John Kenney, CEO, Cotney Consulting Group
When it comes time to grow your roofing business, carefully prepare in advance to ensure success. Maintain the right balance between too much planning and not enough. While no plan is perfect, growth strategy plans are critical. Failing to plan properly for
growth can result in a real struggle, so know why you want to grow your business, the drawbacks and the gains. If you lack a good growth plan, your chances of exceeding your budget and schedule increase greatly.
Do you hope to gain new markets or territories, add more employees so your company can take on more work? To do so, you have to scale your operations strategically. First, be sure you have enough resources to handle the additional work, including workers and equipment
Formulate a good growth strategy using your experiences and information you collect about the roofing industry. This is a tried-and-true way to ensure your business will thrive amid the competition.
Profitability should always be the ultimate goal. Your roofing business needs a road map to succeed. Suppose the goal is to increase market share and calculate what percentage of the market you wish to gain. This helps hold you accountable for meeting your business objectives.
Break down each objective into steps. For example, to increase market share, actions may include giving incentives to loyal clients and changing your customer service tactics to appeal to more clients. Outline where you want to go and how you will get there.
Coming up with the right plan requires research into the industry. Question clients, examine your own experiences and study your more successful competitors’ growth strategies. Consider hiring a market researcher to conduct research in your specific areas of interest. For the best results, focus on your company’s specialty. This will help you determine the extent to which it can grow. Base your objectives on concrete factors.
Once you put a plan in place, monitor its progress and make changes as needed to ensure you get the results you seek. Such oversight can detect potential problems and correct them in a timely manner. Adjust for unexpected circumstances.
■ People are your business, so grow a successful team. Hire knowledgeable, dependable and skilled workers. Retain them by rewarding them for their efforts.
■ Lead your employees: do not just manage them. Employees will follow a great leader. Over-management leads employees to believe you do not trust their abilities.
■ Invest time and money in your company to earn even more business. Train your employees, purchase new equipment when needed and actively market your company.
■ Networking earns you more business. It will pay off in new business opportunities. Join local trade groups to build brand awareness for your company, find new vendors and generate sales leads. Give back to the community.
■ Find your niche and use it to grow. Instead of being known as a good roofing contractor, seek a reputation as the best roofing contractor for commercial or residential roofing installation.
■ Talk to people and they will talk about you and your company. Word of mouth is powerful as a marketing tool. Ask your best customers to spread the word about your business and the great work you do.
■ Take work that will make you a profit. More work is only beneficial if it puts more money in the bank. Be selective to be profitable.
■ Adaptation is the key to success. Do not be afraid of change. Roofing can be a volatile market, but you will come out ahead if you are willing to adjust to keep up with changing trends.
■ Do not sacrifice quality. Cutting corners to reduce costs will hurt your company. Your reputation for quality work will take a hit, so never compromise.
■ Happy clients should always be a priority. If you actively communicate with them on every aspect of a project, you become equal partners in decision making. Satisfied customers give great referrals.
Fix issues and set your short and medium-term goals to implement the best strategies. Build a sales lead system to estimate more jobs, win more jobs and install them correctly and efficiently. Target your challenges. Consider how fast you would like your company to grow to avoid the stress that comes with the territory. Is it time, a specific employee or is your team trying to work too fast? Focus on these issues first.
Getting good leads for projects is essential and when you do receive new leads, make sure you have a trained estimating team to bid on projects more quickly. This also gives you more time to focus on your company.
Consider an in-house estimating manager, if possible. If not, you or another top senior manager must manage the department’s results for takeoffs and estimates. If you are still manually taking plans off, use digital takeoff software to allow you to calculate
accurately and quickly. Estimating by hand is much too time consuming and you do not necessarily want to trust your subcontractors to bid accurately on your behalf. Use historical database pricing, which is highly accurate and reflects projects in your specific region.
Once the estimating is done, write a winning proposal. Take the time to be thorough, including what you will and will not include. Emphasize anything you think will not be crystal clear. Include a section on the project’s total amount, your payment terms and any other provisions you want to add.
Pull this all together to prepare for growth and success. Make hard decisions in advance to bring in more business that will impact your future success. Do not be pressured into making impulsive or unwise decisions. Instead, devise a plan and follow it.
John Kenney has over 45 years of experience in the roofing industry. He started his career by working as a roofing apprentice at a family business in the Northeast and worked his way up to operating multiple Top 100 Roofing Contractors. As CEO, John is intimately familiar with all aspects of roofing production, estimating and operations. During his tenure in the industry, John ran business units associated with delivering excellent workmanship and unparalleled customer service while ensuring his company’s
strong net profits before joining Cotney Consulting Group. If you would like any further information on this or another subject, you can contact John at jkenney@cotneyconsulting.com.
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