Many of the contractors I speak to and even work with have many common traits. The one trait that undermines them the most is being overly involved with stuff that doesn’t really matter all that much. Because they like to do those things, they do them at the expense of things they don't like to do (but are crucial to their businesses).
It can be warehousing, fixing stuff, trucks and even the financials.
It’s not that you don’t need to know and master these things. It’s that you don’t need to know as much as you need to if you get carried away.
Ellen Rohr, the consultant I work together with for select clients says, “You don’t need to know how many slices of bread there are on the shelf when all you really need to know is how many loaves of bread there are.”
Here’s a good example. I had an ex-partner who loved the numbers. He could generate reports and figures like nobody else could. The problem was the division he was running stunk and the numbers proved it!
That didn’t stop him from tweaking financial reporting forms, flat-rate books and more to death. All of it was pretty and nice to know but none of it was as important as his getting out of the office and doing the ride-alongs with Techs. But, he didn’t like to do that.
So, I confronted him about it one day. He said he didn’t have time to do ride-alongs. I said, “That’s interesting since you have plenty of time to generate meaningless reports that point to the same problem of crummy sales, bad operational and technical performance by the Techs in the field. One more thing to consider is if you don’t have time to do ride-along to teach them, how will you find the time to fix their mistakes? And finally here’s what I know…when you do finally ride along with the Techs, magically their sales, operational and technical skills will get better.”
It fell on deaf ears!
Okay, what about you?
The 7 Power Concepts
What are you not doing? What are you overdoing?The best thing you can do is make sure you are attending to the7 Power Concepts.Master these and not just the ones you like, but also the ones you don’t like, so they go from weak to strong; and you’ll have a solid business:
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1. Operating Power:
Create the policies and procedures for every task in every department of the
company.
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2. Financial Power: Generate the
selling price and define how each person affects the financial success of the
company.
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3. Selling Power: Establish how
each department plays a role in the pricing and profitability in order to focus
on how each employee affects the selling process.
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4. Marketing Power: Once the
price is established and the tools to sell have been given, we need to market
effectively and reach the target audience - those who desire what we’re
selling.
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5. Staffing Power: Add people
with the right attitude and develop the rest in-house. Hold people accountable
for the sales, operational and technical standards you create.
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6. Leadership Power: Set the goal, inspire a vision or
belief, and take the actions to make it all a reality.
- 7. Sales Coaching Power: Have everyone who performs work for the customer use a selling system that is linked to a system for coaching sales..
Do this and watch your business take off!
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