Tips to Maintain Efficient Operational Standards As Business Booms

“Strategic planning” combines two words that require intentionality and forethought. Planning simply means looking ahead and plotting a course of action. Strategy, however, means you are considering all the identifiable variables and plotting the path that provides the greatest returns and rewards the efforts along the journey. 

For many organizations, a strategic plan is a three-to-five-year framework of the projects and actions that will move them to the desired outcome. For a rapidly growing propane company, you probably can’t even imagine what three years from now looks like. 

For these companies, a strategic mission statement is probably more appropriate, followed by the short-term tactics it will take to get there. We know where we want to go, and we think we know how to get there. We probably even know some of the variables — we just can’t put names on them. 

I see propane companies experience rapid growth in two ways: inorganic and organic growth. Today we often see inorganic growth through the acquisition of smaller companies by larger and growing companies. Many of these companies are being sold because of aging owners, lack of a new generation of the family to take over, or the fatigue of dealing with the ever-changing landscape of cost, regulation and often empathy toward a plan for growth. 

Once this inorganic growth has occurred for the buyer, their focus turns to organic growth in the new market. When we acquire a new company, we go in with a 90-day plan and a one-year plan. In the first 90 days, we need to address staffing — the leadership of the company is probably departing, their roles have to be backfilled and this is the time we want to set the expectations for the future as well as introduce our culture and demonstrate our commitment to the staff and customers. There will be a lot of little changes, but the one thing that won’t change — and can’t — is the focus on customer experience and ensuring we are communicating through our team. 

Growing Your Staff 

Additional staffing opportunities exist. This could look like promoting a manager from within their organization or ours and then bringing on a sales team to drive organic growth. There are plenty of opportunities: residential new construction and remodeling projects or working with HVAC and plumbing professionals to establish or expand relationships to use them as a sales team to grow propane installations. Power generation is certainly a space that many smaller organizations are not capturing — not just standby residential and commercial generators, but also prime power and micro-combined heat and power equipment that drives propane gallons while reducing operating costs for the customers. 

An increased focus on commercial markets that require capital to grow and serve is often a tactic. When companies have been operating without a strategic plan or focus, they often do not see the long-term gain on these investments or just aren’t willing to reinvest into the company to maximize the near-term distributions. Having a plan for this growth allows you to map out when new employees will be needed to deliver your customer experience. It’s not a linear climb, but more of a stair step. 

Additional staffing needs occur as volumes and locations grow, as well. When is the right time to move from using consultants to bringing those resources in-house? As an industry, we are extremely fortunate to have highly skilled partners to help us with safety and compliance. When you get ready to make a move, finding the right person is key, but so is identifying all the jobs that need to be performed. It is likely you are combining the functions of two or three consultants into one full-time position that is taking some other duties from teammates. This can be a little more like art than science, based on who is available in the marketplace and how they fit your team and culture. 

Navigating Delivery Operational Standards in a Growing Season 

Managing delivery logistics is often a challenge during growth. How and when do you add trucks, drivers and routes to deliver your customer experience? For our company, technology is our friend and go-to partner to manage this. We have committed to remote tank monitors on a high percentage of our customers. Pairing the data our monitors provide with a dedicated routing team and front-office platform allows us to maximize resources. In some cases, we have been able to free up driver capacity to handle growth without adding new trucks because of our increased route efficiency. In others, we have impacted key metrics like gallons per delivery and per mile, and we set the stage to meet the increased demand from organic growth. 

When Is the Right Time to Sell? 

With growth will come the attention of others. This can be positive, or it might be a distractor. Having a strategic vision for your organization can help you know when to respond to merger and acquisition (M&A) activities. When we decided to sell Cordill Propane, it followed a time of significant organic growth and transition as my dad was retiring. We were prepared to take advantage of the growth we had focused on the previous seven to eight years. Financial clarity is important for an acquiring company, but there are other things you can do to be more attractive to buyers. Take pride in your facilities, your equipment and your people. Those are the assets that will carry on your legacy. 

I have mentioned customer experience several times. This goes beyond customer service, which is meeting the needs of your customers for a propane delivery. Customer experience is impacted by the voice on the phone when they call, the website interface for an online order and the consistency with which your team answers the same question, whether it is to a customer service representative, a service technician or a driver. This experience is set into motion by the culture the leadership team has created in your organization. Our culture is driven by teamwork, consistency, mutual respect and a belief in where we are going. And where we are going is governed by our strategic plan.