Are you a busy tradie considering outsourcing to ease your workload? Not sure which parts of your business you are able to outsource?
Your trades or services business has grown and you’re now overwhelmed by the additional workload. Or are you juggling managing your team, scheduling jobs, answering phone calls or quoting. All whilst still on the tools? Are you getting home after a hard days’ work and playing catch up on emails, quotes and invoicing late into the night instead of spending time with your family or watching the footy! Have you even asked your partner to help you keep up with your workload? If you are relating to any of these scenarios maybe it’s time to outsource.
So you are now considering outsourcing to ease your workload and need to figure out what can be outsourced. Below we suggest which functions of a typical trades or services business operation can easily be outsourced:
1. Answering phone calls – one of the biggest challenges for tradies is juggling answering phone calls whilst on the job. Engaging a professional specialised call answering service that can answer all or some of your calls will free up loads of your time. Not only can you now focus on the task at hand, you will also never miss a call – which could be a valuable lead! Some call answering services will just take a message, whilst others like Office Shed are far more specialised. Doing all the admin work associated with calls so there’s no doubling up of tasks.
2. Email inbox management – responding to email enquiries in a timely manner is critical to securing more jobs. Also uploading work orders quickly to your job management is important so you can schedule jobs to meet KPIs. A VA can review, action &/or file emails throughout the day and draw your attention to only those important enough to concern you. Not worrying about emails will free up lots of time and reduce stress so you can keep the rest of your business moving.
3. Scheduling jobs – if you outsource your phone calls you should also be outsourcing your scheduling to avoid doubling up on time spent on tasks. Allowing your VA to schedule also means a much better customer experience with only one contact point. You will always have vision and control of your schedule and can easily make changes as and when you need via your job management app. It’s important to engage a specialised tradie VA that understands your trade if outsourcing your scheduling.
4. Quotes and invoicing – getting quotes and invoices out can be tricky when on job sites throughout the course of the day. Then if you don’t do them quickly they can build up and become a very time consuming task to complete. If you don’t get them out you will lose jobs and get paid slowly, neither being acceptable to a well-run business. Having a VA or bookkeeper do your quotes and invoicing will mean you get more jobs and have more money in your bank accounts faster.
5. Follow up calls – you’re now getting the quotes and invoices out quickly, but are they getting followed up? A simple follow up call will greatly increase your conversions and reduce debtors. Or are you a maintenance-based tradie who could be doing more annual service calls? Why not engage your VA to keep up regular call cycles to your customers. Most strong businesses rely on repeat business from happy customers!
6. Bookkeeping – you probably already outsource your tax accounting requirements to an accountant. But what about all the rest of the bookkeeping work that needs to be done in Xero or Myob? If you are trying to keep up with reconciliations or spending hours ensuring time sheets are completed to do your payroll you can outsource all your bookkeeping needs with ease. Or if you are already outsourcing to an accountant, you should be able to achieve a considerable saving by having a bookkeeper take on these tasks instead.
7. Advertising and content creation – marketing is a highly specialised profession with a vast depth of knowledge required to properly manage meta or google ads, little lone creating a radio advertising campaign. Most smart trades business owners will outsource some or all their marketing. Having a good digital marketer can be the difference between success or failure for some tradies.
8. Documentation, data entry and record keeping – for tradies this will primarily mean managing jobs and customer creation within your job management app or spread sheet maintenance. Job management apps are a fantastic time saving solution but still require the data to be entered and updated regularly. This can be tough when out on the road or relying on your team to maintain it. Outsourcing this function will streamline your operation and ensure your information is always kept up to date.
9. Compliance documentation – in Australia each state has different requirements with regards to safety and compliance. Some states have quite a high level of compliance, others not so much. A specialised trades VA can easily take on these tasks and keep them up to date.
10. Ad hoc tasks – as a business owner you may have odd jobs and unique tasks arise from time to time. An experienced VA can help you with these types of requirements as and when required.
Outsourcing some or all the above administrative tasks can save you a lot of time and headaches. Imagine getting home after working all day and not having to check emails, get quotes out or reconcile a weeks’ worth of transactions. Outsourcing creates efficiencies and will allow you to focus on key revenue generating areas of your business and not get lost in a pile of admin.
Office Shed is Australia’s leading tradie specialist admin support (or VA) service. We have been in business for over 13 years and have worked with thousands of trades businesses. Office Shed partner with major tradie software platforms such as ServiceM8, Fergus, Aroflo, Simpro, Xero and Ascora. We absolutely love helping tradies get back more time to focus on their business or spend more time with their families. If you are considering outsourcing, get in touch with Office Shed today on 1300 779 529 for a no obligation chat to see if outsourcing suits you.
Duncan McClure
Duncan McClure helps his wife Jay McClure run their fantastic business Office Shed. Office Shed helps tradies streamline their admin processes, are tradie Bookkeeping experts and do reception services for their busy tradies. Duncan has a long history working in management consulting, specialising in business strategy and planning, sales and marketing and customer experience.
