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Business advice for construction: Electrician | How our advice helps

by | Jun 22, 2022

Our business advice service offers business owners a long-term supportive environment to develop their business. Greenway works with the business owner to build structures and procedures that will increase profitability, sales and turn your business into a powerhouse.

We operate as virtual managing directors. Giving you the benefit of our years of experience working in multiple industries and businesses with 5 to 500 employees. This business growth case study is applicable to a number of the construction businesses we work with.

STAGE 1

Costs, market, sales, capital.

STAGE 2

3 legs to a stool, pivot, no ego.

STAGE 3

Systems & scale.

Year 1: Company Issues

Small construction business with 3.5 employees. The business owner works on-site doing work themselves with 2 employees helping. There is a part-time office admin staff member who handles accounts and answering the office phone.

The company has 2 x 10-year-old vans that have no financing. The business owner has leant the company money every year to keep the business in operation. There are directors loans totalling €40,000. The business had posted losses for the last 3 years. The owner struggles to manage the business and find the time to plan a future for the business.

Year 1: Company Issues

Problems
Pricing jobs.
Organising work.
No coherent plan for growth.

COVID hit 2 months into working with the business.

This delayed some actions by 2 or 3 months.

What we did

  1. Took the current business and carried out a financial analysis to find all costs.
  2. Created a pricing model to allow them to know what they needed to charge on each job.
  3. Created a construction marketing plan to scale their sales & marketing efforts. This involved new website & a construction SEO plan.
  4. Margin flexibility lets them charge different prices depending on the type of customer.
  5. Found the work that was the most profitable and focused on building those sales pipelines.
  6. Put in place a job management program to ensure jobs are being managed proactively instead of reacting all the time.
  7. Advised on staff changes and hiring of new staff.
  8. Made adjustments to their online profile to increase inbound sales calls.
  9. Started using a lead generation tool to increase sales.
  10. Gave the business weekly sales targets in values and the number of days work they needed to book each month.

Result

  1. The business is on track to make a net profit of €85,000 this year.
  2. The business owner was able to increase their salary by €25,000 per year.
  3. Growth structure in place for 2021 to make €139,000 net profit.
  4. Growth structure in place for 2022 to make €210,000 net profit.
  5. Business is working efficiently. Costs are 10% less than budgeted.
Debbie Cheevers

Debbie Cheevers

Qualified Financial Advisor (QFA), Technician Member of the Irish Taxation Institute

Debbie was born in Dublin and graduated from NCAD with a degree in Visual Communication. She brings a strong customer service background to Greenway.

Debbie qualified as APA in 2017 and a fully qualified financial advisor (QFA) in 2018. She believes that product knowledge is key to helping customers make the right choices.

In 2022 Debbie gained a tax qualification as a Technician Member of the Irish Taxation Institute.

Greenway Financial Advisors Limited is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Registered No. C168372