Congratulations – you’ve taken a step in the right direction to grow your window and door business! The next challenge however is to understand how to go about scaling your business for growth. Promoting your business online, generating more leads, manufacturing and selling more products – sounds so easy when you read it like that, but selling like crazy isn’t the best recipe for scaling your business for growth.
Business growth, in some instances, can be extremely challenging – going through a time of change. As you grow and the number of sales orders increase, you want to avoid having orders fall through the cracks, miscommunication, not enough manufacturing capacity and making costly mistakes. To do this, you have to take a look at how you operate in business – your systems and processes, infrastructure and machinery, how you manage your supply chain, orders and manufacturing. Then ensure you have the capability and capacity to continue delivering a quality product and delivering it on time.
Scaling your business requires communication, planning, funding, the right systems and processes, technology and technology partners.
Below are 5 steps you can follow to help grow your business:
1. Evaluate your business
Establish an understanding of the current capacity of each department if you don’t already have this information on hand. Identify if your teams could realistically sustain any increase in momentum to support growth.
If you find your staff are already working to full capacity, take a further look into how they work. Is there a business tool you could put in place to help them free up some time? There are almost definitely some parts of your processes you can and should automate, moving away from manual and paper-based work practices. (Download our Software Solutions for Small Business cheat sheet for some suggestions on where to start.)
2. Goal setting, resourcing and funding
If your goal is to scale beyond your current capacity, you will require additional funding and resources. How many new customers or new sales orders do you anticipate receiving in the first year of growth? What revenue do you want to be achieving a year from now? Ensure when setting these goals that they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound (SMART). A good place to start with identifying your future resourcing requirements to support these goals is to put together a sales forecast. Work backwards from there to assess the additional expenses and resources you would need in order to achieve these goals. Take into consideration adding new technology, people, infrastructure and systems to manage these new customers and forecasted sales orders.
Check with local chamber of commerce or business associations in your industry, to understand if you could be eligible for any business grants to help fund your growth. Another way to raise capital for your business growth is to take on a partner or an investor who shares a common ethos with how you run your business. Or alternatively you could approach your bank lender with a business plan, to apply for a loan.
3. Plan to increase sales
Once you’ve identified how much spare capacity you have, or you have a goal to increase sales orders by a certain percentage over the next year, begin planning on how you intend filling the gap between where you are now, and where you want to be. There are a few ways you could do this:
– Existing Customers
The easiest place to start is by selling more of your products to your customers, in marketing terms this is called market penetration. They already love your quality, service, location, fast turn-around times etc. Are there products you can upsell that would increase their spend? Upselling is the practice of encouraging customers to switch to higher-end, feature rich products carrying a higher price tag. A great example here is to switch your customer from the basic profile to a slim profile, pitch the benefit as being an improved aesthetic for a more modern design. Or, upgrading glass to laminate or toughened glass. The benefit here would be a safer more secure window, reduction in noise and added thermal properties as less energy is required for heating and cooling.
You could also promote new products to your customers, known as product development. This involves cross-selling, so your sales team could suggest complimentary products to add to incoming orders. An example of this is to offer a door option complete with doggy door already fitted. Or look to introduce a new range of insect screens or high grade security screens to compliment your existing window and door products.
– New Customers
You already have a range of “components” on offer if you like, investigate how these could be used in a different environment to attract new customers. This is known as market development. Some of our customers, especially in outlying areas, aim to be a one stop shop and grow their customer base by supplying a large variety of similar or related products such as glass splashbacks for kitchens, custom shower glass and glass balustrade or pool fencing for example.
You could consider a totally new product range to attract a whole new customer segment, this is known as diversification and it is a higher risk strategy. You’re likely not familiar with the product or the market, so this new venture will take up a bit of your time to fully investigate. But, if you are confident you’ve found a gap in your local market, it could be a worthwhile strategy resulting in “having your eggs in a few different baskets”. It may even allow you to charge premium pricing for a while at least, so could be quite beneficial if done right. An example of this is branching out to supply gutters and down pipes or roofing materials. Your windows and doors with their complimentary products will be the “bread and butter” of your business, but the gutters and down pipes or roofing materials may be the “cream”.
4. Get ready for digital transformation
– Keep updated on the new technologies disrupting your industry
The marketplace is more crowded than ever before. A lot of your competitors are already embracing technology to help scale and grow their business. Many businesses were forced into this space in 2020, adapting to a global pandemic while keeping their business operational. Embracing and leveraging technology in your business will allow you to do more with less.
Keep yourself informed by signing up to e-newsletters from market leaders in your industry, read industry relevant publications, attend industry exhibitions and networking events (some of these are now taking place online or in webinar format). Familiarize yourself with new innovations and technologies that are interrupting our industry such as 4IR and Industry 5.0. Share this knowledge with your employees and encourage a tech-savvy workforce by hosting internal training workshops, lunch & learns or leading informal discussions.
– Digital Marketing and online presence
Use digital marketing to your advantage to help grow your business and acquire new customers. Many businesses are already making use of online and digital marketing strategies through Google Ads, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Digital and Social Media Advertising, email marketing and through an optimized and active website, drawing in, connecting and communicating with current and prospective customers.
If you have a website, that is a great position to be in, but here are some questions you can ask yourself:
- Is your website in line with your branding, e.g. has it been designed in line with your brand personality and have you used your corporate font and branding assets such as your logo?
- Has it been created in your business brand/corporate colors?
- When last did you review your website?
- How often do you update your website with new content – news updates, sharing blog articles etc.?
- What is the goal of your website; to provide information, lead generation, to be used as a product catalogue?
It is important to be consistent with your brand identity across multiple online and offline channels in your business. This helps your customers and prospects see your company as a trusted and consistent, professional brand to partner with.
If you don’t have a website and you’re not sure where to start, it doesn’t need to be a costly exercise involving web developers and custom design. Take a look at a few of the free options you can use to create a simple yet effective website below. Most of them have online video tutorials or support resources available to help you set up your website with whatever goal you have in mind:
Squarespace | WordPress | Weebly | Wix
Depending on your target audience, there are also several social media platforms available with options to help grow your business too, the most common being Facebook and Instagram, as well as Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. But, it is also a good idea to keep an eye out for any new upcoming social media platforms such as TikTok and Clubhouse.
– Targeted/Personalized online messaging
In order to reach your ideal customers online, you’ll need to break up the market into smaller segments and create targeted messaging to attract a specific group of customers within that audience. Once you’ve identified your ideal customer, create a customer persona to further understand their pain points and describe how these customers will benefit from using your product or service. By creating targeted online messaging, you are speaking directly to your defined audience where the pain points and solutions will resonate more deeply. This will help to get your business noticed online and result in a higher quality of converted leads for your sales team to follow up.
5. Seek out technology partners
A common misconception we’ve seen in the window and door industry is when a business underestimates the ongoing work involved in building, supporting and maintaining internal systems to assist in their growth. As a business evolves and grows, the solutions and systems put in place should enable that growth, not hinder it.
A good technology partner will have deep insights into your particular industry as well as the integral workings of your business and processes, derived from years of experience. Using this knowledge to innovate for the future is a sure sign that you won’t be left with outdated or unsupported technology.
A genuine technology partner will also be supportive, not just in offering good customer service, but working together to ensure the projects you take on are set up to achieve success.
In summary – technology will enable you to achieve many things in your window and door business, but ensuring that you have the right technology partner onboard will set you on a course of evolutionary success.
If you’d like to understand why so many of our customers in the window and door industry choose to partner with us, sign up for your free demo below:
