Ventured Gains – Who Are Your Customers?

By Frank Hennessey, Chairman and CEO, Hennessey Capital
for April 10, 2008 v. 01 in the Oakland Business Review

If you had a idea about repositioning your company in the market, wouldn’t it be great to have a team of marketing, accounting, financing and other business experts just swoop in for free and help you get it done?

Well, that’s just about how it happened for Connie and Tom Morbach, the owners of Sanit-Air in Troy, and two other companies that earned Walsh College Extreme Small Business Makeovers last fall. The program brings ten companies to help small businesses analyze their situations and execute strategies that will help them grow. The Morbachs got great help from the experts, but their experience is also a good case study in asking the fundamental question: Who is my customer?

Here’s the situation. Sanit-Air cleans heating and cooling ductwork. For years it basically relied on mass mailings to recruit customers. As Tom put it – they were buying ads and waiting for the phone to ring. That strategy began to weaken as the economy tightened and customers delayed maintenance for items they couldn’t easily see – including the insides of their heating ducts.
In a crowded field of competitors, however, Sanit-Air has one crucial advantage. Connie is an environmental research scientist. She has experience evaluating problem buildings, conducting air testing and providing expert testimony for water-related construction defects, sick buildings, and mold remediation.

To take advantage of those credentials, the Morbachs needed to rethink who their customers really were. One group consists of people who already recognize the benefit of regular duct cleaning. Who are they? The Morbachs realized that former customers very likely fit that category. So instead of mass mailings, Sanit-Air is sending regular communications to its own client list. One of the Walsh consulting firms, Western Creative, also helped Sanit-Air sponsor a Saturday home improvement radio program, because its listeners are likely to be receptive to messages about preventive maintenance.

Those would have been important steps by themselves, but other key targets for Sanit-Air are people who are experiencing health problems related to the air quality in their homes and workplaces. Here is where Connie’s expertise is crucial. Based on her skills, Sanit-Air can conduct qualified air quality tests as well as building inspections for probable sites of contaminants. The company can recommend and execute a number of different solutions to air quality issues, and duct cleaning is just one of them. Again the question is, how do you find those people?
One simple answer is you let them find you on the Internet, where it is increasingly likely that people are looking when they have health issues they suspect are caused by environmental conditions. To that end Western Digital helped Sanit-Air redesign and relaunch an information-rich Web site that easy to find on Internet search engines.

A second way to find people who are sick is by talking to doctors. People affected by indoor pollution often see an allergist, so the company has started an outreach program to educate doctors about its range of assessments and solutions. Connie’s credentials give Sanit-Air credibility when she talks to medical professionals.

These have been big changes for a small company, and other Walsh partner companies have been supporting them through the process. But you can ask the same basic questions about your company: “Who are my customers? What can I do that’s valuable to them?” and “How do I find them?”

You will likely have to identify your own resources to answer those questions, but if you want a shot at getting the same help Sanit-Air and the other two companies got from Walsh College and its partners, the competition for round two will be announced May 8 at the college’s Extreme Small Business Makeover Conference. Check the school’s Web site www.walshcollege.edu for details and plan on attending.