USTEK

Growth Challenges For A Small Business

USTEK is a provider of custom electrical and mechanical technical components and the small team (like many other small U.S. manufacturers) wears many hats — operations, quality control, and customer service, just to name a few.

Since being founded in Ohio in 1987, USTEK has stayed true to its mission — deliver solutions that enrich every customer’s experience. However, the shop’s leadership team, including Operations Manager Amy Holbrook, also wanted to enrich revenues. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the time, resources or perhaps most importantly, the plan required to make it happen.

For a small manufacturer like USTEK, balancing the need to deliver great customer service with the desire to attract new customers can be tough.

“It’s kind of like keeping an airplane level,” Amy explained. “You’re going from side-to-side trying to make sure that you satisfy the customer by giving quotes and providing all of the service that they require for every order while also trying to be strategic about your business.”

The company put so much time and energy into the customer service side that they couldn’t focus on the strategy side. “It’s great to have goals,” Amy said. “But if you don’t do something literally every day to move yourself toward that goal, you’re never going to achieve it. And we were really guilty of having goals but not doing much to actually achieve them.” Without a plan, USTEK’s sales efforts proved fruitless. “We would try and call people, with very limited success,” Amy recalled.

Challenged with not enough time for sales and strategy, USTEK sought a way to maximize revenues without detracting from other priorities.