20
Tips for How to Make Money with a Service Business
#1 Network
#2 Recurring Work is the Best Kind of Work
#3 Under Promise, Over Deliver
#4 Get a Contract
#5 Don’t Overpay Yourself
#6 A Good Partner Can Be Your Best Asset
#7 Ask Questions
#8 The Customer isn’t Always Right
#9 Do Something You’re Willing to Stay Up Late For
#10 Choose a Growing Industry
#11 You’re only as Good as Your Portfolio
#12 Get Feedback
#13 Ask for Endorsements
#14 You Don’t Need an Extravagant Website
#15 You’re Always Looking for New Clients
#16 Don’t Expect to Earn a Full-Time Income Right Away
#17 Your Primary Job isn’t Providing the Service
#18 Always Be Learning
#19 Hire Character, Train Skill
#20 Nothing’s More Important than the Quality of Your
Work
20 tips based on my worst mistakes and biggest
triumphs. You can learn how to run a successful service business much more
quickly than I did by reading on.
#1 Network
People like to do business with someone they know.
#2 Recurring Work is the Best Kind of Work
If you keep
landing one-time jobs, you’re always going to be looking for new clients.
That’s fine when you’re just starting out, but it makes growth very difficult.
Recurring
business is a foundation that allows you to hire full-time employees and spend
less time pursuing new accounts. So start thinking of ways that your clients
could benefit from receiving your service month in and month out.
#3 Under Promise, Over Deliver
Good companies
meet their clients’ expectations. Companies destined for greatness so exceed
those expectations that their clients jaws hit the floor.
That means
pulling all-nighters to put on that last coat of polish and add features that
your client never paid for. That’s the type of service that earns you repeat
business and word of mouth referrals.
#4 Get a Contract
if you can’t get
somebody to agree to a contract, then you don’t want to work with them.
#5 Don’t Overpay Yourself
You start a
business to make money, but if you’re personally taking every penny of profit
then you’ll have nothing left over to invest in your business.
Think of your
business as a hard-working member of your team who needs to get paid just like
everyone else.
Obviously, you need a salary that pays for the bare
essentials. But the more you invest in your company, the sooner you’ll be able
to make a salary befitting a CEO.
#6 A Good Partner Can Be Your Best Asset
Taking on a
business partner means splitting the ownership of your company in half. But the
right business partner will more than double the company’s profits, so it won’t
matter.
#7 Ask Questions
The more you
know about who a client is and what they want, the better you’ll be able to
help them get it.
#8 The Customer isn’t Always Right
You should bend
over backwards to make your customers happy, even when they’re being a little
bit unreasonable.
But often the
customer is wrong about how you can best help them. When your client thinks you
should do something that you know isn’t in their best interest, it’s your duty
as an expert in the field to put your foot down.
Don’t tell them
that they’re wrong. Take their idea into consideration and then explain the way
you envision doing things. They’re hiring you for your expertise. After they
hear all of the well-informed benefits of proceeding your way, they’ll forget
they ever had a different vision to begin with.
#9 Do Something You’re Willing to Stay Up Late For
#10 Choose a Growing Industry
With a
commitment to excellence, you can start a thriving service business in any
industry – even if it’s on the decline.
But why not
choose a fast-growing industry? Starting a company in a growing industry is
like running downhill. There are more clients and fewer competitors.
#11 You’re only as Good as Your Portfolio
When you’re trying to land a client, it doesn’t matter
what you’re capable of doing for them. It matters what you’ve proven you can
do. So the more impressive and diverse your portfolio is, the easier it will be
for you to get lucrative work.
Think of each
project as an opportunity to enrich your portfolio. You may find that this
influences what type of work you take on and the quality of the work.
If you’re
looking for your first project, then you’ve got nothing to prove your value. So
you may need to work for free just to get started.
#12 Get Feedback
Have you had
someone tell you that you’ve got a piece of food stuck in your teeth?
It’s an awkward
moment, but my guess is you were happy they let you know so that you could do
something about it.
The same concept
applies to a service-based businesses. You could be making an embarrassing
mistake with your clients or letting them down in an important way, but you
won’t know unless they tell you.
That’s why you
ask. I have a ‘Client Feedback Survey’ that I ask companies to fill out after
I’ve worked with them. One of the questions is, “How could your experience with
this project have been improved?”
#13 Ask for Endorsements
“What would you tell a friend who’s thinking
about employing our services?”
The answer to
that question usually makes for a great endorsement. To a prospective client,
there’s little more persuasive than reading a hearty recommendation from
someone who just worked with you.
#14 You Don’t Need an Extravagant Website
A website is a
huge asset for any business. It’s both a place to provide helpful information
for your current clients and a virtual salesperson that works 24 hours a day.
But for most
service businesses, a fully-featured and robust website isn’t necessary. Next
Level Ink’s website currently has just five pages and a contact form. Since I’m
a graphic designer with some rudimentary web development skills, I was able to
develop it myself for free:
Ideally, the
site would have a blog, a login area for clients, and rank at the top of Google
for ‘video production company’. But for now, it’s serving our purposes
elegantly. It’s a place people can go to learn more about our service and it
garners unsolicited leads every month.
#15 You’re Always Looking for New Clients
It’s good to
feel a sense of satisfaction when you land a new client.
But don’t let
that fool you into a false sense of security. If you stop pursuing more clients
just because you have a project on your hands, then you’ll have no work when
the project is complete. That means you’ll probably have costly dead time
before you get another contract signed.
Always be
looking for your next client – even if your company’s next availability isn’t
until six months out.
#16 Don’t Expect to Earn a Full-Time Income Right Away
I don’t think
any entrepreneur should expect to make living wages their first month of
business. Or their second. Or their third.
It’s possible,
but it also puts a ton of unneeded pressure on you and your business. Worse
still, the desire to make lots of money up front could cause you to skimp on
essential investments or rush through projects that deserve your full
attention.
I recommend that
you start a service business when you either have another source of income,
like a part-time job or a healthy nest egg in your savings account. That way
you can give your business room to grow at its own pace – and you won’t go
hungry if a client is unexpectedly late on their payments.
#17 Your Primary Job isn’t Providing the Service
You spend more
time meeting with current and prospective clients, developing business
materials, establishing systems, and doing the million other little things that
come with running a successful business.
If you want to
spend all of your time providing a service, then you should become an employee.
Only start a business if you’re ready to be a business person.
#18 Always Be Learning
Whatever your
service, you can – and should – be doing it better.
Don’t take your
improvement for granted.
#19 Hire Character, Train Skill
There’s nothing
more important to the growth of a service company than the quality of the
people that you bring on board. But while it’s a good idea to hire people who
are technically great at what they do, that shouldn’t be your number one
priority:
“Over my years
in business, I have had a saying when it comes to hiring: Hire character and
train skills. Everything worth doing is done on a foundation of integrity and
honor.”
#20 Nothing’s More Important than the Quality of Your
Work
There are no
small contracts, only small companies.
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