Brett Saunders founded air conditioning and mechanicals company Hiflow in 2006, and since then has grown to service clients in both Queensland and New South Wales with revenue of over $5.9 million.
But success wasn't easy. Saunders says clients were extremely hesitant to sign up to a small start up. As a result, Saunders and his colleagues needed to make Hiflow appear to be a bigger business than it actually was.
How's the business travelling?
We've established an office in Sydney now, and although we're a Queensland-based company, over the past year we've had 80% growth and things are going extremely well, we've had a really good year.
As soon as we started noticing our business started dropping off, we changed our business strategy. We looked at the regions where we were losing businesses, and then remedied that. Instead of targeting larger projects, we targeted a whole lot of little projects we knew we could get.
But you say starting up wasn't easy because you were perceived as too small.
This was an issue I found, that we were too small to get noticed. So I just marketed the business differently. I didn't sell myself as a director, I sold myself as a sales guy.
People would assume there were higher ups than me, and even though the final decision came back with me I would often say I would have to check with my other managers to finalise the decision. I just made the whole business appear bigger.
How did you fund the business?
I sold my house, and then we went back to pretty much having nothing. I had to buy some company vehicles, then I put a lease on a commercial property. I had to get the appearance right so people would jump on.
While all this was going on, what else were you doing to get clients?
I lined myself up with other people in the industry so that if I did get jobs coming through I could utilise their services. I allied with a few other companies, and that really helped me out so we could hear about the leads.
Did clients ever assume you were misleading them?
If they asked the question, I told them the truth. I would never lie to them. It was just all about the appearance. There were a couple of times that I told the client we were just three guys running the business, and they were really surprised.
But think about it – what do people look at when it comes to a business? They go to the website. If I've got my website looking like a big organisation, they are going to assume we are a lot bigger. We put a lot of money into promotional materials, the website, put a lot of money into marketing so we had a definite presence, and a professional approach.
Did this strategy pay off for you?
We've only been going four years, and this year we have 32 employees in Queensland and six in New South Wales. We've doubled the size of our business, and it's going to keep going.
We've secured a lot of clients, and what I've found is that once you start getting a few big customers, and you keep servicing them, you don't need to worry so much about promoting the business as bigger than you are. Once people see your client base, you've got them.
What advice would you give to small businesses wanting to use this method?
Absolutely get your marketing right from the very first day. Don't skimp out on that, really work hard to secure at least one major client, and then once you've got them, leverage off them as much as you can because you need to establish credibility, and quickly.
