Hoo boy. This year was a bloodbath and found me coming back down to earth after thinking I was hot stuff last year.
33 jobs total making 53k on the books for an average ticket price of 1600.
I literally have 5000$ worth of SH sitting in the chemical distribution warehouse that I expected to use this summer and just barely went through 27 15gal jugs this year.
Closing rate was 53%. Up a few percent points from last year so it’s progress. I’ll take it.
Things I need to work on…
Generating leads. This year I had about half the amount of people contacting me. Can’t get jobs if I’m not touching people.
Getting out of company debt. Almost there. I owe about 20k left And my goal was to be at zero by now. Hopefully by the end of winter I’ll have that whittled down.
Man. This year boned me and I’m kinda thrown for a loop. I don’t feel like I let my foot off the gas with advertising or anything like that and just got absolutely dumped on. It was a brutal one up here. Hope y’alls went a little better than mine and hopefully it’s because the economy and election year and not that I’m terrible at this!
Looks like you do either a few really big houses, a lot of commercial work or a few large jobs job and a bunch of small jobs. I think average ticket for most guys (depending on mix of clients and geography) is around $400-$500.
Wrapped box truck, Facebook ads, top search on Google, cork board ads, direct mail marketing mailers, and Craiglist. Didn’t do yard signs because competitors family keep taking mine down
Every think about doing a referral program? If a past client sends you a new client, offer them some incentive? I’ve been testing out some options, and think I’m going to implement it to all customers next year… 5% of the final invoice (once work is completed and paid) of anyone they send my way, in the form of an Amazon or Visa gift card or a donation to a charity of my choosing that has yet to be decided… still working on details for it all.
Yes I’ve offered that from word of mouth, but have thought about putting it out on a mailer/flyers but haven’t yet. I have enough door hangers printed from previous years that I’d like to use up before making new ones as well so there’s that
I’m in the same boat as far as print material… I think come next spring I’ll just send out a email blast to all previous customers and then mention it to new customers moving forward. Then eventually get new material printed lol.
Yea our yard signs get taken down a day or two after we put them up. We do it to the code of the city so it’s not a city worker taking them down… seems like one guys signs are up and the rest of ours are taken down…
We found out that the backroads that have decent houses we put them in a couple spots out of the way of traffic and actually get some more calls than normal sign placement.
I know you like doing them, but part of the problem with doing roofs is that your repeat business is 5-7 years apart. I started as a roof cleaner doing nothing else , but only took me a year or so to figure out the repeat business aspect. Try to really look for other stuff to do when you’re doing the roofs, tell them maybe next year they should consider the house, etc.
But I think it’s been a little slower this year on the resi side, fortunately commercial has held up well and much more repeatable, so keep looking for those if you ever got hot water.
Be glad you kept your other job, until you can consistently get well over 100k annually, highly recommend for everyone.
There’s still SO MUCH gross roofs on my area! I have been working on more commercial stuff this year, and have some quotes out still that people are thinking about for next year. We have native housing for low income families which has a ton of properties and I just did 5 house wash/gutter cleanings for them. Needed to do paperwork to become a vendor for them and now I’m on the books. They apologized for bugging me so late in the season, and property manager asked me to call them early spring when I start back up. I am hopeful that will bring a lot of business just by itself but you know what hoping does…
Ive even gotten face time this year with property managers here but never got calls back from them. It’s been a real head scratcher for me this year.
@Racer yep you were right (per usual) but it doesn’t make me hate this state job any less They keep trying to get me to do these huge pressurewash/ soft wash projects for my hourly peasant wage at work and I have to keep telling them to hire my business or kick rocks because that isn’t under my regular duties.
Thanks for sharing! You’re not alone. This year has been a struggle. We were rocking in Spring/early Summer (as usual). Then around mid July I was having hard time filling the calendar. I had 3 crews. Dropped to 2 and still couldn’t fill the calendar. Things are picking up a little. I feel like I’m doing a lot of estimates, but my close rate has taken a hit. A lot of people are beating me up over price. This year has definitely been frustrating!
As terrible as it sounds I’m glad it’s more than just me struggling because I’ve been wondering if I’m just the absolute worst at this and wasn’t doing a good job and deserved this at least now I know that I’m not crazy
