You’ve finally made it.
Your construction company is booming, and you’re ready to expand. But as excited as you are about growing your business, you can’t rush into scaling without a plan. If you’re unprepared or scale too fast, your business will suffer.
In this article, we’ll cover the six essential steps to successfully scale your construction company. Let’s get started!
How to Grow Your Construction Business
Perfect Your Products & Services
Some companies want to grow so much that they decide to scale first and fix product problems later. But that doesn’t work. The greater the demand, the harder it is to meet while changing the product because you’ll be doubling your workload.
As you dive into expanding your business, look at what could slow or stop your growth. Take some time to identify roadblocks. This could involve thoroughly reviewing your current operations, talking to your team about their challenges, or analyzing customer feedback.
If you find any product or service roadblocks, figure out how you want to approach them. For example,
- If you’ve noticed your team struggling with framing lately, offer a short training session.
- If customers complain about how their ductwork is installed, you might find another installation method.
Pinpointing these areas for improvement helps you address issues earlier so expansion goes more smoothly.
Even if you believe your products and services are as good as they can be, there’s always something you can improve. To see where to improve, try reading reviews, collecting customer feedback from a survey, or testing your product.
Inspecting your products and services will help you give your customers the highest quality possible. And when customers notice your craftsmanship, you’ll create a loyal customer base that leads to more jobs and referrals.
Get Organized
Organization keeps employees focused and empowers business owners to grow operations. Being organized provides three other advantages for construction businesses:
- Increased efficiency. An organized workplace helps you be more productive, saving time and unnecessary stress.
- Higher-quality results. Staying organized helps you avoid crucial mistakes, such as missing appointments, project details, or instructions.
- More professionalism. Professionalism sends a positive impression to your customers, communicates trust and size, builds a good reputation, and reduces liability.
You can help your construction company appear more professional in four key ways:
- Establish workplace ethics, rules, and expectations. Clearly communicate goals, company policies, and how to handle situations so employees can practice self-management, complete tasks, and exceed expectations.
- Keep a nice physical appearance. At work, you represent your company and need to make a good impression on clients. Dress appropriately and maintain a high standard for hygiene and grooming.
- Use appropriate language. Your language says a lot about you and your professionalism. No matter who you’re talking to at the workplace, you should avoid swearing and keep sensitive subjects, like politics, to yourself.
- Go paperless. Nothing looks less professional than an office with stacks of documents and sticky notes scattered all over the room. Plus, going paperless lets you have mobile access to information from anywhere, not just your office.
According to ARMA International, the average employee wastes 3.5 hours a week and $5251 a year searching for information. That’s why it’s so important to stay organized at work. Here are a few simple tips to help you get organized today!
How to Start Getting Organized
- Clean out your desk. Get rid of the non-essentials, put paperwork in its place, file your emails, and keep regularly used items at your desk within reach.
- Clear your mind. Aim to get around 7 hours of sleep a night, don’t multitask or overwhelm yourself with decisions, and take plenty of breaks at work.
- Prioritize your tasks. Identify what goals you need to accomplish, complete them in order, and create a schedule with deadlines for completing tasks.
Polish Your Processes
What are business processes? They’re the series of steps you take to complete a task or achieve a goal in your business. They include how you manage your projects from start to finish, and they will make or break your company.
If you don’t have a process, it’s nearly impossible for your business to grow efficiently. You’ve got to maximize your productivity and time, not just with physical labor but with everything else you’re doing too. Find a way to efficiently do tasks like:
- Taking job site pictures
- Talking to your customers
- Making estimates
- Getting crews out on the job with work orders
- Scheduling jobs and appointments
- Tracking communication
Take a moment to examine how your construction business operates, from sales to appointment follow-ups. Tracking your processes might seem like a waste of time, but it can save you from major problems down the road. Write your processes down so everyone can reference them.
This should also be where you check how closely your construction business follows those processes. No matter how great your processes are, they can’t do much good if no one uses them.
One of the best ways to improve your processes is to use a construction software like JobNimbus. A construction software system structures your processes, so your team follows the same steps for every project.
Construction software can also help your construction company grow through integrations and automations.
Integrate Systems
Many construction companies use several different platforms to run their business. All those apps, platforms, and open tabs get harder to manage when you grow your company. Save time by simplifying all your systems into one platform.
A software like JobNimbus integrates with a variety of construction industry tools, so you have everything you need in one place. For example, you might use QuickBooks to keep track of all your accounting information.
JobNimbus has a two-way sync with QuickBooks, so any information you input will be up to date on the desktop or online versions of QuickBooks. You can easily find accurate accounting data without ever having to leave JobNimbus.
Create Automations
What’s time-consuming now will only get worse as your business grows, and repetitive tasks are the worst offenders of all. But automations take care of those tasks for you so you can focus your attention on what matters.
Automations are part of the software that can cause something to happen at set times or in specific circumstances. You can make custom time-based or event-based automations that do what your business needs most.
- Time-based automations: Set up your automations to do something at a certain time, such as reminding a customer about their construction appointment the day before the job.
- Event-based automations: Set up your automations to do something when something else happens, like sending an email after a customer signs your estimate.
Automations provide several advantages to construction companies like yours. Here are just a few that will help you scale your business:
- Save time. Automation fulfills menial tasks and frees up your time for more meaningful work.
- Drive speed. Finish tasks faster so you can move on to other projects and get more done in a day.
- Get the right info at the right time. Send information like follow-ups or project updates to the right departments so people can communicate quickly and get on the same page.
- Cut costs: Automating your workflows reduces the risk of potential mistakes, which ties directly to business and overhead costs.
- Improve employee engagement: Repetitive, basic tasks can drain morale and leave your employees feeling like zombies. Freeing them to concentrate on work that utilizes their full abilities will increase engagement and job satisfaction.
- Keep processes uniform: Automation makes your processes consistent and reliable by ensuring that things are done the same way every time.
Figure out Funding
It’s an unfortunate fact that business expansion requires more funds. You might want to upgrade your equipment, get new technology, or move into another office. No matter your plans, you must find a way to get the capital you need.
One option is to use your personal funds and bootstrap your construction business. But personally funding your company isn’t for everyone.
Construction business owners can also look into grants, business credit cards, and loans. Check out the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s helpful guide about common business funding options for more ideas.
If you can prove that your business is profitable, you’ll have an easier time getting others to fund it. Profitability shows you’re running your business well and securing a steady cash flow. To see how profitable your construction company is, you need to understand your costs, profit margin, and markup.
Regardless of your chosen funding path, be sure to map it out so you know how to move forward.
Grow Your Team
Whether growing the size of your business or starting a secondary location, you’ll need more team members.
If you’re opening another location, take a look at how many people it takes to operate your current location. That number gives you a rough estimate of how many employees you’ll need. Keep in mind, though, that you can start with fewer employees and add more once you get off the ground.
If you’re building your current team, ask yourself where you need more staff the most. Do you have enough construction contractors to get work done quickly? Do you have enough sales representatives to help all your customers? Will you hire contractors or turn to subcontractors?
To scale your company, you want to work with people who set realistic goals and take action. Surround yourself with people who want the same things but have different strengths than you. They can help you turn areas where you lack into strengths.
Now is the time to find the best people for your team. Don’t forget to fill new management positions to oversee your growing staff.
Spread the Word About Your Business
Marketing can naturally bring new customers to your business. If your current marketing strategy is working, amp it up. If it isn’t working (or you don’t have a marketing plan), try different marketing methods to find the most effective one for your construction company.
Consider marketing strategies like billboard advertising, emailing, referral programs, and search engine optimization to get your business in front of more eyes.
When you’re spreading awareness of your construction business, stay focused on the results. Your efforts should result in new customers—if they don’t, it’s time to create a new strategy.
Successfully Grow Your Construction Business
Growing your construction business might seem daunting, but taking the right steps puts you on the path to success. With some planning, foresight, and introspection, you’ll see more customers and income.
If your goal is to grow, let JobNimbus help you evolve your construction company. JobNimbus provides the tools you need to scale your business. Take JobNimbus for a free 14-day test run to see what it can do for you.
One Response
You made a good point about the importance of inspecting the services of your company to improve their quality as much as possible. I think that a good way to ensure high-quality services is to work with high-quality materials. I’d recommend looking for a materials supplier that has a good reputation among its past clients.