How will you grow your business in the New Year? At the surface, most people will answer that question by saying “sell more,” and “hopefully hiring some good salespeople”. A solid sales team helps create a great backbone for any home improvement company but it takes recruiting and retaining the right people.You can hear a great webinar about proven methods for building a great sales team here on this “Let’s Be Frank” series.

What is Your 2020 Growth Plan?

Here are some critical questions to ask yourself if “sell more” is your 2020 Growth Path:

• How many more leads do you have to have in order to “sell more”?
• How much will those leads cost you?
• How will you even get those leads?
• Who will install the additional jobs you sell?
• Does “selling more” mean your company needs to cover a wider area?
• If you need a wider area, how will you cover it physically? How will you market to it?
• Do you have the infrastructure to handle “selling more”? People? Equipment? Technology?
• Do you have the extra insurance and licenses you might need?
• Perhaps most importantly — do you really want the headaches and liability of “selling more”?

You see, we all often think of increased sales as the pathway to growth but increasing sales is difficult and expensive and, at the end of the day with all things considered, many contractors decide that they do not necessarily want a “bigger” business because of the headaches that would bring. What they really want is more profitability, not more sales.

That is where high-end residential metal roofing can play a role for savvy marketing-oriented home improvement contractors. I was talking recently with a contractor who had built a successful business selling replacement windows and asphalt shingles. Then he added an “entry-level” exposed fastener metal roofing product and has found a good market for it as well.

But, what he’s finding is that his profitability on the entry-level metal jobs is not all that different from what it is on asphalt shingles. The end result is that he took on a new product hoping it would bring him increased sales and increased profits but instead it’s primarily just flipped the same dollars from one product into another. He has a great installation crew but, if he’s going to really change his numbers, he’s going to need to recruit and train another good crew, which is not an easy thing to do these days as we all so painfully are aware!

After some good discussion, he agreed that a higher ticket, higher profit margin product is the only Path to Growth that is really achievable for his business. He began to think of a high-end metal roof that might sell for 3 – 4 times his current product yet offers 5 – 7 times the profitability per square. With a product like that, he can sell fewer jobs, have fewer crews, yet increase his bottom line significantly. That means he has to generate fewer leads and he can perhaps pull back on his footprint. (This is the type of company that Isaiah Industries supports every day with our unique metal roofing systems.)

At the crux of this is more focus on his sales process and making sure that he has a successful in-home sales program but, with that, he can see a great Path To Growth for 2020.

If you’d like to talk about your Path To Growth, give me a call at 1-800-543-8938 ext. 201 or drop me an email. Sometimes, the obvious “sell more” is not only impossible to achieve but it doesn’t get you what you really want – increased profitability. I look forward to dreaming and scheming over the possibilities for your company with you.

Warmest Regards,

Todd Miller, President
Isaiah Industries, Inc.