Rodney Jetton knows how to earn buy-in.
The former state legislator and former speaker of the Missouri House made a living representing a wide range of constituents. During his 2005–09 stint as speaker, Jetton negotiated a $23 billion budget and supervised operations, including 300 employees.
That experience is coming in handy as marketing director for Schultz & Summers Engineering Inc., a Poplar Bluff-based firm with offices in Branson and Lake of the Ozarks.
In a construction sector typically unconcerned with brand image, Jetton has worked roughly two years to market the firm’s civil engineering, land surveying and materials testing services. Since Jetton came on board in March 2010, the company’s revenues have increased 77 percent to a record $6.2 million in 2011.
His first assignment: Secure federal contracts in New Orleans, where post-Katrina levy repair was big business. Among 15 federal contracts with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jetton helped win a $1.9 million job, the largest in company history.
“Diversifying into the federal market was a huge thing,” Jetton says. “Our revenues basically doubled from 2009 to 2010.”
In his first year, SSE netted about $3 million, or 60 percent of its annual revenues, from work in the $14 billion federal hurricane protection system rebuilding project. The results signaled a change in direction for the company, which had targeted municipal water and sewer systems and commercial developments.
Jetton also quickly set out to improve SSE’s online image and external communications.
While in New Orleans, Jetton began a complete overhaul of
SchultzAndSummers.com.
Jetton now blogs and produces content for all social media, including tweets when new federal or state grants are available and posting pictures to Facebook of SSE-sponsored community events such as the recent Missouri Sports Hall of Fame induction banquet in Springfield.
Jetton, who lives and works in Branson but travels to SSE’s Lake of the Ozarks and New Orleans offices monthly, also revived a seldom-used company newsletter, branded as Field Notes. The newsletter is key to what Jetton calls his systematic contact plan for some 9,000 customers and prospects.
“Typically, your Web site is working in conjunction with your other marketing and sales efforts,” Jetton says of his multipronged approach.
Jetton’s run with SSE didn’t start out so rosy, as he was coming off of an assault charge against him. Before he got hired at SSE, Jetton was turned down for a job as a Sears appliance salesman in Missouri’s bootheel.
“No one would hire me. It was pretty bleak,” Jetton says. Then he got a call from Stan Schultz, who co-owns SSE with Bob Summers. Shultz knew Jetton’s credentials and believed in his future, hiring him in early 2010.
At that time, Jetton also was the target of an FBI grand jury investigating him for bribery in his handling of a bill in 2005.
“You start with a guy on Monday and on Wednesday you’re in Kansas City before a federal grand jury, not knowing how it’s going to go,” Jetton says of his first week on the job at SSE.
In relation to the assault charge, Jetton pleaded guilty in May 2011 to a lesser misdemeanor charge for allegedly battering a woman during a sexual encounter in fall 2009 and was released from probation following payment of court costs and restitution. The grand jury never filed any indictments in the bribery case.
“It meant a lot to me that Stan was willing to put confidence in me … and that he trusted me,” says Jetton, a former Marine captain, real estate broker and political consultant. “I told him about my assault case and those charges, and he had known about them and looked into them. He knew I hadn’t been perfect, but he knew the kind of person I was and was able to stick with me. I appreciate that a lot today, now that all that’s behind me.”
Jetton calls the trials educational.
“It helped me get back to my faith and helped me get my life back on the right track,” says Jetton, the son of a Baptist preacher. “Being at SSE was a big part of that.”
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