Growing your surveying firm from £250k to £500k? Here’s how to do it.
What are the most important steps for growing your surveying firm from £250k to £500k?
During the growth of your surveying firm, what happens?
To go from £250k to £500k is an ambitious goal for any small business. In your surveying firm, it’s no longer all about you, but about how well the team works together. These challenges often prevent small surveying firms from growing beyond £200k. As a surveyor, you can implement several strategies to grow your business and expand your client base.
In this article, we examine what processes are needed to increase your surveying firm's revenue.
Your role and your time will change as a result.
In this diagram, you can develop how your surveying firm is working and what you spend your time on:
Working on the business is discussed in the Green section. The focus is on long-term strategy and key processes that will benefit your business, such as:
Planning for your business
Taking a fresh look at your marketing strategy
Training and development of skills so you and your team can offer your clients more services
The mapping of your processes and optimising them
Introducing new technology to the business
The Grey area refers to activities that take place in the front office. It's here where you make money servicing your clients. You will also be able to perform short-term business development activities in this area.
Back office type activities fall under your Blue area. This is the cost of doing business, and every business owner must do it. The maintenance of your books, the renewal of your insurance, and the measurement and monitoring of your KPIs are examples.
Your opportunities to personally engage in more grey activities become limited as your firm grows to around £250k. You will also find that your team and clients will require you spend more time working on the business, i.e. the Green type activities.
Most likely, you have already minimised your time spent on Green activities - so change is required. As your business grows, you will need to hire more people who will interact with your clients from an admin or surveyor perspective (or both).
In other words, you have to make a decision. Depending on your approach, you might either:
Aim to reduce your chargeable time by bringing in someone to run your firm operationally for you
or
Run your firm by yourself and reduce your chargeable hours.
The way you do it does not have to be right or wrong. There may, however, not be enough cash or profit margin in the business until you reach £500k for someone else to manage it for you. Your chargeable time may need to be reduced so that you can run your business effectively.
When you grow your revenue to £300k with some admin/marketing assistance and a small surveying team, you will find that you physically no longer have the time to:
Take a look at everything the surveying team has returned
Ensure that you are available to all of your clients and partners
Take a break when you want one.
This means that you will need to hire a team member to manage part of your client portfolio with you. This means you should not always be the client's first point of contact.
Changes will take place in your role
It's common to think of yourself first as a surveyor when you run a small surveying firm that relies on your chargeable time. It is important to realise that your identity will change after you reach £500k. Try to think of yourself as the owner of a large surveying firm.
Like most small surveying firm owners, you will know billing is always essential. The amount you charge each month may be directly linked to your self-worth. You may be forced to say no if you take on too much work. Being able to do this without sacrificing your enjoyment of working with clients is very difficult.
As your surveying firm grows, you may also need to consider these mindset shifts:
In spite of the fact that you are the most qualified to do the job, that does not mean that you should do it.
The method of delivering most of the firm's revenue personally that got you here will not get you to the next level of growth for your practice
It is not a good idea to do it yourself just because it is quicker
You don't have to accept every piece of client work you receive
You will determine the long-term health of your firm and its scalability by how well you manage your business and its team
Establishing a leadership team
It doesn't make sense to have a leadership team when you have 3-4 people reporting to you. Meetings of your team will be attended by nearly everyone in your firm. In any case, having everyone in every meeting will become inefficient beyond this number! In particular, if some members of your team need to be out of the office to deliver the billed work.
You are now responsible for people management
When you only have a few employees, it's easier to manage them. Since you'll be dealing with clients directly, you're likely to spend quite a bit of time with them. As your firm grows, however, you will have less time to devote to them.
As your surveying firm grows, you have to get serious about performance management, along with all the challenges that come with it.
Here are some examples of what you need to do:
Your staff should have regular 1:2:1 meetings.
Your team members should attend quarterly reviews and resets where the last quarter's KPIs and objectives are discussed and reset.
Establishing a challenge each quarter and helping your team members analyse what this means for their roles.
Inform your team about how their roles contribute to the business's success on a regular basis along with improvements required.
Contracts of employment in writing with HR support in place.
Collaborate with Partners
With the changes in place, you can spend more time seeking strategic partnerships with other professionals in the construction and development industry, such as IFAs, engineers and estate agents. Collaborating on projects or cross-referring clients can expand your reach and provide access to new opportunities.
Engage in Continuous Professional Development
Professional development is crucial for staying ahead in the surveying industry. Attend conferences, workshops, and training programmes to expand your knowledge, stay abreast of industry changes, and gain insights into emerging technologies or best practises. Being seen as a knowledgeable and competent professional can attract clients and set you apart from competitors.
Growing a business takes time, persistence, and a customer-centric approach. Continuously evaluate and adjust your strategies based on market dynamics and client feedback to ensure sustainable growth and long-term success.
Contact the team at Surventrix today. Designed by Surveyors, for Surveyors.
There’s so much more to Surventrix than reporting, we want to be part of your journey, support your business growth and help you and your business achieve success at each stage of your business development.
