Case Study · Diagnostic Consultation
A premium renovation firm: the diagnosis.
What one afternoon with a high-end renovation and project management firm found, why we told them to fix their cash model before hiring us, and what that says about how we work.
The business
A two-person firm running high-end residential renovations as a portfolio director rather than a project manager: they handle procurement, payments and every trade so the client stays hands-off from start to finish. Projects run well into six figures. A recent one, close to half a million euro, was delivered in nine weeks of active work after two months of planning. Three to five projects run at any one time. The work is excellent. The business around it was not.
What we found.
They came in asking about lead generation. Within the hour it was clear that more leads would have made things worse.
The money model carried the risk in the wrong place
Every euro of client funds landed in the company account, trades and suppliers were paid out as invoices arrived, and the firm took whatever was left at the end. Target margin ten per cent, owner paid last. If a project slipped or a trade defaulted, the owner carried it personally.
Eighty per cent of work came through one channel, on bad terms
Most projects arrived through designers, mostly one. They wanted five to fifteen per cent for a referral, took the credit on award-winning houses the firm had actually managed, and in two cases barred the firm from using its own photographs. The biggest source of work was also the reason the firm had no proof of its own.
Four possible markets, none chosen
Premium domestic renovation, overseas owners of Irish property, professional referral partners, and holiday-home oversight. All four were plausible. Chasing all four at once meant no campaign could be specific enough to land.
No pipeline, no CRM
Nothing systematic for tracking enquiries, quotes or the relationships that produced them. Good work, remembered in people's heads.
Priced too low to grow
At the current margin and cash structure the firm could not afford to recruit, even though one well-run project would have funded a hire. The pricing was capping the business, not the demand.
What we recommended.
In order. The first item unblocks every other one.
Separate the firm's fee from client project funds. Collect the fee in instalments against milestones, and hold project money in a distinct account, so the owner is no longer the bank.
Pick one segment for the first campaign and leave the other three alone until it is working. The strongest candidate was estate agents as referral partners, because they already earn on the sale and refer without demanding a cut.
Stand up a simple CRM before any outreach, so the next referral is recorded rather than remembered.
Raise pricing to a level that funds a second project manager, since the constraint on growth was capacity, not enquiries.
Sort out the name. It was an acronym inherited from a handyman business the firm had long outgrown.
Why we did not sell them a campaign.
A lead generation campaign into a business whose owner is personally underwriting every project, cannot afford a second pair of hands, and has not chosen who it sells to would have produced exactly one thing: more of the same problem, faster.
So we said so. The restructuring had to come first, and it is work the owners could largely do themselves with the plan in hand. That is a smaller first engagement than we might have sold, and it is the right one. If we are ever going to be trusted with a firm's pipeline, we have to be trusted to say when the pipeline is not the problem.
This is what a Poloswiss discovery session actually looks like. Not a pitch. A diagnosis, in writing, that you keep whether or not you hire us.
Want the same look at your business?
Book a discovery call. You will leave with a written diagnosis, and if the honest answer is that you do not need us yet, you will hear that too.