Selling Your Services As a Handyman Or Home Services Contractor

Selling services to prospective customers is the most important task any small service business owner does on a daily basis.

A typical sales process for a handyman, contracting, trades or similar home improvement services business requires the following steps.

Marketing
Qualifying
Selling
Getting Hired

Through your marketing efforts, you are attracting people with a home repair or home improvement need. Then through qualifying, you are ensuring that your prospective customer has the money and the motivation to hire you to get his or her project done (please see my previous articles on both marketing and qualifying). Next you present yourself and your company and sell your services.

How well you present yourself and your business, and the value you bring for the price you are charging are the factors that will determine if you are hired! It is equally important to build initial trust and rapport - to create connection and commonality with someone. The questions you ask prospective customers during the qualifying process can also help you find some common ground to build a connection and relationship.

Your prospective customer wants to like and trust you before he can buy something from you. This is not to say that you will become life-long friends, but having rapport means you like talking to and being around someone in a buyer/seller business relationship. Remember, most people want to be active and engaged buyers - they don't want to passively be sold something, they want to take the initiative and actively buy something. People generally prefer to buy from someone they like, with whom they can develop a positive business relationship.

Providing an estimate to a customer is an important part of the selling process, which, if done well, can result in having a customer hire your business for his project. Pricing and estimating jobs is covered in more depth in the Operations section.

If you have done a great job at marketing, qualifying, and rapport building, this will often lead directly to selling. Prospective customers will likely hire you if you meet certain key criteria. What do customers typically want from a home improvement company?

A company or individual with a good reputation, preferably from a third-party referral.
Workers who are knowledgeable and expert in what they are doing and can communicate that information in layman's terms.
People who are easy to reach by phone or email and who are flexible and easy to work with.
Customers want to feel they are getting a good value and being charged a reasonable price. No one wants to pay too much for any service!
A quality end product that looks great, functions as intended and will last its typical lifetime.

If you can provide this entire package for your business, then you will be successful at selling your services.