7 Reasons Why Pool Service Businesses Fail

By avoiding the leading reasons why pool service businesses fail, you can develop a successful, long-lasting business.

Steering clear of these top reasons why pool service businesses fail, you can:

• Properly price services for maximum profit
• Hire the best techs during a labor shortage
• Beat the competition and become the leading pool service provider
• Develop robust rules and procedures for daily operations and training
• Offer a manageable, profitable range of services your business does well
• Streamline daily operations and automate everyday tasks with the right software
• Take advantage of the top marketing strategies to increase conversions and upsells

Use the key pro strategies in this article to avoid these common reasons why pool services businesses fail.

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1. Difficulties Hiring the Right Pool Technicians During a Labor Shortage

By far, hiring the right techs during a labor shortage is one of the biggest struggles pool businesses currently face.

Even though it might be easy to hire out of desperation, it’s crucial to instead focus on hiring the right employees for the position.

Keep in mind, it only takes one bad tech to hurt your reputation with bad reviews.

To hire and keep the right technicians, you can:

• Create impactful hiring ads
• Cultivate a positive company culture
• Prioritize increasing employee retention
• Provide a competitive wage and benefits
• Offer clear career paths and advancement opportunities
• Establish a strong online presence (e.g. website, social media, etc.)

2. Unable to Get Past the Competition

Finding new, innovative ways to stand out from the local competition allows you to develop condensed, optimized routes.

Here a few top strategies for overcoming the competition:

• Prioritize keeping clients happy
• Providing the best customer service
• Give your best 110% effort every time
• Honesty, transparency, and admittance of guilt
• Implement changes based on client and tech feedback
• Develop a positive online reputation (e.g. socials, reviews, website, etc.)

When you can push past the competition, you can avoid one of the biggest reasons pool service businesses fail.

3. Improperly Setting Prices

Not having your prices right is one of the biggest reasons pool service businesses fail. Plus, with the right resources, calculating prices for maximum profit doesn’t have to be complex.

Take a look at how you can calculate and implement your new ideal prices:

• Track your job and tech times
• Get to know you local target market
• Maintain records of your operational costs
• Test price increases on your least profitable clients first

In addition, you can easily track your job and tech times with Service Autopilot. Also, you can use Service Autopilot to quickly view client profitability, without wasting endless hours manually calculating it.

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4. Insufficient Rules and Procedures for Daily Operations

Many pool services businesses fail due to insufficient rules and procedures for daily operations.

When you develop proper rules and procedures for daily operations, you can:

• Get optimal team productivity
• Provide coherent decision-making
• Offer reliable, uniform services for clients
• Provide your team and clients with clear expectations
• Properly train technicians on rules and company procedures

Also, developing the adequate rules and procedures for daily operations is simple. Just create these rules and procedures based on your business goals and needs.

5. Providing Excessive Services

By spreading your technicians thin with an exhaustingly long list of services, you prevent your business from developing a reputation for specialties.

Depending on the needs of your business, it’s typically a good idea to start with 3-5 basic pool services. Then, you can slowly add more services as your technicians adapt.

6. Reluctance to Use the Best Software

Many pool service businesses fail because they’re reluctant to begin utilizing the #1 pool service software.

Using Service Autopilot, you can access lucrative resources like:

• Quick bulk invoicing
• Instantly optimized routes
• Rapid anywhere estimates
• Track chemicals and assets
• Same-day, automatic payments
• Find and fix profit holes with reports
• Track techs and job progress in real time
• Simplified, automated marketing campaigns
• Access client accounts and job notes on-the-go

Scale faster, save time, maximize profits, and so much more with Service Autopilot. Plus, experience limitless success and surpass your biggest goals.

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7. Not Utilizing the Right Marketing Strategies

When you take advantage of the top marketing strategies, you can conquer goals like:

• Increase conversions
• Develop unified branding
• Establish online presence
• Amplify selling effectiveness
• Grow your social media channels

Plus, when you begin harnessing the power of the best pool service software, you can simplify campaigns by automating:

• Upsells
• Invoices
• Client surveys
• To do’s for techs
• Estimate follow-ups
• Past due reminders

Additionally, Service Autopilot’s automations allow you to create custom campaign triggers to funnel leads and clients into the right campaigns based on the actions they take.

Also, automations give you the opportunity to automate your most mundane, time-consuming tasks, so you can work on higher value tasks.

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Avoid These Leading Reasons Why Pool Service Businesses Fail

When you begin taking advantage of these key expert strategies, you can avoid the main reasons why pool service businesses fail and:

• Price services for maximum profit
• Hire the best techs in the midst of a hiring shortage
• Get past the competition to dominate your local market
• Use the #1 pool service software to automate everyday tasks
• Incorporate rules and procedures to optimize daily operations and training

Now, you can begin utilizing these top pro strategies to avoid the main reasons why pool service businesses fail!

Related: 5 Ways to Build a Recession-Proof Pool Business

Originally published June 8, 2023 5:44 PM CT