Got a leaky profit pipeline? Not to worry. Read on for four surefire strategies to move your plumbing business forward this year.
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1. Fire up your existing customers
The easiest and most cost-effective way to increase sales is to sell more services to your existing customers.
For this reason, it’s a good idea to collect your customers’ email address and phone number after you complete the job. That way, you can keep in touch with them and offer more routine work, like an annual boiler check.
There are a ton of free marketing tools that simplify sending emails to your customers in bulk, so you can stay in-touch with just a couple clicks. MailChimp is one of the most popular, and allows you to maintain a 2,000-strong client list at no cost.
Not sure what to write? Consider these email ideas to get started:
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- Remind your clients when they are due for routine service.
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- Offer a discount for your service. (Remember: 70% of consumers use email coupons.)
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- Could you save your customers money by installing water-saving solutions, or an eco-friendly boiler? Offering them a no-obligation consultation and showing them examples of other clients who realized cost savings will spark their interest.
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- Provide useful information to your clients to educate them on best practices, such as how to lower water bills by reducing waste (most water providers nowadays offer water-reducing products for free).
2. Tighten up your professional partnerships
What’s the easiest way to gain access to a lot of potential customers? Find someone who already serves them and ask them to cooperate.
Although collecting details yourself is a proven strategy to build your client base one email at a time, cooperating with anyone who has access to homeowners or property managers is a potential partner.
Getting other businesses to share their details with you will not come for free, though. Offering them a percentage of the profits gained from any business with their customers is an effective win-win strategy.
Alternatively, you can also offer to promote them to your customer base for a share of their revenues earned.
3. Cool down your costs
There’s one reliable way to reduce your plumbing business costs — by increasing efficiency.
You can do the same thing to save money running your business. Investing in a more fuel-efficient van, for example, could make your business more profitable in the long-term by reducing the cost of travelling to and from each worksite. In just a few years, you could save thousands of pounds spent on petrol (meaning there’s more in your pocket).
Reducing your operating costs is something you should regularly re-evaluate. Start with your biggest expenses and then work down to the last fitting. Try and find ways to save a few pence here and there, and then repeat. It adds up fast.
Here’s a few ideas to get you going:
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- Find the best prices for tools online
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- Offer a loyalty program to keep your clients coming back
4. Fix-up the flow of your leads pipeline
No matter how good a plumber you are, people won’t buy your services unless they know to contact you.
These days, 83% of your customers look for local businesses using online search engines.
If your business is not showing up on Google’s top pages when searching for the services you offer, then your competitors will get the call (and the job).
Your first step should is to get your plumbing business on the map — the Google Map, that is!
In sum, to make your plumbing business stand out, you need to know your customers and provide them not only with great service, but with valuable information and tips. Planning ahead, with smart partnerships and innovative strategies, can make a small business owner succeed in a crowded, competitive market.
