Lately, I’ve been trying to work with tradesmen on a bathroom rehab.  My husband and I have always been DIY-ers and he’s done some great work before on bathroom and kitchen rehabs.  We own a wet saw!  This time we thought we would skip the pain and have someone else do it.  Living in a city of 12,000 people I’ve come to the realization that the whole trades culture is different here than the suburbs of Chicago, where we used to live.

When the market is big there are big players.  They have good branding, systems, billing and customer service.  There are so many potential customers that they can fill all their worker’s time, all the time and when they have too many requests, they have access to more workers, so they can get someone to work for them tomorrow.  They have a logo or motto that sticks in people’s heads so when they need them they call them first. The plumber has a system of squeezing in a quick fix in between projects and calling on their extras when needed so they can do the work soon. The roofer compares their rates to their competitors and undercut slightly, but still make a profit. They answer the phone.  They do good work.

When the market is small there are big tradesmen.  They might have a logo. They talk to people and kind of give an estimate when they get to it.  There is no need for advertising because they get quite a bit of work from referrals.  For carpenter’s it’s either feast or famine. Plumbers answer their phone when they aren’t working and if they’re busy they don’t answer or return voice mails.  They’re too busy.  They pick their rate and it’s higher than what an MBA makes.  They do good work.

In both large metropolitan areas and small towns tradesmen do good work.  Similarities seem to end there.

I was talking to a banker recently.  He really enjoyed his early career when he worked with new businesses and helped them stay liquid; helped plumbers, printers and bakers have money needed to grow and become stable.  He confirmed what I’ve always thought – many small business people are good at what the result is, but they really struggle and dislike all the background requirements.  They are painters, not personnel managers.  They are flooring installers not accountants.  So, the question is does a small town need a business services center?

 What could a business services center do?  

• Write business plans that help guide the business, identify issues and assist in obtaining loans
• Write a marketing plan that helps identify the way to get recognized by the most wanted customers
• Help develop branding through logo and motto
• Identify areas of pain for owners and find some operational medicine
• Provide professional customer service through phone services, guaranteed response time, responses to social media critiques and praises,
• Keep intelligent bookkeeping that will identify profitable and unprofitable practices
• Provide cost benefit analysis of marketing and operations initiatives before money is committed
• Arrange for risk management through insurance, review of government requirements such as licensing, identify existing unethical or libelous operational practices
• Provide technical solutions for tasks and procedures which drain the owners and employees time.
• Utilize social media to keep in touch with existing and possible customers.
• Provide the proper website and email addresses with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so people can find you and be confident in your professionalism.
• Much more

In researching small business operations services, I found the following interesting post:

13 Best Practices for Building Solid Small Business Operations

If marketing, operations, scheduling, customer service, payroll bother you, call me.  Maybe I can help.