This Podcast Is Episode 546, And It's About Seven Sure-Fire Ways To Grow Your Construction Business   Once your construction business is up and running, it’s essential not to rest on your laurels. Successful business owners always look for ways to grow and maximize their profits. We’ve compiled a guide and checklist to help you identify ways to get the most out of your contracting company.   1. Grow your sales   Contact your best clients.   One of the easiest ways to increase sales is to sell more to your existing clients. For example, you could try contacting every customer and offering a complementary product or service they might need now. You could also determine when clients need maintenance checks.   Create a client loyalty scheme.   You’re looking to create a customer care program using customer contact software and implementing a customer loyalty scheme.   Commence a contact nurturing program.   Can you make more effective use of your database of customers and clients by maintaining regular contact through newsletters (physical or email), phone calls, personal visits, or attendance at conferences and trade fairs? Do you advise them of special offers or tell them about any products and services they have not previously bought?   Develop a social media campaign.   If you’re not on social media, now’s the time to start. It’s one of the most essential marketing tools and one of the cheapest (and often accessible).   Run webinars/demonstrations.   By doing this, you’re positioning yourself as an expert in your industry, creating brand awareness and customer trust. It’s also a great way to network among industry peers and meet potential customers.   Attend and exhibit at trade shows.   These are important for the same reasons you’d run webinars and demonstrations, but trade shows also offer the chance to get your product to new customers, increase word-of-mouth advertising, and add more to your customer database.   Cross-sell complementary products/services.   Learn the fine art of cross-selling, which suggests to customers that whatever they’re buying from you would be of more value if they purchased a complementary item.    2. Grow by developing new services   Research new ideas and see if you can update current services.   You’re looking to identify any new products or services that a) complement those already existing and b) your customers have indicated they’d be interested in buying them from you. Any new product needs to complement what you already sell, not be a substitute. Otherwise, there is no growth in sales.   Check financial feasibility   It’s essential to ensure there’s a demand and that you can create the product. Diversifying into new products is a medium to high-risk growth strategy because new products and services cost time and money to source or develop.   Test with customers   From friends and family to more formal focus groups, testing your product in your target market and recording and analyzing the results is essential. You’ll be able to determine if the demand exists and if there are changes you could make to the product or service before taking it to market.   Protect intellectual property   The last thing you want is your brilliant idea and all the work that went into creating it nixed at the last minute because someone else beat you to the patenting, copywriting, and trademarking. Equally, you don’t want to steal someone else’s idea, so protect your IP and ensure you’re not breaching anyone else’s.   3. Grow by improving profits   Improve efficiencies   Technology’s great here – there are many ways you can use it to make your processes more efficient. So review all your systems and look for ways they can be improved. The better the system, the more efficient and productive it will be. Look at your customer...