As a small business construction owner, you may continually be searching for ways to improve your current business practices. Being proactive and innovative can increase the chances of long-term success, as they’ll allow your company to stand out from local competitors. According to Small Business Trends, about half of small business construction companies will fail within the first three years. Below, you’ll find management tips to help your company grow and thrive.
Re-Evaluate Your Attitude
As the manager of a small construction company, your attitude and outlook is contagious. If you think that you are going to be successful and that this is going to be a good year, then it likely will be. But, if you believe that you are going to fail this year and that it’s going to be bad for business, the outlook is grim.
Managers with positive attitudes pass this down through the company. A positive attitude could create an environment where employees appreciate coming into work every day. This, in turn, could allow you to complete more projects on time, leaving your customers happy while improving your reputation.
Invest In Your Sales Staff
Customers are not always going to come to you. It’s imperative that you work to hire new clients. Make sure that you hire quality salespeople who are well-trained in all of the steps of the sales process. They must also be well-versed in prospecting. They should be able to find prospects in their everyday activities and know how to speak with them regarding your business. Passing off outreach and sales to other team members also allows you to focus more on the day-to-day operations of the company.
Invest In Marketing
Another successful tip that could help your small business grow is by investing in marketing. Pew Research finds that nearly 90 percent of Americans are online, although some other firms estimate that this figure is much higher. Many customers use internet search engines like Google and Bing to find a local contractor. They are no longer flipping through an eight-inch-thick book trying to find a phone number.
Investing in marketing campaigns and putting yourself out there could allow you to connect with customers unlike ever before. Unfortunately, not enough small business construction owners invest in a dedicated marketing plan. This could provide a window of opportunity for you, however, allowing you to stand out from your competitors. Not all of your marketing needs to be online, either. Opportunities exist throughout the community. Consider things like:
• Sponsoring a hole at a charity golf tournament
• Sponsor a seminar with your local chamber of commerce
• Visit a local service club
In order to help your business thrive, you must get your company name out there.
Evaluate Your Overhead
As a small business owner, every penny matters. You should continuously be looking through your business to identify areas of unnecessary expenses. This could range from things such as company cell phones to additional offices. Make sure that your business expenses are critical to your company’s success and day-to-day operations. If not, consider taking it off the books. Doing so could provide you with extra capital to help grow your business or pay off any debt.
Modernize System Processes
No longer are the days where small business construction owners must worry about manual timesheets. What a nightmare those things were – the odds of losing them was tremendous, as too were the hours wasted as individuals had to enter them into a spreadsheet and run payroll manually.
Those simple pieces of paper turned out to be an outrageous waste of company resources. Consider upgrading to time clock software that allows employees to log their hours from their phones.
