BSGA’s David Allen and Craig Brown discuss why consistent sales calls and smart outsourcing can break the boom-and-bust cycle
There’s a pattern most sign business owners know all too well. The order book fills up, the team is flat out, phones are ringing, and then, almost without warning, it goes quiet. The phone stops. The workshop empties. And everyone wonders where it all went.
It’s called feast and famine, and according to David Allen, president of the BSGA, it’s as much a structural problem as a behavioural one.
“We’re at the end of everybody’s chain. Other trades have had a lot longer to plan. We come in right at the end, with the shortest window to manufacture. A job might sit in sales for three or four weeks going through various changes, and then you’re left with a week to make it,” he says.
The result is a business that lurches between extremes, stacked out one moment, scrambling for work the next. Customers won’t wait six months for signage the way they might for a bespoke kitchen or a building extension. If you can’t turn it around, they’ll find someone who can.
The sales call that nobody makes
Craig Brown, chair of the BSGA, has seen this dynamic play out across sign businesses of all sizes. The root cause, he argues, isn’t a lack of clients. It’s a lack of consistency.
“When your order book is full, that’s the thing you try and get out of the door. The downside is that you then neglect the calls that might be instigating new relationships or following up with existing clients. That’s where the peaks and troughs come in,” he says.
It sounds obvious. But the act of protecting time for sales outreach, even when you’re busy, is something most small sign businesses quietly abandon the moment a big job lands. And it tends to compound. The quiet period arrives, the calls start again, but now there’s a frantic edge to them that clients can sense.
“The busier you are, the more confident you sound on the call, and the more work you seem to win. When you’re quiet, you maybe come across as a little desperate. An astute buyer picks up on those tonal changes,” Craig observes.
His practical solution is almost boringly simple: diarise the calls. Protect a slot each day, assign it to one or two people, and treat it as non-negotiable as a production deadline. Work out your win ratio, calculate how many calls you need to make to hit your revenue target, and stick to the process, even when, especially when, you’re at full capacity.
The control problem
Outsourcing is another lever that many sign-makers are reluctant to pull. There’s a pride of craft that runs through the industry, a preference for doing everything in-house, for keeping control of quality and timing. David is sympathetic to that instinct, but also candid about its limits.
“I see posts on LinkedIn from smaller businesses that do everything in-house, and you do wonder whether it’s necessary. In a lot of cases, you can outsource for less than it would cost to do it in-house. And the quality is sometimes better, because they’re doing it all day, every day,” he explains.
The irony is that outsourcing can actually create capacity for growth rather than ceding it. When a trade supplier handles a complex element of production, your team is free to take on more work. You’re not carrying the overhead of specialist equipment or the risk of a skilled employee leaving with the knowledge in their back pocket.
Craig frames it as a business decision rather than an admission of weakness. “Sometimes people think that if they bring it in-house they can be tighter on margins. That isn’t always the way. You have to trust the supplier you’re working with, and that’s about building relationships where both sides win,” he says.
The bigger picture
What connects both issues, the stop-start sales cycle and the reluctance to outsource, is a mindset that many sign-makers will recognise in themselves. The industry attracts people who like making things, who take satisfaction in the craft, and who find the commercial and operational sides of running a business less natural territory.
But as Craig puts it, the substrate is only part of the job. “The creative side is what we enjoy, but that isn’t the only thing that makes a business work. Being able to stack those elements, talk to each other, learn from each other, that’s what makes businesses successful.”
Craig concludes, “The craft is what gets people into the trade. The discipline around sales and effectively running the business is what keeps them there.”