How to start a business in the trades post-lockdown

In the last month, the lifting of furlough rules has allowed thousands of employees in the trades to return to work. With government grants for green and efficient insulation installations, along with the liberalisation of planning regulations and Stamp Duty cuts, there has been plenty done to help stimulate the trade sectors. With plenty of opportunities being created, it is vital for businesses to hit the ground running and make a success of the remainder of 2020.

Ben Dyer, founder of Powered Now, an app technology designed to take the pain out of admin and paperwork heating and plumbing engineers as well as other sub-sectors, has offered his tips to running a successful trade business.

1. Imagine how good life could be Imagine life if your staff always did a great job for your clients. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if there never seemed to be any problems – they were all sorted out before you even heard about them?

2. Take care who you recruit You only ensure getting great staff by recruiting really carefully. So, beware of pressure to act in a hurry. Bad staff will upset customers and lead to disputes and refunds. They will create mayhem unless you are always watching them. Even cheap ones will still demotivate others who will start to wonder why they bother.

3. Keep talking Talk to your staff. Explain as much as you can about details of the job and your priorities. Don’t assume that they know. The biggest complaint in most jobs is that “nobody told me”. Give them quick feedback when they have finished a job.

4. Pay fairly Contrary to a lot of belief, salary isn’t a big motivator, although a higher salary does make it easier to recruit. But people will become very demotivated if they believe that they are not being paid fairly. And that will happen as soon as a good person discovers a worse employee is paid more than them.

5. Keep them motivated Decent people will be motivated when they believe they are being treated fairly and are allowed to take pride in their job. The key point is to always give praise in public, and only criticise in private. If someone has done a poor job or made a mistake, approach them straight away and in private and with an attitude of trying to help them.

Criticism does need to be constructive so that they have a chance to improve. You need to act as the adult and stop any frustration from showing.

 As lockdown lifts thousands of employees in the trades can think about returning to so some sort of normality.

With government grants for green and efficient insulation installations, along with the liberalisation of planning regulations and Stamp Duty cuts, there has been plenty done to help stimulate the trade sectors.

With plenty of opportunities being created, it is vital for businesses to hit the ground running and make a success of 2021. If you are thinking about starting a business in the trade we have plenty of great advice on our blog including startup guides and tips and tricks.

There are several steps to running a successful trade business, these are even more important post covid.

• The most important is the ability to do the job well. This underpins everything else
• Then you have to launch out and take the initial plunge
• Once you are up and running, there are a number of things that keep you going (e.g. record keeping, simple marketing etc.)
• The final piece of the puzzle is harder than it sounds, but if you follow our advice you will be OK. It’s pricing things right.

You can read more in our full getting started guide. It's a decent read with a large number of tips and tricks.