I recently met a local guy that runs a pretty successful commercial snow plowing “management” business. He doesn’t own a single truck or plow but has contract with a couple dozen commercial properties like banks, super markets, office complexes etc. He knows the industry, handles everything directly with the customers, but outsources the actual work to local landscapers.
Im sure there’s plenty more that goes into it with insurance, liability, contractors stealing customers, etc. but got my wheels turning a little bit. I remember a bunch of successful redditors doing this with cleaning companies back in the day. Wondering if anyone else has some examples they can share.
We outsource a % of lead generation for my b2b technology sales agency.
We have a flat structure and out senior people on work, allowing us to charge a lot. Then for the grinding work we hire internal juniors but also agency partners to help scale our funnel.
Agency models can make a lot and without the overhead of traditional companies.
Can you sell? Manage clients? Hire? If so, agency will crush the companies you’re helping. Not even close.
Hey look, an actual post in this sub that isn’t people slinging garbage and providing actual value. Props to all of those who responded.
In service industries the pricing will be fairly commoditised so the margin will have to come from the price of acquisition. If you can get orders for less than what the actual service providers would pay to get them you can profit from the difference.
It costs my company about £25 to acquire a customer so if someone knew how to do it for £10 the could easily charge me £20 and pocket the difference.
The other option is to buy the service in bulk at a lower price and try to then effectively resell them individually at a higher price.
I would happily give you a 10% discount if you were willing to buy 20% of my capacity for the next 12 months. If you then are able to resell all of that for full price you would pocket the difference.
This is basically freight brokerage. Build a stable platform, competently handle administrative tasks, and develop a sound marketing strategy - and the actual delivery carriers, as well as freight customers, will value you as the “middleman.”