Selective Customer Base Key to Success for Manassas IT Firm

MANASSAS, Va. — Would you go to school for 15 years after high school just to be prepared to start your own business? That’s what John Jewell did prior to starting his IT services company, Jewell Technical Consulting (JTC).

Jewell always knew he was going to own his own IT company someday. He even had the company slogan, “Big Business Solutions for the Small Business Budget,” selected years before he was ready to incorporate. But Jewell also knew he needed to learn more about IT, business development, and sales.

So for ten years he worked companies like EDS, where he honed his technical engineering skills, and later at Dell for five years learning sales and business development. He carried a sales quota of $12 million per year an exceeding that goal by about $3 million annually, he said.

He never waivered from his vision – on the fourth anniversary of his employment at Dell he incorporated his company. In 2003, on the fifth anniversary of his employment he resigned from Dell and launched JTC.

Fifteen years of preparation served him well. In fact, Dell immediately offered Jewell a contract to support one of their existing customers. Starting out in the basement of his home, Jewell soon made his first hire, an engineer to help support his growing customer base. While Jewell focused on sales, when he wasn’t actually working at a customer site, his wife Nora took care of operations and finances.

Ten years, 16 employees and several hundred customers later, Jewell and his executive vice president, Kristen Maxey, talked about lessons learned along the way to building his dream.

Act bigger than you are right from the start

One of the biggest breaks Jewell got early on in his business was meeting Creston Owen. Owen, who passed away in 2010, was the president and CEO of Falcon Communications, and an influential business leader in Manassas. Owen was looking for IT support for his company and invited Jewell to a meeting based on a JTC corporate brochure he’d been given by one of his employees.

Sitting in the conference room at Falcon headquarters, Owen was astounded to learn that JTC was comprised of three people working out of a basement.

“I’d have never called you if I’d known that,” said Jewell, recalling Owen’s comments to him. “Your brochure makes you look like a much larger IT company.”

Move fast when you find great people, and be flexible

It didn’t take long for Jewell and his wife, Nora, to outgrow the basement. In searching for their first office space, they met Kristen Maxey. Nine months pregnant, she showed them several options within the building where they eventually located their business. After the tour, while walking back to their car, Nora turned to John and said, “You need to hire that woman.”

John went back into the building and asked Kristen if she would be interested in coming on board. Maxey was intrigued, but pointed out the obvious: She was just about to go on maternity leave.

Jewell told her she could work from home for as long as she needed to after the baby was born, and he would always be flexible about her need to balance her job with her family, said Maxey. So, she accepted the offer and today she remains one of his most valued employees.

Delegate

One of the hardest lessons a new business owner learns is that you can’t do it all. Jewell understood that his focus needed to be on sales and recruiting talented engineers. He couldn’t do that successfully if he was also trying to manage operations and delivery. Plus, both he and Nora had decided that working together full time was not something they wanted to do long term.

Maxey quickly took over management of the day-to-day operations of JTC and Nora narrowed her role to that of the company’s CFO. With the back office responsibilities taken care of, Jewell was able to go out and do what he does best – bring in new customers, hire top-tier talent, and ensure that his existing customers were satisfied with JTC’s services.

Build processes. Then follow them!

Fast growth in any type of business usually results in processes falling apart. Like any other company, JTC began to experience problems when they suddenly found themselves putting out fires and supporting their ever-growing customer base without following a disciplined, programmatic approach.

Working collaboratively with the rest of the employees, Jewell and Maxey developed a series of processes for every type of service the company offered. Whether it was as simple as setting up a desktop computer or as complicated as rolling out a wide area network, there was a clearly defined set of steps to follow, lists to check, and procedures to adhere to.

But that was just the first step. Maxey then made sure that everyone followed the system, to the letter, for every engagement. Ingraining this into the culture of the company early on has allowed JTC to grow in size without jeopardizing quality or customer satisfaction.

Develop your differentiator

The IT services market is a crowded one, and it is hard to stand out. Since most of the companies are essentially selling the same type of equipment, the differentiator has to come from how their services are delivered, said Jewell.

The difference lies in how JTC delivers on that promise through an in-house developed software system called “Vision.” It’s a robust, fully integrated helpdesk, ticket tracking, and customer relationship management (CRM) application that is at the center of JTC’s success. Customers go online to access the helpdesk, view the status of an open ticket, or place a new support request (they can always call or email JTC as well.)

To tackle some major common complaints of the IT world, Jewell decided to eliminate the frontline support on the helpdesk with call takers who escalate issues to more experienced engineers and, instead, staff it with experienced engineers. When a customer calls JTC for support, they are immediately speaking with someone who can help them, said Jewell.

Secondly, to avoid working with technicians who are not familiar with a customers’ equipment set up, JTC literally writes a book, or site manual, tailored for each client. This manual includes a detailed list of all the installed hardware and software, a Visio diagram of the corporate network, and all key points of contact. There are even photographs of the customers’ server room or IT closet so a technician on the phone can direct an employee to do something by referencing the image.

Weed your customer base

Most service companies tend to take on a wide variety of customers when they’re starting out. Over time, Jewell identified his “sweet spot” – those companies that are a perfect fit for his services.

After about five years, Jewell realized that his client base needed some weeding. Fortunately, thanks to Vision, he was able to analyze each customer and identify those that were no longer a good fit for the company.

This was a critical step for the success for his organization. For companies like JTC, at some point the customer base is large enough to sustain the company. But having the wrong types of customers can actually inhibit growth.

A cold hard look at the profitability of each customer, the demands they make on your resources, and their willingness to approach the business relationship with a win/win attitude was needed, said Jewell.

Develop a healthy dissatisfaction

Though JTC’s business has grown, it’s not there yet.

“I don’t consider us a success yet,” said Jewell. “We are well on our way, and we have a great team here, but we have so much more to accomplish and a lot of goals to meet.”