Plumber says Hi

[Heat24seven]

Hi everyone , I run a small plumbing and heating business in London , new to forums but looking forward to a little help on marketing please.
Thanks all .

[A2Z Joiners]

Hi, you've came to the right place, loads of useful info here :)

[G. Lasagne]

Hi mate:)
London plumber, thought you would be too busy counting your millions to spend time on here ;)

Dave

[Heat24seven]

Hi
Yeah Gasangel I wish , things a bit up and down lately , Its a myth the streets are paved with gold here , Ferrari and Bently have got to go unless things pick up . At home doing quotes today , trying to dream upnew ways of getting more new custmers

[BusinessIdeas]

Hiya - Gina :)

[Gavin-Design-Right]

Hi welcome to the forums :d

If you need any design work completed give me a shout.

See you around

gavin

[streetslocal]

:DWelcome to the mad house

[Tregeor]

Welcome Heat24seven. I'm new here too and find the forum very useful. Could do with a few marketing ideas myself as business is a bit slow for me too!
Good luck, Tregeor

[G. Lasagne]

heat24seven
how do you generate your work so far?
good to have a heating guy on, we are few and far between i count 5 so far.
me,ckg,chartergas and markD and now you,

Dave

[Heat24seven]

Thanks all for making me welcome ,
Its good to know there are other heating guys on here , Dave at the moment im doing all the usual things to generate work , local paper , local letting agents, contacts with builders and developers , gumtree and referalls , gumtree seems to be working well at the moment , never seem to get much from gas safe website or in the past from corgi , I used to get alot of work from Transco when they cut people off but that seems to have dried up since they changed , ive been in yellow pages before and thought I was going to ring the bell with my ad but was disapointed , how about you Dave what do you do to generate new business ?
Dan

[G. Lasagne]

How did you manage to get work from transco?
How did you make gumtree work for you?
Most of my work comes from online www.gasangelheating.co.uk
i had a full page in the phone book but got very little from it.
The obvious referrals and word of mouth.
I am going to concentrate on offline advertising this year i think.
I also work for a few letting agents and a pretty large building company.

[Heat24seven]

Transco engineers used to give out five phone numbers every time they disconnected someone and I used to call the main hotline every few days to get my number to keep coming out plus I covered all London postcodes which helped , now its National grid and they have changed how they work and I think they just have a list of numbers from gas safe and give out the numbers of the nearest engineers , but I used to more or less run my business with hardly any advertising costs when it was Transco , Gumtree seems to work in London but I think its just the amount of people , if I put an ad in the Essex Gumtree I get nothing.

[G. Lasagne]

Transco engineers used to give out five phone numbers every time they disconnected someone and I used to call the main hotline every few days to get my number to keep coming out plus I covered all London postcodes which helped , now its National grid and they have changed how they work and I think they just have a list of numbers from gas safe and give out the numbers of the nearest engineers , but I used to more or less run my business with hardly any advertising costs when it was Transco , Gumtree seems to work in London but I think its just the amount of people , if I put an ad in the Essex Gumtree I get nothing.

Is it a paid listing on gumtree, or free?
I suppose if you could get one the transco lads to hand out your business cards it would be a goldmine.

[Heat24seven]

For the London gumtree you have to pay even for the normal listings for plumbing but its only a fiver and you get a few days worth of calls , for Essex its free but like I said ive had nothing out of that ,be good to get into one of the transco guys , dont know why it changed but I called National Grid last month and told them all the post codes I work in and they said they would give my number out but nothing , try it where you are might be different up there 0800 371782 is the helpline number. iused to get two or three jobs a day off of it , some little jos but also boiler changes and new gas runs .

[maxine]

Hi and welcome :)

[CKG]

Welcome heat24seven.

Good to see another heating guy on here.

The people I know who do call out work for transco get the work by getting in with the lads on the ground.

A good one we used to do was un-blocking ball valves for Welsh Water after they had re newed the water mains. All the stones and grit used to get stuck in 'em.

As for finding new work. My best advice is find a neich market and exploit it.

I've switched from domestic gas work to commercial catering gas repairs and have never looked back.

Though nothing can quite match the easy money of a boiler change. If only there weren't so hard to come by in large volumes!

[Heat24seven]

Thanks CKG
yeah three boilers a week would be nice , come to think of it three a month would be good at the moment !

[G. Lasagne]

Getting in with transco, is always something i have thought about, but its easier said than done.
you could always follow the vans around ;)

[My Owl 1]

HI Dan,

Welcome to the forum.

Wish you were in Cardiff. Looking for a plumber to join our BNI. Don't know whether you have consider visiting your nearest one, if the plumber spot is not already filled. Or there are other networking meetings 4networking to mention one.

I have had a steady stream of referrals since joining BNI and the cost for a year is about that of an printed advert.



Best wishes


Avril:)

www.savemoneywithus.co.uk

http://www.uwdcvideos.co.uk/?v=3&exref=189903

Save Money - Make Money

[ARBELL]

We work with several Plumbers and Heating Engineers up and down the country.

One guy we have is always very busy. It's not because he is the cheapest either. His prices start from about £95.00 and will not provide free quotes!

I believe he invests quite heavily in Yellow Pages adverising and we receive lots of calls from people who see his advert in the local ad booklets which get sent round.

He uses our Reception service to ensure he never misses a call. We would be pleased to help you to if you would like more info.

Arron

[Pilfo]

heat24seven
good to have a heating guy on, we are few and far between i count 5 so far.
me,ckg,chartergas and markD and now you,

Dave

What about me??

Hope to have my Gas Safe registration later on this year!!

Pilfo

[OfficeHounds]

Hello
My husband recently retrained and started a plumbing business, but he was offered a really well paid job with a year contract in criminal justice. I helped to prepare some marketing materials for him. He got his work from leaflet drops. It's time consuming but a cheap way of advertising. Also, dropping off leaflets made him feel like he was taking positive action instead of sitting at home and waiting for the phone to ring.

Good luck.
Maggie Langley

[Heat24seven]

Thanks , but im looking for a bit more than leaflets , ive been a heating engineer for about 20 years now , have three guys that work for me and am looking for new ways to get more heating installations to keep everyone busy , tried leaflets when I first started years ago got a very low response rate . I suppose Im just looking for something that gets me consistant leads but then isnt everybody . Do any of you heating guys out there get any work by being tied into particular boiler manufactures like worcester for example ? has anyone had a lead off of warmfront ? I signed up for that months ago and have never had a call , I think that was just a way to take the heat off of them after they got alot of stick for using their own installation teams !

[G. Lasagne]

what do you think of this heat24seven http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=108364.
whats your name anyway? my company is roughly the same size, so we are i the same boat.

do you accept credit card's?
have you maximised your potential online?
are you on the £300 warmfront rebate scheme?

also look at this http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=107125&page=3

[Heat24seven]

Hi mate , My names Dan , its good to have someone around whos got the same stress levels as me , yes I take credit cards find it alot easier to get money out of people with my little machine plus dont have to go back if checks bounce , I need to sort out a decent website one day but not sure how much work would generate from it ( suppose ive just opened the flood gates and am going to be bombared by web designers now ) And yes Im on the warmfront rebate scheme but as I said ive had nothing from it , have you ? I had a look at your mock up ad , thats the sort of thing i wa looking for , I want to create volume of work , did you run it ? Do you do housing association work ? I dont , dont know if theres money in , or who to give backhanders to to get the contracts ! I was thinking of running ads giving cash back for old boiler for every new condensing boiler fitted wording it like an energy efficiency thing or beat british gas price guaranteed or £500 cash back ( you know you can beat BG anyday)Perhaps together we could come up with something .
Dan

[G. Lasagne]

Hi Dan

I think the old beat british gas angle has been done to death, the ad will be going out the 1st of june so will keep you updated on the results.
The internet generates almost all my work so far and has helped me treble in size in 18 months.
its one of those things if you get it right and work on it, you will get the rewards, but if you simply build any old website and leave it, then you wont.

Sane as the paper ads, good ads= lots of work. bad ads= no work.
Thats why before you do anything it's good to get feedback on this forum first.

[G. Lasagne]

are you on this www.supply2.gov.uk

[G. Lasagne]

What about me??

Hope to have my Gas Safe registration later on this year!!

Pilfo

sorry mate, good luck with it, just got my cards on tuesday, only took 6 weeks to get them, if you thought corgi was bad wait until gas safe get going.

[OfficeHounds]

Glad to see that you guys have a good supportive thread going. I'm sure that in a year's time when my hubby goes back to his business, I'll be asking you guys for some advice.

Good luck!
Maggie

[markD1968]

Hi Dan
As the other have said its good to have another heating guy on here. If you crack the secret of getting regular work please share it as I think were all a bit down at the momment but it's got to get better at some point.

All the best

MarkD

[florenceij]

Hi Dan, welcome to the forum. I am sure it will be a great place to network and even find clients.