Small Construction Company Must-Haves
There’s a lot of competition in the construction industry, and it has a habit of chewing small businesses up and spitting them out. In fact, around 96% of construction companies fail to make it to the ten-year mark. With this in mind, you need to put processes in place to make sure that your small construction company can grow successfully beyond the first decade. To help you out, we’ve put together this series of must-haves.
Brilliant Leadership
Building a company is the first part of the journey, but it needs consistent quality leadership to stand any chance of success. Putting together a solid plan, vision, and general direction for the company can only come from those sitting at the top.
Whether your outlook for the future is positive or negative, you need to know that your attitudes and optics will trickle down to everyone inside your business. Therefore, even in the face of adversity, you need to make sure you keep a positive attitude with a growth mindset. When everyone in the business is working from the same plan, there’s much more opportunity for success.
A Quality Website
Even though construction is very physical, the world works in the digital landscape, which means having a high-quality website. In 2023, a website is the equivalent of a physical store, as it will likely be the first interaction many people have with your business. It needs to look great, be informative, be in line with your values, and be optimized well for all devices and search engines.
If constructing a website goes over your head, that’s perfectly fine – your skillset lies in the real world. Fortunately, you can leave that responsibility to a firm that offers construction website design services. Let the digital professionals take care of your website, while you focus on growing your business.
Fantastic Customer Service
Customers are what makes or breaks a construction company, as you need them to bring in revenue and grow. Therefore, you need to put a priority on customer satisfaction, as a fulfilled customer will most likely lead to more leads.
Keeping customers happy means more than giving them false hope because they need to hear it. Instead, you have to become a communication expert and only make promises you can keep. A customer will respect your business much more if you’re transparent with any potential issue with a project.
Excellence in customer service needs to be demonstrated across the entire business, which means spending time training your staff on customer interaction. After all, if a member of your team is disrespectful to a customer, it will taint their overall experience and image.
Reliable Employees
You are responsible for steering your construction company through the waters of growth, but your employees are the foundation for you to do this. When you’re not around, your team will act as the face of your business, which is a heavy responsibility. With this in mind, you need to treat your team with respect. If you do come across poor-quality employees, put policies in place to deal with them, and don’t let them drag your business down.
Supply Chain Diversity
When you’re just starting out, a couple of decent supply streams will suffice. However, once you begin taking on more expensive and expansive projects, you’re more likely to face supply chain issues. Therefore, during your growth period, you must diversify your supply chains. Having enough options means that you can overcome issues with ease, which will help with your customer satisfaction efforts.
Good Cash Flow
Cash flow is essential for all types of business, but it’s much more of a necessity for survival in the construction. For example, when you’re waiting for payments, balancing projects, and working to tight margins, you need to have the available cash to pick up the slack. If you need help with managing cash flow for your construction company, check out this insightful article.
Concrete Accounting Processes
You won’t stand a chance of growing your business successfully unless you know what’s going on financially. Therefore, you need to have concrete accounting processes in place, which will tell you exactly how much is coming in and what’s going out. Additionally, if you need to apply for business loans, the lender will need to see the inner workings of your business. After all, they need to make sure you’re in a good position to make the repayments.
This list of essentials is not exhaustive when it comes to construction, as there are things like marketing and tool sourcing. However, everything above will help set you up for future success, helping you to avoid becoming another failed business.
