So, it’s time for you to grow your construction business. Whether you’re looking to expand into new markets or simply to make more money, you’ll need to plan carefully. It doesn’t matter whether you’re well established or whether you’ve been in the business for years; you’ll have to take a careful and well thought out approach.

This guide has been created so that you can make growing your construction business your business with ease. Read on for some super helpful information:

Start By Building An Incredible Team

An incredible team is the backbone of any business, however, this is especially true in construction. You need to make sure your employees are knowledgeable, and that you work on retaining them and rewarding them so that they stay with you. A high employee turnover will go against growing your business every time.

Turning Your Construction Company Into A 12 Month Business

Depending on where you are in the world, you may only have around 9 months a year when you can offer your main services. However, to keep people in a job and your profits up, you should consider expanding your services so they are in keeping with the season. For example, snow removal, installation of holiday lights, and other services can be offered. There’s a high chance that some of your regular clients will need some of these winter services done too.

Take A Look At Your Assess Your Internal Organization

If you’re going to improve and expand your business as much as possible, then you may need to take a look at your internal organization. Ask yourself some questions and figure out what you can improve on. Is your business financially stable? Are you able to retain your customers? How are people rating your business and giving you feedback? What’s your employee turnover like?

Take a long look at your business and be honest when you come up with your answers. If you don’t have employees who excel at customer service, for instance and you are getting complaints from customers, then you may want to consider hiring people who do excel in customer service. Alternatively, you can provide proper training for your current staff. Great customer service is a must!

Manage Your Business Properly By Leading

You need to know the difference between leading your team and managing your team. If you’re a great leader, you’ll know about it because your employees will happily follow you. However, if you try to manage everything your employees do, it’ll show them that you have zero confidence in their ability to do their jobs. This isn’t great for morale!

Invest In Your Business

You need to not only invest money into your business, but your time too. You may have dreams of being a detached entrepreneur whose business rumbles along nicely, but you’re going to need to get involved to make sure you’re using the correct equipment and technology. Employees also need to be trained properly, and you should be actively marketing your business.

Spread The Word

In any business, word of mouth is an extremely powerful way to get more business. This means you need to do your best work every single time, offering amazing customer service, and you’ll encourage your customers to tell others about your company.

Find Your Niche Or Speciality

Being good at everything is fine, but being known to be good at something specific is even better. Know what your strengths are and figure out where your niche market lies, or what you can specialise in. This will help to differentiate you from your competitors.

Start Networking

Networking is a brilliant way to meet people and spread the word of your business. A great way to network is to join your local trade association. When you know how to network for business, you’ll build brand awareness, generate more leads and find vendors.

Look At Your Marketing

Some people think that marketing campaigns are designed to attract new customers, but this should never be the case. These campaigns should be about getting profitable projects while ensuring current customers are happy. Ensuring you continue to contact your audience through email, social media and blog posts, means you will be able to demonstrate how your business solves their problems.

Bear in mind that marketing your business locally is best in the construction trade. You don’t have to market solely in the local area, but it’ll certainly help you to get more work and create more brand awareness. Start by making sure that your address, phone number and hours are available online and easily searchable. Attending chamber of commerce meetings or answering questions in a local newspaper forum can help you to market your business in different ways. On social networks like Facebook, you can advertise for free, but there are also paid options that you shouldn’t be afraid to try out.

Refine Your Online Business

Although your construction business is very much a practical business, you need to make sure your online business is as refined as your offline business. Consumers will be searching for your services online, so you need to make sure you have a professional looking website that works well. You could consider marketing your business website and your online store by creating some how-to videos that you could distribute on social networks, YouTube and your own site, which will help you to get more exposure and increase your reach.

Sharing your knowledge is a must, as this will help people to see that you know what you are doing, and more often than not, they’ll decide they’d rather it was you doing the work anyway. This ties in a lot with marketing, and is potentially the reason you should consider investing in a professional to take care of the online aspects of things so you can focus on what you’re good at.

Figure Out Ways You Can Add Equipment And Diversify

Figuring out additional services you can offer may not require new equipment. However, you may need to invest in new pieces to be able to offer something brand new to your customers. If you’re unsure if whether this is going to be a worthwhile investment, you could potentially rent out the equipment before purchasing. There are sites like ConstructionTrailerSpecialists.com that can offer equipment you may need at an affordable monthly rate. If you do decide that this wasn’t a good idea for your business, you will have learned a good lesson and it won’t be as expensive.

Flexibility And Adaptability

Change should be seen as a good thing. If you’re not willing to be more flexible in your business, then it’s only a matter of time before you become stagnant and stop growing. You need to adapt to the market and remain flexible at all times.

Make Customer Service A Priority

Your customers need to feel like they are important to you, so make sure you treat them like a priority. The customer isn’t always right, but you need to do your best to make them feel like they’ve had a great experience with you every single time. Satisfied customers are the only way to get great word of mouth reviews and recommendations, and of course improve your customer retention. Make sure your team are all on the same page on how customers should be treated and spoken to. Just because you are a very hands on, practical company, doesn’t mean your customers should be treated a different way to different types of business.

Find A Business Coach Or Mentor

A business coach or mentor should be able to look at your business objectively and guide you in solving any problems you may be facing. Ideally, your mentor will have done what you are doing already, and be able to introduce you to vendors/investors. You may be able to find this person in person or online. Make sure you hold out for the right person!

Be Proactive

There’s a big difference between being proactive and reactive. Make sure you’re actively seeking out opportunities that can help you to grow and retain your business. Reach out to people who could help you and come up with new ideas that can help you to get bigger and better than ever before. Read up on people who have done what you’re looking to do and how they handled their business/made decisions. You can’t just wait for opportunities to knock on your door!

Become A Smart Decision Maker

Making decisions is all part and parcel of being a business owner. Making smart decisions can be scary, especially since you need to have confidence that you’re doing the right thing. However, it’s important to remember that making any decision is better than making no decision at all. Analysis paralysis never helped a business. Just don’t make impulsive decisions that you haven’t considered properly. In your heart of hearts you probably know the decision you want to make, so don’t second guess yourself.

Grow your construction business in no time with these pointers!