There's currently a high demand for garage door repair services. They are something people will always need regardless of where they live. That includes regular maintenance and replacements.
It's never a bad moment to start a garage door business. However, it would help if you planned everything thoroughly to be successful. This page is about that.
Here, you will learn how to start a garage door repair company. Remember that this is a general guide that should work as a blueprint for your new project. You must adapt it to your specific situation and add the steps needed. Same applies when considering how to start a carpentry business.
Why Should Someone Start a Garage Door Repair Business?
There are many reasons to start a garage door business in 2024. If you do things right, you'll profit a lot from it. That's due to the high demand for these services in the country.
It's not challenging to get a steady stream of customers when you offer high-quality services, even if you open a new garage door business. Yet, you must do what you can to get good reviews from family members, friends, and neighbors.
Learning how garage door systems work helps you in case you have an emergency. You will have a whole crew of experts ready to help you at all times. Besides that, business owners can have a flexible schedule. That gives you enough time for your family and friends.
Compared to other businesses, garage door companies have low overhead costs. You won't need to spend a fortune to start. Blue Collar Websites can explain the differences in how to start a junk removal business.
What Services Should Garage Door Repair Companies Offer?
The garage door industry is competitive. It's difficult to outsell the other companies if you only offer repair services. You must take a step forward from them and give your clients something else.
Below, you will find the main services you should offer as a garage door business. Some of them are the bare minimum you must meet. The last two are optional.
Garage Door Repair
Garage door repair, naturally, is the most important service to offer in your business. It's the one people need the most, too. Why? Because it's way more affordable than getting a replacement.
These companies need to know how to fix broken springs, tracks, pulleys, cables, and other components. As a business owner, you don't have to learn how to do all those things yourself but rather hire someone who can do it. If you have the experience, though, you could handle some projects.
Not all garage doors are the same, so make sure your team understands how the most important models on the market work.
Garage Door Replacement
Ideally, garage door businesses should offer replacement services. This will allow you to get more clients. If there's a problem too big you can't fix, your customers don't need to look for another company to install a new model.
The fact that you offer both services also creates a sense of urgency in your clients. If they have to wait until they find someone who does replacements, they will take time to hire a reliable company. When they already trust you, they won't hesitate to pay you to do things right away.
It's essential to understand when to repair or replace a garage door. If you offer a service when you should have done the other, your clients will start doubting your authority.
Garage Door Installation
When you offer garage door installations and replacements, you can start business alliances with manufacturers. That will benefit your business in the long run, as they will refer clients to you if you do the same for them.
Although this depends on your company, we recommend you offer residential and commercial services.
Garage Door Maintenance
Clients will not only ask you to repair garage doors. They will want to pay for maintenance, too. You must be ready for that situation, as it's a great way to profit from your business regularly.
When your clients ask a garage door company for maintenance services, they will likely try to schedule monthly visits. If you get that, you can get a steady income source sooner than you thought.
Maintenance will also help you identify when a door may have problems. You will notice issues sooner. Customers appreciate when you solve issues for them before they become bigger.
Safety Inspections
Anyone looking forward to selling their garage door must run a safety inspection to ensure everything is going well. Although it's not as important as the others, it's good to offer this.
Safety inspections let you identify potential problems before they happen. Besides that, you can make sure the door complies with local regulations.
Emergency Services
If you want to get some advantage over your competitors, we recommend you offer emergency services to your clients. The fact that they can call you whenever they need will build authority and a good reputation in their neighborhood.
Few things are more stressful than having garage door problems at midnight. While some businesses offer emergency services, not all do.
In this case, you could have a part of your team that takes emergency calls from your clients each week or month. You can pay them a higher rate.
Helping people with emergencies creates loyal customers. If you don't want them to abuse this service, you could add a list of garage problems to your website that would be eligible for it. For more information, web design experts for garage door repair may be able to help.
The services stated below are the most important ones in the garage door industry. Yet, you can offer more of them if that works for your business. Nonetheless, try to make them all related to your area of expertise. You don't want to overwhelm your clients with services they don't need.
Steps to Start a Garage Door Business
Now that you know the garage door services you should offer, it's time to learn how to start the company in the first place. This process won't be easy and may take some time, but we assure you it will be rewarding when you launch your business.
Although this page is about garage door companies, the steps below are essential to starting any kind of business, regardless of the industry. Don't skip them.
However, you will have to adapt each step to your garage door business and how you want it to work when you finish. Many things depend on the services you want to offer and the size of the company.
1. Create a Business Plan
The first step you must follow to start your company is to create a detailed garage door business plan. This is the blueprint for the whole project, and you will go back to it many times throughout the process.
Thus, the plan must be as detailed as possible. Work on it as much time as you need. First, study your industry. Analyze the demand and offer for garage door services in your area.
Here is where you must choose whether to offer residential services, commercial, or both. The demand for one won't be the same for the other.
It's also an excellent opportunity to determine the legal business structure of your company. It could be a partnership, LLC, corporation, etc. We recommend you hire a lawyer to help you with this.
As for the business plan itself, outline the goals you have for the company and your financial projections. You and your team must understand the key performance indicators for the project before they start to work.
One of the most difficult parts of creating a business plan is to set the right budget for it. You should never get out of that limit once you've picked a specific amount of money for the project. It's good to hire an accountant to help you with this part of the process.
When you set the budget, save money for your team, operations, legal fees, licensing requirements, work equipment, transportation, marketing, and emergencies. Other business owners could give you some advice on how to handle this.
2. Get All the Licenses and Certifications Needed to Work in Your City
You won't be able to work if you don't have all the licenses and certifications needed to operate a garage door business in your city. Now, the specific permits you have to get depend on where you live.
Lawyers can guide you on the forms you must fill out and the licenses you need. They will tell you how to get them, too. Depending on where you live, your business may need a contractor's license to start.
We recommend you use this chance to get liability, workers' compensation, and property insurance. You are never too safe, and these things will protect your business from any kind of accident.
Moreover, it's easier to find crew members when you offer decent insurance policies. After you do this, open a business bank account. It will make it easier to manage your finances.
You will use your personal and business accounts at some point, but try to address most things in the professional one. Why is this so important? It's all about preventing problems from happening.
Let's say someone sues your company. Your personal assets will be at risk if you use one account for everything. Business lawyers know this concept as piercing the corporate veil.
3. Buy Equipment and Supplies
Repairing and installing garage doors requires specific equipment and gadgets. You want to work with the latest options available on the market to deliver the best service possible.
The essential tools for this kind of company are a ladder, power drill, socket set, screwdrivers, impact wrench, measuring tape, and safety gear. Those are the first items you should look for when you start buying the equipment.
It's good to have other garage door components, such as springs, cables, rollers, pulleys, and remote controls. That way, you already have them at hand when a customer needs a replacement.
Avoid getting just one item of each of the tools mentioned before. It's ideal to buy as much of everything as you can to have something to work with if you lose anything.
Depending on your team size, you may need to buy more or less equipment. If you want to get a huge company, it's ideal to purchase many tools to work on several projects at the same time.
Startups or small businesses won't need that many tools. The equipment we mentioned is just an example. Ask a professional garage door company what you should get or check what it works with.
4. Hire Your Crew
When you work with garage door systems, you can deliver all the services you offer yourself. That means the business doesn't need a big crew if you don't want it. Nonetheless, it's the best option if you don't want to spend all day working with no help.
If you are worried about splitting the pay with many people, you could hire a couple of assistants to help you. When the business grows, you can get a few more employees to take over.
Regardless of how many people you hire, they should always be experts on the matter. Try to get a team that has experienced workers and young people.
Apart from hiring workers to repair or install garage doors with you, the business needs other people, such as lawyers and accountants. If you haven't hired them by this point, do it.
They will keep you out of trouble at all times. Big companies need marketing teams to develop strategies to catch new people. Do you want a business that gets many clients? Invest in it.
The bigger you want your company to be, the more workers you will need. However, since there are many garage door businesses in the country, you will have to offer special bonuses and benefits for your employees to choose you over the rest.
5. Look for a Reliable Vehicle and Workspace
Residential and commercial construction projects require you to work in different places. Hence, your garage door business needs a reliable vehicle big enough to take you, your crew, and the equipment you will use there.
We recommend going for a pickup truck or van. Some owners hire people to drive these vehicles, but you can do it yourself. That doesn't mean you won't have a permanent workplace, though.
Your garage door business should have a place to work on specific projects or talk to clients. Business owners run their companies from there. Fortunately, you have many options to choose from.
Owners don't need a full building to operate their company. You can use a rented workshop for the job.
If you don't want to spend that much money on that, you can always use your garage to operate your business. It's not as flashy as other options, but it gets the job done.
You could add this to your initial budget in your business plan if you want to decorate your workplace in any special way.
6. Develop a Marketing Strategy
Nowadays, marketing is one of the most important parts of launching a new business. Your company won't be successful if you don't advertise it correctly. That's the reason we recommend hiring a special team of experts to take care of this.
First, you should have a professional website that offers all the information customers need about your business and services before hiring you. That includes pricing, location, and contact details.
Websites, such as Google My Business and Yelp, could help you get to more people. Sign your company up for them.
Social media platforms are the key to most marketing campaigns. People spend all day scrolling through Instagram, Facebook, or X. Ask your advertising team to create an account for your business and an online persona that is approachable to your target market and audience.
Local advertising, such as magazines and newspapers, could work, too, depending on who you want to reach.
7. Launch Your Business and Ask for Advice
The last step of the process is to finally launch your business. If your marketing team does its job, you will have a lot of people waiting to hire you.
Offering special deals and promotions to your first clients is an excellent way of catching new people. Everyone's always looking for new ways to save money.
The first projects you work on are the most important ones. They will determine if your clients like what you do and if they refer you to their friends or neighbors. Always ask your customers for feedback on your services.
Offering excellent client support is a great way to ensure customer satisfaction, too. Your job doesn't end when you launch your business. Everyone needs to keep working to improve and become the best option available to their buyers.
Final Thoughts
Launching a business takes time and money. It's not an easy road, but it's something highly rewarding if you become successful. Besides that, the garage door industry is lucrative.
Among the benefits of having your own business, you have that you could give it to your children once you retire. All you need is to start.
In a nutshell, create a business plan, get licensed and certified, hire your crew, buy the working equipment you will use, get a decent vehicle and workplace, and launch your company. You won't have trouble doing this as long as you follow the steps on this page.
Do you want to read other blog posts? There are plenty of them on our website. Check it out now to learn more about how to start and run a business!
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