When you’re so close to the matter, it can be less intuitive than it may seem to pick out all of your company’s most advantageous strengths. At the latest Sweeper Summit, in Las Vegas, NAPSA featured its pinnacle program — Transforming Your Sweeping Businesses. The thought-leadership presentation focused on how to convert an average-performing or non-volume sweeping company into a formidable competitor in its market. NAS has covered that session in some detail over the months since the event. In this article, we dive a little deeper into the concept of Growth by Building on Existing Strengths.
To back up a little and lay some groundwork, we should say that the Summit session extended into a variety of important discussion areas. According to Craig Diebert, (Owner, Select Sweeping, Fresno, CA), the host of the Sweeper Summit NAPSA session, the discussion included an exploration of Growth by Building on Existing Strengths and other subtopics, including:
- Preventing Excessive Risk for Growth
- Protecting Your Core Business During Expansion
- Capitalizing on Seasonal Downturns as Growth Windows
- Expanding into New or Adjacent Service Markets
- Assigning a Champion
The kinds of strengths that can lift a company to the next level are represented in the above list. It amounts to a list of the core strategic strengths that support business growth and long-term sustainability. So, let’s see what those look like in terms of applicable growth principles.
Growth by Building on Existing Strengths
Of course, not everything you need to know is included in that bullet list of a half dozen discussion topics. The kinds of critical strengths required to grow and sustain a great business spans beyond that core set across the full spectrum of service management talents to a loyal customer base, to highly profitable and well organized routes, to good equipment, to effective branding, and others.
There are many categories of application necessary for growth in which you are likely to identify the strengths that already exist in you, your team, and the company you’ve built. And, those are what we want to talk about. Existing strengths that you may recognize in your company and apply to achieve growth goals may include:
Ability to Manage Risk Levels
Managing the fine balance between calculated risk and the drive to achieve goals seems intuitive to successful entrepreneurs. Maybe you want to embark on a substantial growth initiative. If your track record shows an ability to recognize acceptable risk levels, that inspires confidence in your estimation that your business can bear the added risk of investing in expansion.
A critical point here is the need to clearly define the intended scope and scale of the transformational plan for your team and regular route customers. That clarity serves as a guardrail against opening up excessively and exposing the business to too much risk.
Ability to Maintain Quality Levels During Expansion
Actively focusing on growth while preserving your mainstay business base entails preventing yourself and your team from allowing tunnelvision on new revenue sources. Consistently meeting routine responsibilities while undertaking growth activities divides energies. The team must be able to serve the various types of needs and ensure that quality does not start to slip.
Adroit operators to lead skillfully in multiple directions at once demonstrate a high-value management talent. The combined strengths of the team and leader in this area, or the lack of it, often determines the outcome of growth initiatives — gain or loss.
Willingness to Use Seasonal Slow Periods for Growth
Creatively finding ways to level out the ups and downs in the revenue flow by using off-season downtime to pursue growthopportunities is a key strength. Entrepreneurs who choose seasonal businesses like powersweeping and who are open to new challenges can capitalize on the wide open field of very popular options for supplementary lines of income.
The flexibility to switch from powersweeping to pursuing adjacent markets, for example, snowplowing, portering, lightbulb replacement, dumpster rental, etc., is a veritable superpower in the industry. In most US regions, it will serve a powersweeping business exceptionally well to add one or more of these or other time-tested revenue-infusion channels.
Willingness to Add New Service Lines
Sweeping companies are ideally positioned in the US market for startups in related service operations. Many add trucks to serve additional types of sweeping needs, such as milling cleanup, industrial applications, sweeping narrow urban lanes, indoor garage floors, etc. Others move into adjacent markets, to offer new services like signage replacement, rental unit cleanout, storage rentals, painting, landscaping, etc.
An often overlooked approach in setting growth goals is targeting current customers’ expressed needs that the sweeping business currently does not meet. It is typically more convenient and cheaper to draw more revenues from existing customers than investing in marketing and sales to attract new customers. Yet, it’s still a frequently missed opportunity. So, think about services your customers have asked you about, and start providing those for them, if it makes more sense to do it than not to do it.
If your business possesses the special strength of proven management in the balance between existing and new service channels, then this mode of expansion may take your company to new heights of financial stability.
Willingness to Assign and Train a Point-Person / Growth Leader
This was identified as “one of the most exciting ideas” offered at the roundtable. Identifying a person already on the team with the professional developmental potential to lead and champion the growth cause is a gift. The candidate would become instrumental in the implementation of the plan for expansion. This advantage of an internal resource for dividing growth leadership responsibilities empowers management to multiply its own efforts most conveniently and affordably.
Opportunities in Existing Sweeping Service Systems
Once again, here in our look at existing business strengths, the NAPSA roundtables keep on giving. The above cited discussion generated a lot of actionable knowledge to help sweeping company owners become stronger competitors.
Other suggested points for growth strategies we’ve heard around the industry lately include small initiatives like brand boosting by stepping up quality assurance with at least a few personal outreach calls by managers per period. There are gift gestures, even personal Thank You cards, etc. Bigger ideas include the suggestion to join the 1-800-SWEEPER affiliation. At the grand end of the scale of ideas is raising private equity funding for acquisition, etc.
In the wealth of ways to achieve business growth, it’s fair to say that all depend on the application of current strengths for sustainable success. Often, the most economical and logistically practical opportunities are waiting to be discovered in your existing sweeping service operations. So, you’re well advised to just start by listing your company’s existing strengths that are most conducive to growth, and explore creative ideas from your team and others.
For information about the 2026 Sweeper Summit, check the NAPSA website at powersweeping.org,
For info about Select Sweeping, Fresno CA, you can call (559) 344-8002, email office@selectsweeping.com, or visit selectsweeping.com.