Category: Uncategorized

The Maintenance Mindset

How many miles are on your car?  If you’re like most, you drive around 15,000 miles a year and keep your car for about nine years.  But there are some car owners out there who push their car further… a lot further. 

Not long ago, I read an article about car owners who maintain their cars so that they last for years, even decades. One gentleman in the article was still driving his 1966 Volvo® that had an astounding 2.7 million miles on it! He was the extreme, but there were many others in the article with hundreds of thousands of miles on their cars.

The secret that all of them touted to their cars’ longevity is maintenance. Maintenance. It’s a simple word with a big benefit, and it’s one that will likely ring true with many of your clients nowadays.

How many homeowners do you serve that are trying to push their roofs to last a hundred summers? How many would like to keep their air conditioner cooling through 2.7 million days of summer? How many would like to see their water heater keep heating and their electrical panel keep powering for a few more decades?

You may not know the number, but they are out there. Are you sending them the right message?

You might be a business that is focused on replacements, but what about those homeowners who aren’t looking to replace? What can you do to pique their interest and get them to make you their service company of choice?

Here are three ideas to try and attract homeowners with the Maintenance Mindset:

Promote Maintenance

This is what they want—so give it to them. You don’t need to shift all of your marketing from replacement to maintenance, but it doesn’t hurt to let homeowners know that you have a “Maintenance Mindset,” too.

Offer Tips

These homeowners who want to push their homes as far as possible would love some tips on how to do it. A great place for this is your quarterly homeowner newsletter or even emails to your client base. Tell your technicians to give homeowners some easy examples of what they can do reduce wear and tear.  They’ll appreciate it, and may even call you when the tips alert them to something in need of attention.

Explain the Club Membership

If you notice a homeowner with an old car in the driveway that keeps going strong, you can bet they’d be interested in a club membership. But you don’t need the car to know that you should be offering the benefits of a club to every homeowner you talk to. For the maintenance-minded consumer, a club membership offers a double benefit—scheduled maintenance and savings, which should get them interested in being your next club member!

These three simple tips are ways to attract the business of homeowners trying to stretch their systems as long as they can. But what’s in it for you?

For starters, these homeowners will go for maintenance year in and year out. That means you’re practically assured a call from them every year, and if you can get them locked into a club membership, they will be calling you.

Plus, even those with the maintenance mindset will eventually see the need for a new system, service panel, roof, or water heater, and when they do, they’ll turn to the company that has taken care of them all along.

In today’s budget-conscious times, more and more homeowners are working to stretch their dollars even further. Providing and promoting maintenance are ways that you can help these homeowners and your bottom line.

What Business Are You Really In?

“I’m in the heating/plumbing/electrical/construction business.”   That’s what I’m normally told by contractors when I ask them what kind of work they do.  After chatting with them a bit, all of them soon discover that’s not the right answer.  They find that they’re in something much different.

I found myself in a similar conversation not long ago.  After this particular contractor told me he was in heating, I immediately followed up by asking him how many employees he had.  He proudly said, “I have nine field staff and four in the office.”  “That’s a large payroll you have,” I replied, to which he agreed.  We then discussed what those people were doing right now.  He was quite concerned when he realized he didn’t know!

Would you agree with this statement: You are only as good as your people?  It only makes sense.  You are as smart as your smartest, and as weak as your weakest employee.

What do we do about this dilemma?  Realizing that our real business is the development of our team is the first step.  We have to accomplish our work through them.  If we give them clear direction, they will be successful in their day.  If we are vague and respond only when things go wrong, then we are headed for trouble.

So what do you do?  The first is to consider training on a regular basis.  How often is “a regular basis”?  The answer is at least weekly; in fact, we have members that train daily!  A contractor once told me, “I have trained people, and then, they left me.” I immediately replied, “What if you don’t train and they stay?”

When asked, employees will put training at the top of their list of things they desire from their employers.  Training is an investment—not an expense.  Your training should be aimed at meeting your objectives.  Training can be planned—for example, your weekly training topics could be:

• Goal setting
• Customer satisfaction
• New opportunities
• Technical topics
• Completion of paperwork
• Customer service
• Warranty
• Programs you are offering your clients

What is your training budget for this year and next?  Without training you will never reach your goals!  So, as you can see—and the contractor I recently chatted with saw—you’re not in the heating/plumbing/electrical/construction business.  You really are in the PEOPLE business!

Why do I need a coach?

Likely, you’ve a football game or two over your lifetime.  As you are watching the game and looking at the sidelines, who are the first people you notice?  It’s the coaches!  The cameras always seem to pan to the coaches signaling plays or yelling to players.

Most of the players have been playing football since they were little boys.  They understand the rules and are paid exceptionally well to do so.  So, why do they need coaches?  Are they really necessary?

Most people understand the role of a coach—most of us have played an organized-team sport at some time in our lives; some of you may even coach your children’s teams.  So, how does this apply to our world?  What can a coach do to help us and our businesses?

Having the role of a business owner, you know that one-third of your time should be spent recruiting, one-third of your time should be spent training, and one-third of your time should be spent managing.  So, what does a coach do?

He/she recruits—or at least has a strong opinion of what the team requires; trains; and manages.  Does this sound familiar?  Maybe we are all coaches.

Merriam-Webster® defines a coach as: “One who instructs or trains.” A coach leads his team, a coach instructs his team, and a coach measures his team against expectations.  He holds the team together.  A well-coached team will always win.

A good coach understands that every player is different and has to be instructed in different manners.  He will apply different philosophies for different players.  He understands the strengths and weaknesses of his team and will put the correct player in the correct position so that both the player and team will experience success.

On a football team there are many different coaches: head coach, offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, special-teams coordinator, and there are coaches for every single position!  Some professional teams have more than two-dozen coaches!

A good coach is balanced and will encourage players to follow his/her lead.  Good coaching teaches and motivates.  A great coach motivates, disciplines, enforces teamwork, challenges, and accepts only 100 percent from his players.

All of us need coaches to keep our game on.  Where do you go to be coached?  Entrepreneurs arguably need coaches more—mostly because we live in an isolated world.  Many SGI™ Canada members started out excited about being able to chart their own direction.  However, some eventually found that they actually miss having a boss—or at least they miss having a trusted adviser with whom they can brainstorm, set goals, confess their anxieties, and work through the day-to-day challenges. Think about the best boss you ever had (or dreamed of having).  Being an SGI Member and having the coaches on the SGI team is just that!

Here’s what the SGI team does for our members daily:

• Listens to what you say and for who you are
• Asks you strong questions
• Offers insights, inklings, perspectives, and suggestions
• Makes big requests
• Remembers your goals
• Expects commitment and honesty
• Celebrates your successes with you

SGI can be your coach!  Call us when you need some motivating or a little direction.  That’s our responsibility to our members—and one we take seriously!

What Are You After

Everyone is after something different.  You have a different motivation and drive than competitors in your market.  What is it?

On the day you opened your business, what was your vision? Every successful company needs a vision guiding it, which will keep you and your company on track to achieve the goal you started out with.

Let’s say you have a powerful vision for where you want your success level and your company to go. How do you get there? It’s one thing to know what you’re after and another to know how to achieve it. To give you a framework for achieving whatever it is you’re after in your business, I’ve taken several of the most popular goals that I’ve heard from talking to business owners across the country and applied a few action steps that will help you get there.

Financial Independence
You didn’t start your business hoping that you’d be up all night worrying about payroll and sweating out the last few days of the month wondering how your bills would get paid. You started your company for financial independence. But worry and stress might be your reality. How do you get to the independent

stage? It sounds simple, but to get there you need a profitable business and a strong customer base—a lot of business owners aren’t willing to do what it takes to get there. It might mean laying off some of your employees or getting back in the truck yourself, but at the end of the day, you’re the one worrying about payroll and bills so do what’s right for you and your business.

Tip: A wealthy exit strategy is something you probably haven’t thought about, but it’s your ticket to  financial security when the time comes to leave your business behind. Plan today for your security tomorrow.

Freedom of Time
You probably wanted some freedom of time when you started your business, but often owners find themselves working night and day just to keep things afloat. The remedy for this is strong systems and dependable people. With Success Group International™, you have the right systems to put in place in your company; and with the SGI client support staff, you have knowledgeable individuals willing to help you find the right employees who are willing to use those systems. That equation means your business can run like clockwork whether you’re there or not.

Tip: Take stock of your team. If you don’t have the people in your organization that could keep your company going in your absence, find them and train them before something happens.

A Company of a Certain Size
Sometimes the goal you’re striving for might be a company that’s a certain size. Often, this is a goal built on pride more than anything, but if it’s your goal, there is one surefire way to achieve it—bring in calls. The worst choice that you can make is to bring on another truck without the calls to keep it running and that technician working. An underutilized truck and technician will simply eat up your profits. So, before you bring another truck into your company, make sure you’re turning away enough calls to keep it busy.

Tip: If this is your goal, you need to start booking more calls. Make sure your marketing is ringing in the calls you need, but more importantly, make sure your call-takers are turning those calls into service calls. Listen to your call-takers to gauge their abilities and ensure they’re doing what’s best for your company every time the phone rings. They, too, should be training every week, just like your technicians.

A Certain Income Level
Are you after a certain income level for yourself? Your goal for your business might be to provide a certain lifestyle for you and your family. If that’s the case, how do you do it? You need profits. A profitable business will allow you, as the owner, to have the lifestyle that you’re seeking. A profitable business isn’t necessarily the biggest one you can build. Profits are revenues minus expenses. So, you need to maximize revenues while decreasing expenses. Increasing revenues might mean raising your prices or getting in the truck yourself rather than hiring another technician. Decreasing expenses might mean limiting the number of employees you have in the office or improving your purchasing terms. Analyze your company to determine how you can maximize your profits, and you’ll be in good shape to earn whatever level of income you’re seeking.

Tip: Some owners assume that to make more personal income, they need to increase the size of their company. The opposite may be true. You may have all the revenue you need to be profitable, but your costs may be sucking it away. Are you making the most out of your relationship with SGI? You may not be if you haven’t looked at how Buy-Max can start saving you money immediately—using products that you already are using in your company today!

 
Those are just a few of the goals business owners have on the day they go into business for themselves. No matter what drives you to build your business and serve your clients every day, you need a vision for what it will take to achieve it and a plan to get yourself there. So whatever you’re after, it’s time to get after it.

Planning for Quiet Times

Here is what I promise you: There will be certain times during the year that your business will be quiet. Your phones will stop ringing and your staff will be looking at you asking what they should be doing with themselves. You may tell some of them to go clean the shop or count inventory. Sometimes you may have work to be done at home or at a friend’s house that you have been putting off. This is what typically happens when we are slow.

But how does this affect our profitability? The average North American contractor’s net profit is less than five percent.  When we pay our staff for non-revenue producing work, it eats into our profits further.

So what should we do when it’s quiet? The answer is to plan for it now! You don’t have to spend a lot of money to market. Today with social media and email you really have so many new ways to communicate to clients.

You need to have a marketing plan based on a budget that you also should be planning now! You create a plan for what happened yesterday. All you can do is learn from yesterday to plan tomorrow. Use this little tip to begin your planning process. You require the following:

• Sales plan month by month, broken down by each department in your company
• Marketing plan
• Training plan
• Recruiting plan
• People plan
• Goals
• Team reviews & bonus plans
• Inventory

This is the beginning of a complete plan but to balance out your year you need to plan it. The time to plan is NOW! If you need help give us a call we would be happy to discuss this with you.