While it's not the most simple side hustle, if you have the experience as well as industry connections… starting your own home remodeling company is a viable path for an entrepreneur.
Many of today’s home remodeling start-ups and company managers are looking to raise the bar in their industry. One of the best ways to do so is to come up with managerial techniques that will help improve their company overall and deliver high quality service to their customers.
Management specialists and entrepreneurs have gone out of their way to help home-improvement businesses. Not only will they benefit by adding more to their bottom line, they can also improve their overall business plan with a few simple techniques that are easy to implement.
With that said, we’ll now share our favorite tips for managing a home remodeling company. Whether you’re installing a motorized louvered pergola or performing other home remodeling tasks, these tips will help you stay on track, improve your overall business, and ultimately make your company more successful over the long run.
Tip #1: Focus on Tasks to Improve Profit and Growth
At the end of the day, a home remodeling company, big or small… can only be as successful as they are profitable. The only way to consistently become profitable is to step up your marketing techniques, begin to work shows and events like a pro, and make sure your sales staff is always on point in getting the job done.
As an example, if you’re worried about the performance of your sales team, every good manager should spend time riding with each member of their sales staff. By taking a hands-on approach, you can see exactly what’s happening when members of your sales team pitch your remodeling services. If they aren’t selling your company to the best of their abilities, you can provide important insight and information that will help them sell your services better.
In another example, you should make every effort to get together with your marketing team on a regular basis. Look over all aspects of your company’s marketing plan and make sure the team is hitting on important notes that will make it easier than ever to sell your home remodeling services.
By focusing on these areas, your company will begin to grow and profit. Both of these aspects are obviously incredibly important for all successful home improvement organizations.
Tip #2: Use Online Time Tracking to Track Employee Hours
You may running your side gig solo when you start out, and juggling contractors. But, as you grow… you may need to hire employees to answer phones, schedule jobs, make sure your contractors are getting paid and so on…
If your background is in a particular trade, you might also hire some field workers and apprentices, rather than contracting everything.
Keeping track of your employee hours is incredibly important in the home remodeling business. This is especially true if you are charging your clients by the hour.
As an example, let’s say one of your clients wants you to put in a new deck in the back of their home because their home suffered from major damage. It’s a detailed job and the deck is going to wrap all the way around their recently installed above ground swimming pool. You estimate that it will take about a day for four of your employees to complete the task.
Guess what? If you aren’t tracking their hours using online time tracking software like Clockspot, you could miss out on potential billable hours because your employees forgot to tell you about additional time spent on the job. When everything is being tracked through online software, your employees will be able to “clock in” and “clock out” wherever they are and everything will be stored using a handy computer program.
Tip #3: Track Other Important Key Metrics
Besides tracking billable hours, home remodeling businesses need to track other key metrics as well. Keep track of sales staff closing rates to discover if your training is too inefficient and if you aren’t spending enough time training sales reps.
If you have particular financial profit goals, keep close track of them as well to make sure you reach them. Otherwise you’ll fail to hit revenue goals and your company will suffer because of it.
Conclusion
Managing a home remodeling company, whether it's a small part-time pursuit or a full-time business can be quite difficult if you're not prepared. To make this process much smoother, we highly recommend using the valuable information we’ve shared above to improve your processes and turn your company into a well-oiled machine.
