This is a service provided by Google that acts like your own personal operator.  It is beneficial for those installers that have a business land-line at home and a cell phone to conduct business on the road.  Google will give you a new phone number to rule them all.  Incoming calls will be routed to your land-line or cell phone based on your preferences.  You can also set it to “do not disturb” and take advantage of visual voice mail so you don’t have to listen through all of your messages.  This is all done through a web-based interface or through an app for your smart-phone.  Don’t make customers call 3 different numbers to find you, get Google Voice!

https://www.google.com/voice

Square along with others such as Intuit Go Payment, PayPal Here, Payware Mobile by Verifone and Phone Swipe are all services and hardware that you add to your smart phone in order to take credit cards on the go.  With this weapon added to your repertoire you can take payments over the phone at the office or at the job site.  They’ll even take care of sending confirmation via email to the customer.  A note of warning, credit card fees can be pretty steep (2-3 percent usually) so it is still advisable to grab a check when you can.

https://squareup.com

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube are all services that you can start participating in to gain visibility.  In my opinion there are 4 strategies here.  You can use any or all of them…

1. Content Creator: Start creating compelling content for your customers.  My suggestion here would be to cater your content to the do it yourselfers out there with helpful tips in hopes that it trickles to their friends that need assembly help.
2. Customer Service: We have had some success here.  It is a transparent way to take care of issues.  I believe it gives customers confidence that even if there is a problem you’ll take care of it.
3. Advertise:  This is where the people are.  Segment them correctly and could find yourself a very cost effective advertising medium.
4. Trust Indicator:  When you have these profiles set up with at least some legitimate activity it gives customers confidence to do business with you.  In my opinion, this is the biggest value Social Media is delivering right now.

A smarter person than myself once described social media as your company’s embassies.  Set up an outpost at all of these sites and make friends with the natives.

If you have a smart phone you have a navigation system.  Google has had turn-by-turn directions for quite some time and Apple just recently announced that their new operating system (iOS6) will also have navigation.  Both will show traffic and give you alternative routes ensuring you will not waste time on the road.

Any tablet makes for a great on-site tool.  A few of the best uses are…

1. Resources: Keep diagrams for pier placement, court markings and basketball goal specifications on hand to help yourself as well to help the customer visualize the court before you dig.
2. Sales Tool: Sell other complimentary services through pictures such as court marking.
3. Review Request: After finishing up, prompt your customer to leave a review of your service.  With you hovering, there is no way they’ll give you anything but 5 stars.  Also, you’ll make sure that it actually gets done.  This will surely improve your response rate.
4. Payment: Take payment through Square or one of the other services mentioned above.

There are more sites out there that take free local listings than you’d even care to think about.  A small sampling includes Facebook, Citysearch, Yelp, Google, Judy’s Book, Super Pages, Yellow Pages, Foursquare, Yahoo, Angie’s List, Insiderpages, infoUSA, HotFrog, Twitter, Mojo Pages, Local.com, iBegin and MapQuest.  I’d list on every single one out there.  The time and effort is minimal compared to the years of use you’ll receive from each listing.  Many of them will even let you specify a service area while hiding your home address!