11 Handyman Skills That Are A Must Have: Get Yourself Upskilled

Learn about the important skill set for an independent handyman contractor and understand why upgrading your skills is important in the industry.
According to Zippia, roughly 91,120 handyman contractors are now employed in the United States.

Whether starting or running a professional handyman business, you must consistently hone your skills to reach new business heights.

Most handyman independent contractors or small business owners are unaware of the different skill sets they need to learn to stand out from the rest.

But we’ve got you covered.

Our team has filtered the most successful handyman contractors’ top handyman skills. So without further ado, let’s get the learning started.

What Does a Handyman Do?

A professional handyman performs the basic repair and maintenance tasks for homes and businesses. The work is limited to small tasks, and handymen don’t take up big technical projects compared to general contractors.

The primary duties of a handyman are to repair the plumbing systems, fix company equipment, and test multiple home appliances for proper functioning.

Apart from these, a handyman can handle different odd jobs that technical contractors or skilled professionals don’t handle.

Becoming a handyman contractor or independent business means the willingness to handle different small tasks that the homeowner or commercial businesses find difficult to repair or maintain.

Handyman skills and responsibilities

A general handyman is focused on handling electrical, plumbing, and mechanical-related repairs, but if the scale of business operations increases, the handyman can handle landscape maintenance and other exterior areas of a site.

Apart from managing the on-site technical issues, a handyman contractor and small business owners must manage the business side.

They must look after the finances, taxation, certification, salaries, material procurement, and other vital information to run a handyman business.

Here is the list of the vital handyman skills and responsibilities:

• Paint and repair various parts of the buildings.
• Repair the electrical systems in spaces.
• Make sure mechanical equipment is functional.
• Complete all general building upkeep and cleaning.
• Installing and updating plumbing, stairs, and flooring as necessary.
• Keep recycling and garbage bins handy all across the building.
• Maintaining and fixing heating and cooling systems as needed.
• Handle the scheduling process.
• Manage the cash flow.
• Ensure proper functioning of the mechanical equipment.
• Client management.
• Perform different repair and maintenance tasks.
• Handle the employee.

These tasks require a wider horizon of skills that you must acquire or work on as an independent handyman contractor or a business owner.

Learn These 11 Handyman Skills to Stand Out

A qualified handyman will be familiar with the basic fundamentals of plumbing, mechanical, electrical, and customer service. But, through continuing job experience, self-directed learning, apprenticeships, and vocational training, a handyman may gradually hone their existing skills and pick up new ones to stand out.

You can learn these 11 handyman skills to stand out:

• Technical skills
• Communication skills
• Marketing
• Organizational management
• Scheduling
• Hiring
• Customer support
• Working with others
• Effective client selection
• Consistent learning and evolving
• Financial Management

Let’s discuss the skills in detail.

1. Technical skills

The vital aspect of running a successful handyman business is understanding the different technical knowledge required to complete the task. If you are working as an independent contractor, you should be able to perform what your client has requested.

If you are running a small-scale handyman service business, you can understand the technicalities of the client’s requirements and quote the desired price. You can help your team bypass different roadblocks during the project’s completion because of your expertise in the industry.

The technical skills can range from repairing a drain to hanging a picture on the wall. You can also choose a special technical skill you can master and become an expert on.

While running a handyman business, you can create a handyman skills list and narrow your services into limited offerings in which you have expertise.

You can hire a workforce who are experts in filtering services that can help you deliver an excellent customer experience and grow as a leading brand in a specific handyman service niche.

You can also learn technical handyman skills based on the area you want to operate. For example, in a rural area, repairing floors or unclogging the sink can be the most in-demand handyman skills required. But in an urban locality, the client requirements can change to painting or hanging light fixtures.

2. Communication skills matter

A vital skill in the handyman skills checklist is your communication skills. It’s an important element of quality customer service skills for your business’s success.

You can’t just rely on technical skills to scale your handyman operations. You should focus on honing your communication skills to help you connect with your in-house team and build a solid relationship with your clients.

Clear communication can create a positive sign for converting your leads into clients and delivering the right message with more impact. You can complete the job faster with minimal misunderstanding and mistakes, resulting in a happy and satisfied clientele.

A vital aspect of clear communication is understanding the requirements and needs of your clients and providing a tailored handyman service solution with professional estimates.

Good communication needs to be handled at different business stages that can help you provide a professional customer experience to your clients.

• Once you receive an inquiry request or email, you should follow up with them quickly, within 24 to 48 hours. You should provide a tailored solution to process the request forward and help the client achieve their desired results faster.
• Once you have shared the quote or scheduled a consultation call, you need to take a follow-up to close the sale and make the potential customer feel important and valued.
• Once you have completed the requested handyman task, send automated invoices to your clients and accept online payments for a better brand image. Communicate with your target audience using text, email, or phone calls in the future to ensure that you solidify your bond and trust.

3. Marketing

You should be aware of handling your own business marketing based on your business model. You might find it difficult to market your brand through the different online or offline channels because of budget constraints or lack of knowledge.

But you need to start learning more about marketing your handyman service business or hire professionals who can do that for you. Learn to explore different marketing strategies and start with the implementation process.

Having the basics cleared about marketing can help you manage your outsourcing and ensure that your digital marketing efforts are handled professionally by the agency.

Choose a hybrid marketing model to target your local audience and ensure that you can attract your target audience to your brand. Understand the importance of marketing and learn from your competitors, market leaders, top marketers, and other online resources that can help you stand out.

Focus on the weaknesses and drawbacks of your competitors and use different marketing strategies like email marketing, paid ads, or online listings that they are not using to scale their handyman service business.

4. Organizational management

Managing your organization’s in-house operations is also a part of the broad skill set you need to acquire. Once you start providing services like general repairs, home repairs, light switch replacements, and other handyman jobs, you should know the job description and how to quote handyman jobs.

Integrate professional pricing strategies that can help you attract decent profit margins and entice the customers to choose you over others.

Create a happy and workable ecosystem within your organization by integrating professional handyman software that can remove the inefficiencies and human errors from your daily process.

Focus on optimizing your organization’s overall productivity and ensuring you can achieve your desired business outcomes with finesse. Plan an excellent customer service policy that can help you deliver quality service results and ensure that your team follows the set rules and regulations for the smooth functioning of your organization.

5. Scheduling

Once you scale your business, you’ll find it hard to handle too many clients and their unique handyman job requests. But with the experience and management, you can streamline the process and ensure that your clients don’t face delays or failed handyman services.

Manage your resources using different manual strategies or adapt to professional job scheduling software like FieldCamp that can give centralized control over your handyman service business.

You need to acquire the skills to operate the professional job scheduling tools and ensure that you can minimize the inefficiencies that can arise with increased clientele.

But once you scale your handyman business, you should look to hire skilled professionals who can handle different business operations for your handyman business.

6. Hiring

A time-consuming and tiring aspect of running a successful business is hiring the right talent for delegating different business aspects to the right professional.

You must learn how to associate with the right talent and how you can filter the best for your business. You need to understand your requirements and look for specific traits that you want from your next employee.

Hiring the wrong or ineffective employee can cost your business the time, resources, and effort required for hiring a professional.

7. Customer support

Listening to your clients’ and prospects’ questions and queries and providing them with a tailored solution can help you increase your business efficiency and maximize your customer connection.

If you are starting your handyman independent contractor business, you need to manage the customer support queries by yourself, and once you scale your business, you can appoint the right candidate that can fit in for the task.

You can also use the power of digital channels to address the doubts or queries of your customers or integrate an automated chatbot on your website that can help you minimize the effort your support team has to put in.

8. Working with others

Focus on collaborating with others to handle your business requirements. Whether it be your employees, partners, or subcontractors, you should know how to operate in a team and collaboratively achieve the desired outcomes.

Listen and understand the issues raised by others and help everyone improve and grow their skills to become a better version of themselves. 

Aim to learn from others and also set an example for others to learn from you. Once you learn how to work with others, you’ll find it easy to scale your business operations.

9. Effective client selection

Learn how to say no to clients you don’t want to work with. It can help maintain a professional and quality clientele. 

Also, avoid taking up more client work beyond your handyman’s business capacity. If you say yes to work you can’t manage, you’ll degrade the quality and hinder the relationship with existing clients.

You should also avoid taking projects that overstep the license and permit boundaries. It can result in business fines and tarnish your brand image in the handyman industry.

Learn the art of filtering your clients and be aware of what type of clients you want to work with. You’ll learn by having the skin in the game once you step into the industry and work for a wide range of clients.

Don’t run after money and say yes to every prospect you encounter. Not every client’s work is healthy for your business model and approach.

 10. Consistent learning and evolving

Focus on improving and evolving daily and stay in line with your business goals. Integrate professional training programs in your business ecosystem to help employees train and scale their skill sets. 

Once you consistently work on specific skill sets, you can improve your efficiency and grow your handyman service business.

 11. Financial Management

Financial management and budgeting are among the leading skill sets you must focus on. You should have control over your cash flow and ensure that you don’t end up increasing your expenses, more than your income.

You can understand the importance of creating professional handyman invoices, estimates, purchase orders, and credit memos that can help you create a positive image in the minds of the clients or leads.

Managing your finances can help you stand out from the rest and ensure that you can scale your business without ending up making losses.

You can also integrate professional software that can manage clients, calculate estimates and ensure you can achieve new business heights. 

The financial software can help you create professional financial documents for your handyman business and ensure that you can process your business finances effectively.

But out of hundreds of handyman financial management software available in the industry and with the expected rise in the value of accounting software to $20,408.0 Million by 2026, you might find it difficult to filter one based on your requirements and needs.

Our team has worked hard on your behalf and filtered the best estimating and invoicing software for handyman to help you streamline your finances.

InvoiceOwl Can Help You With The Financial Management

InvoiceOwl is the leading estimate and invoice software for handyman contractors that can assist you in streamlining your financial management aspect and ensure that you can achieve the desired outcomes.

You can track business expenses within a few clicks and check your financial transaction history within seconds.

You get centralized control over your financial management and can assist your team in bypassing different hurdles in the management process.

Avail of the FREE trial today and transform your handyman business.