Want to run a trade business? You need a plan!

A successful contracting or trade business is based on a solid business plan. It’s the blueprint you build your business on, as well as the tool that keeps you on track.

You wouldn’t start a client’s job without some sort of plan — and it’s the same for your business.

At Tradify, we work with a lot of trade business owners as well as solo operators. We’re uniquely placed to help tradespeople run their businesses, and feel responsible to do just that. Whether you’re just starting out, or have found that your established business needs some guidance, a solid business plan is sure to help.

So here’s our contractor’s guide to writing a business plan, as well as a template to help you pull it all together. Read on for more information and guidance on filling out the template.

1. Building a business plan

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” – Mike Tyson

Starting and growing a business means you’ll likely experience a few knocks along the way. Learn to roll with the punches. As you work out your plan, think about your business and how you will react to threats as well as opportunities. The finished product of a written business plan is often less important than the process of planning itself.

So have a think…

• What are your short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals?
• What is unique about your business that will consistently attract customers?
• What potential problems can you imagine cropping up, and how will you deal with them?

Maybe you already launched your business without a proper business plan in place. Now that you’re up and running, you’ve probably realised that a comprehensive plan will be necessary to make your business a success.

If you’re just starting out, you may need to borrow money to get your business off the ground. Banks and other financial lenders will want to see a comprehensive business plan with a clear vision, goals, and objectives. They won’t lend you a cent without one.

2. Working out what to charge

It’s important to work out if you’ll be able to make money from starting your own business before you borrow money, commit your savings, or quit your current job.

A contractor or tradesperson usually charges an hourly rate for their services, on top of the cost of materials and consumables. These are called ‘variable costs’, as they differ between projects, and are often passed on to the paying customer.

But there are other costs associated with running a business. You may have rent to pay on your business premises, vehicle payments, insurance, maintenance, employees, etc. These ongoing charges are called ‘fixed costs’ and you need to work out how much to charge hourly to cover these costs.

Example

For this example, we’ll assume your fixed costs are a currency-generic 5,000/year. Let’s say you want to generate a salary of 100,000 per year. This means you need to generate 105,000 per year from your hourly rate.

Let’s assume you decide to work 5 days a week, for 48 weeks, or 240 days a year. Subtract another 15 days for sickness and holidays, and this leaves a total of 225 working days.

You plan to put in at least 8 hours a day but need to allow 3 hours for travelling and work such as marketing and admin. This leaves 5 billable hours a day.

Now you can work out your hourly rate:

Billable hours per year = 5 hours per day X 225 working days, or 1,125 billable hours.

Divide your goal of 100,000 by 1,125 billable hours and your minimum charge-out rate per hour must be 88.88.

Remember this is just the break-even figure to cover your fixed costs and personal salary. There’s no extra profit to expand the business.

To help you be as accurate as possible, we’ve developed a calculator and guide to help you figure out your charge-out rate.

3. Finances & forecasting

If you are borrowing money to start your business, then this is the section of your plan that your bank or lender will pay the most attention to. It should explain exactly how your business will generate money.

Apart from actually selling your services, you might also be:

• Joining a franchise
• Bringing in a partner
• Working with a private investor

Whoever you’re borrowing money from is going to want to see that you’ve done your homework.

It’s important to include:

• • A break-even analysis – show your business can at least break even before it makes a profit.
  • A cash flow forecast – try and be as accurate as possible, lenders don’t like guesstimates. Drill down into the details and be as objective as you can when working out the numbers.
  • A sales forecast – this isn’t easy when you’re starting up, because you don’t have any historical data to base it on. There are ways to conduct one though, and it’s important to do so because it’ll help you work out if your business idea is financially viable.

4. Defining what your business does

What does your business do exactly? This is where we get into the nitty-gritty of your business plan. What you’re looking to do here is outline what your business does and detail how you’re planning to achieve your goals and objectives.

Your business plan should be easy to follow and engaging to read. It needs to explain clearly what your business does and why you’re the one to be doing it. When it comes to presenting it to your bank, investors, or other financial lenders, it should grab their interest right off the bat.

1. A business overview

You’ll need to describe your business (or future business) in detail, including:

• • • Business structure – many contractors are sole operators, but others may be starting a business in partnership with another tradesperson or even with a supplier. You may also wish to expand in the future.
    • Location – describe where your business is located, and any strategic advantage your location offers. Are you establishing new premises or are you working out of your home office and garage?
    • Financials – the results of the break-even analysis, cash flow forecast, and sales forecast worked out earlier.

2. Your services

You’ll also provide a detailed outline of what your business offers. Whether you’re a plumber, electrician, HVAC technician, or any other trade, you should include details like:

• • • Exactly what products/services you’ll offer – are you offering a generalised service or are you specialising in certain areas?
    • Pricing – how will you price your services? What percentage of profit margins will you have?
    • Price sensitivity – explain how price sensitive your offerings are. Identify where you’ll make your profits, and describe your ability to increase margins.

3. Skills and experience

You won’t have much of a trade business if you can’t show a lender (not to mention potential customers) that you know what you’re doing. Your business plan needs to include details of training and certifications you’ve achieved, as well as all your on-the-job experience.

Think about your ongoing plan which may include:

• • • Upskilling through training courses.
    • Courses to retain or update any relevant or necessary qualifications.
    • Needing to train or qualify staff.
    • How you’re going to win – your marketing strategy

5. Marketing strategy

Any bank or lender will want to know that you’ve got a marketing strategy in mind. It’s something you should constantly refer to as you think about new ways to market your business. Your marketing strategy should cover the following three areas.

1. Who are your customers?

Provide an outline of who your target customers are, including how you plan to target them. If you have different services that would appeal to different types of customers, create customer personas that you can assign your services to. This will help you decide where to concentrate different marketing activities.

Consider the following:

• • Where your customers spend their time – this is the place to market to them, whether it’s online or physical locations.
  • What your customers are most interested in – high quality materials, a good deal, fast turnaround?
  • If you’ll need a dedicated marketing budget, and how much it should be.

2. What’s your marketing plan?

Write down a plan to increase awareness of your business. You can’t rely entirely on word of mouth, as powerful as it may be. How are you going to get your name out there?

To start with, think about things like:

• • Building a website.
  • Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube etc.
  • Listing with local business directories:
    • 🇺🇸 List of USA small business directories 
    • 🇬🇧 List of UK small business directories
    • 🇦🇺 List of Australian small business directories
    • 🇳🇿 List of NZ small business directories

3. What’s your competitive advantage?

Your competitive advantage is the thing that you do better than anyone else. Customers like to shop around and it’s up to you to answer the age-old question: “Why should I hire you?” If you can make this clear upfront, you’re already ahead of the competition.

Take a look at competitors in your area, and decide:

• • What you can do differently, or better.
  • How you can stand out.
  • If any existing businesses may offer potential partnership opportunities.

To help with your marketing strategy, we’ve developed a practical marketing toolkit for tradespeople. It’s full of examples, tips and tactics to help you successfully market your trade business.

6. Ticking the boxes

All businesses, regardless of industry, have to comply with government regulations and bylaws. It’s a tedious aspect to owning and running your own business, but there’s no getting around it.

You need to keep the following in mind:

• Environmental concerns – is anything you’re doing going to impact on the environment? If so you need to outline how you plan to deal with those issues.
• Legal restrictions – check your local laws around operating a business. If you’re hiring staff, there will be employment laws to abide by. There may also be restrictions around what types of work you can do at certain times.
• Health & Safety – an area every contractor must pay attention to. There will be H&S regulations you (and any staff you might employ) have to comply with. Find out what they are and show evidence of your compliance.
  • 🇺🇸 USA Health & Safety Requirements
  • 🇬🇧 UK Health & Safety Requirements
  • 🇦🇺 Australian Health & Safety Requirements
  • 🇳🇿 NZ Health & Safety Requirements
    

Don’t skip this part! Legal hassles are not worth the time and money they cost, and they can easily be avoided by getting it right from the start.

7. Filling out our No-Nonsense Business Plan Template

It’s essential that your business plan is as realistic as possible. Try not to make assumptions. Being overly optimistic or unnecessarily negative will not help either. You need to produce a plan that’s an accurate outline of how you intend to start and run your business. The process of writing your plan will help crystallise your ideas and identify priorities, saving both time and effort.

Once your business plan is written, keep it close at hand. Review it regularly so you know you’re staying on target with your goals, and update it when necessary. It’s just as important for established businesses, so don’t make the mistake of ignoring it once you’re through the start-up phase. Revising and updating your plan will keep it relevant as a roadmap for your business.

8. What’s next?

Once you’ve got your business plan written down, you need to be able to execute it as effectively as possible. Tradify is the way to run a contracting business easily and efficiently. The app works on desktop or mobile and records notes, receipts, quotes, timesheets, contacts and more.

The following content was originally published by Tradify. We have updated some of this article for our readers.

Automating your key systems is the way to turn your enterprise into a 21st century, digital business.

But are we getting carried away with automation? And could we be systemising areas which could benefit from a more personalised, human touch?

Personalisation of the customer experience is vital. Automation can play a big part in creating targeted, data-based personalisation for each customer. But not everyone loves automation.

36% of customers in a recent survey would rather wait on hold to speak to a human agent when they have an issue, rather than interacting with an AI-powered virtual assistant to self-serve.

So, how do you get the balance right between automation and a genuine human touch?

A big part of offering a top-notch customer experience (CX) is having direct, personal human interactions with your customers. So, which tasks should you be automating? And which should you leave for your human team to deal with?

Here are a few ways to get the automation/human balance right:

• • Automate your basic admin tasks – most of us hate the tedious, time-consuming admin tasks. With smart use of software tools and customised AI assistants you can quickly automate things like onboarding new customers, answering basic FAQs or sending out reminders and notifications to your customers.
  • Automate your key finance tasks – many of the current crop of cloud accounting platforms have automation and artificial intelligence tools built in as standard. These tools help you automate your invoicing process, the collection of customer payments and the matching of transactions for your bank reconciliation process. This makes your bookkeeping and cashflow more effective and delivers real-time financial data.
  • Don’t automate the whole customer journey – customers want efficiency but not impersonal automation throughout their entire customer journey. 77% of customers say they’re more loyal to businesses that offer top-notch service – and being able to speak to a human agent can be a big part of personalising and humanising these interactions.
  • Make your people integral to your brand – the personality and experience of your people is vital to your brand identity and your CX. Have as many human interactions with customers as possible and tailor your interactions in the most personalised way.
  • Don’t put efficiency over and above having a human face – people buy from other people. Because of this, having a human touch is vital for delivering a top-class CX to your customers. You can have a slick, automated buying experience when it adds convenience, but don’t remove people entirely from your offering. Without humans, you have a software process, not a real, living, breathing business.

Talk to us about keeping the humanity in your customer experience

There’s no denying that automation and smart use of AI will be vital for creating an efficient and productive digital business. But it’s important to never discount the importance of people, human interactions and real customer relationships when building and growing your business.

The following content was originally published by BOMA. We have updated some of this article for our readers.

How does budgeting affect your business?

Budgeting is about estimating your revenues, projecting your expenses and detailing the allocation of funds, so you stick to (and don’t overrun) your agreed budget ceiling.

How does budgeting affect your business?

Having a clear, agreed budget gives you a structured framework for your financial decision-making. It’s a practical way to control your costs, monitor performance and adapt your strategic and financial decisions to meet changing economic conditions.

Using budgeting helps your business in a number of ways:

• • Better control over your finances – budgeting gives you a clear roadmap for managing your company’s finances. Sticking to that budget helps you maintain control over expenses, reduce wastage and make the very best of your resources.
  • Achieving your financial and strategic goals – your budget helps you to set and track financial goals, making it easier to align your business strategies with your desired goals and outcomes. It’s a great way to boost growth, profitability and debt reduction.
  • Improved control over your cashflow – effective budgeting helps you anticipate any cashflow fluctuations. That’s a bonus that helps you plan for both lean and prosperous periods, making sure you have the funds to cover expenses and seize opportunities.
  • Allocating your resources – budgets are useful for guiding how and where you allocate your resources. From your one pot of cash, you can decide whether to prioritize investments, marketing efforts, operational improvements or business growth.
  • Keep track of your performance – comparing your actual financial results to your budgeted results helps you quickly assess your performance as a business. You can look for variances, make timely adjustments to stay on track toward your goals.

How can our firm help you with budgeting?

Being in control of your expenses, spending and predicted revenues sits at the heart of your financial management, giving you a framework and set budgetary goals to aim for, track against and (hopefully) achieve.

As your adviser, we’ll help you set up budgets for your strategic business plans, with clear tracking and reporting to keep you on the ball and meeting those targets.

Get in touch to chat about budgeting.

The following content was originally published by BOMA. We have updated some of this article for our readers.

Gone are the days of running a business with pen and paper.

Breakthroughs in the digital space offer more options and a better user experience. But even if you’re ahead of the curve, your audience may not be. You need to get in front of potential customers wherever they operate. Even in the age of digital marketing, you can’t discount offline marketing strategies.

1. Referrals incentivise word of mouth

Incentivise your customers to provide word of mouth referrals by offering gifts or discounts to your loyal customers. Even a slight discount on a big job may seem like a lot for a small business owner, but the ongoing effects can provide more revenue in the long run.

A reputation for good work will certainly win you referrals, but imagine the impact of actively incentivising customers to spread the word. If they’re getting something out of it, then you’re already giving them a story to tell.

2. Branded clothing, vehicles & merchandise

The most important part of successfully marketing a business is building an easily recognisable brand. Besides the customer rapport you spend years building, a good logo will make you stand out in front of other competitors and quippy slogans are easily remembered by those who see them. Using brand colours for your business has even been shown to improve recognition by up to 80%.

Spend time thinking about the colours, images and words you use when marketing your business. Document the decisions you make about your brand so that you can refer to it and remain consistent. Your brand guide will come in handy if you decide to hire some help with marketing. Once you’ve settled on your brand image, put it on everything: clothing, vehicles, equipment, merchandise, websites, advertisements…the list goes on.

3. Business cards aren’t dead

Business cards are a neglected part of marketing in today’s digital marketing age. But a well-designed business card can still go a long way. People need someone to reach out to when they have an emergency like a burst pipe or loss of electricity. Business cards can often be close at hand and beat out the overwhelming amount of options online.

4. Print advertising through brochures and flyers

Other print advertising like brochures and flyers may seem outdated too, but they work in a similar way to business cards. It’s the touch, being able to hold something in your hands, and the quality of the printed medium that takes you one step closer to clients. It’s got that ‘local’ feel, doesn’t it?

It’s estimated that an average person sees some 6,000 to 10,000 ads a day. The same probably goes for you, but ask yourself, how many printed ads do you see daily? How many brochures and pamphlets do you get daily? It’s the rarity of this medium that can give it a special value.

5. Trade shows are networking hubs

Don’t underestimate the power of trade shows and the value of face to face interactions. These events are the perfect way to get exposure and to see what else is going on in the market. Regardless of whether you are a sole trader or run a bigger business, make sure to understand where the market is going.

More and more work is being automated, freeing up valuable time and resources that you can use to address other areas in your business. Trade shows are like a big brainstorming session of what other work you could be doing. The acquaintances and business deals you make will have long-term benefits on your business. An online ad is a great marketing tool, but letting prospective partners and clients meet you face to face is even better.

6. Local events build community awareness

Local events are often an untapped source of next-to-free marketing potential. Make sure to understand your local residents and what events they like to take part in. Then it’s just a matter of contacting the organisers to see how you can help. Offer some kind of value and look for a way to spread the word about your business at the same time.

It may cost you very little to provide what you’ve promised, but the exposure in front of potential clients and the positivity they will be connecting to your brand are priceless. Establish a presence and become a part of the local community. You’ll quickly become everyone’s first call when work needs doing.

7. Consider your colleagues

Regardless of your trade, you should be aware that brand building applies internally as well. Your staff will be getting an inside look at your business and you want them to be happy with what they see as well. Modern technology and apps will help you track the progress of jobs, better manage your team, and communicate more effectively.

The following content was originally published by Tradify. We have updated some of this article for our readers.

If you plan to sell your business, give yourself a reasonable timeframe to bring your business into full market readiness.

Set targets to improve performance and minimise risk.

• • Financial: go beyond asking do the numbers add up. Where do revenues, costs and profit need to be to present the best buyer opportunity?
  • Strategic: potential buyers look for a compelling business model, sound management systems, streamlined processes.
  • Human: be upfront with your team. Work through potential HR issues before taking the business to market.
  • Assets: ensure all equipment is well-maintained, premises are clean and well-organised, and all assets are in good order. Potential buyers will be turned off by the need for any urgent major upgrade.
  • Risk: assess the risks to your business and work to minimise them. Does the business depend on a single key client or supplier? Can you attract other clients or alternative suppliers? Or can you secure that key client or supplier with suitable contracts? Ensure your systems comply fully with all legislative requirements (such as health and safety) and all staff are fully trained on all systems.
  • Legal: settle any court cases or disputes looming over the business before you go to market. Look at the ownership of all the business’ assets – do you or the business have complete (and documented) ownership over them all? Does the business have any intellectual property assets which give the business competitive edge? If so, make sure they’re trademarked and patented.

Call us to help you with the detail.

• • Pay your bills on time – paying your bills and debts punctually demonstrates that you’re reliable and improves your creditworthiness in the eyes of lenders and creditors.
  • Don’t use all your credit – keeping your credit utilisation low (ideally 30% or below) showcases that you’re responsible with your business finances.
  • Don’t use multiple credits lines – taking out multiple credit cards and loans can be a red flag for credit agencies and lenders and could underline your credit score
  • Monitor and correct errors – if you spot any inaccuracies (like incorrect industry SIC or ANZSIC codes), rectify these as quickly as possible to improve your overall credit score.
  • Maintain long-standing credit relationships – having a longer credit history often demonstrates stability and can help to boost your overall business credit score.

How can our firm help you with your business credit score?

Being proactive about improving your business credit score has multiple benefits. Lenders will be more willing to fund your growth, potential suppliers will be more willing to offer trade credit and your bank will be able to see your financial stability and offer better overdrafts etc.

As your adviser, we’ll be happy to review your current credit report and help you find straightforward ways to enhance your existing business credit score.

The following content was originally published by BOMA. We have updated some of this article for our readers.