Writing Tips: How to Write For Your Contracting Business
Communicating with clients is absolutely vital to the success of your contracting business. The trouble is that sometimes, it’s not clear exactly how you should be writing for them. These tips help you determine the best communication styles to use for residential, small business and corporate clients.
Getting Started
When you are just starting out, you have to figure out your own writing style and how to apply it ideally to different kinds of situations. You also have to balance your needs with the industry and area standards that people expect. You can begin by looking for some examples of professional writing, such as purchase orders, estimates, contract bids and routine emails. Think about the kind of voice you want to present to potential clients at different levels. Be careful before choosing any boilerplate forms to copy. Make sure that you understand the ramifications of what you put in writing, and what you leave out. Even casual emails to a client can be considered a contractual agreement in certain contexts.
Avoiding Writing Problems
Even if writing wasn’t your best subject in school, you can still offer communication with clients that looks professional and gets the jobs done. Typos are a fact of life in business writing, but you should minimize it as much as possible. Take the opportunity to familiarize yourself with common spelling and grammar checkers. Ask a friend or family member to proofread your communication at the beginning, because they may be able to help you identify issues that come up regularly. If you plan to make a few forms that you can use again and again, it might be worth paying for the short-term services of a lawyer to vet the documents before you start sending them out.
Residential Clients
Doing work for homeowners may seem like it is much easier, but it still calls for a careful approach. At the B2C level, contracting businesses rely heavily on word of mouth. As a general rule, residential clients prefer simple communication that is easy for them to understand. They may not be familiar with industry jargon, and you might be the first person they have contacted for an estimate. Start your communication on the more formal side (e.g. “Dear Ms. Jones), but be ready to shift to a friendly or more informal style if that’s what the homeowner seems to prefer. Answer questions as clearly as possible, but be careful to avoid miscommunications in timeline or pricing.
Business-to-Business Communications
Working with businesses offers a wide range of communication opportunities, and you may need some time to develop an effective strategy for dealing with all of them. Doing contract work for a small business or property owner might be similar to residential clients. It could also require you to step up the details that you provide in official communications. Stick to a formal-but-friendly voice most of the time. Businesses need efficiency, and they may glean more information from lists instead of paragraphs. You may be able to get a little more technical in your explanations of certain processes, but be sure to get a feel for the knowledge of your primary contact first.
Corporate and Municipal Jobs
For larger businesses as well as local and state government agencies, you should be prepared to get familiar with the standard documentation. Businesses with thousands of employees, and organizations with huge budgets for improvements, may have specific requirements for the way communication is presented. Expect to provide information for different levels of the organization. For example, you might have to fill out a set of documents created by the company, and add a cover letter. Although someone in the middle of the hierarchy is probably going to be your point of contact, they may need to get a project director or executive vice president to sign off on your bid. Providing a simply-written but professional executive summary makes it easier for someone who is more removed from the daily involvement to understand what you propose to do.
Learning how to effectively communicate with all kinds of clients is a major step toward making your contracting business thrive. To start on the path to becoming your own boss, contact us at CSLS today!
