|
Starting your own mobile
Locksmith Business
The locks on the doors of most homes keep the
skilled burglar out for about 30 seconds!
This is especially true if the only thing slowing
him down is a standard key in the knob lock.
Statistically, there's about one residential
burglary every 30 seconds in this country.
Traditionally, as the economy falters and times
get harder, the number tends to rise.
Quite naturally, people are concerned and
frightened.
As a result, locksmithing is not only one of the
new "demand" businesses, it's rapidly becoming one of the more profitable
businesses for entrepreneurs with not too much capital to invest.
Today's locksmiths are usually well versed in
mathematics and basic electronics.
They almost have to be, what with the new types of
locks being introduced.
Today's locksmith is more likely to be known as a
"Security Specialist", than as just ordinary locksmith, as in the past.
Even so, most locksmithing businesses are still
one-man operations.
In many instances, it's a husband and wife family
affair, with the husband handling the mechanical end and the wife the books and
financial end of the business.
Most of these small operations tend to concentrate
on the repair side of the business, and0deliberately choose to remain small in
size.
As we will discuss later, however, this need not
be the case; these small businesses can "grow up".
According to the area in which he is located, an
established, well organised and trained locksmith may gross between
£50,000 and £60,000 per year, using a van as a mobile "workshop",
and space in his home as an office.
Remember: As the economy turns towards recession,
burglaries increase, and people become aware of the need for better locks to
protect what they own; thus the locksmith enjoys an increased income during
hard time.
You'll need a preplanned sales programme along
with good breakdown on your costs versus expected income. Direct mail campaigns
can be as simple as making up advertising circulars or flyers and hiring
students to deliver them, or hand them out to shoppers in busy shopping
centres.
The best angle here is to offer a free check of
their locks.
Show them how easily a burglar could open their
doors; and then propose new locks for all their doors at a special price.
You should feel no reservation about putting a
little fear into the prospect; remember burglary is real, and frightening!
Local newspaper advertising can be as simple as a
regularly run advertisement announcement your business location and phone
number.
However, it's best used to "splash" a special
offer such as the replacement of all key in the knob front door locks with
deadbolt locks for half the regular price.
Whenever you spend money to advertise, really go
after new business.
Once you've installed or replaced the lock on one
door, it's only natural to check the adequacy of the locks on the other doors,
and thus you should be able to realise some real profits from your advertised
special offer.
Promoting and selling your services via Home
Protection Seminars could work like this: You rent meeting space in a church,
school or even the meeting room of a popular hotel.
Run lots of flamboyant advertising in your local
papers announcing your seminar.
Have brochures made up describing your
services.
Have your materials arranged so that you will get
the name, address, and telephone number of everyone whO attends.
Put on a short half-hour to 45-minute presentation
first about the increase in the number of burglaries and the losses sustained,
and then follow through with a presentation describing the proper ways to
ensure the security of a home or business.
Contact your suppliers, and through them you may
be able to come up with a slide presentation of a complete programme detailing
how their line of locks, alarms and other security defices will burglar proof a
home or business.
Make sure that everyone in attendance gets one of
your brochures, and then have sales people follow up on all who attended.
Via telephone, your sales people can sell
homeowners and business owners on a free survey.
Commission sales people to make the survey
appointments.
Outfitting yourself and your help in smart using
uniforms will help.
Making your calls in a clean, well organised van
will also pay an important part in the image your customers have of your
business.
You want your customers to have confidence in your
business, and in the quality of work you do for them.
When they do, you'll find they are more likely to
pay their bills with fewer reminders.
Think of it like this:
A large invoice presented by a man in a clean
uniform who drives up in a good looking van and does quality work is going to
be paid more readily than one for £25 presented by a guy in grubby jeans
who drove up in a 10 year old decrepit transit van.
With so many technological changes occurring
within this field, on an alíost monthly basis, it's to your advantage to
stay on top of what's happening within the locksmithing field.
This means subscribing to some of the better trade
publications.
You should be attending the various Locksmithing
Associations promoted seminars and workshops that offer on-going help in both
the technical and financial side of this business.
In other words, you should plan to keep yourself
up to date with a programme of continuous learning.
There are several ways to get started in this
business.
You can buy an existing operation from a retiring
craftsman.
Ask him to help you with the technical side of the
operation, while you spend most of your time actively promoting and managing
the business.
Or, you can hire the technical help you need, and
the sales force to build the business while you do the managing.
You can enrol in one of the popular correspondence
courses, become involved in the business as you learn from the various trade
publications, and progress at your own speed.
Our recommendation is that you learn the fiscal
and management side of the business, and hire others to handle the mechanical
or technical side.
Thus the purpose of this article is to
indoctrinate you on the business side.
To examine the technical details of this business
would take volumes, and probably much of the information contained would be
out-dated by the time it came off the press.
However, we will provide you with an outline of
the most common types of jobs a locksmith should be able to handle.
LOCKOUTS
Frequently, a person finds himself locked out of
his home, office, warehouse, etc.
Invariably, this happens at odd hours of the day
or night.
So opening locks at odd hours of the day and night
will be a role you'll definitely play in the lives of your customers.
A typical pin tumbler can generally be picked open
in about 30 seconds, using either picks or a single piece of spring steel and
good wrist work.
All locks have tolerance and variations in
manufacture which allow you to push the cylinder pins up out of the way while
exerting a turning pressure on the cylinder itself.
You are currently viewing the preveiw version of this article. Registered members get access to full, extended versions of articles within the Freelance Network.
Please click here to register to read the full article or click here to Login
<< Back to Business Ideas
Index |
