Here we go again. I’m writing on the subject because selecting contractors is fraught with so many problems.
How do you select a contractor who’s going to give you a good price and do the work well?
Lately I’ve been calling in many contractors to get quotes from them. It’s not just about the price, it’s about a whole host of other things. I’m sure if you google contractors, and here I’m talking about contractors for household repairs, refurbishment, and renovation, you’ll get many lists of tips.
Certainly you can sift through all of them and try to work out what are the key things you need to know.
Now I’m tackling it from a different angle because mine is actually a work in progress where I am going through the learning curve.
Remember, although this is for people who are hiring contractors for domestic or household work, it can in some instances apply to any type of contractor, even myself when I provide my business writing services and other services that I have.
I think what’s important for me is the small indicators.
Does the contractor rock up on time? You’ll be amazed how many are late. Isn’t this a kind of indication of what respect they have for you? Some fools might think this is old school, that you can rock up at any time, but usually it’s a leading indicator of the slack-mack type.
Whatever the expertise of the contractor, one thing that I’m beginning to realize is that you have to think about the type of person you’re dealing with.
I find myself saying to myself, is this somebody I would like to do my job for me? Is this somebody I could work with?
This is so important that it bears underlining and re-reading.
If things go awry later on, if you’ve been dealing with a person who’s uncommunicative, can’t really communicate or is an undercover liar, you are going to have problems and usually they are costly.
Let’s briefly look at the area of the experience and expertise of a particular contractor. I’m finding that even the most simple of jobs that I’ve been getting quotes on with contractors involves some sort of complication. Nothing seems to be simple. Take vinyl flooring, you may have skirting, but because vinyl flooring is about five millimeters high, it means that your skirting boards will have a gap where they meet the vinyl flooring. Now, how do you solve that? What are your options? You see what I mean?
Everything has some level of complexity and as soon as it becomes more complex, there’s more time and money involved.
Perhaps you thought you would escape a sales message in this blog post, but I’m afraid not. I want to point out that when you deal with me as a freelancer or contractor or even service provider, you’ll find that I try to simplify things. I try to give as much information about myself and do things for my clients on time. If you want to contact me about any business writing or if you’ve got business writing problems, merely subscribe to this website and we’ll see what we can do for you.
