Signs lead to construction reporting

Public Record, The, Aug 10, 2004 by Kleinschmidt, Jancie

Without realizing it, Mark Ross began developing a new career while working as a sales representative for Imperial Sign Co. The owner of Construction Lead Sheets has since fine-tuned his techniques and says he reports construction projects earlier than he did when he began his business in 1987.

Ross provides subscribers of his service - contractors, interior designers, real estate brokers, manufacturers and companies interested in what's being built in the Coachella Valley - with basic information on projects as they go through the city and county planning departments. Each week he generates a series of two-sided, one-third page forms that show the location, approximate value, type of work, owner, general contractor, architect/designer, APN code and status of residential, industrial and commercial projects valued over $50,000.

"I tell my subscribers if there is a project over $50,000 that I don't report, 'Call me,' and my phone doesn't ring," Ross says, adding that he has clients that have subscribed to Construction Lead Sheets for 10 years.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Ross' first entrepreneurial endeavor was owning a moving company: two men and a truck called The Movers. "Our slogan was, 'Let us let you lay back,"' he says. For four years, he provided local and long-distance moving services. After that, he went to work for his brother-in-law's company, making nameplates and decals for manufacturers. "My job was to call on design engineers and purchasing agents all over Ohio," he says.

The member of a close-knit family with five brothers and two sisters, Ross frequently came to the desert to visit one of his brothers, who ran a pool service. "Usually I came out in the summer," he says. "One year I came out in November. It was beautiful out here, and I got back to Cleveland and it was sleeting. I was sitting in my office looking at my car and the gray skies and figured, 'I'm outa here."'

Ross moved to California in 1986. "I had to get very resourceful, because there was no industry/manufacturing in the valley. So this business I worked for three years was kind of out the window. I had to readjust and decided to go after a bigger nameplate, such as signs." He ended up in a sales position for Imperial Sign, and thus began his path to Construction Lead Sheets.

"The owner would send me to the cities when business was slow to find out different commercial or retail projects coming up," Ross says. At the time, he belonged to a business networking club. "Everybody looked forward to my bringing in my leads," he says. That's when he realized he could make money from his efforts. He had software developed and started logging information into a database.

"I started cold-calling different contractors and subcontractors," he says. He began with seven subscribers and built his client base primarily on referrals. A Public Record subscriber who uses the newspaper to prospect for new customers, Ross last month placed his first ad in six years in the paper.

In 2001, Ross left Imperial Sign and turned his full attention to his fledgling business. "I was getting very good testimonials or comments from subscribers, and it kind of fired me up to carry on with it," he says.

Wednesdays through Fridays, Ross makes the rounds of city halls. "I do all my own research and have developed relationships with people at the different cities," he says. He canvasses Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, La Quinta, Indian Wells, Indio and Riverside County. On Mondays, he enters data into the computer and assembles and mails the information packets. Tuesdays are devoted to cleanup and selling.

Every other Tuesday, Ross heads to the beach - or, more precisely, to city halls in seven coastal municipalities: Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, Palos Verdes, Rancho Palos Verdes, El Segundo and Torrance. In a two-day trip, he gathers the same type of information in those communities. "I just needed a break from the desert during the hot summer months, and I thought this was a good way to do it," he says.

He's been doing it for the past year and a half and says that on his first day of making sales calls he signed up seven or eight subscribers. The service is the same as in the desert, except it's a biweekly mailing.

"What's different there is a lot of construction is tear-down of beach houses and building two- and three-unit condos," Ross says. "Everybody is maximizing their square footage on their lots, building out to the max."

After running business from his La Quinta home for several years (he lives next door to another brother who opened a plaster and general contracting business here), Ross established an office in Palm Desert two years ago. "To this day, I do all my own research," he says. He also maintains the database; prints, collates, cuts, packages and mails the reports; and makes sales. And he makes service calls. "I found out some people need to be instructed on how to use [the information] for their particular service or project," he explains.