Whether your business has a retail space, a bustling headquarters, or a production line in a workshop, you have to maintain and occasionally refresh your workspaces. This can be difficult to do, as taking an area offline can negatively impact your sales and profits while also generating new expenses. The key to success in this area is hiring the right contractor that understands your needs and demands, but who is also capable of delivering a high-quality finished product. Here are four simple rules to follow when choosing and hiring a tradesperson to help maintain or remodel one of your business’s properties.
Sourcing Reliability
The hardest part of choosing a contractor, such as a builder or local painters and decorators, is finding someone who will work to your timescale and will not let you down. This can be difficult to do without getting recommendations from other people and businesses that have first-hand experience with your shortlist of contractors. MyBuilder helps you identify someone reliable, and comes complete with reviews, recommendations, and even photographs that help you hire with confidence.
If you are looking for painters and decorators near you with a proven track record, MyBuilder is a highly-valuable resource that will help you to separate the wheat from the chaff. With the addition of photographs to reviews, you can see examples of the finished product before you get down to the details of a contract. This makes it much quicker and simpler to find the perfect contractor for the job, and build a shortlist of qualified and experienced tradespeople for you to choose from.
Contracting Is A Business
When you are identifying potential builders, painters and decorators, plumbers, or any tradesperson, you need to understand that they are business people too. Their trade is their business. They will be eager to land a new client just as you are when you have an enquiry. They need to do all they can to convert you from a potential customer into a regular client. This gives you the upper hand in negotiations, especially if you have a lot of work that needs doing.
The higher the value of your business, the more room there is in contract negotiations for a better deal. You may not know much about building materials or plumbing, but you do understand business. Leverage your experience to get a value-for-money deal on the work, and underscore that their success and the quality of the finished product will lead to more business for them in the future.
Getting It In Writing
Before any work can begin, you need to finalise a contract that both you and the tradesperson are comfortable with. This should not only include pricing but also a timescale. If you are refitting or redecorating a retail space, the amount of time a job takes will impact your sales and profits. You should investigate working unsociable hours through evenings and weekends to get the job done quickly. This may add to your labour expense, but it can save you money on the cost the disruption causes.
When your contractors are on site, they are representing your business to local stakeholders like your commercial neighbours and passers-by. It is a good idea to include some language in your contract that underlines the importance of professional behaviour. Careless builders who do not show enough respect to surrounding properties and businesses could affect your reputation with your customers and the other businesses surrounding your location.
Support Builds Support
The more support you provide to your contractor and their team, the quicker the job will get done and the better the result will be. Happy workers are productive workers, for both your business and your contractor’s business. Something as simple as making sure the tradespeople have access to clean and well-stocked bathrooms, a break area, and lots of coffee, tea, and biscuits can be a small investment that pays big dividends.
Support your contractors, and they will support you by delivering a high-quality finished product on schedule. These small touches make your job more personal to them and can help labourers feel invested in your business and its success. If your business has good customers, you look after them and try to give them the most value possible to help keep them coming back. It is the same for your contractor and their labour force. The more you support and invest in them, the more they will do the same to you, and give you a high-quality finish within the agreed timescale.
Follow these simple rules, and you should be able to identify a capable and reliable contractor, negotiate a deal that suits you both, and get the work done on time and within budget. Building work helps to build relationships. Start your new relationship on the right foot with the right contractor, and you will keep getting value from your properties throughout the lifetime of your business.
