3 Best Practices for Organic Sales Growth

When it comes to increasing sales in the construction industry, there’s always room for improvement. Doing so rarely comes easy, with referrals and word-of-mouth representing the primary sources of new business for contractors.

With such an extended method to each sale, organic growth — that is, sales growth not related to acquisitions or consolidation — should be a focus of every construction company owner. Let’s look at three best practices for achieving it.

1. Attentive customer service

Providing your clients with premier customer service is more than smiling and offering a handshake. Are your employees really hearing clients’ problems and concerns? Do their solutions not only fix the issue but also, whenever possible, exceed the customer’s expectations?

The ability to conduct productive dialogues with your customers is key to growing sales. Creating an ongoing conversation can be as simple as holding regular update meetings or phone calls between principals, or checking periodically with project managers about customer feedback.

Trust and honesty are critical. These traits will increase the likelihood that the client will remain happy and the project will succeed. Thereby, your odds of getting a referral will rise — along with the stronger possibility that your customer will voluntarily sing your praises to anyone who will listen.

2. Smart marketing

Do you often find yourself wondering why all of your marketing channels aren’t generating new leads for your construction business? Most likely, it’s because some of those channels are no longer the right fit. Marketing is all about getting your company’s name and logo in front of exactly who wants to hire you.

This is why you might want to step back and reassess the nature and strengths of your business. If you work directly with the buying public, you may want to cast as wide a net as possible. But if you’re a commercial contractor or subcontractor, you might grow sales more organically by focusing on participation in professional networking groups, social organizations and trade associations.

3. Great employees

Ultimately, people are what make or break a construction business. Even the best idea can fail if ill-equipped or uncommitted employees are marketing, selling or producing the product or service. Of course, as you well know, employing talented, industrious staffmembers requires much more than simply getting them to show up for work.

First, employees must be well trained. This means they need to know both: 1) how to do their jobs, and 2) how to contribute to sales growth. You might ask: Does every worker really contribute to sales? In a sense, yes, because quality work — from laborers on the job site to executives in corner offices — drives sales.

Second, once an employee is well trained, he or she must be retained. Happy workers are more likely to preach the excellence and values of your company to their family and friends. Sales may occur as a result.

The right moves

These best practices are, obviously, general in nature. The specific moves you need to boost your construction company’s sales organically will depend on your market and specialty. Work with your business and financial advisors to pinpoint those moves and then implement them in a cost-effective manner.