Use investment to fuel growth and sales & marketing effectiveness

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When companies think of return on investment, (ROI), theytypically consider capital investments. Purchases of new machines or softwareaimed at specific tasks with a measurable return on invested capital such as productivitygains, increased production, faster billing etc.

However does investing in non-tangible items provide a realreturn to your business, and how do you measure that return?

Most companies are reluctant to spend money on intangiblessuch as employee training and development, or nonproduction related expensesrelated to plant and equipment. Let’s face it, its tough to measure a clearreturn on investment of intangibles.

It might be easier to measure the impact of not making theinvestment, such as high employee turnover, poor quality, poor customerservice, and lost market share.

I am working with a client that has made significantinvestment in what would normally be called intangibles, and has seen anexcellent return on that money. I typically don’t name clients but since thisarticle is focused on the positives I think he won’t mind.

Aardvark Memphis is a full service property maintenancecompany, with the largest fleet of sweeper trucks in the tri-state area. Theyalso do warehouse sweeping and scrubbing, retail teardown and build outs, floormaintenance and nearly everything related to maintaining retail or industrialproperty.

I’ve worked with them for about a year on strategicplanning, diversification and sales and marketing effectiveness.

One of the reasons I’ve had to work with them on sales andmarketing is they’ve never done any. The company has been in business for 14years, has been profitable for 13 of those years and has never done any reallevel of sales. They have experienced excellent growth entirely throughcustomer referrals and word of mouth.

What sets them apart? A high level of commitment to qualityand doing whatever they do right. The owner spends money on things that mostowners wouldn’t consider. For instance he washes his fleet of trucks everyday.He maintains all of his equipment to original OEM specifications, and investsin technology from GPS to track routes to maintenance logs. He has a high levelof commitment to employees and customer alike.

While the return on the money he spends on “intangibles” maybe had to justify in hard numbers, the results are hard to argue with. The highlevel of commitment he gives to quality and appearance creates expectations forhis employees. They clearly see his commitment and follow that lead whethercaring for the equipment or performing work at a customer location, theexpectation is, only best effort is enough.

The results speak for themselves, growth, profitability,customer loyalty and limited sales expense.