How To Start A Roofing Company With No Experience

It’s one thing to work in a profession that you enjoy. It is another to turn that profession into a profitable business that would support you, your family, and your employees.

What you will read below may not be a complete checklist of what you need to start a roofing company. However, it would help define the essential tasks to kickstart your roofing business even with little or no experience.

Anyone starting any business needs guidance. Experts estimate that eight out of every ten small businesses usually fail.

Therefore, if you have chosen to jump into the wagon of starting a roofing business, you would need to know the essential needs to create the business you envision.

Let’s begin.

1.   Write your business plan

A business plan is vital for every business. It does not have to be a fancy document formatted with graphs and charts. You also do not need an MBA to be able to write one.

Your business plan should entail and clearly define what your business goals are, your roofing service area, and also your strategies for achieving them.

2.   Pick a  business name

Every business must have a business name.

However, it can sometimes be challenging to name your roofing business, similar to how challenging it is to name a baby or a puppy.

If you do not have a name in mind, then you should consider the following tips:

• First, don’t use tough or long names. You need to make your business look professional.
• Involve a small number of people in the early process. Then, after getting a shortlist, you can ask friends and families for their opinions.
• Also, ensure that others are not using your shortlisted choices. You can do this by searching online.
• Lastly, consider how the name would appear on social media handles and in your website URL.

3.   Know your costs

You should adequately consider your products and equipment investments. It would help if you had the right tools to get a job done correctly in building a profitable business.

Unfortunately, the cheapest things are not always the most efficient or the safest.

Therefore, it is vital to determine the amount it would cost you. This is one of the factors to consider before starting your business.

You can quickly figure out direct costs such as labour and materials. However, you should carefully consider soft costs like marketing and administrative expenses to break even.

It would be best if you worked out the cost for promotional materials, products, vehicles, equipment, registration, insurance, operational expenses such as salaries and labour wages, small websites, commercial premises, and administration.

It is also crucial that you open a business bank account for your business.

4.   Know your legal obligations

Starting a roofing company can be challenging with some legal obligations, such as starting contracting licenses and local permits.

Therefore, you should be up-to-date regarding the legal necessities you need to run roofing business. You don’t want to run into some legal problems businesses face.

Networking groups, roofing or contracting colleagues, and local business mentors can also point you in the right direction for expert advice.

5.   Set up an office

It is unnecessary to have a complete office when you are just starting. However, an office phone, a desk, and basic stationery should be able to get you started.

You can also use your phone’s planner to set up appointments.

Suppose you can’t afford an outdoor office, you can build one from the ground up. You can set up one in your garage, basement, or spare room.

Create or order invoice forms online. Add an email address that is dedicated to your roofing company.

6.   Educate yourself as a salesperson

While you might be in the initial stages of starting your business, it would be quite small. Therefore, it is pretty likely that you might have to be a jack of trades.

From product manager to secretary, you might take on most of your company’s responsibilities for a while.

You would find out that you need to get acquainted with general customer communication and sales presentation.

7.   Hire and train your staff

When you decide to hire staff, you should endeavour to retain the best. By all means necessary, you should train your team on the job, so you can watch and then correct them.

As your staff’s skill improves, so will their value to your business while working for you. It would be best if you also placed priority on workplace health and safety.

8.   Invest in and maintain a high-quality roofing website

A good website can be a lead-generating machine and a must-have to make your business a better one.

Nothing frustrates me more than clicking on a company website to find their information or answer, but you cannot find it.

Ensure that your website is regularly updated with correct contact information that would make it easier for prospects and customers to shoot over an email or give you a call. You don’t want to make some web design mistakes that affect business.

With a website, you can reach out to your customer with news about your roofing company and what you offer.

Including a digital portfolio with videos or photos of completed jobs and an About Us page would help your customers and prospects trust your work and company.

9. Develop a good referral program

An excellent way to create customer loyalty is to offer incentives to your customer in return for referrals.

When your customers are happy, your business will thrive. Unfortunately, your roofing company can solely survive on word-of-mouth referrals.

However, you can become even better when you take your time to improve your referrals.

10.   Have a solid marketing plan.

Planning is very important. After you have set up your company and operation has just begun, your work has only begun. You might be on a tight budget.

Therefore you need to start with low-cost marketing. It would be best if you considered ranking your business by launching a simple one or two-page site and printing business cards.

Seek access to high-quality marketing materials like product materials and brochures used in sales presentations.

Also, you can use cost-effective digital marketing like Instagram and Facebook ads to get the word out about your business.

Roofing marketing from Operation Technology can also help you get the necessary roofing marketing tools for your roofing business.

Conclusion

Roofing companies can be a lucrative business, both for learning a skill and setting up buildings.

However you can only have this business successfully when you follow the right approach.

So, simply follow the tips above to get started on your new roofing company.