Do You Need A Surety Bond If You Have General Liability?

October 28, 2010

Many contractors confuse general liability insurance and surety bonds. Surety bonds protect the client, where general liability is more about protecting you. If you do not have a good representation of surety bonds in your portfolio, you are guaranteeing one thing; you are going to miss a significant amount of business. Why? Why would you lose business just because you did not have a surety bond? Curious? Read on.

Surety bonds are actually required by many larger companies when they solicit bids. Think about that. If a large company requires a surety bond when they are asking for bids, shouldn’t you make sure you have one so that you are ready when the time comes? Lots of contractors lose a job just because they are not ready when they are asked for a surety bond. What happens if you are asked for one and you don’t have it? While you are scrambling around trying to get your surety bond, your competition (with surety bond fresh in hand) gets the bid. This is not where you want to be. You want to make sure all your bases are covered.

Finding the right surety bond agent or broker is where it all starts. Once you have the right broker, everything else falls into place. You have the right insurance because you took the right steps to get it in place. Now make sure your surety bond is the right one.

Two Tips On Finding The Right Mix in Surety Bonds And Insurance

October 28, 2010

Surety bonds are old hat with contractors, but many do not know the difference between them and general liability insurance. The truth of the matter is that you need the right mix of both to have good coverage as a contractor. What kind of surety bond do you need? Janitorial? Contractor? High Risk? Finding the right surety bond broker is the first step, but you need to know the difference between what you are buying and insurance. What is the principle difference between general liability insurance and a surety bond? If you have always wondered, I have good news for you. I will explain.

Surety bonds, at their basic function, protect the client if you do not live up to the contractual agreement. At first blush these may seem to be the same, but there are critical differences. First, general liability insurance covers your liability if something goes wrong; a fire, breakage, wreck, etc… Surety bonds are aimed at the contract you signed and what you promised to do. If you do not do it, or if you do it badly, a surety bond company comes in and makes it right. This is the principle difference.

You should have a healthy mix of both on your portfolio. Having the right surety bond broker is going to know that mix, and be able to advise you as to what direction you should take.

Concerned That Your Bad Credit Will Keep You From A Surety Bond?

October 26, 2010

Surety bonds are something that every contractor needs. Bad credit can keep you from getting one, though. If you are one of the millions of contractors around the country who are struggling with bad credit for the first time, you know what we are talking about. The stress of needing a surety bond to be able to bid on a job and not having it has to cause loss of sleep and angst. What are you doing about it? IF you have not checked into high risk surety bonds for your business, you are losing money while you are reading this.

There are some great surety bond companies who are seeing the need for high risk surety bonds, and have made a nice, easy-to-use platform for getting yours. If you find the right company, you will be able to apply for your bond online, and not only that, you will be able to get your surety bond sent to you in your email. Never thought you would see that, huh? When you look out across the landscape of contractors and contractors bonds, this high risk surety bond angle could be a game changer. With this economy, all many contractors need is a second chance. High risk surety bonds and contractor bonds gives that to them. If that sounds like you and you are tired of fighting an uphill battle without a surety bond, this could be for you.

How Do You Know How To Find A Good Marketing List For Your Small Business?

August 22, 2010

Ever wondered how can you find good leads for your small business? What can you do to find the right kind of leads? Should you even use marketing lists? How do you know whether you can trust a mailing list broker? How do you know what mailing lists to trust when you do find a good mailing lists company? There are tons of digital and electronic means of getting leads out there in the marketing world trying to get your attention. Good mailing list companies are only as good as the mailing lists they putout. Find the right mailing list company, and you will find good mailing lists that you can use to drive leads for your company A good Mailing list starts with a good mailing company. Mailing lists are set up to succeed, if you do put the right copy in your mailing list. You can really succeed if you use a good mailing list, provided you use good copy. Find the right kind of mailing list to start with, and you can trust your mailing list company to always give you good leads. Your leads depend on your mailing list, so find a good mailing list company that you can depend on for your leads. If you do the work, you will find a good mailing list company that will give you good leads for a long time. Good mailing list companies will make great partners for you and your business.

How do I go about getting a performance bond?

June 22, 2010

What is a performance bond all about? What is the reasoning for them? Why should I even mess with it if I already have liability insurance? Many business owners ask lots of questions like this when it comes to performance bonds. They don’t understand all that goes on with performance bonds, and the reasoning behind them.

First, understand that performance bonds are not like insurance at all, except for maybe from the view of the client. The client gets paid off by the performance bond company, and thus the end result looks like insurance, but it is not at all. Insurance claims are paid out, but the contractor does not have to pay the insurance payout back. With performance bonds, they do. They owe the performance bond company for any money the performance bond company pays to the client to make right anything the contractor did not to according to the contract. This means that the contractor has to be very sure that he is doing everything he can to follow the contract, thus the reasoning for a performance bond.

You should get a performance bond if you are a contractor, period. The reasoning is simple. You will get more work if you have a performance bond on bond over some other contractors who look more fly by night since they do not have a performance bond. A performance bond just makes you look more professional and much more grounded.

What is a performance bond?

June 15, 2010

What is a performance bond, anyway? What happens with a performance bond? Is it the same as a surety bond, and if not, what are the differences? These are very common questions with performance bonds, and I will try to shed some much needed light in these few words.

Performance bonds are set up to protect a company if they hire a contractor that does not do what he said he would do. If he does not, the performance bond company comes in and makes everything all right. This is why it is a good idea to have a performance bond if you are a contractor. It makes your potential clients feel a lot more secure, and you end up getting more business out of the deal. What if you have bad credit though? What then?

If you have bad credit, you are usually out of luck. There are some performance bond companies that are out there now who are starting to offer performance bonds to people with bad credit, because they know that bad things happen to good people. This economy has affected everyone, and there is no reason that a contractor should not be able to provide for his family the way he wants to just because he hit a rough patch.

The great thing is, some of these companies are actually making the application process a lot faster and easier. This means no more waiting or hassle, and you get it in your inbox.

Will a surety bond help your business?

June 15, 2010

Surety bonds are great for business. Ask any contractor. They help you in many ways. In the biggest way, of course, they help you if some thing goes wrong. If it does, the surety bond company goes out and makes it right. You have to pay it back to the surety bond company, but the process is there for you at least. In another way, it helps you actually get more business. Because the client feels more secure with you when they see the surety bond, the surety bond actually helps you get more business. A client will go with you over some other guy that does not have a surety bond, all things being equal. They just feel more secure.

What if you have bad credit, though? What happens then? Surely you have felt the rejection that comes from the vast majority of surety bond companies, as they will not deal with anyone that has bad credit. Well, you don’t have to feel that way anymore. There are some great surety bond companies out there who know that bad things happen to good people, and they know that you need to be able to go back to work to be able to provide for your family in the way that you want to. Now, there is a way to do that, and they have actually made the process a lot easier and faster. It’s all online, so get your surety bond.

How does a surety bond help your business?

June 15, 2010

How can a surety bond help your business? Will it increase sales? Can it help you with your customer retention? Do surety bonds help doughnuts taste better on Tuesdays? I don’t know about the donuts, but surety bonds will help your business in a lot of ways. First, surety bonds help clients feel more secure. That is a fact. If a client sees you come to their door with a surety bond, and another equal contractor come to their door without a surety bond, which one do you think they are going to pick? The fact that a surety bond makes them more secure because of the promise of the surety bond company that they will come in and make everything ok. This means that you get the job over the local yokel that did not bother to get a surety bond.

So, how do you get your surety bond? There are tons of surety bond companies out there, so how do you choose? If it were me, I would be choosing the surety bond company that is making the process easier for you. There are surety bond companies out there who are putting the whole application process online so that you can input all of your info there, and then you get your surety bond in your email inbox. How great is that? You get all that, and great service. They even offer surety bonds to people with bad credit.

Can a performance bond help your business?

June 15, 2010

Can a performance bond actually help you in running your business? Can it bring more business in? Can a performance bond make your lunch taste better? I don’t know about lunch, but one thing is for sure, a performance bond will bring you a lot more business. Performance bonds are bonds that insure a company that hires a contractor and protects that company just in case the contractor does not do all he said he would do, or does not perform up to the contract stated. Performance bonds are something you should consider, because they make the company feel a lot better about doing business with you. If you have a performance bond, they don’t have to worry that you might not do what you said you would do. Performance bond companies offer these bonds to contractors, but in the past, contractors with bad credit were left out in the cold. If you have bad credit, though, you now have somewhere to go for your performance bonds.

There are some great performance bond companies out there who know that bad things happen to good people, and they know that you need to be able to work. They even make the performance bond application process fast and easy. Just go to their website, and you can fill out all the info there, then they will actually, believe it or not, send you your performance bond out to your own personal email inbox.

The BOOM heard in small business direct marketing world

February 18, 2010

No, it’s not the marketing dinosaur some are saying. Oh, email and internet/website marketing are clearly contenders. But there are some very valid reasons to revisit small business direct marketing. Direct marketing puts you in the drivers seat in terms of who sees your messages. You are sending directly to chosen customers. You are more likely to hit the nail on the head, because you already know what they like and have invested in. You can tailor your small business direct marketing to those specifications.

Often in small business, valuable information, such as sales leads and customer contact information fall by the wayside. When you take the opportunity to use small business direct marketing to specifically target your prospects, you uncover the dust and reveal some really substantial profits.

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