8 Ways To Help Your Contracting Business Weather Economic Uncertainty

When the pace of my phone calls and text mes­sages start to pick up, I know change is in the air…

And right now, most of the calls, texts, and emails I’m receiv­ing are in regard to our strange eco­nom­ic cli­mate. Con­trac­tors want to know if I’m see­ing leads slow across the coun­try, if there are things they should be doing dif­fer­ent­ly, and if they should be wor­ried at all.

The short answer? It varies. I see some clients doing well, con­sis­tent with years past (and stick­ing to their growth tra­jec­to­ry), while oth­ers seem to be expe­ri­enc­ing a strange drop in leads despite heavy mar­ket­ing efforts.

I see it much like prepar­ing for a poten­tial storm: wor­ry­ing about it doesn’t do any good, but it’s def­i­nite­ly advis­able to watch the weath­er and make prac­ti­cal steps and informed deci­sions. That way, whether you get a pass­ing sprin­kle or are slammed, you’ve pre­pared the best you can.

Is this anoth­er 2008 crash? Prob­a­bly not, but many of the con­trac­tors in my cir­cles who weath­ered that par­tic­u­lar storm are still con­cerned, and under­stand­ably so. Rather than stress about it, let’s see what we learned from the ​‘08 dis­as­ter and see how we can use it to pro­tect your busi­ness now.

1. Cash is king

Now is the time to think care­ful­ly before spend­ing your cash. Is it the best time to pur­chase more equip­ment for your busi­ness (that isn’t 100% nec­es­sary), or a vehi­cle, boat, RV, or vaca­tion home for you? In some cas­es pur­chas­ing new items for your busi­ness can be a good idea, but just make sure you have a han­dle on your finances and avoid unnec­es­sary debt. Keep your books lean and mean.

2. Every lead counts

This is the time to improve the process­es in your busi­ness, includ­ing how you han­dle and view the leads you are get­ting. Make sure that you become less par­tic­u­lar about the leads and instead deter­mine how to best nur­ture them. Every one, even the ​“low­er-qual­i­ty” ones, cost you mon­ey and may be hard­er to come by if the econ­o­my con­tin­ues to slow. This could mean it’s time to invest in sys­tems that help with automa­tion, bet­ter ways to answer the phone, pre­qual­i­fy­ing, lead mag­nets, etc. In oth­er words, don’t be as selec­tive, assum­ing some inquiries are just junk.

3. Main­tain a high­ly-trained sales team

Lead­ing up to 2008, I saw a lot of sales­peo­ple become order tak­ers, scal­ing back on the actu­al art of sell­ing. The abun­dance of leads made prospect­ing less impor­tant and sell­ing tech­niques less crit­i­cal. Sell­ing was easy, or at least a lot eas­i­er! If you are active­ly in sales, make sure you are pre­pared to use those skills and put them to good use. Get rid of the head trash!!

4. Prospect­ing and hunting

Regard­less of the econ­o­my, prospect­ing and hunt­ing should NEV­ER stop in your orga­ni­za­tion, but it’s espe­cial­ly cru­cial now. Your team needs to be active­ly invest­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty, net­work­ing, build­ing cir­cles of influ­ence, and prospect­ing all. the. time.

5. Build your brand

Make sure your brand­ing and mes­sage are clear. If you don’t have a brand guide yet, cre­ate one, and make work through help­ful exer­cis­es like build­ing a cus­tomer avatar. Who are you try­ing to reach, what are their needs and con­cerns, and how do you meet those needs? Then con­tin­ue to get your brand into your tar­get mar­ket. Those who have cash on hand, don’t stop their mar­ket­ing, and play it smart will become the heavy hit­ters and grow their com­pa­ny — even in a recession.

6. Change your mindset

Instead of think­ing about the neg­a­tives, think about what you want to cre­ate in the com­ing months, year, three years, etc. When you focus on the neg­a­tive, you will miss out on all the pos­si­bil­i­ties and oppor­tu­ni­ties that are right in front of you. So focus on what you want to create! 

7. Get seri­ous about your mar­ket­ing team

If you do not have reg­u­lar mar­ket­ing meet­ings, get that going. I would also sug­gest set­ting up a mar­ket­ing com­mit­tee as well to make sure that projects don’t stall out but keep rolling for­ward. A mar­ket­ing com­mit­tee does not have to be peo­ple with­in your own orga­ni­za­tion. I have seen con­tract­ing busi­ness­es reach out to their banker, a ven­dor and oth­er local busi­ness­es to join their mar­ket­ing committees. 

8. Stand out by edu­cat­ing your audience

Inbound mar­ket­ing has been pop­u­lar with mar­keters for a cou­ple decades now, but real­ly took off after 2008. The quick ver­sion? Inbound mar­ket­ing is the idea that your prospects come LOOK­ING for your ser­vices because you’ve edu­cat­ed them and become an author­i­ty in your indus­try. This is a pow­er­ful com­ple­ment to out­bound mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties: cold call­ing, door knock­ing, Google ads, etc. Edu­cat­ing your audi­ence and being an author­i­ty in your space should nev­er stop, but now is the time to take that author­i­ty to anoth­er lev­el. Invest your time in cre­at­ing excep­tion­al con­tent: blogs, pod­casts, videos, social media con­tent, local net­work­ing events, etc. Make sure you stand above your com­pe­ti­tion as the lead­ing voice in your industry.

The take­away?

This isn’t the time to slow down and watch the clouds accu­mu­late on the hori­zon. We don’t know what the future will hold… We do know, and expe­ri­ence has shown us again and again, that push­ing for­ward and mak­ing smart moves NOW will always pay off in the long run. Will you ever regret improv­ing your mar­ket­ing? No way. Will you ever be dis­ap­point­ed that you have less debt and more cash on hand? Def­i­nite­ly not.

Keep going, con­trac­tors. You’ve got this.