Valle Translations is a woman-owned, SBA 8(a) certified business that provides English-Spanish translation services globally. What began in 1994 as a translation company focused on birth certificates and other forms of personal documentation has grown into a sophisticated business serving some of this country’s best known companies including Blue Shield and Oakwood Worldwide.
Challenges
Rocio Valle, founder of Valle Translations, has allowed her company to successfully grow organically over the last 15 years. While recessions are typically a challenging time for small businesses,Rocio and her husband saw this as an opportunity to prepare for the future. They began to focus their efforts on marketing and growing the company more strategically, but the question was how to accomplish this. For answers, Rocio turned to the San Francisco Small Business Development Center (SBDC).
Gameplan
The company clearly had a long and successful track record working with large companies such as Blue Shield, but it had never asked its existing clients for referrals. This led to one of the most critical elements of Valle Translation’s new marketing plan, implementing a referral strategy. Referrals were identified as the key ingredient to Valle Translations business expansion.
Rocio and Warren set a modest goal of 3-4 new clients who would generate $10,000 per year in additional revenue. This was the original plan, however business is fluid and our focus changed as we identified some key drivers of Valle Translation’s growth. We modified the marketing plan to emphasize building stronger, deeper and more profitable relationships with the company’s top clients, including Blue Shield and California Pacific Medical Center. This approach has been validated with an additional $40,000 in new business in 2009 and is anticipated to grow into $60,000 by 2010.
Results
Today, Valle Translations is growing smartly and strategically. It is using its 15 + years of experience in commercial translation and editing to develop profitable relationships with key clients. The company continues to work with PhD linguists and American Translators Association (ATA) certified translators to provide culturally relevant English-Spanish translations which address a wide variety of commercial documentation needs.
