Want to build your business? Then get out of your comfort zone and start supporting customers in sectors other contractors might avoid. The results will boost your bottom line.

This is a lesson that has been taken to heart by Western Supreme Rooter and Plumbing (aka Western Rooter), a family-owned residential plumbing business in Arcadia, California. It’s been around for 42 years and second-generation leader John Bottola has been serving as CEO for the past decade.

“When I first started running the business, I soon realized that, man, this is a hard road. How can we continue to grow and expand?” Bottola says. “The business had been going well, but obviously I wanted to grow the business to succeed and provide more opportunities/benefits for my techs. And then it hit me: What about yearly jetter maintenance for homeowners association complexes? Every time you go into somebody’s parking garage, you see all those sewer pipes hanging down and wonder, ‘Who’s cleaning them?’ There’s an opportunity that most plumbers are missing. And that’s when I started figuring out what I’m going to attack.”

MULTIPLE REVENUE STREAMS

This proved to be a valuable insight on Bottola’s part, but he didn’t stop at HOAs. He also sought out all kinds of local property owners, including business, community and industrial facility operators. Basically, if the building had plumbing, it should be in need of maintenance on a regular basis.

For residential contractors, these represent a largely untapped market that pays the bills just as much as homeowners do. And if a company can get these new customers accustomed to the idea of regular maintenance — a more common practice among nonresidential customers than residential customers — then that’s a whole new stream of ongoing, reliable revenue, Bottola says.

The result of Bottola’s revelation? Today Western Rooter has built a client base of over 800 HOA complexes throughout the greater Los Angeles area.

“I serve them because it seems like no other residential or commercial plumber really wants to do it,” Bottola says. “Obviously when you work in multistory buildings, it’s a little bit more costly to have the proper insurance versus residential liability. But that’s how we grew the business.”

At the same time, Western Rooter has expanded its consumer-facing residential service business. This means that the company can now rely on two revenue streams rather than just one.

As for growth? “Today we have 40 techs,” Bottola says. “We’re running a lot of calls per day and we continue to provide residential, community and HOA services.”

Meanwhile, Western Rooter is open to finding new business in areas that other contractors rarely approach. “We do the Rose Bowl Stadium, we do facilities, and we do a lot of residential,” Bottola says. “We will take on anything.”

PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE PAYS

Western Rooter is also willing to do small jobs as well as large, and provide the same attentive service for them all.

“Everybody wants the big repair. Everybody wants the $20,000 jobs,” Bottola says. “Those are great when they come along, but you can’t live and breathe like that with a business.”

One way that Western Rooter is boosting its bottom line is by encouraging all of its customers to do more preventive maintenance and have their plumbing systems inspected regularly before trouble occurs.

“We have this movement right now within Western Rooter to constantly remind the techs, ‘Hey, make sure the customers are up on preventive maintenance,’” Bottola says. “Get them on a routine once a year, whether your drains are clogged or not — snake them or better yet, jet them.”

In a perfect world, such customers could be signed up on a monthly payment plan, providing a contractor with regular payment in exchange for scheduled preventive maintenance visits and reduced charges when larger repairs are required.

“That’s the smartest way to do it, without a doubt,” Bottola says. “But it’s the hardest thing to get the customer signed up. No one really wants to pay for yet another monthly membership. I’m a consumer myself. I’m trying to limit my subscriptions with Netflix and the other streaming services and all that. And the last thing I need is a plumber’s subscription. So what we do instead is take the customer’s information without charge and just tell them, ‘I’m going to remind you three months, nine months and 12 months with a text message and email.’ I would say between 90 and 95% of the time, we get a call to go service once we send that message out.”

RIGHT FOR THE CUSTOMER

Add Western Rooter’s commitment to local charitable work and its giveaway of free sink strainers branded with the company’s logo and contact information, and Bottola is doing everything possible to grow the firm’s customer base.

“At the end of the day, service is tantamount to success, be it answering the phone promptly, being dressed correctly, offering techs continuing education — the whole works,” Bottola says. “Ultimately you’ve got to just do what’s right for the customer, and that’s what we strive for at Western Rooter.”