Tag: Oneflare tips

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7 ways to attract more leads with your Oneflare profile

Your Oneflare profile is the key to connecting with the right customers and winning work on the platform. Think of your Oneflare profile as your selling page – the more information you have for potential customers, the more likely you will get hired! This is your chance to stand out from your competitors and promote the value of your business.

Here are some pointers on how to attract more leads using your Oneflare profile.

1. Reviews, reviews, reviews!

Reviews are the most important factor when winning work from an online platform. This is generally the first thing that a potential customer will look at when making their hiring decision. There are several ways you can build your review base on Oneflare:

2. Get verified

The verification process has been introduced on Oneflare to add a layer of credibility to your business profile. This process is designed to give your potential customers peace of mind when hiring you.

To complete the verification process, all you need to do is log on to oneflare.com.au – click get verified – and follow the prompts. Once you complete this you’ll get a fancy blue tick next to your business name, the same as a public figure on other social media sites!

For a step-by-step guide click here

3. Talk about your business

Customers want to learn more about your business when they are making their hiring choice. Make sure you spend time outlining why your business stands out from others in your industry. Do this by writing a great description and filling out your Unique Selling points on your profile to capture your lead’s attention the moment they click on your profile. 

4. Profile Image is your first impression

Having a professional logo on your profile is crucial to gaining a customer’s attention. This is your first impression on these potential customers – so make sure you have a professional logo, or headshot there to stand out from other businesses.

Tip: make sure you jump on Oneflare’s website to utilise the new profile image editor tool, which allows you to zoom in and out and crop your image to look professional.

5. Images: what customers want to see 

Customers want to see your best work when they look at your profile. Be sure to fill out your image gallery to showcase some of your stand-out projects, whether these are before/after shots, work in progress shots, and completed projects; uploading around 10-15 images will help you to shine.

6. Setting up the correct preferences 

Get the right leads from the right area, and leave the rest to us so you can focus on what you do best. You can do this by setting your service types and service areas preferences in the Lead Settings section of the Oneflare for Business app, or on the Oneflare website.

7. Connecting with customers 

When you reach out to customers on the Oneflare app it’s important to stand out right from your first touchpoint. Use the additional comments feature when connecting with leads to personalise your message. Add links to your website and social media pages, and we’ll tell your customers to check out your Oneflare profile too. Adding in these details will show your potential customers that you value providing them with a personalised service, and will aid you in getting the best response.

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4 ways to grow your margins through automation

Staying ahead of the curve for trade companies is notoriously tricky. The number of moving pieces involved in carrying out a job means that from the initial job request through to invoicing there are thousands of points where a job can go south.

The sheer scale of staying across every single facet of two or three jobs, let alone 20 or 30, is a task that nobody can or should be expected to complete flawlessly. In a lot of cases, there’s a sense that trade businesses are too much trouble past a certain point.

Over the past five years, however, we’ve seen trade companies start to emerge from piles of paperwork and mountains of debt by automating repetitive tasks and adopting smarter organisational tactics.

To spread the good word and help our tradie mates out, we’ve put together a list of tactics we’ve seen take trade companies from ditches to riches.

1. Accounting software

In the early days of running a trades business, there can be a tendency to want to learn how to do everything yourself. It, however, often a much better use of your time to hire a bookkeeper to look after your accounts for you.

To support this, it’s invariably in your best interests to move your books onto accounting software like Xero. Xero is a simple way of staying across all of your financials in a straightforward interface that both you and your bookkeeper can access remotely. Among other smarts, Xero can read photos of all your rogue receipts and turn them into expenses in your dashboard, easily create financial reports, and track inventory.

2. Online Price Books

Flicking through 20kg supplier price books all day is enough exercise to cripple the heftiest of footy players let alone a wee office manager. So put down the deep heat and pick up a job management software solution that does the heavy lifting for you with online price books. Online price books are the new kid on the trade block: they allow you to significantly reduce time spent on manual data entry by saving supplier price book files and auto-populating materials with their respective costs when you’re building quotes and estimates.

3. Just in time stock control

It’s often the little expenses that eat away at trade and service business profits, so it’s pivotal to make sure as little falls through the cracks as possible. Just in time stock control is a framework employed by some of the world’s most successful manufacturers to help with loss mitigation and cash forecasting. This is a methodology for managing materials costs. It requires you only to buy the materials that you need when you need them so that you’re never left with expenses that won’t ultimately be covered by the customer. Here’s how to do it:

  • Quote exclusively what you purchase: Quote with surgical precision and make sure that all the materials you’ll need will be accounted for.
  • Order what you quote: Only purchase the materials required to complete a job.
  • Charge what you buy: If you’ve purchased materials for a job that you know you need to complete the job, make sure you charge them to the job.
  • Control what you buy: Be disciplined in buying (or instructing your team to buy) the correct amounts of materials that have been included in quotes. An easy way to do this is to use the quote as a shopping list.

For many companies, it’s not as easy as going to the supplier a few times a day for materials specific to a job (and moreover, that would be inefficient). If you’re miles away from the nearest supplier, plan and buy all the materials you need for several jobs at once.

4. Digital job card apps

If you run a trade business and you’re just hearing about job card apps now, it’d pay to take a seat as you might get a little light headed when you realise how much time, money and stress you could save by adopting this system. Within job card apps office managers, project managers and tradespeople alike can make real-time updates to job briefs. Whether you’re rescheduling a job, adding hazards, changing an address, scheduling a second job or adding photos/notes – the job card is your oyster. The benefits here speak for themselves; it’s a game changer.

All things considered

Trade and service businesses aren’t an easy game, and things will always go wrong, but it’s on business owners to create a business structure that eases the pressures on their employees and minimises room for error and ultimately grows their margin. There are plenty of ways to do this, but they won’t come knocking at your door, so it’s best to think creatively and be resourceful to find solutions to suit your business.

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News & updates

How to convert Oneflare leads

5 top tips to getting hired on Oneflare and growing your customer base

There’s a few simple things you can do to stand out to potential customers, wow leads and ensure you put your best foot forward to win more business on Oneflare. Here, we’ll take you through five of our top tips to getting hired today. 

1. Optimise your profile 

Seventy percent of customers will check out your business profile before hiring you, and completed profiles win up to 230% more work. The top things customers look for when considering hiring your business are reviews and qualifications, such as insurance, license details or certifications. Make sure your profile is verified by including your ABN and Public Liability Insurance details.

Include a high resolution business logo or profile photo of yourself, professional photos resonate well with customers as they lend authenticity and legitimacy to your business.

Highlight your specific skills and experience in your business description, make it easy for your customers to identify exactly what you do, and what your business specialities are.

The benefits of having a complete online profile are not only limited to differentiating your business from the competitors but also help to build your digital presence, boost your brand and assist with search engine optimisation.

Beyond profile optimisation, also consider:

  • Before & after photos: Your business profile has a portfolio section dedicated to showing photos of your past work. Feature great before-and-after photos of the projects you’re most proud of,customers love to see evidence of past work. Use high quality photos and descriptive captions to highlight the key stages of the project.
  • Getting descriptive:  Use your profile description as a selling tool to make customers hire your business over your competitors. State your business speciality, highlight your passion for your trade, quality of recent work completed, and any specific qualifications, certificates or licenses you hold. Highlight examples of your best work in your portfolio, ensure you have included all of the different types of jobs your business offers in the services section, and provide answers to the Frequently Asked Questions.

2. Get in quickly

To optimise your chances of winning work, always aim to respond to customers with quotes quickly. Sixty percent of winning quotes are submitted within 60 minutes of a job being posted. Responding to quotes quickly proves to the customer that you are keen to complete the work and run a professional business.

Did you know we offer autoquoting? 

3. Get personal

Personalising your quotes will show that you really care. When responding to customer quotes address them by their name, customise the price estimate and message to their needs, make alternative suggestions you feel may work based on their request, and attach any before-and-after photos of similar projects you have completed.

Explain to the customer how you estimated their price, provide a rough breakdown of costs, including labour, materials and time needed to complete the project. Let the customer know what the next steps involve one they have reviewed the estimation, and portray your excitement for completing the work. Phrases such as ‘I’d love to help’, ‘that’s our speciality’ and ‘we’ve just completed a very similar project, check out the before and after photos’ are great ways of showing the passion and expertise in your field of work.

4. Follow up

Oneflare will notify you as soon as a customer has viewed your quote, follow this up with a more personal conversation. Thank them for reviewing your quote and provide them with more information about your expertise, and how this relates to their specific needs. You are able to contact verified customers by their mobile number and email, though it’s always best to reach out via their nominated method of contact. 

Give the customer enough time to review before you make the initial point of contact. Calling them as soon as they have received the quote may catch them off guard and lead them to think you are too pushy. Some customers prefer email or sms communication, while others respond better with a direct call. With time you will develop a deep understanding of your customers and know what triggers a better response from them.

5. Maximise your reviews

Having good reviews on your profile will resonate well with prospective customers. Businesses with five or more reviews are hired, on average, four times more often than those with less. Don’t be afraid to ask your customers to leave a review of your services after you have completed the job. Oneflare makes this easy providing every business with a review link, which is found below your business information on your profile. You can share this link with customers via email/SMS and social media. The Oneflare Win Work Guide includes comprehensive, step by step instructions on how to collect customer reviews.