Win the work buyers pay more for, before you sell.

Buyers do not value every pound of turnover the same way. A testing and maintenance book that comes round every year, or every inspection cycle, tells a buyer the income carries on after you leave; a year of one-off installs tells them very little about next year.

That is why the programme's growth stage aims at the work buyers value most, such as periodic testing, planned maintenance contracts, commercial clients and places on public sector frameworks.

The mix matters too. Inspection and testing on a fixed cycle, maintenance spread across many clients, and EV charging work with an installed base to look after are all harder for a buyer to build from scratch than one-off domestic jobs, which is why they draw more interest.

Spread matters as much as volume. New work that adds to one main contractor's share can make the business riskier in a buyer's eyes, so growth is planned with the whole customer list in view.

Start from what the business already does well and what buyers ask for, then agree which contracts, clients and frameworks are worth going after.

Timing matters. Growth work comes early, three to four years out, so the extra contract income has time to show in the accounts a buyer will read. A contract won in the final months before a sale shows a buyer very little history.

Research and careful targeting find the landlords, property managers, facilities teams and main contractors who buy testing and maintenance, rather than waiting for the phone to ring.

The approaches themselves are patient and direct, made quietly and without pressure, to open conversations that can turn into testing and maintenance agreements. Martin's work is finding owners who are weighing up a sale before they list, and growth marketing applies the same groundwork to winning the work electrical buyers pay more for.

Customers who already call you out for faults and small works know your electricians. Offering them periodic testing or a maintenance agreement is one of the plainest ways to build recurring income.

The same goes for installations. A buyer will ask which customers could take testing or maintenance after an installation, or additional services such as EV charging, and whether the electricians and the capacity are there to deliver them. Building that follow-on into how you quote and hand over a job turns one-off work into income that repeats.

More work only helps a sale if it adds profit. Nick works with you on lifting profit at the same time, looking at pricing, job mix and costs, so that growth adds profit rather than only adding work.

The two together give a buyer what they are looking for: income that repeats, from a spread of customers, at a margin that holds up.