Electrical contracting businesses still feel the effects of supply chain issues and shortages caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Many electrical contractors and subcontractors are unaware of how their gross profit margins are performing. This leads to many experiencing financial losses and treading water to stay afloat.
Thankfully, there are ways business owners of electrical companies can stay on top of their operating expenses and earn a positive cash flow. Discover more about gross profit margins and how to build your bottom line.
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Understanding Profit Margin
Profit margin is a key indicator of a company’s financial well-being. Expressed as a percentage, it represents the amount of money or total revenue left over after subtracting all overhead expenses, such as material, labor, job, and direct costs.
Any business in the electrical industry must know its profit margins. Consider these reasons:
Gauging Efficiency
Profit margin serves as a benchmark for companies. Electrical businesses can compare their profit margin to industry standards to determine if they are operating efficiently. The average profit margin for electricians is around the 10% mark. Businesses should aim higher to mitigate the risks of running an electrical company.
Identify Irregularities
A below-average profit margin strongly indicates the business is lacking in some aspects. The reason could be the company’s pricing strategy or cost structure. Keeping track of profit margin gives business owners and managers better insight into what’s going on financially and how to correct issues.
Plan for Growth
A healthy profit margin is essential for small businesses that want to achieve long-term success. Reaching financial stability enables businesses to reinvest, expand, add new customers, and withstand difficult times.
How to Increase Electrical Contractor Profit Margin
Electrical services businesses that wish to earn a higher profit can realize this objective by implementing the following strategies into their business plan:
Focus on Building a Loyal Customer Base
While gaining new customers can increase net profit margin, it’s typically more cost-effective to retain the services of an existing customer than acquire a new one. Evidence shows that acquiring a new customer can cost you five to seven times more than retaining an old one.
Companies can foster relationships with previous customers and increase business profitability by making them feel valued. When consumers feel valued, they are more likely to be repeat customers, recommend your services to others, and provide valuable feedback.
One way electrical businesses can make their customers feel appreciated is through email marketing. This tactic entails reaching out to customers to thank them for their business and ask how your services can be improved. Taking this step shows you care about your customers and keeps you fresh in their minds should they need additional services.
Consider Increasing Rates
It’s common to grapple over the thought of raising prices for fear of the backlash you might encounter. While businesses may experience a slight dip in total sales, price markups will improve profit margin over time.
The key to raising consumer costs for your electrical work is continuously testing, reviewing, and analyzing the results. Additionally, businesses can ease potential backlash by effectively communicating with customers about the reason behind the price hike.
Business owners may not be convinced of the effectiveness of this approach. However, it’s crucial to recognize that in the constantly changing business environment, making assessments and calculated adjustments to pricing metrics is rational. These decisions are often necessary for sustaining profitability and growth.
Develop Skilled Contractors
An electrical contracting business cannot be successful without a skilled and knowledgeable workforce. By investing in training and development, you can improve the quality of work your electrical business produces. This is significant for enhancing efficiency and completing jobs faster to take on more work and increase sales. Adequate training also helps to reduce costly errors.
Furthermore, continuous training and certifications on safety protocols, new technologies, and industry standards allow you to expand your offerings. With more services to offer, you widen your customer base and increase revenue streams.
Embrace Technology
Electrical businesses not already utilizing new technology and software solutions are falling behind. Field service management software helps streamline operations and correct inefficiencies so businesses can enjoy more productivity and higher profits.
Electrical contractor software can assist businesses in achieving growth with the following features and more:
Simplified Dispatching
Automated dispatching automatically assigns a technician to a job based on its priority and the tech’s availability and capability. By leveraging automated intelligence to pre-assign electrical jobs, businesses can experience a 75 to 80% reduction in work generated through manual scheduling.
When using electrical contractor software, dispatchers can review schedules, check the status of electrical technicians, keep track of all aspects of a service request, and manually adjust jobs. This oversight keeps contractors more informed about the efficiency of each job and provides data visualizations to support data-driven decision-making.
Smart Scheduling
Electrical contractor software allows businesses to offer online scheduling. This feature is important as 94% of consumers said they would switch to a different provider if they supported online appointment booking.
With scheduling software, homeowners can submit service requests and schedule follow-up appointments online. Users will be immediately notified of appointment confirmations and updates.
Enhanced Estimating
A key feature of electrical contractor software is estimation solutions. A common inefficiency in the field service industry is the back-and-forth that occurs when providing quotes. Homeowners request a quote from technicians, who usually need to call office staff via cell phones to get accurate estimates.
The correct software eliminates this step and empowers field technicians to generate accurate quotes while at the job site. Offering fast quotes entices potential customers more than needing to wait and hear back about an estimate.
Reach Electrical Contractor Goals with Sera
At Sera, we have created software solutions specifically for small-to-medium-sized residential electrical contractors. Our goal is to empower teams to streamline processes, reduce tedious day-to-day tasks and redundant data entry, and ultimately deliver better customer service.
To learn how our software boosts efficiency and adds more money to the bottom line, schedule a demo today.
