Spending more time working in a growing business, as opposed to working on it, can be a barrier for business owners in their ability to develop sustainable growth.
Spending more time working in a growing business, as opposed to working on it, can be a barrier for business owners in their ability to develop sustainable growth.
Fusion Plastics general manager Ben Karel caught himself falling into this common trap, as the day-to-day demands of his rapidly expanding business drew him away from driving the company’s continued growth, which included the aim of establishing offices on the east coast within two years.
Fusion Plastics, which provides plastics and engineering products and services to the industrial, mining and irrigation industries from its Bibra Lake manufacturing facility, has experienced significant grown since 1998, servicing a number of large resources and government projects throughout Western Australia, and supplying products to South-East Asia.
Earlier this year, Fusion opened a second office in Karratha to place the company in closer proximity to a number of existing clients, and to increase its presence in the region.
Just more than a year ago, Mr Karel identified a weakness in the company’s marketing strategy, which at the time consisted of him personally visiting current and prospective clients.
When the company started to grow, Mr Karel began to spend more time on day-to-day activities, and progressively less time on client contact and marketing.
“There wasn’t much in the way of a marketing strategy. We didn’t have a marketing structure, we didn’t have a marketing plan, and we didn’t budget for marketing,” Mr Karel told WA Business News.
“I went out to visit clients, but because we were getting busier I was doing less and less of that.”
With a desire to attract more blue-chip clients and develop relationships with existing clients that would ensure repeat business, Mr Karel looked at ways to improve the company’s marketing capability.
After considering the financial costs involved, he hired Adam Graham as business development manager to spearhead the company’s sales and marketing activities.
“We focused on building up our client base with an emphasis on having good blue chip type of clients, and we’ve succeeded quite well in that,” Mr Karel said.
Mr Graham took over the management of the company’s marketing, improving its branding and corporate image (including a new logo), as well as regularly visiting clients.
Mr Karel said that implementing a more structured marketing campaign, with the expertise of his new BDM, helped the company develop its existing relationships, and bring in new business.
“We now set up budgets for what we spend per annum on marketing, advertising, and areas where we’re going to market to. Adam visits clients every day, which is something we didn’t do before,” he said.
Having a committed BDM also left Mr Karel to focus more on planning for the future and growing the business.
“It freed me up to do a lot more planning in the business – I now spend around 50 per cent of my time planning for the future of the business,” he said.
And the investment has paid off, with the company experiencing a 30 per cent growth in sales each year for the past two years.
Mr Karel said this growth was made possible by improving the company’s marketing, and by getting closer to their clients by opening their second office in Karratha.
He now believes the company is well positioned to go forward, with plans to open its first east coast office in the coming year.
“We’re looking towards expansion, continued growth and making sure we’ve got a substantially successful company in the future,” Mr Karel said.
