John Bosma, president of Boz Electric, (an electrical contractor in Vernon, NJ, which is run by Bosma and his brother, Bill) has a good problem-a backlog of contract work. This "problem" was created when Bosma decided to focus on business development in late 2007 because he saw the negative shift in the economy coming. At the time, Boz Electric was doing some public sector work, which they called their "bread and butter" work. Since Bosma saw that the private sector was going to get pinched by the economy, he positioned his firm to compete against contractors who were going after low-bid public sector jobs.
Bosma and his team developed a comprehensive business development plan focused on customer relationship retention and new client acquisition to gain a competitive advantage. While other firms stopped spending on business development, Boz decided to spend money on this area:
- He hired a consultant to help fine tune the processes.
- He took leadership training to help him better focus on business development.
- He hired the firm's first ever assistant project manager to give project managers more time to cultivate better customer relationships and to make them more efficient on each job.
- He paid for leadership training for his managers.
- He hired a business development coordinator to help manage the business dev process.
- He engaged a marketing communications firm to develop the firm's first ever marketing strategy that included branding, advertising, networking and public relations.
This was all in 2008, which gave him the early edge he needed to sustain his business through slumping economic times.
Bosma is currently positioning himself for the market turnaround. With longstanding contractors abandoning the private sector, he is now able to get informational meetings with private sector operations managers and other decision makers. He knows the next year will be a challenge, but he plans to begin new branding and business development initiatives such as golf outings and complimentary leadership seminars to generate recognition amongst key market segments. His goal is to grow his business by an additional $2 million this year.
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