Word of mouth is the best advertising you will ever find.
Obviously this is difficult when you have a total of zero previous customers to spread your good name.
However, all is not lost.
Let all your friends, family and work acquaintances know about your new business.
have printed 500 or more business cards and give everyone you know 5 or 10 of them.
If you manage to give a handful to 50 people then a few of them will know someone that wants something doing now or in the near future.
if only 20 of them manage to hand out 3 cards to people they know, then you have managed to get some targeted advertising and a good word of mouth recommendation to 60 people.
It is not a fast approach to building a customer base but it is likely to give you a better standard of clients.
When you do get a job with one of them, be perfect.
when I say be perfect, I am not talking in a textbook context about your specifications and testing, we will assume all that is up to spec.
perfect from a customers point of view is a combination of the following (not in order of priority)
1. answer phone calls
2. don't promise what you can't achieve
3. when on site, be polite and talk to the customer, try to answer there questions in layman's terms.
4. do try to keep the working area clean and tidy, watch where you leave tools etc.
5. hand prints round switches etc. are not a good look!
6. TRY HARD to Provide what the customer wants and find a way to do it. there is nothing worse than having a plan of what you want and then having a tradesman sucking teeth and telling you no, that's not the way its done.
7. Conversely to the above, do not let your standards slip because a customer seems to know what they want and tell you how to do your job, there is normally a way to do what they want to do AND make it compliant.
8. For any job that is more than an accessory change, send an email quote. Require a response by email to confirm, before starting the job.
9. Be careful with your pricing, To cheap and you will be walked all over by the customers that nobody wants. too expensive is a good position to be in IF, and only IF you have so much work of the type that you want.
Get a few Good Jobs and happy customers under your belt then word of mouth is a powerful tool and will propel you good fortune.
If you have good people skills then managing customer expectations should be ok
if you manage most of the above points then you will do ok
If you get them all, all of the time then this time next year Rodney, you will be a millionaire.
Best of luck with your new business.
