How Can a Small Trade Business Get More Consistent Work?

The short answer

Stop relying on one type of customer or one lead source. Mix residential jobs with recurring clients like property managers and commercial maintenance, keep cheap channels like local Facebook groups and referrals going, and add small, tightly targeted paid ads and flyer tests. Then track where your jobs actually come from so you know what to turn up when it goes quiet.

How does a small trade business get consistent trade work?

Every trade business owner knows the feeling. One month you’re turning work away, the next month the phone barely rings. Getting consistent trade work comes down to having a few different sources of jobs that behave differently, so when one goes quiet the others keep the team busy.

I talked about this with Steve Leigh from E-Maintain on the podcast in Getting the Phone to Ring When Work Dries Up. Steve’s an electrician who came out of oil and gas and facilities management. He actually worked with us at Smartfix for a while to learn the residential side before starting his own business. E-Maintain does electrical and split system installs, and it was coming up on two years old when we recorded.

He was going through exactly this. Some of his work had dried up and some had kept going. Looking at which was which tells you a lot.

Why does trade work go quiet?

Part of it is the season. At Smartfix we’re heavy on air con through summer, which is our biggest time of year. Then April and May hit, with school holidays, Easter and people going away, and our revenue usually almost halves from summer. Month on month it just drops.

The other part is what kind of work you do. Steve’s mum and dad customers mostly wanted new splits, replacement splits, downlights and extra power points. Those jobs are nice to have. When fuel prices went up and people got nervous, that work virtually stopped for a couple of months.

There’s also how often a customer needs you. Steve put it well:

A homeowner might not need an electrician again for a year. So you can have a heap of happy customers and still have an empty diary, because tomorrow’s jobs have to come from new households. That’s the main reason a business doing only residential work struggles to get consistent trade work.

Are property managers and commercial clients more consistent?

In Steve’s case, yes. His property manager and commercial maintenance clients stayed fairly consistent the whole time his residential work dropped off.

The reason is obligation. A business has to keep its workplace safe, so failed lights and power points get fixed. An investment property owner is contracted to give the tenant taps, lights and power points that work. Some owners will sit on a quote for two months until the tenant has complained three times, but the work still comes.

Steve said if I’d asked him three months earlier, he’d have said he wanted to grow the residential side, because the margins are fantastic and his team loves that work. The downturn changed his mind. He now wants more variety in his customers, including ones who call on a regular basis, because that’s where his consistent trade work had been coming from.

He’s also made himself more useful to the property managers. If his electrician is at a rental to replace a light switch and the towel rail has come off on the same work order, they fix both. For roof leaks or ceiling repairs, he calls in roof plumbers and painters he trusts from his career. Some jobs he coordinates for them don’t have any electrical in them at all. The property manager makes one call and the problem’s handled.

What’s the risk of relying on one big client?

Relationship work has no contract behind it. Steve’s main property company relationship had been going since the day he started. Then a new property manager came in and brought her own electrician.

He was lucky. The new property manager didn’t last, her electrician didn’t work out, and the owner of the agency told the team to use E-Maintain from then on. You can’t count on that ending though.

So build those relationships, and keep an eye on how much of your work comes from any one client. If one property manager or builder left next month, could you still pay your team?

Do local Facebook groups get tradies work?

They can, and they cost nothing but time. Steve watches the community Facebook groups where people post asking for an electrician.

The problem is you’re one of 20 or 30 comments, half of them people tagging their husband. Steve still comments, then where he can he sends the person a direct message as well. He reckons it makes E-Maintain stand out, and it’s easier for the customer to reply to one message than to go through every comment. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

The catch is you stop doing it when you get busy. Steve went about three months without checking the groups because he had no spare hours, then stepped it back up when it got quiet. That’s fine for a small business. It’s hard to build consistent trade work on a channel that depends on the owner having a spare hour.

Are Google Ads worth it for a small trade business?

Google is where people go when they actually want the job done, so the leads are usually better quality than Facebook in my experience. It’s also expensive. Smartfix has always been almost all private residential customers, and getting that work in costs a lot.

Steve assumed you need a 24 hour service to make Google worthwhile. We don’t do emergencies, call-outs or weekend work anymore. We used to have office staff in until 9pm every night and on weekends, and the cost was phenomenal. Customers won’t pay what you’d have to charge to cover it.

Now our Google Ads switch off around 5pm and come back on about 6:30 or 7am, with nothing on weekends. If nobody’s going to answer the phone, there’s no point paying for the click. That was a game changer for us.

For a one-man band, my advice is to start small. Pick your suburb and the ones around it, set a tight radius and a low budget, and turn the ads off when you can’t answer. Find a decent freelancer. We went through three or four agencies before a one-man freelancer did a better job for us than anyone ever had, though his fee would be too much for most small operators. Be careful of anyone who wants you spending more than you can afford.

And remember people will look you up before they call. Reviews, your website, your Facebook page. I wrote more about that in how to build a reputation for a new trade business.

Do flyer drops still work for trade businesses?

For us, flyer drops have been the best return on investment ever. Hand-delivered to letterboxes.

Smartfix does electrical, air con, plumbing, gas, ceiling fixing and painting, so a flyer has more chances of landing on something that household needs. A single-trade business might get less out of it. Test it before you commit. One suburb is roughly 8,000 houses. Drop that, track the calls and jobs that come in, and decide from there.

The same goes for any channel. A client of mine tried Facebook ads, had a couple of great weeks with cheap leads, then turned them off when it filled up with price shoppers. Test small and watch the jobs, along with the leads. For more on what’s worth the money, see what marketing actually works for residential trade businesses.

What should you do when the phone stops ringing?

Before you throw more money at ads, work out what’s actually changed. Is it the season? Did one client stop sending work? Did you stop checking the Facebook groups because you were busy last month?

Then look at what you’ve already got:

• Past customers. You’ve already paid to get them. Our whole focus at Smartfix this year and next is how we get back into their homes, through servicing or other services.
• Property managers, commercial clients and builders you already work with. Ask what else they need done.
• Suburbs where you’ve already done a lot of work and have reviews.
• Each enquiry’s source. Write down where every job came from, which ones turned into quotes and which quotes turned into work.

Owning that customer list matters more the longer you’re in business. Have a read of stop renting your leads for more on that.

If you want to work through your own lead mix with other owners who’ve been through quiet patches, come to a Perth networking night or have a look at Hypotential membership.