It took just three years for partners Jim English and Wayne
George to build their start-up plumbing and drain operation into
a $1.2 million-a-year business.
Launching A Rooter Man Plumbing in Pittsburgh, Pa., with
just two service vans, they grossed $600,000 in the first year.
First-month revenue was just $5,200, but in the second month
it reached $28,000, and in the third month $55,000. By then,
Jim and Wayne had added one employee, and they knew they
had a winner. In the second year, sales added up to $1 million.
Starting with the initial plans mapped
out around Jim’s home office, the two
set out to achieve growth and profit
through quality service and quality
customer relations. In fact, quality in
every aspect of the business was a top
priority — they saw it as the key to
customer loyalty and repeat business. “We wanted to build the business
slowly, and correctly, and not become so
large that we would lose track of the customer,
or be hiring people who did not
meet our criteria,” says Jim. “We didn’t
want to just get bodies in a truck to do
the job and make money. We wanted to
have the right people on the job.”
The right technician
Jim and Wayne wanted a crew small
enough to keep track of, and to ensure a
quality job for every customer. Today, at
the three-year mark, they have 13
employees, including eight service technicians,
three on a digging crew, and two
office workers. Eighty-five percent of the
business is residential, and the balance is
commercial. The company, a Rooter-Man
franchise, performs exclusively service
work — no new construction.
The fleet consists of seven Chevrolet vans (either 3/4 or one ton), two Chevrolet 12-foot box vans, and a Grumman truck with dual wheels, hydraulic pump and hydraulic jack hammer. They use seven Gen-Eye cameras from General Pipe Cleaners for video inspection and two Hydrojetters from O’Brien Manufacturing for heavy pipe cleaning.
Wayne handles all excavation projects, operating a backhoe, skid-steer loader and dump truck, equipment he brought into the business. Jim came to the Rooter-Man operation with experience working for a similar business in the area. Initially he drew his team from among former co-workers. “These were people I knew,” he says. “I knew their style of work and the quality of their professionalism.”
Today, when they bring in a prospective employee, each partner conducts an interview. They look for people with confidence and a professional appearance, preferably clean-shaven. The company supplies uniforms, and technicians carry a clean uniform in the service van in case one gets soiled.
Newly hired technicians work on a
90-day trial period so that Jim and
Wayne can assess their job performance
and sales ability. “We are quality conscious
and sales driven,” says Jim.
New hires ride with an experienced employee for a time, until they demonstrate that they can perform to expectations. The firm does not need to advertise for employees, as qualified people often call looking for work. When they do, Jim takes down their names for future reference. “I think that people who are looking for work are motivated people and are the type we would look for,” Jim says. “I try to get family-oriented people — someone with a family to support.”
Imparting the vision
From the start, Jim and Wayne give
employees a clear understanding of
the company’s goals, including their
intention to stay relatively small. Their
goal is to build a solid customer base,
and that means courtesy toward every
customer is the priority.
So is customer satisfaction. If a customer
has a complaint, the company..
(cont. on page 2)