- Posted by Kristen Hajduk on February 17, 2010
One way to get your phone to ring is to make sure you are presenting an appealing image to the buying public.
Start with your company logo. Is it clean and fresh, good colors and eye catching? Look hard at your font, your colors and the image you are presenting, and if it’s time for an update, go for it. If you have been in business some period of time, can you incorporate “XX Years of Serving You” in your logo? Stating your company’s age will lend trust to your name. Don’t forget to make sure that your business cards and all your other advertising show your image.
Have you looked at yourself in the mirror recently? Do you dress well, project a professional image, and look fit and trim? Or do you look like you just crawled out from under a house? If you want to be paid like a pro, you must think, speak, look and act like a pro. Clean clothes, haircut, shoes shined, clean vehicle, these are all part of a professional image.
Do you present yourself around town as a pro? Do you always have fresh, clean business cards to hand out? Can you give your elevator speech at a moment’s notice? Do you look good and most important, have a smile on your face? Honestly, would you buy from you?
If you’re in business, get in it. Present to the buying public what the buying public wants to see. Trying to be a rebel or doing things “your way” will get you a quick exit out of business. Get your image right.
Michael Stone of Camas, Washington, has more than four decades of experience in the building and remodeling industry. He is author of Markup and Profit; A Contractor’s Guide, published by Craftsman Book Co, and his second book, Profitable Sales, A Contractor's Guide was released in 2007. Michael offers Coaching and Consulting services for construction companies throughout the U.S., as well as products for business management, and is a frequent speaker at national and regional construction related events and will be speaking at JLC LIVE in Providence. www.markupandprofit.com
- Posted by on February 12, 2010
All indicators are that the recession is slowing down and that in the future it will bottom out. This means that the economy will slowly recover. It may never reach the craziness of the past decade but a rebound none the less. This means those that have survived need to be ready. Even those that are still in the game see the need to be ready. Ready for what? Ready to squeeze every bit of profit out of the jobs that they do get. And to serve the client in a way that creates referrals, making it easier to sell and make a profit.
The emphasis over the last two years with many remodeling companies has been to spend their training money on sales and marketing, a need that became clearer as the abundance of jobs dried up. I believe it is time to start investing some money in training the production staff once again. The companies that have survived saw the recession coming and got ready. The same is true now about the recovery.
Two major areas stand out. The first the need to manage the time spent on the job, or labor costs. The second, managing the clients expectations and high quality customer service in the field. I know it is clear to every business owner, but I will refresh your memory here, that a small amount of time saved everyday will make enormous differences to the bottom line. If your labor cost is $40 per hour and you have 5 people in the field and each one saves 15 min per day the profit for your company goes up roughly $13,000 per year! 1 hour of training, done properly with follow up, can accomplish this, and only cost you $400.00 in labor including lost production time! Let’s look at customer service. The cost of a carpenter saying the wrong thing at the wrong time is enormous! Taking the time to train them, by role playing, how to answer those difficult questions and it will save you countless dollars and many sleepless nights.
Think about it. The old adage, “pay now or pay later” is never truer than when it comes to your staff. Almost every business around us learned it years ago; it is time for us as an industry to catch on. Invest some time, invest some money, and invest some energy and it will pay off.
Tim Faller of Westerly, Rhode Island, founded Field Training Services in 1999, a firm committed to training production staff in good job-site management and helping companies develop production systems that produce profit. For 12 years, Tim worked at Hopkins & Porter Construction in Potomac, Maryland, where he started as lead carpenter, became production manager and then helped begin the New Homes division. Based on his extensive experience, Tim has conducted many successful lead carpenter training programs across the country. He is the author of The Lead Carpenter Handbook: The Complete Hands-on Guide to Successful Job-Site Management and the Lead Carpenter Audiobook. www.leadcarpenter.com
