AI & Lead Gen for Service Based Contractors
Any service based or fence contractor businesses interested in helping each other in AI and Lead generation I have created some really helpful Automation and AI tools that I use every day that have helped my business out tremendously. Like: AI Answering phone calls, determining call intent, and then sending me an email right when call ends. No missed calls. Scrape google businesses in any zipcodes based on search terms (great for marketing B2B) Find emails from list of websites Automated Wordpress Blog Posts based on keywords Mass Email sender (so it looks like it comes from you personally). The only non free ai tool is the AI Answering assistant, but it is super cheap. What I am currently struggling with is getting consistent lead flow. I'm only doing Google ads, but wanted to see what other ways are working for you to generate leads. Would be happy to discuss the above with anyone that currently owns/ operates a service based business.The Handyman Business Machine: Non-Negotiables for Scaling
Non-negotiables that turn a handyman business into a repeatable machine—systems that make the business operate whether you “feel like it” or not. Think standardized scope, flat-rate pricing, SOPs, quality control, scheduling discipline, job costing, and a comp plan that rewards speed + quality. If you had to boil scaling down to 5–10 tenets, what are yours—and which ones moved the needle the most? Make sure they are measurable actions and results. “What doesn’t get measured doesn’t get done.” - Peter Drucker
Software
We own a general contracting company which uses Jobber but we will be starting a separate electrical contractor company this year, the previous electrician we're bringing on used Joist for his CRM/Invoicing. His "price book" was all in his head since he owned the business and did all of the invoicing himself. We would like to create or set up a price book and use flat rate pricing. We did a demo with Housecall Pro and we liked the ability to integrate Profit Rhino as well as mark up/down as needed. It does not look like Jobber has this ability so we might not set up the new company with Jobber. I saw we can import a CSV file with our products but Housecall Pro seems to be able to update prices/costs automatically all within the system. What other software have you electrician companies used that provides this service? If you have used Housecall Pro, any downsides we should keep in mind? The CEO/owner of the GC company was sitting in on the demo for Housecall Pro and really liked the Pipeline feature, which Jobber also does not have. So we're thinking about switching both companies over to Housecall Pro. All back-end accounting will be handled by QuickBooks Online so mainly need to worry about CRM/invoicing and tracking job progression from lead to completed job.
Inventory Management
Hi Everyone, I run a small appliance repair company in Nova Scotia. Our current strain with using jobber is lack of inventory management. We keep essentially inventory in 2 different places, the technicians truck and in the shop. The shop is split into 2 sections. Customer parts that we receive in for specific jobs and just warehouse stock of parts we keep around. We have seriously been considering switching to a different program for lack of features that fit with jobber on this. If anyone has any recommendations that you have personally used I would love to hear about it. In my ideal world a technician would be able to add a line item and enter a part number and it would say "you have this in your truck" so he can select it and it will alert us that he is using it from his truck to reorder. This is a strain on our growing business and I am hoping there is a solution so we do not have to leave jobber. Thanks, Jacob.Drywall or multi visit scheduling
Would love to hear what others are doing to mitigate the manual chaos of scheduling multiple visits. Currently right now as quotes are approved we build the jobs in a Google sheets we call our schedule board. We build all the visit blocks and then put them on techs accordingly. We meet once a week to go over the board for the following week and once we agree and finalize it we then build all those appointments into Jobber. That summary doesn't sound too daunting but trust me it is, there has to be a better way to schedule jobs as they come in. Less manual intervention. I would love to hear what other companies are doing in this space. ThanksAre you driving around to every quote?
Hey guys, We do small average job size electrical jobs in the Vancouver Canada area. I got really sick of driving around to all of these quotes especially when you're getting a few tire kickers. So we've changed over to doing all of our quotes through video calls. There's a software I've been using for this it's basically Taylor made for this kind of application and it just works a lot better than FaceTime, WhatsApp, and zoom. It's called live switch contact and you can check out their site here : https://www.liveswitch.com/ Great company, updating constantly and really nice people working over there. Anyways the reason I'm posting this is that they now have a jobber integration. They've built this right into the client profile which makes using the service even easier. Here's a link to a video I recorded just explaining it a little bit. https://us02web.zoom.us/clips/share/A2F3MRZIQmc2WjNBZ1RVU0hSLVZKVWFGUU9nAQ If you have any questions about it or quoting remotely through video definitely reach out to me.
Starting an appliance repair business.
Hey everyone, I’m new here and excited to be part of the community! I’m currently taking a course to better understand appliance repair, including how to troubleshoot, disassemble, and repair various appliances. My goal is to gradually ease into the field and build confidence as I learn more hands-on. I’m reaching out to see if any experienced business owners here have advice or insights on starting up an appliance repair business. What were some key steps you took when starting out? Are there any resources or tips you’d recommend for someone just beginning their journey? I’d also love to hear your thoughts on some specific topics: What tools and equipment were essential when you first started? Are there any you couldn’t have worked without? How did you go about building trust with your first few customers? What’s been the best way to market your services early on? What were the biggest challenges you faced in the beginning? How did you overcome them? How do you handle customer relations and ensure repeat business? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and any advice you can share!Accountants in WA State familiar with Jobber
I'm running a small handyman/contracting business (~$100K annually) and need to find an accountant in Washington State. My current accountant is based in southern California (yes, she is licensed in WA State), but is too far away to effectively support my business. I'm looking for someone familiar with Jobber to minimize the learning curve, and has the ability to integrate their accounting software (such as QuickBooks) with Jobber to access my jobs data. Your help is appreciated - thank you!
