In service industries alike, there’s no shortage of competition to acquire new business, especially when it comes to establishing a regular clientele. The summer months provide a hotbed of opportunity as a majority of homeowners are looking to enhance and remodel their properties. As a newer business to the area or industry, it can be challenging to overcome the already-established relationships with other companies that residents have been cultivating for years.
What many service-brand business owners might not realize is that there is an untapped potential for consistent and reliable business already in their markets, which can be found with other local businesses. Smalls businesses make up almost 45% of activity in the economy and employ more than 1.5 million jobs annually. However, there are several advantages of working with other smalls businesses in the community outside of growing a franchise location’s sales, including engaging with community leaders, enhancing brand awareness and increasing philanthropic collaboration.
Benefits of Small Business Collaboration
A huge benefit of collaboration with local businesses, is that it gives the opportunity for a service brand owner to expand their reach and earn new clients. When franchise owners go out into the community to conduct their services for small businesses in the area, they can tap into new opportunities to grow their business. Commercial business owners may have the opportunity to examine the outcome of a brand’s services for a neighboring business or house and become encouraged to reach out and try those services for themselves.
Another fantastic benefit of working with small businesses, is that it allows brand strengthening in your community, without having to spend money on any paid advertising. Word of mouth is a powerful tool, so when franchise owners complete an exemplary job for one business owner, those clients likely to tell other colleagues or friends about the brand’s services. The more people talk about a brand’s services; the more likely new people are going to want to utilize that brand for those services to remedy their needs. It ultimately creates a healthy business environment, especially since there’s always a need for landscaping with small businesses.
In addition to the benefits of expanding and developing our clientele with new opportunities through small businesses, you might be able to benefit from the relationships you develop with those small businesses. They also might be willing to collaborate with your brand on other efforts, like community outreach and philanthropy. Having a strong relationship with your community through collaboration, can allow you to make a bigger impact with your outreach efforts, which develops this cyclical trend of doing good and giving back to the community.
Leveraging Small Businesses as a Franchisor
Collaborating with other small businesses in local communities is not only beneficial to franchise owners, but franchisors as well. For service brands, there are a myriad of ways that franchise owners can work with subcontractors in their markets to reduce costs, increase workforce flexibility and create better scalability within their businesses.
ManageMowed’s business model has evolved over the past decade to specialize in partnering with other local, owner-operator landscape companies. This allows our franchise owners to reduce their overhead start-up costs as they don’t need to hire a full staff or source equipment before launching in their territories. Vendor partners also often possess specialized skillsets, which enhances the potential revenue opportunities that our franchise owners can offer to their clients.
For franchisors looking to implement subcontracting into their business models, it is important to provide your franchise network with the proper training programs on how to find reliable vendors and maintain effective communication with those partners. Our team offers franchisees a comprehensive training program, which includes corporate and in-field training, as well as up to three days of training in your territory, and is supplemented by our extensive virtual library.
The Final Outcome
Working with other small businesses has become the lifeblood of ManageMowed’s business and brand culture and has added value to the brand in a wide variety of ways. By shifting the focus from residential jobs to local commercial jobs, we’ve managed to create a business model that has a deeper focus on community by involving every aspect of the community. By making commercial jobs a priority, in turn we’ve also made community relations a priority ultimately strengthening our relationships with the markets that we serve.
Partnering with other small business allows service brands like ManageMowed to become more integral parts of their communities and has the potential to result in in increased growth year after year. Not every business owner or franchisor realizes the benefits that working with other small businesses can provide, and there are a variety of different opportunities in every market. Whether it’s helping with lawn touch ups for a local gas station owner, a complete landscape makeover for a local chamber of commerce or even sponsoring community events, the benefits of being more involved in one’s local community are nearly endless.
Peter Roberts is a co-founder of ManageMowed, a leading commercial landscape management franchise with locations in Washington, California, Oregon, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Missouri.