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Finally taken the leap
Well folks, I’ve done it. I’ve jacked in my job and I’m working for myself. But I’ve cheated slightly.
I’ve been signing part time for nearly 2 years now , and 12 months ago I was going to take on a shop on a high street in a village not too far away from where I live. But to my astonishment another sign maker had already signed the lease and was opening up last Xmas. I was gutted, more competition to contend with. But, it didn’t dishearten me, it only made me try harder. And just by chance I was driving passed the shop in question and I saw a sign in the window saying "Be your own Boss, business for sale" I thought I’d be nosey and just walked in and asked the owner how much he was asking and my jaw dropped. The equipment alone came to the asking price without any supplies and client base so I thought maybe there’s a catch somewhere. But the guy said that he was just running the shop as a part time thing, more of a hobby, and that his wife had been promoted, but meant that they had to move away, so he needed a quick sale. Lets just say it didn’t need much thinking about. The next day I went back into the shop and almost chewed his arm off.
I’ve been in the shop now for 5 weeks, and it seems to be going ok. I get the odd old lady wanting a sticker for their granddaughter’s room etc. but have managed to keep myself entertained. Although I find Mondays like a scene out of the film 28 days later (I think?) You’ll know the one. This is why I am posting this thread today.
When there isn’t much manufacturing work to do I try to keep myself busy with design work. Trying new things and familiarising myself with Illustrator. I used to use corel draw and flexisign, but the system in the shop is mac, so it was like trying to ride a bike all over again. I never thought I’d make the transition from PC to mac but I have, and I love it.
It’s alot easier now designing and cutting from Illustrator, where as before I was designing in corel draw and exporting as AI and importing in flexi then cutting. Saves a hell of alot of time.
My god I’m rambling on. I think I better get to the point.
Would anyone like to post any ideas on the following:
Getting the work in
How do you not waste down time
Invoicing strategies: like allowing customers to pay on 30 day or cash/cheque on completion
Anything else that could be of relevance.Cheers Mark
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22 Replies
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Sounds good Mark. Good luck with it.
Getting the work in, now there’s a thing. I could do with some help on that one. Of course, catch 22 says that the more work you do, the more you will get from referals but sometimes it is just deadsville. I keep my eyes open all the time, looking for new shops opening etc. Make friends with local tradesmen who work for businesses. Like builders and glaziers. I know a lad who does property maintenance who sends people to me quite regularly. The other thing to do is visit local businesses and introduce yourself. Don’t bother just posting leaflets, it doesn’t work.
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Great profit to be made on van livery. Make yourself some small magnetic panels advertising vehicle livery and magnetic panels and every time you see a van unwritten, wap one on. Another way of getting extra work is to go don any high street and look for damaged signs. Quite often, the owners do not realise that their insurance covers any "vandalised" or "storm damaged" signs. They will always have an excess on their policies so it would help if you could …..ermmm incorporate it 😕
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Good for you, Mark!
I have two suggestions…
#1 see about getting a credit card machine.
If you are on a high street, and accept Visa, etc., you may get more "impulse" shoppers. It might be just for small jobs like car tags or little decals, but everything adds up.
The person who buys a car tag today might own a big business that needs signs tomorrow.
#2 Use your "down time" to make crafty samples to hang on your walls, showing that you can do more than just run-of-the mill stuff.
Try a few dimensional or gilded pieces. Or things with a fancy shape or background.
This might inspire a client to think out of the box and make you more money.Oh…and make sure you put some sort of "Under New Management" sign in the window. People are nosy and therefore might pop in to see what you can offer. And do change the existing sign.
Oops…that was more than 2 suggestions!
Love….Jill
PS
I would not do the 30 days thing. Do half up front, half upon completion. Hand over no sketches without a deposit, either. -
Good on you Mark, sounds great.
This is almost exactly how I started, went into my local sign shop to order a replacement, to be told the owner was selling up.
I haven’t looked back!
Newspaper ads are useless.
My work is almost all from word of mouth. My turnover for the last 5 months has been in the region of £3000 each month, so I’m quite happy. -
quote Jill Marie Welsh:Oops…that was more than 2 suggestions!
Another thing Mark is learn to count :lol1: :lol1:
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Yeah I’ve tried the "your sign needs replacing" line, but this town is full of tight gets. I mean how dare they refuse a young man of earning a couple of quid to support his family. 😉
I get customers coming in giving it the whole "money’s no object, I need 2x signs, 1000 business cards, 5000 leaflets and a vehicle signing" And when I call them to come in to run through some designs and to let them know the costs they never return. I wouldn’t mind if I gave them the quote and it was too high, but I don’t even get to that stage.
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The 30 day things a bit of a sore point. I’ve got a handful of big companies that are wanting contract work. Great stuff I thought, but it’s the initial layout costs that are gonna cripple me. I’ve tried the 50% up front but they don’t seem to having much of it. I’ve tried explaining that because I’m just starting out that it’s difficult to payout for big jobs amounting to what they want. But I think a violin strings snapped cause they ain’t buying it.
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Avoid the contract work like the plague Mark, unless you have a large overdraft to see you through. The big companies are as tight, if not worse than smaller ones. They are not doing you a favour here.
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The bigger companies expect 30 days (or more!). It is a bugger, but once the first month is out of the way it’s not too bad. In fact, sometimes it is quite nice when you are having a quiet spell to get paid for something done last month. I consider it a reasonable price to pay to be a regular supplier.
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Good luck with the venture mark, little pointer for you if you are looking for more work, do you have a unemployment office near you, if so they do loads of stuff for getting people off the dole and STARTING there own buisnesses, training providers such as rathbone, pertemp get people starting, now i new a lad with pertemp who was starting his own buisness and he needed his van signing up and they gave him a grant for his signage, as he knew me he came to me so i did the van for him, 2 days later i had pertemp on the fone asking could i do all the signage for everybody who is starting new buisnesses, yes i said 😛 , week after walker hall foned asking the same as there was no1 in the area and they were sending people 15 miles away to get signage done, in 3-4 months my work load has gone OTT im now having to move into larger premises and take on staff to cover all the extra work, find out who the traing providers are for new buisness in your area and go see them you never know 😉
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Yup, our big companies do it here too.
I have one that would pay by credit card if I accepted them (I know I told you to, but I rarely have a need for that service) so it still might be worth your while to accept credit.It wouldn’t hurt to tart up your shop vehicle either, to match your shop.
You could also make a changeable A-Frame sidewalk sign (if your zoning code permits) offering a special on a certain item per week.Love….Jill
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you’re not wrong lorraine, I haven’t even started the work yet and I’m ready to F*&@ them off. excuse my french.
I mean I know in this game you’ve to take the rough with smooth.
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quote Mark Pack:you’re not wrong lorraine, I haven’t even started the work yet and I’m ready to F*&@ them off.Don’t be too hasty Mark. I make my living from contract work.
They can provide regular work without the effort of continuously having to sell your services. Today we have vans in for three different clients. I sold them our service ten, twelve and sixteen years ago and have been doing respectively eighty, sixty and three hundred vans a year for them without having to advertise, spend my time on sales duties or any of that other nonsense.
Also, my experience sounds a bit different to Lorraine’s. I have more trouble getting paid from the small customers, the bodyshops wanting parts to repair a van, than ever I do with the big boys. Sure, some take a bit longer to pay than others but they have a payment cycle and I can tell you to within a couple of days exactly when we will receive a cheque for the stuff we are doing today. The thing is that we get to know the clients very quickly and if one takes sixty days that’s fine, I just add a little to the price to compensate.
Another benefit is that we have a fair idea of how busy we might be next month. Most vans are on leases with a three year change cycle so for many of our clients I can just look back to see how many new vans they had in December 2003 to have a fairly accurate idea of their requirement for December 2006.
Fair enough, some of them can occasionaly be hard work, but a bit of extra effort in keeping an existing client happy is time better spent than having to continuously hawk my wares around to attract new clients.
I understand that the capital requirements can be onerous (I just have to look at the debtors balance in my accounts) especially in a start up situation but, again, I think that a bit of a struggle now, even to the extent of a small bank loan to cover it, is more than worth it in the long run. On that note, don’t factor your debtors, that’s a long term answer to a short term problem and one which you will very quickly come to regret.
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John, how did you intially gain these customers? I know it probably took years and that there is no magic way, but what actions did you take to ‘get the work in’?
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Alan, I’d like to know more about what you were saying in regards to people setting up there own businesses. I contacted the DWP/Jobcentre in my area and they didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. Don’t suppose you know who to contact by any chance?
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quote Andy Gorman:John, how did you intially gain these customers? I know it probably took years and that there is no magic way, but what actions did you take to ‘get the work in’?
No magic to it Andy. The same way everybody goes about getting new clients. Put myself about a bit, knocked on a few doors etc etc.
What I did find was that there was no instant fix. For instance, one client I made my presence known to them but they already had a supplier they were happy with and were just not interested in changing. I kept calling in at odd intervals, not so often as to annoy them, and sometimes just talked about anything but signage, but just made sure that they were kept aware of my existence. The day eventually came when they needed a new supplier and the first person they called was me. It took eight months but seventeen years later we are still going strong. I can give many instances similar to that from my early days.
What that boils down to is the age old sales trick. It’s no good pushing your wares to somebody who isn’t ready to buy, but, catch them at the right moment and they are sitting targets. Fish in a barrel.
I also realised very quickly that customers don’t often look for a change of supplier because they have a major problem with their old one. I found that in most case it was a procession of small niggles, this job a day late, a mistake on that invoice, stuff like that. One day something very minor will trigger an attack of irritation and send them off looking for a replacement. The trick is to be there when that happens.
That also made me realise that service was of paramount importance because if I could stop those almost irrelevant aggravations coming from me they would feel no need to replace me when my time came. Of course nobody is perfect and things do sometimes go wrong but firstly I try to let that happen as infrequently as possible but when something does go wrong I make a big song and dance about putting it right as quickly as possible and with a minimum of inconvenience to my customer. I regard it as an opportinuty to show them how good our service is, how important we consider their business, give them confidence in our product and to show them how smart they are in using us as a supplier.
Reading all the above I realise that it probably doesn’t help a new starter very much because it is a long term strategy. That didn’t worry me too much at the time because I wasn’t in this business for the quick buck, that’s not my way, and I was always here for the long haul and prepared to wait.
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well said John Childs
That’s good advice and a reminder to us all that we could lose clients without ever having a major problem.
I’m going to take it on board – I knew it already but sometimes get too busy to remember.
John
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Best of luck Mark.
What you need to get is your reputation for a good job at a fair price sorted.
I’ve found that the best, fastest , most regular & cheapest way to build business is through tradesmen liveries. Nearly all these guys have mates in the same or similar trades – they’ll ask who did their van….voila! Next customer. Failing that, they get asked when on site who did their van…chi-ching$..next job.
Even if it means doing a ‘special offer’ in your window – or ‘A’ board near a busy junction for a couple of months.
What to avoid is a sob story – nothing scares of big buyers like the prospect of dealing with a failing or struggling business. Let them know you ARE busy (even if it’s just doing artwork), you CAN squeeze them in at the end of the week. You won’t do ‘cheap’ jobs – just good value for money. If they want block black letters on a white van for £40…let them go get it – but show them WHY they should pay £100 or £200 more for a professional job by knocking out a design right in front of them.
No, they can’t take a print away…your printers playing up. Sorry, no money off for cash – but I’ll throw in your bonnet, or do a same colour shadow for free.
Cash on collection where possible unless it’s guaranteed money. It’s easy to get screwed over by the unscrupulus when you extend them 30/60 day credit or even agree that they can ‘pop in tomorrow’ with the cash.Don’t waste money on leaflet drops & getting 10,000 flyers printed. The return is well under 1%, no matter what the marketing / printing companies say. Word of mouth (& yellow pages) is the way to go.
Think BIG & talk bigger than you are – you are NOT a one-man-band. Use ‘we’ when talking about your company even though you may be doing it all!!
Over the years I’ve found mailshots to be ineffective – with only maybe 3 or 4% resulting in an enquiry – but you can pick up some good customers that way – try all the joiners, plumbers & sparkies in the YP.
If you fancy cold calling…don’t. I don’t apreciate it, and I bet you’re not keen on somebody just turning up. Call to make an apointment – or ask permission to send a fax to a director / purchaser – you might get lucky & somebody forwards it to them rather than just binning it. Like John Childs says – it’s catching them when they’ve had enough grief from their current supplier – no sensible buyer moves on a whim. And Service, Service, Service…give customers your all. You might hate them with a passion – they might bug the hell out of you or forever be trying to get a better deal. Just give them great service – price becomes secondary, loyalty is pretty much assured.
Anyway – I’m off home.
Dave
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good luck andy 😀
nik
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hope it’s goes well for you Mark I’m sure you’ll do well 😀
Lynn
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You lucky man!
We keep "downtime" productive by getting the crew to manufacture lightboxes, frame structures etc in popular sizes. You should see the expression on a customer’s face (whos artwork you already hold) that he can collect a 1800 x 1200mm lightbox "after lunch"!!
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Mark the buisiness enterprise group Walkerhall http://www.walkerhall.co.uk/ give people advice on how to start a buisness they advise on everything including sourcing suppliers for there buisness, but i would say most people starting up need some sort of signage van/premises etc so if you make yourself known to them but also tell them you are a new startup yourself apart from getting work through them they will also help you out aswell, its all free service aswell, i dont know if they operate in your area but 1 fone call to them will tell you. All job centres have some sort of training/advice for people wanting to start up a buisness, round here they use rathbone and pertemp traing, from what i gather they have to be unemployed for 6-9 months before they can go onto these schemes but again find out who they are and go see them or give them a call.
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