Approaching PM for using your tradie services

Hi everyone as the thread title says we knew a few real estate agents in our area and approached them to use our tradie business. At the moement we do work for about half the local real estate agencies. We are about to hire a new member and just want to make sure we will have enough jobs available for him. For all the PM's out there whats the best way to approach you? We've done a mixture in the past just introduce ourselves with business cards, other times we had a estimate pricing guide. is there any tips to make you stand out?

 

Offering to do emergencies/weekend work without a surcharge can help.

 

Hi @MBowen

I'm a PM, I'd want to know:
- Pricing estimates (including call outs)
- Availability, suburbs of coverage, and how best to organise a job (ie hours of business and whether there's afterhours or weekend surcharge)
- Examples / Testimonials of previous work
- Payment methods/terms (eg 30/60 days?)
- Proof of insurance

 

Surely all tradies charge more on weekends/out of bus hours?

 

Not all, but it's important to know when it applies and how much. Obviously if a jobs urgent it needs to happen or otherwise schedule for next day or what have you.

 

Dear M Bowen,
I like your initiative!
a few suggestions may include,
Have good phone manner, (state your business name when taking a phone call), take your boots off when coming inside, provide accounts promptly, (taking into consideration 'end of month' payments$$$ ) provide a list of fees, or hourly rates, clean up after yourselves, return phone calls, ask for the owners authorisation for payment, full description of Job.
I hope this helps

 

Offer kickbacks for all work referred?

 

Stop it.

 

No. I don't like that and only makes PMs look worse for using their trades. If you want to offer a kickback, put it into the invoice as a discount to the owner.

I'd always prefer someone to introduce themselves, by phone is fine - but please no spammy emails.

Insurance, licencing, cost, coverage areas, testimonials from previous work/other agents is all big pluses in my books. Also expect to get small jobs/quotes while the PM makes up their mind whether they will keep you long term or not.

 

This is why i rarely use agency tradies! Ideas like this

 

Hi @MBowen

Another approach is to have another tradie that already does work for an agency to recommend you there. eg have a sparky recommend you as a plumber.

One of my friends does exceedingly well with agency work which may or may not have to do with the fact the PM girls at the agency find his young staff easy on the eye.

 

Thanks for the tips everyone we approached three new agencies and one was very interested and we have a job this Thursday with them. Now I have a new dilemma though. As we do gardens and lawn mowing we've been asked if we do internal end of lease cleaning by one of the new agencies as there person is retiring. We originally did the full package a few years back but we found that everyone would get a quote and than do it themselves. We thought our prices were to high and lowered them but still no takers(I think people moving out just want to save as much money which is fair enough). My wife used to do the cleaning on the odd jobs we did get. She doesn't want to do it again. Its quite a big agency so we would love to get the lawn mowing business but I'm afraid they won't take us on without doing the internal cleaning as well. Has anyone had experience in using a contractor for the odd job or maybe outsourcing jobs and taking a finders fee(Yes I'm greedy lol)?

 

Hi @MBowen

Just because someone wants to spend your time getting free quotes doesn't mean you have to offer a free quoting service. Many tradies refuse to do so especially for smaller jobs. If you decide to offer an end of lease clean, perhaps simply have a standard set of fees you can email to the property manager for a pre-defined set of services. Or better still just give it to them when you first start working for them so they can refer to it at all times and not pester you with unnecessary calls asking for a price. You could have it in like a table/grid format such as the attached pic.

 

Totally sexist comment @JacM - this should be moved to the "mods do jack" thread. @Simon Hampel @keithj @geoffw @wylie

 

Ohh, good thread! My husband has not long started a handyman business and just sent him the link to have a read.

 

giving quotes is part of business, if you give out 100 quotes and they are all rejected, it means you are too expensive, or something else,

but I get how some people shop quotes, but that is a customers perogative and best interests

recently, I had a guy quote on something really simple, I think it was replace a leaky tap head, or hand, apparently it was a quick fix, he went and quoted, and it was rather expensive, $150, the other guy was $90-110, and the $150 guy refused to even budge after he had already quoted....

we ended up giving him the job for some other reason, but if you are going to be that inflexible, then expect customers wasting your time too

 

But is he handy?

 

Very!

 

So you're married to Andy?

 

Ha, no. But he's at the start of the alphabet with Andy.