Seeking business advice

[BorderFox]

Hello I started my own roofing company quite a few months back now, And I actually have had quite abit of success thankfully

But I've now taken on a guy to help me with my jobs as it's too much for me to handle on my own plus having someone else to do my work allows me to spend more time quoting jobs & dealing with customers


How ever I'm finding it hard to supply a consistent flow of work, At the moment our work comes from the following sources

- about 60% Comes from an ad words campaign

- 40% From My builder

We do get some recommendations but it's not a great deal


Some weeks we can be fully booked up the others we can only be working for like 3 days out of the week

Is there anything I can do to bring in more consistent work?

Thank you

 

[SmilePrint]

You're looking for advice to grow your business in order to make up the additional 15 hours per week... which is a 'marketing' question....

However, your problem could be viewed as a capacity issue. With yourself and one employee, you have an over capacity of workers and not enough work.

You're trying to increase sales to match the capacity you have with one full time employee.

Self 40 hours per week/ 160 hours per month
Employee 40 hours per week/ 160 hours per month
but only
Work for 65 man hours per week/ 260 man hours per month. (Averaged out)
(I know it's not precise but think about it in this way)

Therefore, why not consider reducing your capacity (& overhead) instead?

Reduce your employee's hours to say 4 full days per week. Let jobs during the busy weeks take longer to complete (i.e. run into the next week) which fills up the slack from the quieter weeks.

Continue to do good work, and become known in your area for it, more word of mouth referrals will come, at which point you can scale back up your employee's hours.

Sounds like you're doing well with your adwords campaign.

The best improvement might come from getting professional help with the campaign (to bring in more leads) accompanied with figuring out how to convert more enquiries to sales.

I'd look at IMPROVING your exisitng lead sources rather than introducing new, untried (at least for you) methods.

 

[Mitch3473]

I'm a bit old school on this so I'd keep on doing what your doing and provide a good service. Your referals will come, may take a couple of years or so but the work will be better and better paid. You'll be more confidant in your abilities and your diary will fill up. The main thing is, is not to undercharge and undercut your competitors.

 

[MBE2017]

You do not mention your success rate for lead conversion, one area most people can improve on. Converting 6 out of 10 inquiries instead of 3 out of 10 makes a huge difference.

A lad I know in roofing uses video extensively to show the state of roofs, before and after to prove what needs doing, plus that the job has been done. He has a very good conversion rate.

 

[Mr D]

Whenever someone on my street has some building work done I get someone knocking the door asking if we need any work doing. They may spend half hour a time knocking doors but presumably some people do get left cards or agree to get a quote.

 

[Scottishgifts4u]

In our town we have a local Facebook page which takes ads once a month. Also people are always on it looking for recommendations for builders/roofers/plumbers etc. Get yourself on there and get yourself known to the posters.

 

[Millerd]

Is there anything I can do to bring in more consistent work?
Thank you

In a number of the answers above the "more" work has been addressed.

But "more consistent" is another issue. Here you are striving for utopia - an operation that is perfectly balanced, one in which there is never any over or under capacity! Where week by week resources match perfectly with required delivery.

While every business strives for this perfect situation it is seldom, if ever, attained. Every business at every moment in time has a bottleneck and your role is to manage these ever-changing situations in the complete process.

If you want to understand this concept better a great book is "The Goal" by Eliyahu M Goldratt