Expanding your commercial construction business is not for the faint of heart. It takes determination and dedication to take your business to new heights. Consider the following six tips for expanding your construction business and see how you can apply them to your current vision.
Take a Look at Your Current Budget and Finance Practices
An important consideration for growing your business is your finances. It can be expensive to expand and will require investing additional capital. One way of securing more cash can be taking on a partner or investor who can offer you funds and help you grow in return for a stake in the company. However, if you don’t want to bring a partner on board, you can look into some alternative opportunities, such as:
- Crowdfunding: You can establish a crowdfunding campaign on a crowdfunding platform describing your goals and obtain funding from individuals interested in contributing to your project.
- Grant Opportunities: You may be able to obtain funding from a variety of grant opportunities to expand your construction business.
- HEL (Home Equity Loan): If you are a homeowner, you can take advantage of the equity you have built up in your home. You can consider leveraging a home equity loan, which can provide you with the cash you can invest back into your business.
- Small Business Loan: Don’t forget to check out how small business loans work and how they can benefit your growth.
Not only is securing capital important, but you will also want to ensure that you are allocating your funds strategically. Think about what is important to you and where investing your money will give you the best return. Having good budgeting practices in place can help you avoid common financial mistakes these small businesses make. Having a better way to budget and keep track of your finances about projects. For example, you can leverage software to manage invoices, estimates, job costs, and job possibilities. Such tools can help you better budget and track your financial health as you take on more projects.
- Consider Opening a New Branch
Opening a new branch is a big endeavor. Therefore, it is essential to take a holistic approach and look at different aspects of expansion, one of which is your team.
When expanding, you will need to have your team members on board. Ideally, managers could help run operations at your current location while focusing on a new one. However, this could be a big change for staff in all positions within your company. Therefore, you will need to ensure your senior leaders are prepared and have the resources necessary to manage your team and operations successfully. If you feel that your staff is ready, then think about your goals for expansion.
Around the country, there are booming cities for commercial construction projects where you could grow your business and expand into a new market. Perhaps you’re looking to try something new, network, or expand your presence in a new city. With so many potential markets, it’s important to do your research. Every market presents its opportunities as well as challenges. Even if there may be many opportunities for projects, you need to consider the level of competition you may face. Check out your potential competitors and see what they are doing and how successful they are. Also, don’t forget about connections you have previously established—perhaps you have a reputation in a certain area from working on a previous project or through networking experiences.
- Consult a Marketing Team
When growing commercial construction business, nailing your marketing strategy can provide a huge return on your investment. Finding a niche base for lead generation can help you truly own a space, spark interest, and, ultimately, secure more contracts. Think about what your target is for expanding the construction business. What types of projects would you like to focus on? Who would you like to reach? All of these questions are important to ask yourself.
When you have a good idea of how exactly you would like to expand and your end goals, you can consult a marketing team to help you get there. Marketing services can help improve construction companies’ visibility through various media and help you generate more leads from your website. For example, ensuring your site is aesthetically pleasing through top-tier web design and that it has a comprehensive and consistently branded blog will improve your potential to reach the right audience. A marketing team can also help tailor your marketing campaigns to be aligned with your new market and target audience.
- Invest in Construction Software
When growing your commercial construction company, you must have the technological infrastructure to streamline your daily management for efficient operations. You can consider commercial project management software to help you boost productivity and grow your venture. Features such as project and financial management, job site collaboration, and CRM can help to track data in the cloud.
Business development tools can especially help you expand. Construction CRM can help you to better track and manage interactions and relationships you are growing. This will be key when you are growing your scope of reach. Nurturing numerous leads simultaneously can be challenging. However, by leveraging effective CRM, you will more easily be able to keep your accounts and contacts organized, ultimately helping you to better foster leads and customer relationships. You won’t have to worry about missing bids, and you will be able to secure more projects as you expand.
- Streamline Employee Onboarding and Engagement
Having a dedicated and talented team on your side is crucial for expanding your construction business. When securing more bids and projects, you will need to grow your team. Recruiting and hiring the right candidates is one thing, but getting them on board and up to speed can be a lengthy process. Therefore, you want to ensure a robust onboarding and training plan in place. This could be creating a mentoring system in which senior members from your commercial construction team are paired with employees to lead and grow. A mentor system helps build camaraderie trust and strengthens team morale necessary at the office or on a job site.
In addition to a mentor-mentee relationship, build streamlined training tutorials that can be easily accessed in the cloud. Such training programs can help employees acclimate to your tools, software, etiquette, and protocol. Skills learned in the training sessions can then be executed with their mentor for feedback.
- Network and Offer Your Expertise to Others
Growing your connections and networking can help you build yourself and your construction company’s reputation within the industry. Don’t hesitate to use platforms like LinkedIn to your advantage. Take the initiative and reach out to experts in various specialized trades. Starting a conversation with professionals online can help lead you to more opportunities. You could also serve as a resource for those looking to expand their knowledge. You can post your tips and discussion boards, offer online workshops, or even be a speaker at an in-person or virtual commercial construction conference.
If you are starting to expand your construction business, you should congratulate yourself. It takes a lot of grit and tenacity to maintain your business, let alone scale it. Growing your construction business is a big step, one that takes a well-thought-out and adequately executed plan. However, if you do your research, invest in the right tools, build connections and develop your team, you will set yourself up to not only reach new horizons but become a force in your new market.
