NETT, Ways of finding business

[UKTT Darren]

Here is a little bit of what we go through on our course, As previously said your Tiling skills are no good unless you can find some work to do so here are a few pointers in that direction

• Yellow pages / Yell . com, This is an ok way of advertising, i wouldnt waste any money paying for larger box ads, just take the free listing that they offer

• Other tradesman (Best Option), This is by far the best option to get yourself grafting, probably 60 - 70 % of all work is done by a recommendation from someone, just think if a plasterer or plumber has done a bathroom for a customer, that customer will ask if he or he or she knows anyone that can tile it, if they recommend you then you will most likely get the job once you have given the estimate, if you are recommending anyone make sure they are good or the customer will blame you for it and theirs your reputation up the swanny

• Church parish magazines, i used to find these good, your local church will do a monthly mag and its generally about the community, its not expensive to advertise in it but can throw off some good jobs and creat a good word of mouth for you around the people that read it

• Tile shops, get your cards into these and try and have a bit banter with the lads in the store, they will dish the work out to the tradesman they like, try and buy their products and send your customers to them for their tiles, in return you want the jobs

• Construction sites, bit dodgy at the moment but they will return

• Conservatory suppliers, these are excellent and a lot of money to be made from conservatory floors, All our tiling courses cover design work and bespoke pattens and borders that you can up sell to your customers, people that have just spent £10-20K on one are easily swayed by an offer of upgrading to a nice border and centre piece, you can get some big extra money for doing these. Try and sell your bespoke services to the guy that owns the window / conservatory shop

• Estate agents / Letting agents, Estate agents allways need tradesman to reccommend and letting agencies are good for repairs , in and out, quick money

• Kitchen and bathroom shops, pretty self explanitary this one

• Plumbers merchants, leave your cards on the counter, bung the guy behind the counter 20 quid to dish you cards out to the plumbers

• Paper shops, Newspapers, pretty poor really but if your desperate, brings in some cheap jobs

• Vehicle sign, If you have a van the best money you could spend (£150) is to get it sign written, this will bring in business no end

• Flyers, get youself 5000 A5 flyers made up, the percentage return is about 1%, doesnt sound much but if you dish out 1000 flyers, thats 10 jobs from them at an average of £300 per job thats £3k in return plus all the reccomendations from them,

If you see a skip outside a house as your travelling down the road, just stop and pop one of your flyers through the door. Also when you are doing a job, on the second morning of that job just post 20 flyers through the nearest doors to that house, they will have seen your van there the first day and it will be a reminder when they get your details through the post box

Lastly Multi Skilling yourself, this is definatly the way forward now, imo the days of the pure tradesman is numbered, customers prefer 1 person in now to do the plumbing, plastering and finish off with the tiling in a bathroom than trying to connect and organise 3 trades. Also you are not relying on trying to fill your diary and week up with just tiling jobs, a couple of days plastering means less looking for tiling jobs.

Anyone thinking of doing 6 weeks of Tiling training should seriouly think about doing 2 weeks tiling, 2 weeks plumbing and 2 weeks plastering for the same money.
All training centres are artificial so after 2 weeks in there you just are going over and practising what you already know and have been taught,, after the 2 weeks you need to be learning on some easy family, friends or some straight forward paying customer jobs to build up your confidence.
Our training courses are around fast track laerning, i could spend a week teaching with a pair of nippers and practice and practice if i wanted to drag out the training, all that does is waste time.
Anyone thats been on our course will be able to cut perfectly around anything after the first afternoon of the course with the methods i have developed, there will be hundreds of people on here allready done my course and know its the truth

Anyway sorry for any spelling errors
Hope this helps some of you out
My post before on Key to success in Tiling in the sticky thread above is worth a look at just in case you havent seen it before

Best of luck
Regards
Darren

 

[kgbviktor]

Hi Darren,

Top notch advise there-hoping to get to your centre soon for a couple of weeks' plastering and see how confident I feel after that,was looking at doing the plumbing as well,which you have commented on,looking more on setting up as a handy man myself,but we shall see how it goes!

 

[Triffid]

Top advice from Darren there. I've got a couple of people pestering me at the moment for advertising after they got my name from the free site on the plastering forum. Very expensive, especially for someone in my position just starting out.

Can't recommend Darren's courses highly enough.

 

[UKTT Darren]

Hi Victor, 2 weeks is enough and is a great grounding in the plastering, it covers a lot and you should be fully confident after that, 5 days in the plumbing is all you need for dealing with the day to day bathroom stuff you come accross as a tiler or plasterer

As for the advertising from Triffid, i would keep away from expensive advertising if i was you, other tradesman is what you need to find and thats free. If you want to you can offer the tradesman a £ kickback for jobs they pass your way, this normally grabs their attention to start thinking of you, allways worked for me the offer of free easy money for a referal of a job
Regards
Darren