I previously held a Managing Director role for 20+ years but I had never worked in franchising. I thought, how great would it be to work with intrinsically motivated self‑employed business owners? So that was something that attracted me to the role.
The key strength of Pirtek is that the service we offer is required in all sorts of businesses and industries – from transportation to construction, healthcare and everything in between. This creates a wealth of opportunities, and makes our business resilient, and less vulnerable to economic downturn. When the economy is up, we prosper from increasing equipment installation and a shortage of technical skilled labour. When the economy is down, we benefit from higher demand for repairs, because of companies postponing replacements. This is how we have been able to grow.
We are the market leader in reactive maintenance. A key factor behind our growth is the value of the mission-critical service we provide to customers, targeting to be on site within an hour. When you need an urgent repair, you call the company that you trust. Our national coverage that we have built up over the years, with 24 centres and over 100 vans, is very difficult for competitors to replicate and would require a huge investment. We also monitor our performance, and report it to our customers continuously. This helps us keep existing customers and attract new ones.
We are expanding our range of services, offering preventive maintenance services to our reactive customers, showing them how it can help lower operational costs. Looking forward, we have predictive maintenance, where our technology can help predict a potential failure. This “stepping stone” approach is how we grow our business and ensure customers understand the range of services we offer.
My team is small, focused and multifunctional so it’s easy for us to step in for each other when needed. I have a strong legal background so can advise on labour and customer contracts. While my main role is advising and coaching my team, I often chip in on the sales side to support my team wherever I can.
With our expanding range of services, we provide our people with opportunities to grow. That means technicians who work well in reactive maintenance are able to develop their skill set and gain experience in preventive and predictive maintenance. We’re all about offering new challenges and experiences. This is how we retain talent: we offer them opportunities to grow alongside a positive work-life balance.
Leading by example is an effective way to help franchisees to grow their businesses. So if you want to launch new initiatives, it either requires a leap of faith from franchisees, or you can just show them. My best tool: if I want to try out something new, I use my own centres and demonstrate how it works.
My experience with Franchise Brands has opened a whole different world. They are truly interested in helping you grow your business and having Franchise Brands as our forever home means we can develop some longer-term plans to build a truly great business. The Franchise Brands team radiates a lot of energy and that cascades down into the local teams, stimulating ideas which we all saw first-hand at the Growth Summit in Amsterdam. Suddenly, sparks fly, which for me for me is a lot of fun!
