I'm new here and am finding lots of great information. Thanks.
From reading the posts it seems that many here share our business philosophy. We're a small residential service company and are fortunate to be growing.
When I started working with the company it was just my husband and 1 helper. Now we are up to 4 electricians (including DH), me and 1 admin gal in the office. (My background is marketing & sales). He started the company in 1988 so we are well established with a great reputation.
I am trying to build infrastructure and systems for our company have many questions and hope some of you will share your experiences.
We're at an awkward stage. Not so tiny that we can "wing it" and not big enough to have systems in place and economies of scale. Our revenue has been growing rapidly the last 2 years but so has our overhead. We're at that stage where we're working harder and making a more money, but not enough more for the extra work and overhead. Cash flow is improving but it's still a bit too "hand to mouth". If we could operate more efficiently we could do a lot better. The biggest bottle neck is that too much still has to be done by my husband personally. Poor guy is pretty overloaded these days (me too).
1) Do you use a system or software package to manage the flow of work from incoming call through billing etc. We use Quickbooks for estimates, invoices, accounting etc. but I think we need something more.
2) ? For those of you who started out wearing your tools and grew... Our biggest issue is finding someone who can replace my husband in the field. If he doesn't interact with the customers, we would only get a fraction of the jobs. He's a top notch electrician with over 35 years of experience and that's why we have a great reputation. He inspires confidence in the customer and we work hard to deliver... but then how do you maintain the quality when you have others do the work? He's more than willing to delegate but we find that if he's not in the field the jobs take 3 times as long and are not done well. If he doesn't go to the estimates, we don't get the work. He needs to talk to the customers on the phone and do estimates, not do the service calls and work in the field. If he does a service call there is a good chance it will turn into a bigger job. If we send a technician rarely. If he's on a job, then he's not answering calls and questions or writing up estimates and we are losing opportunities (IMO). That may be a training issue. How do you find guys who are top quality electricians and who can sell too?
3) Finding good electricians is our biggest challenge. We get TONS of applications but finding electricians who are really qualified for residential service work is really difficult. (and can pass drug and background screening etc) We care about the work being done neatly, correctly and efficiently. Commercial and construction electricians are abundant but neat personable residential guys who can do good diagnostic and service work are in short supply. (so is common sense)
The goal is for him to do the estimates and sales and stop wearing tools, but if he's not out there, the quality of work really suffers, even with the best techs we've found. We pay well & give bonuses & incentives. Other EC friends who are bigger tell us we just have to be ok with mediocre work if we want to have employees doing it. We can't swallow that. We charge top dollar and our customers deserve the top notch service they are paying for.
Any advice from those who have grown through this stage?
Thanks!
From reading the posts it seems that many here share our business philosophy. We're a small residential service company and are fortunate to be growing.
When I started working with the company it was just my husband and 1 helper. Now we are up to 4 electricians (including DH), me and 1 admin gal in the office. (My background is marketing & sales). He started the company in 1988 so we are well established with a great reputation.
I am trying to build infrastructure and systems for our company have many questions and hope some of you will share your experiences.
We're at an awkward stage. Not so tiny that we can "wing it" and not big enough to have systems in place and economies of scale. Our revenue has been growing rapidly the last 2 years but so has our overhead. We're at that stage where we're working harder and making a more money, but not enough more for the extra work and overhead. Cash flow is improving but it's still a bit too "hand to mouth". If we could operate more efficiently we could do a lot better. The biggest bottle neck is that too much still has to be done by my husband personally. Poor guy is pretty overloaded these days (me too).
1) Do you use a system or software package to manage the flow of work from incoming call through billing etc. We use Quickbooks for estimates, invoices, accounting etc. but I think we need something more.
2) ? For those of you who started out wearing your tools and grew... Our biggest issue is finding someone who can replace my husband in the field. If he doesn't interact with the customers, we would only get a fraction of the jobs. He's a top notch electrician with over 35 years of experience and that's why we have a great reputation. He inspires confidence in the customer and we work hard to deliver... but then how do you maintain the quality when you have others do the work? He's more than willing to delegate but we find that if he's not in the field the jobs take 3 times as long and are not done well. If he doesn't go to the estimates, we don't get the work. He needs to talk to the customers on the phone and do estimates, not do the service calls and work in the field. If he does a service call there is a good chance it will turn into a bigger job. If we send a technician rarely. If he's on a job, then he's not answering calls and questions or writing up estimates and we are losing opportunities (IMO). That may be a training issue. How do you find guys who are top quality electricians and who can sell too?
3) Finding good electricians is our biggest challenge. We get TONS of applications but finding electricians who are really qualified for residential service work is really difficult. (and can pass drug and background screening etc) We care about the work being done neatly, correctly and efficiently. Commercial and construction electricians are abundant but neat personable residential guys who can do good diagnostic and service work are in short supply. (so is common sense)
The goal is for him to do the estimates and sales and stop wearing tools, but if he's not out there, the quality of work really suffers, even with the best techs we've found. We pay well & give bonuses & incentives. Other EC friends who are bigger tell us we just have to be ok with mediocre work if we want to have employees doing it. We can't swallow that. We charge top dollar and our customers deserve the top notch service they are paying for.
Any advice from those who have grown through this stage?
Thanks!
in deal sister.
