Getting bigger projects and having more clients isn’t all it takes to scale your mechanical contracting business. Growing too fast without a strategy in place will cause you to miss deadlines, spend more than what your budget allows and all in all, you’ll land yourself in complete and utter chaos. Many contractors expand too fast because everyone thinks growth is the most important thing in the world for business. But the truth is, you only want sustainable growth.
Wondering how to get it right? In short, you need to be strategic. Growth isn’t just saying “yes” to all the jobs you can find, but about making sure that your business can handle that growth and still stay profitable and high-quality.
Read on and you’ll find out about how you can take your business to the next level – the right way.
The Best Strategies for Sustainable Growth
Regardless of the strategy/approach you’ll take, firstly you need to get your licensing in order. A valid license for mechanical contracting is required in all states of the U.S. What’s different is the experience required to get the license as well as the renewal period. Also, the licensing exam may be different across different states.
| State | Experience Required for License (in years) | License Renewal Period (in years) |
| Tennessee | 3+ | Every 2 |
| California | 4+ | Every 2 |
| Texas | 4+ | Every 1 |
| Ohio | 5+ | Every 3 |
If you live in Tennessee and you want to become a mechanical contractor, you’ll need to have at least 3 years of experience in the field. Also, once you have your license, you’ll need to renew it every 2 years. And each renewal cycle, as well as the initial licensing process requires you to pass an exam. This is why it’s best to utilize Tennessee mechanical contractor license exam preparation in order to pass the exam on the first go and save money on test retakes.
As you can see in the table above, each state has its own set of rules, but the core is the same – You need a license, some amount of experience in the field to qualify, a test, and there are renewal periods.
Once you’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s time to get your hands dirty.
Work is going great and you’re looking to get as much of it as possible until one day, you realize you have too much on your plate and you’re missing deadline after deadline. Your clients are unhappy and you feel pressure 24/7.
All of this happened because you had no plan. Here’s how to prevent it.
- Research the Market and Find the Best Opportunities
Before you make a big move, do your homework and see where the market is headed. There are new trends, new technologies, and regulations popping up left and right, which means you’ll need to adapt. For instance, being sustainable and energy efficient is a major selling point for all kinds of clients. If you notice there’s more and more demand for these services, why not specialize in that?
Your priority should be to find out what your clients want, what they’ll need in the future, and then position your business in a way that’s appealing to them.
- Expand the Services You Offer
You’ll hit a ceiling if you offer just one type of service and you even risk being obsolete in the near future. This is why you need to expand and bring in new clients. Expanding will also get you more revenue from the clients you already have.
You can also grow if you partner with builders, architects, or real estate developers to get bigger projects and more referrals. The point of expanding is to find the right addition to what you’re already an expert in and make your business more valuable in the market.
- Make Your Operations More Efficient
Your business grows as the workload grows and if you don’t have a good system in place, your job will become chaotic and stressful. If you’ve researched what successful contractors do, you probably noticed that they invest in tools that help them stay organized and productive.
One good example of such tools is project management software that you can use to track jobs, manage your budget, and check that everything’s running according to the schedule. If you don’t have a system, your projects will go over budget and fall behind.
- Invest in Technology
Technology will completely change the way your business runs – for the better. Cloud-based management systems will let you access details on your projects from anywhere in the world and remote monitoring systems will help you spot issues before it’s too late (or too expensive to fix).
For instance, you can use smart sensors to track how your equipment is performing, so there’s fewer emergency repair calls.
A CRM system is also something that’s great to have because it will help you keep track of client interactions, schedule follow-ups, and make sure you don’t miss leads and opportunities.
- Build a Strong Workforce
If your business is growing, your team has to be able to handle it without the quality of their work dropping. The way this happens is by hiring skilled professionals and having a good onboarding process that can get them up to speed fast.
It’s important to bring in the right people, but it’s also important to keep them, so don’t forget that training and certifications can help immensely when it comes to staying on top of the latest technologies, practices, etc.
Conclusion
That “work smarter, not harder” slogan is such a cliché and it’s so overused you almost cringe when you see it. But the thing is, that’s exactly what you want to do because that’s the secret sauce for success. It’s tempting to just go into it trying to get as much work as possible because you’d think that more work equals more money, and that equals success.
It’s not so simple, though. Growth has to be manageable, otherwise it’s not really growth.
