Why Use A Plumbing Business Coach?
Can a plumbing business be profitable?
Often, the business owner asking finds our answer challenging to accept.
The simple truth is that many hugely successful businesses operate in the plumbing space here in Australia. Companies that are making good money, year in year out.
The challenge most small plumbing business owners face is not scarcity of good work. There are sufficient numbers of customers who are prepared to pay a reasonable price for your plumbing services.
What we usually see that needs to be improved upon, are the skills necessary to grow and manage a business that can consistently handle the work at scale.
Plumbing business owners need to learn how to build and manage an organisation that employs others besides themselves and their immediate family.
You need to be trained to solve those problems as though you are an apprentice.
And they’re not skills that tend to come naturally.
Do you need more convincing?
Check out this list , if you have already solved them – Congratulations!
You don’t need a plumbing business coach, you will need a financial coach to get your financial goals reached!
The seven most common complaints from struggling plumbing business owners
- I can’t get paid what I’m worth because competition is about price.
- I need help finding and keeping plumbers who care as much about customers as I do.
- I need help getting my subbies to deliver consistently according to my standards.
- Cash flow is unpredictable because I need to pay for labour and materials.
- My margins keep shrinking because I face rising costs I can’t easily pass on.
- I work ridiculously long hours and can’t afford to take time off.
- The success of the business depends too much on one person –me! I have to wear all the hats.
All those problems are things that can be fixed.
But not one has anything to do with the technical knowledge a plumber needs to get licensed.
They’re all business management problems. And that’s what keeps us busy as business coaches.
Do you want to grow and scale a plumbing business?
Our specialist Trades Business Coaching and Mentoring program for trades and services has been running for years. It gives plumbers and HVAC contractors strategies, tools and training to:-
- Grow their reputation and sales and consistently attract better, more profitable work
- Build and manage a high-performance team whilst maintaining profits.
- Master the financial aspects of the business.
- Comfortably handle the increased workload with the help of systems
- Get off the tools and take at least as much holiday as your employees.
How will business coaching help your plumbing business?
This is not the full list, but here are some of the most critical areas our coaching will help you with.
Helping You Free Up Your Time
Making more time for yourself is a strategy everything else depends on. To improve your plumbing business, you must free up your time from working long hours on the tools.
Besides improving your quality of life and giving you more energy for what you do, you will need more time to work on your business.
As such, a good deal of our coaching program focuses on how to do that.
Helping You Develop Systems
Systems allow you to delegate effectively and improve your plumbing business’s quality, efficiency and consistency. Only when you have systems in place for your most critical processes will your team be able to perform well without your constant supervision?
For many plumbing businesses we coach, systems proved to be the gateway to success they sought when we started working together.
Ultimately, it’s going to be the quality of your systems that determines how many clients you can service at once and how well you can handle more business when it comes your way.
Team Building
Lack of skilled labour is one of the most common barriers to growth every plumbing business has to deal with in Australia. Whether hiring your next staff member or just trying to keep the people you’ve got, you’ll always compete with at least one other plumbing company for the same recruit.
So if you want to grow your business, a lot will depend on mastering the arts of attracting, training and keeping staff. Otherwise, scaling and running your company effectively will be impossible.
That’s why we put a lot of effort into helping you develop strategies to increase the size and quality of your workforce.
Sales Strategy and Training
Plumbing is a competitive industry. As you go about selling your services, you can count on having to compete with rival businesses, especially for better-paying jobs.
Just as you need proper plumbing skills to do the work of a plumber, you will need proper sales skills to convince customers to consistently choose your service over the competition.
Amongst other things, your sales strategy covers whom you spend your time talking to, the steps you take to qualify customers and win their business, and the resources you use along the way.
Marketing
Before you can go out and splurge $2k+ per month on a digital marketing package from a marketing agency, there’s some important groundwork you have to get right first.
Neglect this and you may as well put your marketing dollars in a pile in your backyard, and set fire to it.
It’ll be quicker and a lot less painful.
But get this groundwork right; and you will reap the benefits.
Warning – it takes a lot of work to succeed.
Some of this revolves around coming up with clear answers a marketer will need from you, The rest is up to you to get your business ready to handle the expected growth and strain this will have on your staffing and cashflow.
Financial Management
The two most important aspects of financial management we coach you on are:
Optimising Cash Flow: for a profitable business, this means reducing the time it takes for debtors to pay you and extending the time you have to pay your creditors.
But note that you also need to make a profit to create consistent positive cash flow.
To ensure that you make a profit , there are two crucial requirements for any business to ensure consistent profits.
- A detailed financial reporting system that provides up-to-date information on income and outgoings.
- Accurate knowledge of the breakeven point for every service it provides.
In our experience, most small plumbing businesses need to correct this!
It’s easier for a business to survive if it’s making a consistent profit and has positive cash flow. That’s why financial mastery features are prominent in our training.
As already mentioned, this is not a complete list of what our coaching service covers – but these are some of the significant focus areas.
By the time you finish our program, you’ll be well on your way to taking control of your business and achieving the success you deserve.
Want to know if our coaching is right for you?
We offer 1 on 1 coaching and group coaching and there will be a level and price point that suits all business owners – No matter what stage they are in their business.