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To Grow Your Business
A GUIDE TO GROWTH FOR INDUSTRIAL PAINTING CONTRACTORS
Looking to grow your industrial painting business? Applying the F&F growth method - focusing on your strengths and fixing your weaknesses - can provide the key to becoming a major player in the industry.
The first step is determining your strengths and weaknesses. Best performed by a third party to eliminate bias and ensure accurate results, an effective means of gauging your strengths and weaknesses is by mailing a questionnaire to a wide pool of customers and prospects. Ask them to rate you and your competitors in terms of on-time performance, on-bid performance, on-spec performance, relationship maintenance and similar categories. Consider offering an incentive for completing the survey. Many professional research organizations include a single dollar bill in each envelope as a good-faith token of appreciation for completing the survey.
While your view of reality may differ from that pictured by your survey results, remember that you are measuring the market's perception, which is often more important than reality.
Once your survey shows what the market perceives as your strengths and weaknesses, act upon this information.
If it reveals strengths, focus on them. Say one of your customers identifies relationship maintenance as one of your strengths. Consider the following approach to maximize the benefits of this strength:
First, ratchet up the level of service you provide this customer. Consider a long-term contract, single-source responsibility, a dedicated rep or a periodic inspection service. Then develop a small brochure that demonstrates how you service this account, and distribute this piece to other potential customers in similar markets.
Usually two types of weaknesses will be revealed in this study: those that can be fixed externally via acquisitions, joint ventures, marketing agreements or licensing; and those that can be fixed internally.
Let's say the survey identifies a lack of presence in a given geographic area as a weakness. An external fix involving an acquisition could be in order. Consider the following:
Develop criteria (size, capabilities, location, hard assets) that describes the perfect acquisition to fix the weakness, and independently build a list of existing prospects. After screening the prospect list carefully against your criteria, a few are likely to shake out. Study closely those that survive, and approach the prime targets tactfully but firmly. If they're receptive, negotiate a "doable" deal, devise the consolidation plan that fixes your weakness, and close with dispatch.
A weakness such as on-time performance, on the other hand, could require an internal fix.
Try conducting brainstorming sessions among your personnel. Not only can this practice produce an original solution, it gets your company working in concert. Be sure to include personnel representing various functions - not just sales - in the sessions, disallow negative commentary, invite participants to build on previous ideas, and keep a transcript of the meeting.
Study the results of these sessions and pick out the ideas with merit. Then assign task responsibilities and execute the plan.
If you've identified weaknesses that have no practical fix, this part of your company should be packaged and sold. If you divest under-performing segments, you automatically improve the profitability of your remaining operation. The abandoned effort could mean you can dedicate experienced manpower to your strengths. Best of all, divestiture generates cash.
In summary, focusing on your strengths and fixing (or selling) your weaknesses can produce a tight, growing, more profitable operation. But it requires hard work, some risk, personnel changes and appropriate expenditure.
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