Tradesman4u.com

[Tradesman4u]

Hi folks, we are a new forum sponsor here and hope to get involved too. No doubt most of you will have used lead websites like ratedpeople and servicemagic and no doubt have mixed opinions.

We are electrical contractors ourselves and had been using RP for about 3 years but had been becoming increasingly frustrated at the constant rising costs and difficulty in getting money back for crap leads.

Basically we're trying to do it a different way with a more 'tradesmans oriented' experience. Primarily its free to join and leads are only going to be a tenner a pop. Easy refunds etc. We are trying to optimise towards better quality leads and not just little callouts (although they possibly will occur).

It's still coming together and there's plenty of work to do so if you have any feedback or suggestions from your experiences of using these sites I'd appreciate it. I do know that many are not keen on this type of service but when done right can serve as a real compliment to your existing marketing etc. There's nothing to lose as its costs you nowt.

If you want to support us join up for free the site is Find a local and trusted Tradesman in your area its free and takes 2 minutes and we are generally trying to do this in the right way and make it a much better and reliable service for anyone in the trade.

We've got tonnes of ideas and any you can throw in would be appreciated.

Cheers Dave.

 

[Doc Hudson]

Welcome to the forum Dave.

Doc H.

 

[Tradesman4u]

Cheers Doc

 

[johninlondon1]

I used rated trades for about 6 jobs, 2 were a waste of time as there were massive asbestos issues with one and the other i was never able to contact and never got refunded the cost of the lead. The other 4 involved jobs that were just time wasters people just looking for quotes to compare with other prices they had, and one job (plastering 6m x 4m ceiling covered in artex) quoted

 

[Tradesman4u]

I used rated trades for about 6 jobs, 2 were a waste of time as there were massive asbestos issues with one and the other i was never able to contact and never got refunded the cost of the lead. The other 4 involved jobs that were just time wasters people just looking for quotes to compare with other prices they had, and one job (plastering 6m x 4m ceiling covered in artex) quoted

 

[Stevie h]

Hi, I have just received an email about how you are going to validate that all Electricians on your site are registered with a governing body, good idea, I think your site has a real chance at succeeding if you keep the standards of trades men registered high.

Cheers

Ste

 

[Theorysparky]

wrong site !!!!!!!

 

[Stevie h]

Ha, how did I miss that

 

[Tradesman4u]

Hi, I have just received an email about how you are going to validate that all Electricians on your site are registered with a governing body, good idea, I think your site has a real chance at succeeding if you keep the standards of trades men registered high.Cheers

Ste

Cheers Ste, not sure thats come from us to be fair, however, we are definately going to be trying as hard as possible to vet our trades as much as possible. Good trades and decent leads is the key.

Its not an easy task as even crap trades pass governing body checks as we all know, but definately from our side if we get complaints or negative feedback from customers then people will be removed without hesitation. I don't really want to get into conflicts between trades, but if you knew of someone in your town who you regularly priced against from our site and their prices were consistantly ridiculous then I would expect the trade to be able to contact us to highlight this, and we can raise a red flag so to speak.

Unlike some of the others that are just corporates sat in ivory towers, we are actually normal people who will respond if an issue is raised.

Dave

---------- Post Auto-Merged at 17:23 ---------- Previous post was made at 17:20 ----------

wrong site !!!!!!!

Yep your right, not from us.

 

[lkayelectrical]

seems to be alot of these type of companys popping up now im still hesitant about these alot of people just go on to either get a job done for a price not worth getting out of bed for or are just fishing for price's my dad ( a tiler) has tryed RP and found it to be a waste of money

 

[Tradesman4u]

seems to be alot of these type of companys popping up now im still hesitant about these alot of people just go on to either get a job done for a price not worth getting out of bed for or are just fishing for price's my dad ( a tiler) has tryed RP and found it to be a waste of money

You're not on your own in that. Its part of the reason I started mine to combat a lot of the frustration we had experienced using RP and such. I can defo assure you though if you stick with it and 'learn' how to actively manage leads that come from the web it can be worth it. We've had plenty of good leads and done work in million pound plus houses from leads generated online so as much as there are duffer customers out their on the tinternet there are a lot of decent people too and closing the door on them entirely is defo a bad thing. Managing them better is the way forward.

As the site is completely free to join there is no real risk (unlike others which charge a membership fee where you may never get anything back in return) it costs nothing to be notified of potential work in your area. Having first hand experience of using these sites you eventually tune in to what is a decent looking lead and what isn't. We get leads from RP and the people can't even spell basic things, you get stuff like - 'loking for a fre etimate' you know instantly not to even bother with that as the person posting it is probably looking for the cheapest job possible and doesn't even have the funds for that!! By the time you ring them they have forgotten they've even registered the job. When you get a well described lead with good detail etc you suddenly think, yes this might be a decent fish to try and catch!

Eventually you get it down quite well.

We've added a free profile page now for all members, you can upload your company logo, link back to your own website, select which trade bodies you are members of, a map location to where you are based etc. Its a bit of free online advertising for you. I'm also working on a section in the members area where you can jot notes about where you are up to with leads - i.e tracking quotes, follow up emails etc. I hope that will make your return rate better. I'm also working on a section where you can produce a written quote online - it will automatically pull through your logo, address, phone numbers etc in a letterheaded format and then you can print it or email it directly in PDF to your customer. It will then save that written quote and link it back to the job lead so when you sign in to your account you will be able to easily access the quotes you've given out. (Lots of trades struggle with written quotes so I'm trying to drag the standard up believe it or not). Its also easier to have the quote saved against the customer so you can access it from anywhere, even on site.

Just some things I'm working on!

Cheers

Dave

 

[Manator]

Hello Dave, thanks for your very good post, what you will have to appreciate is that most self employed electricians are very suspicious of any organisation, you have to some extent releived some of those suspicians.I myself have been a member of another organisation, where they did indeed provide very good leads, however 90% of them where as you said in your post not worth replying to, this left 10% of what I would call genuine leads. Problem I found personnaly was that whilst I would commit only to my geographical area, others would not, so I had to compete with companies from miles away, and still not be able to beat their quotes, even though hotel bills for their staff would cost at least

 

[Tradesman4u]

Thanks Manator - totally totally understand and I really don't expect people to suddenly change their opinion of these sites because of a few posts. As I say we've struggled ourselves as a plumbing and electrical contractor on some of these sites, often from a communication point of view it has to be said.

If anything I'm just trying to offer a bit of balance to the whole equation, and that not everything is completely bad as some may believe. We are trying to optimise towards better quality leads and remove the tyrekicker type of leads. Although its a bit of a challenge in itself and no doubt will be a long process.

Whilst most of the forum comments (in any forum) will generally be negative there is an element of people purposefully talking these sites down whilst in the background generating loads of work off them. Effectively saying how bad 'Site X' is in the deliberate attempt to stop trades in their own area joining and increasing their competition on a certain site. Also I'm sure many have won jobs from these sites they are much less likely to jump on a forum and shout about how great a site is or how much work they've won as before you know it every ****** will be on it. At the end of the day even in a decent community forum like this we are all primarily interested in our own business over anyone else's and if something is proving particularly successful for you, then chances are you'll keep that little bit of info for yourself. Maybe even dissuade people from it.

I actually joined RP from an outbound call from their telesales which for me is very odd as marketing calls usually get about 10 seconds on the phone with me. As such I'm as suspicious as anyone.

Top news on the new contract, in today's climate work up to Feb is very nice indeed. I thought we we're doing well with 4 weeks work in front lol.

Dave

 

[lkayelectrical]

not a good start thought i would give it a go and just got an error message Invalid "Text - The profile entered contains illegal characters" all i have typed is normal text

---------- Post Auto-Merged at 19:11 ---------- Previous post was made at 19:07 ----------

update: tried a few different things ways including leaving all punctuation out and still didn't work ahh well was worth a go.

 

[Tradesman4u]

not a good start thought i would give it a go and just got an error message Invalid "Text - The profile entered contains illegal characters" all i have typed is normal text---------- Post Auto-Merged at 19:11 ---------- Previous post was made at 19:07 ----------

update: tried a few different things ways including leaving all punctuation out and still didn't work ahh well was worth a go.

Hi there, not too sure which page you are referring to there. (Is it the registratio page). Oddly enough my web guy has actually been doing some work on it this evening so there's a chance he was messing with something at the same time you were trying to register. I've just registered a dummy account and it went through absolutely fine. Would you mind letting me know exactly what page that was on, also perhaps what browser you're using. I really appreciate the feedback though so it would really help if you could let me know. Cheers.

 

[lkayelectrical]

weird one got the message again, then pressed the spell check button on my google tool bar and seemed to fix it :-/

 

[Tradesman4u]

weird one got the message again, then pressed the spell check button on my google tool bar and seemed to fix it :-/

Very weird mate - my web guy is taking that box out and moving to after sign up. If you sign in to your account now you can link back to your own website, upload any logo's you've got etc. Keep me posted on how you get on.

Cheers Dave

 

[lkayelectrical]

Signed up worth ago will give it a few trys and report back to every one

 

[SteveT]

Tried to register tonight, all ok except the profile - it says invalid characters all I have used is fullstops and commas!!!!!

These are not invalid in any Text input I know - please advise Reg No 1169

 

[Tradesman4u]

Tried to register tonight, all ok except the profile - it says invalid characters all I have used is fullstops and commas!!!!!These are not invalid in any Text input I know - please advise Reg No 1169

That box is coming out. It only went in on ~Saturday and its obviously a bit buggy. It should be out later today. If you sign in o your account and there's a profile tab at the top. You can update within that. I'll keep you posted. Cheer Dave

---------- Post Auto-Merged at 10:39 ---------- Previous post was made at 08:39 ----------

That box has now gone so the problem shouldn't return. Appreciate you letting me know about the problem with it though it really helped.