Thanks for Giving

Let me take this time to thank all people that have given back to me and this industry. So many people have shaped and guided me along the way. I had no idea this is where I would be over 20 years ago. I feel very blessed to have been able to experience so much. We have been able to create a great staff doing great projects for some great clients.  The list is too long to point out everyone, so I narrowed it to a short list of  (5).  A special thanks to these 5 for giving back.

     • Doug Caldwell – business partner

     • Gary Kinman -  http://www.kinmaninstitute.com/about/gary.htm

     • Jim Paluch – JP Horizons http://www.jphorizons.com/

     • Joe Palimeno – Charles Vander Kooi http://vanderkooi.com/

     • Joanne Kostecky - http://gardendesigninc.com/


I look forward to the next 20 years this industry has in store for me. Hopefully I can give back as much as I have received.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Brad

How Schedule 2 Win can help manage sales

The last two weeks I talked about how your schedule should (Schedule 2 Win does) help manage your finances and you production. This week I’m going over how it helps you manage your sales. Yes a schedule can help you manage sales. I think I can keep this short and sweet.

S2W is not meant to be a complex tool to manage sales. It is not a CRM. What it does is give you a good indicator of your sales at a quick glance. We focus on the two main sales indicators. They are your pipeline and backlog. We make it so easy to schedule your projects because we want you to schedule it as soon as it becomes a lead. Your next step it to transition it into a sale. Most people don’t want to schedule a project because they are afraid the date will change. Of course it will. We have rain, sick days, add ons, equipment breakdowns, etc. This list goes on and on. The reality is we all still need to get a certain amount of work done rain or shine. We designed S2W to make it easy to allow change. It is very important to enter everything as soon as it is sold. Otherwise you have no idea of your backlog. This helps in so many ways. First if you can clearly see your backlog you can easily see if you have a sales issue or not. You can even see which salesperson will hit there mark and which need some help. If you are lacking in sales you can quickly reference your pipeline of proposals to see which lead you want to focus on closing. It that simple and we keep it that simple.

Again being a contractor for over 20 years, I realize no one has time to enter a lot of data. We need a lot of output with little input.

Have a great week.

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How to manage production through your schedule?

It sounds obvious that you would manage production through ones schedule, but it’s often not the case.

Let’s start with the 3 most common mistakes when scheduling production.

• Schedules are not measurable

• Schedules are set with too much fluff

• Schedules are dictated by whoever yells the loudest

Does this look like your scheduling system? If you don’t schedule according to $ of produced revenue you are just filling in days with people. S2W was created for this main reason. Having $ of produced revenue associated with every task allows you to clearly see if you are schedule to win before you every start the day, week or month. It’s very clear which crews, types of jobs, clients, etc. are winning and which are losing. This makes it easier to identify the weaknesses, which in return helps you to manage and correct them. It’s impossible to fix a situation if you don’t know the problem.

I also find too many people like to schedule too much fluff. Fluff is the fillers that we like to do, but don’t often need done at that time. I’m not saying you can’t do these tasks, but let’s make sure they are helping you hit your mark. This goes back to having a measurable schedule. Many people have no idea if they have time to do the extras or not. Using a measurable system like S2W makes it easy to see if you produced enough work yet. Did you notice, I didn’t say work hard enough? Often we confuse activity with achievement. After you hit your mark you can do all the fluff you want. You may even chose to go home early or make more money. S2W allows you to make this choice guilt free.

I probably don’t have to say much about the third mistake. We have all been there. Yes sometimes you need to answer the screening client, but now you can see how that scheduling decision affects your team’s ability to win for the week. If this happens too frequently you may need to rethink that client or how you are acquiring your leads. You may even find it isn’t the issue isn’t the client. It is the employee, the task, or even the day of the week this task is being scheduled. Either way you can’t manage what you don’t know.

Does your scheduling system help you to:

Schedule to win, so you can produce a win and finally celebrate the win.

Have a great week.