Transcription
This is the story of a man who took up a business project in 1991, which he had no idea how to execute. Today, he's turned the idea of the same project into a business which makes him more than 10 crores in a year. And he's also one of the leading experts in his field.
In India, more than 1 lakh 30,000 new businesses are registered every year. And guess how many close? More than 9 lakh 30,000 of them. Now, so many shut down, and many just survived without any growth.
This man's business was surviving from 1999 to 2021, till he finally made a few changes that grew his business by 12% in 2022 and a whooping 300% in 2023. He already had the perfect combination of products and services. And as years go by, the demand for what he has only increases because he's solving a problem that's increasing every day, which is noise.
WHO says that up to 55 decibels of noise is healthy for your ears during the day. And you know how much you're exposed to in everyday Indian traffic? 75 to 95 adjusted decibels. With these noise pollution levels, doctors are now saying that more than 1 billion people risk hearing loss in India.
You must have seen these along highways in big cities. These are called noise barriers. They don't let the sound of the busy highway disturb what's around. This is just one of their products. These guys are building noise reduction solutions everywhere.
There is a complainant, there is a noise generator. So, when the noise is generated by one person, it propagates to the recipient. So, when we go, we find out what is the noise generated at the source, whether it's exceeding the limit set by the government at the receiver end. If it is exceeding, by how much, and what can be done in the path of the noise propagation.
Many people complain that, you know, the business is tough because there's a, it's a saturated market or whatever. But our field was not like that. So, when you talk about noise control, or soundproofing, or acoustics, it's still in 2024 also, it is quite a, you know, developing field, and a lot of demand is coming up in India. We were just, you know, just at the break-even. But 23-24, we almost did 3x of the previous year.
Now, Thermosics did pick a market where they can make an actual difference, but they still couldn't grow until they brought three major changes in the way they did business. If you own a business, the changes they brought may also give you some ideas. So, let's see what he started doing differently.
First, they started charging their customers for the value they were providing. For the longest time, they were providing their customers with value, but they weren't even aware. They found areas where they were giving away their time, knowledge, and energy all for free. Even to those customers who are not serious about buying from them. Like I always say this, customers aren't king, they are professional friends. Treat them like a king after they buy.
See, earlier when we used to get inquiries, we used to run behind the customer thinking that they are going to give the order to us, but it was not so. Every time we were spending time, effort, money, but then customers were not our real customers. They just wanted some information. So, when after attending this program, our coach said very clearly, why do you go to your customer? Do you do any diagnosis of the customer? Whether that is important to them? How will you find out that they are serious about it?
Then they gave me one small tip. He said, "Charge them if they call you to understand, study the problem. You charge them minimum." So, why are you giving free? We said, "No customer will never call us." He said, "You try this." So, we started charging for the visit because it's not only the visit. We have to study everything. We have to prepare a proposal, the solution, and then we have to explain it to them. That means it's our knowledge, our experiences, we are presenting to them. So, we need to charge.
So, we found a very interesting thing here. People who are interested in getting the solution, they paid us for the visit charges. So, it became a big filter for us, which we did not know for a number of years. And we made a point there, if the customer, you know, negotiate too much, then we say that, "Okay, 50% we will give you discount provided you give the order to us in the event of, you know, you want a solution."
Second, they realized that if they want to make the business work today, they can't skip two things: marketing and having an online presence. Again, the rule, "Best known will always beat the best." That's what they implemented.
We started one campaign on LinkedIn. So, LinkedIn is one that we have identified that works the best for our field. The people who are there are the decision-makers in some form or the other. They are there. So, if somehow through this campaign or through this activity on LinkedIn, if it reaches to them, that it'll have an impact because this is an industrial field, right? So, right now, LinkedIn is the best option and keeping our website ranked well. So, that these two are the most important things for us right now.
Third, like most companies that do well today, they understood that if they wanted to grow, their employees have to grow with them. They started hiring senior executives who could train their existing staff. And at the end of the day, why do most of us go to work every morning? So, we can grow financially. So, developing employees skill-wise is one thing. They also help them develop financially.
While I have handled a lot of projects from our clients, which is the major, like Reliance, Asahi, we have clients. So, we are handling that projects too, and we are giving solutions to them from the last 20 years. In my personal life, when I was joined this organization, that time my salary was 15,000 only. Now I'm earning more than 1.5 a month. That the commercial personal growth is there. In accounts, all department employees are working in that. Or employees data.
Centralizing their customers for the value they provided, improving their online presence, and providing both financial and technical growth for their employees is what changed the game for their business. And these weren't the only changes. They set up seven functions their business needed, started review meetings, created trackers, and so much more.
And if you're someone who wants to learn the seven functions and how they should be working in your business, watch this 40-minute free training linked in the description below, which will teach you the science of building a business with teams, systems, and strategies. So, click on the link in the description, watch the training, and structure your business accordingly.