Know How to Manage and Expand Your Electrical Business

Many electricians have their own business and service repair and installation projects in domestic, industrial, and commercial environments. To be able to thrive and get business across industries, it is crucial for any electrician to have skills, experience, certifications, and the right kind of tool kit. Nowadays, many electricians use software and mobile applications for making their own reports, scheduling tasks, calculating labor rates, and more. This certainly enhances the speed and productivity, leaving little or no chance for errors and missed tasks or appointments. All these factors consolidated are great business drivers for any electrician. This post discusses all these factors that would help any electrician grow their business.

To grow any business, you need to have skills, tools, technology, and a strategic plan in place for marketing, advertising, networking, and so on. Here are some pointers that can together serve as your business drivers.

• Skills : To do any repair or installation project properly, you must have the required skills and training. Also, most customers look for certifications before assigning any electrical projects and ensure you can do the job well. This is mostly because of the risk involved and many other company-specific policies
• Experience : While most electricians would be able to do basic circuit testing with a digital device or setting up lights, there are many crucial jobs such as installing electrical wiring in an entire premise, checking for shorts in wiring and fixing it, and more. When you decide to start your own business, ensure you have enough experience of performing all these tasks. You can gain that experience by liaising with electrical and hardware shops, doing buddy assignments, assisting an experienced electrician, and more.
• PPE : Personal protection equipment such as headgears, glasses, gloves, flame retardant clothing, and so on are crucial aspects that safeguard you and your staff. Ensure you have these in your stock and that everyone uses it when out on assignments.
• Staff : Once your business starts growing and your number of projects increase, you may not be able to do all by yourself. This is when you need to hire some trained electricians who can assist you or carry out smaller assignments for themselves. You may invest in a software for scheduling tasks, work allocation, staff training, and more. You can do the scheduling from a mobile app as well.
• Marketing and Branding : These two are very important aspects of growing any business and reaching out to people and introduce your business. Increasing your presence on social media and introducing your business, specialization areas, certifications, and so on definitely helps you reach thousands of people in a short span of time, and at a minimal cost. Also, ensure you reach out to your existing customers for value added services or maintenance even after their installations are done. This helps increase your credibility. Asking for referrals from customers is also a good idea.

Investing in software and mobile applications is crucial, and helps speed up your transactions and productivity. You can automate tasks such as scheduling, invoicing, reporting, and other such tasks by using the right software. While a web-based software is important, also opt for its mobile application. Here are some types of software you can look for.

• Electrical Dispatch Software : You can install this software if you are associated with any power generation and distribution projects in your local area or city. It uses real-time data for generation of units and also automates the power distribution process.
• Scheduling and Booking Software : This is an important software that automates scheduling of tasks, save appointments, allocate work to your staff, save the number of hours worked, track the area an electrician is working in through GPS, and more. This helps you track the total assignments in a month and plan the work allocation accordingly.
• Scheduling and Booking Software : This is an important software that automates scheduling of tasks, save appointments, allocate work to your staff, save the number of hours worked, track the area an electrician is working in through GPS, and more. This helps you track the total assignments in a month and plan the work allocation accordingly.
• Marketing Software : This software tracks all your ad campaigns and analyzes which ad or post has generated likes and attracted maximum visitors. You can base this on industry type, customer segmentation, and more.
• Reporting Software : Once you feed the data or attach an Excel file, it analyzes the data in various ways and auto generates reports in terms of profit margins, ROIs on certain purchases, and more. You can use these reports to make some important decisions regarding business growth and revenue generation.
• Financing and ROI Software : If there is a big assignment such as an overhaul of wiring in an existing setup, it may involve significant costs for the customer. In such cases, they can opt for part payment. A financing and ROI software would help divide their payments into a number of installments and the period required to complete the payment. It would also give them the period for return on investment, which is by when they can recover the amount they invested in a project.
• Labor Rate Calculator : Based on the way you bill your customers, such as on a project basis or hourly basis, this software helps you calculate a fair rate that suits the customers and your employees.

You can opt for an integration of all software and store the data in a safe local space or cloud.

This is most crucial aspect of growing an electrical business. While any professional electrician has their own kit comprising a variety of electrical tools, here are some important ones.

• Electrical tapes : Look for UL listed electrical adhesive tapes that are easy to stick on wire connectors, wing connectors, and so on. These are color coded according to the application.
• Cable ties : These are simple yet durable nylon ties that are used to tie a bundle of wires or release a few wires from an existing bundle. You can easily tie as well as remove these cable ties. This helps sort the wiring mess as well as ensure safety.
• Wire strippers : These are handy scissor like devices which are used to cut the insulated portions of wires when the conductive portions need to be merged.
• Electrical testers : There is a variety of electrical testers to check various parameters such as batteries, circuits, amperage and wattage load, GFCI receptacles, voltage, and so on. These are compact digital devices that are handy and easy to use.
• Splicing connectors : At times, two or more wires need to be spliced when forming a circuit. Splicing connectors are plastic device with sharp metal inserts that splice the two wires and keep them in place.

If you are a certified professional electrician looking to expand your business and gain business from diverse industries, ensure you have the right set of tools aside from application software and your skills and experience. Electrical Basics supplies a variety of electrical accessories including electrical terminals. We offer good quality electrical tools such as electrical tapes, cable ties, testers, and more that are useful for wire termination, routing, and management. Get in touch with the experts at the company to discuss your requirements and find the right electrical tools for your business.