COVID-19 (Coronavirus) — Are you sick of it yet?

In Australia, at least, trades businesses are mostly still busy. But everyone’s waiting for that to change, – they’re waiting for the hammer to fall. 

Right now you can still work. We’re on Stage 3 restrictions, not Stage 4 full lockdown, yet.

It’s not clear if a full lockdown is coming or not.

Our government seems keen to avoid it and the number of cases seem to be growing less rapidly.

Maybe that curve is flattening after all.

But it’s too early to tell, isn’t it? Maybe we caught it in time. Maybe we didn’t. Maybe we’ll be locked down properly soon.

That uncertainty is affecting everything, isn’t it?

And it’s affecting your customers, too. So what’s happening to your customers, and your work?

It seems to be a mixed bag and it differs across the different trades. My friends in other businesses are saying it differs across different business sectors, too.

I’m going to share what I’m hearing from my customers and my broader community and I’m interested in additional feedback from you.

How the pandemic crisis is affecting different trades businesses

Builders 

You’ve all got jobs still running so you’re still working. You’ve got work until they finish but it’s not so easy to lock a new job in, is it?

Early in this, all my builders had jobs postponed because of the uncertainty. But some of them seem to be coming back to life already.

People are booking some work in.

Not the jobs they were expecting, but people are still booking some jobs – ones they’ve been quoting on.

Some customers aren’t affected by this financially. A new enquiry seems rare though and this is a bit of a theme that some customers remain unaffected by this. 

Plumbers and electricians

They seem to be as busy as ever. Plumbers need to fix all those blockages caused by the flushed wet wipes.

Maintenance work is still happening.

Property maintenance

Also still busy. But some real estate agents don’t want to let trades into their properties and potentially infect their tenants, so they’ve shut down, so some property maintenance people are quiet or heading into a very quiet period.

One of my clients had a number of jobs that come through in a week – he’s normally at 70 and now he’s down to 5.

Construction trades, subcontractors to builders, etc 

They’re still busy while the builders are still busy.

Commercial maintenance

It’s a mixed bag. Your food retail and manufacturing customers need you, but your nursing homes are less keen, aren’t they?

Large construction projects

These projects and the trades that work and support them are still busy. But the projects that aren’t being initiated now are going to be quiet in 6 months so you might have a quiet period then.

So will there be a big hole in your business in six months? Possibly.

Recommended Reading: What To Do If You’re Quiet – Should You Have A Side Hustle?

And that’s just an anecdotal set of stories I’ve been told personally by my customers. 

There’ll be other factors I haven’t considered or heard about.

One builder customer of mine had a customer call him and say, “I’m a nurse, he’s a fireman, our incomes are fine, we’ll go ahead with the job”.

Another is a wealthy client, and he’s building a holiday home for him and the client said, “If you need work you can do some work on my main house”, which was generous of him.

There are people and customers and businesses who aren’t so affected by this and who still have money to spend.

There’s work out there and you need to get it. You need to do your marketing. 

This is where I’m heading. I’ll remain consistent on this theme for a while, I expect.

You need to do your marketing whether you’re investing in relationships by phone or whether you’re doing your digital marketing, etc. That depends on your circumstances and what type of business you are.

I’ve talked about this in my previous videos – what type of marketing you need to be doing depends on what kind of business you are, and who your customers are and how they behave.

Now is NOT the time to sit on your hands,  do the work that’s in front of you, and wait for the hammer to fall and for you to be quiet.

NOW is the time to get stuck in and invest really very hard and do marketing.

Up your game – do more marketing, call more people, spend more on ads, fix up your website, etc. 

Reach out and talk to more people, get your business and your website, and your messages talking to more people.

I can obviously help you in my coaching program.

But if you’re not ready for coaching, I’ve made my Marketing Training – and that’s the video training part of my business coaching program for trades businesses –  available for just $50 a month.

These are video training (no coaching) where you will learn how to build your marketing machine.

You’re welcome. 

Click here to learn more.