools for small business marketing. But bringing in new customers is only one part of the equation. How you treat those customers, your company culture, and how you set and achieve goals is ultimately how you will successfully scale your business organically.
Here are 5 ways to grow your small business from the inside out.
Build Your Dream Team
If you’re a plumber, electrician, HVAC technician, or other tradesperson, your first foray into business ownership may be solo. But if you’re good at your job, you’ll (hopefully) quickly become too busy to handle every job yourself.
The key to finding valuable employees is to seek like-minded workers that share your values and your passion for the trade. A trade career offers high job satisfaction (83% of tradespeople report that they’re either somewhat or extremely satisfied in their choice of work), high pay, and a high level of entrepreneurship thanks to a connection to the meaning of work.
Those traits that you’re likely searching for – hard work and a positive attitude – come from a long tradition of work ethic, determination, grit, and satisfaction from a job done right.
Treat Your Customers Like Gold
Good (or bad) customer service can make or break your business. While a lot of businesses claim to put customers first, treat customers like family, or offer satisfaction guarantees — you have to walk the walk to build a reputation as a true customer-centric company.
If the fear of poor online reviews isn’t enough motivation to treat your customers like gold (according to a report from ReviewTracker, customers don’t trust businesses with lower than a 4-star rating!), think back to times when you’ve experienced bad customer service. As a business owner, you hold the power to treat your customers like you want to be treated.
Don’t Be Afraid To Fail
You have to take risks to grow your business. And sometimes you’re going to fail. You may hire the wrong employee, invest in unnecessary equipment, or let a customer down. These mistakes may ding your bottom line, but there’s a valuable lesson in each, and learning from your mistakes is how you evolve and figure out how to scale your business.
Don’t Be Afraid Of Change
The foundation behind a lot of trades will never change. While there are certain things that you will always do “because that’s the way it’s always been done,” we live in a pretty incredible time with rapidly evolving technology and tools that can improve your job — and improve your customers’ experience. Better energy efficiency, improved performance, more safety features, and greener building techniques have evolved from change.
And guess what? Those things are exactly what your customers are looking for. Embracing change and being able to provide those benefits to customers is ultimately how you’ll grow your business.
Reinvest In Yourself
Especially in the beginning, it can be difficult to not pocket profits and pay yourself. But reinvesting your profits back into your business is one of the fastest and easiest ways to scale organically. Things might be tight for a minute, but when you’re not beholden to banks and you can invest your money into your business as you see fit, your job satisfaction – and your business – will grow faster.
Strategically reinvesting in employees, technology, equipment, and marketing/advertising can lead to huge growth.
Getting more customers on the books is a good strategy. But retaining those customers is a mindset. You have to have a smart mix of both in order to successfully scale your business organically.
Partner With SimpleBids To Reach More Customers
SimpleBids is a marketplace that connects local service providers with businesses that need service, repair, or replacement. Commercial facility service customers want a fast and simple way to find reliable service providers in their neighborhoods, but they’re often inundated with ads paid for by big companies that may or may not be qualified – or even local.
When you create your free business profile on SimpleBids, you gain immediate access to new work if your location and services match customer needs. You can join SimpleBids now for free and be one of the first service providers in your area, get in front of new customers at no cost to you, and get exclusive invitations to bid on new projects.
