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Busting Through the Ceiling This Year

Every business goes through some ups, downs, and growing pains along the way, but even a successful business will come against a mighty force at some point in its history. This powerful force has slowed the progress of ambitious businesses and crushed many under its weight.  It’s called the ceiling.

It’s the end of another calendar year. You’re reviewing your year-end revenue and profit margin and for the third straight year, you haven’t generated anymore sales or additional profit.  You’ve hit the dreaded ceiling.

Many business owners, especially contractors who are already stretched thin, stagnate at this point.  They lose their momentum, and slowly their company begins to backslide.  However, with the right mixture of determination and planning, you can break through the ceiling and attain a higher level of success.

How do you bust through this ceiling and take the business to the next level?  It’s time to take the 10 necessary steps to do so:

1.     Change your thinking.

Go into your bedroom or bathroom and look at yourself in a mirror.  Look into your eyes and do some soul-searching.  Ask yourself: Are you willing to change the way you conduct business—even though you may be comfortable in your ways—for the good of your business and your family?  If so, be resolute in taking the necessary steps to improve.

2.     Outline your goals for the next year.

Decide what is most important for your company to improve in the next year.  Do you want to increase revenues by 15 percent?  Do you want to improve your profit margin by 5 percent? Would you like to increase your club memberships by 1,000?  Write down three or four large goals that you would like to accomplish next year and what your next step(s) will be to obtain them.

3.     Present your goals to your team.

It’s time that you call a meeting and share your concerns. Your company has hit a ceiling, and you know that everyone—including yourself—is capable of busting through it with the right effort.  Using an erasable board or an easel with paper, write down your goals.  Then ask your team to help you decide how these goals can be reached.

The remainder of your meeting will be a brainstorming session.  Write down every single suggestion—there are no bad ideas.  Ask your team to think about how they could be more efficient in the field, on the phone, or in the office.  Encourage them to be vocal about any idea(s) they might have.  By participating in this process, whether your employees know it or not, they are gaining ownership of these goals—and the company.

4.     Create motivation.

At the end of your brainstorming session, sit down with any managers or key employees and evaluate every recommendation.  Write down four or five realistic actions that can be done to accomplish each goal.  (Please note: you will want action items for all segments of your team—call-takers, dispatchers, technicians, salespeople, etc.)

Next, you will need to generate a compensation plan that will be awarded for attaining every goal.  It could be a new profit-sharing plan, bonuses, or additional time off. Maybe you’ll promise to take your entire team on a trip.  Once you have a set compensation in mind, present it to your team.  Listen to their feedback.  Be willing to make some tweaks.  Remember, the goal is to get them excited about change!

5.     Monitor progress.

If you don’t have them already, position Scoreboards in visible areas of your office.  Update them regularly with everyone’s individual progress.  Have a companywide Scoreboard showing the team working toward larger yearlong goals.  Your team must know how they’re fairing to continue to stay motivated.

6.     Help them succeed.

Evaluate invoices to determine why certain techs may struggle or listen to CCRs with low-booking percentages.  Then train on those issues.  Have regular video-recorded role-play sessions, and have your team review themselves.  Make it a point to do weekly ride-alongs, too.  Get in the field and see how you can help your team improve. Seek new motivational videos and play them during trainings.  Be willing to reimburse team members that invest money in motivational CDs or DVDs for themselves.

7.     Congratulate along the way.

Send congratulatory texts out across the company when someone has a big-ticket invoice or sale.  Have monthly team meetings—bring in food and present companywide progress.  Congratulate individuals hitting their specific goals.  For those who surpass their goals, award them with something unexpected.  You want to keep people focused and motivated throughout the year.  Be positive in everything you do!

8.     Always be assessing your team.

If you stay true to the steps, after several months you will begin to see who is onboard with your goals and who isn’t.  Ask yourself: is this person creating negativity in your company and holding others back?  Can you provide additional training or one-on-one support to motivate this person?  If your instincts tell you that this person is a bad influence, it’s time to start seeking a replacement—once one is found, make the change.

9.     Stay true to your word.

By the end of next year—if you’ve been working with your team along the way and they’ve offered the same effort—you will reach many of your goals, if not all of them, and will have broken through the ceiling.  Have a year-end party celebrating individual and companywide successes.  Hand out compensation or awards that you promised in your team meeting.  It’s important that you thank your team for their hard work and compensate them as you said you would.

10.  Don’t settle.

After your first year, don’t allow yourself to slide back into old habits.  Keep that ceiling-busting attitude.  Create new goals, encourage your team to think of new ways to reach them, and outline a new compensation plan.

Tips for Hiring (and Retaining) the Best Employees

It is amazing the number of times I hear, “I can’t find any good employees.” It can be challenging to find good employees, but they are out there. It takes diligence to secure superstar employees from the general workforce pool. But… there is another way to add superstar employees to your team.

All it takes is the right tools and knowledge to acquire your own group of superstar employees.

Tip #1: Hire Right / Dehire Right

Everything always has to start with the right person. You can’t expect to grow a strong team with bad seeds. It all starts with proper hiring, and the first procedure is to look for a great attitude. It takes a great attitude to become a superstar in the contracting industry. Nothing will determine the success of an employee more than their ability to establish trust and rapport with clients, and that comes across in a great attitude.

Attitude is one thing that is very difficult to teach. A good attitude can and should be positively reinforced.

But a bad attitude is hard to correct — if neglected it can corrupt your entire team. Those with the right attitude are often more willing to learn. An employee who is willing to learn will be worth more to your team in the long run than the most technically or systems-educated employee with a bad attitude.

Start the search for your superstar employees by finding people with great attitudes.

Tip #2: Right Training

Once you have identified the right person, it is time to get them the right training. Let the new employee ride along with co-workers. But… BE CAREFUL… First, you should conduct ride-alongs and be sure the new rising star is not riding along with a black-hole-attitude employee.

The rising star must be given the opportunity to observe what they are supposed to be doing on each interaction with the customer and absorb what they observed. That is why it is important for you the owner/manager to conduct a ride-along with the existing employee before turning your rising star over to them.

Tip # 3: Positive Behavior Reinforcement

You have to reinforce the strengths, positive attitudes, and performance with your entire team to continually get the best results. This comes with providing your entire team with external training. Nothing says “I am willing to invest in you and your future” more to employees than investing in their continued success. Allow them to grow their knowledge base and meet other professionals that perform the same job function in a different city or state.

Tip #4: Accountability

Hold all employees accountable for performance. Let your employees know what you expect and want them to do. Make sure they are doing what they’re supposed to do. Put up goal board and update them DAILY at minimum.

Let your employees know about upcoming external training opportunities and show them the way to further their success. Conduct ride- alongs to allow your employees to demonstrate they know how to perform the job (let them show you how bright their star really is).

The way to grow a championship team year after year is to invest in the proper tools, employees, and knowledge to ensure you, your business, and your team will enjoy success in the coming years.

Making Winners

The people we encounter daily play a major role in who we are and what we do. What happens in your office can determine your company’s victory or defeat.

What kind of influence does your office environment support? When your employees come to work each day, do they encounter coworkers who encourage achievement, or do they find themselves pulled down by bad seeds? You know what I mean by bad seeds—people who say “this place is the worst,” “the boss hates me,” and “the managers don’t care about us.”

As a manager and/or owner you can control your work environment and are able to create one that has the right stuff. You can inspire the team, encourage others to become your champions, and grow your own farm of influencers to produce a winning culture that cultivate team success.

Mentoring team members encourages stronger working relationships. Mentoring employees is a win-win experience for you and your employees. Who knows… you may create other mentors in your business making your mentor responsibilities less time consuming.

Grooming team members to become winners through training is essential for any company. It does not matter if you work for McDonalds or Apple, Inc. If you are not properly trained to deliver exceptional customer service, your company will not reach its full potential. It may never scratch the surface. Use the resources that you have at your fingertips to grow your team’s skills. That is what we are here for.

Addressing challenges immediately with your employees fosters a winning environment. Letting employees know they crossed the line is the responsibility of the manager. When employees do not meet their goals, fail a customer or the company, it is your responsibility as the manager to get the employee the training necessary to bring up their performance.

Closing your eyes and ears, and thinking if I cannot see or hear the challenge, it cannot see or hear me, and it will just go away. Not a chance does that occur. Instead, let employees know that bad attitudes or acts will not go unnoticed or unaddressed. When performance fails, you are willing to invest in them by sending them to training—and always explain what performance levels you expect when they return from training. Talk with the employee professionally and in private when addressing challenges. Set the expectation and let the employee know that you expect them to take personal responsibility for their attitude and performance at work. Only positive attitudes and performance will be welcome.

Acknowledge your team members in public for their achievements. People are more willing to meet you half way if they feel appreciated.

Understand those who are around us shape us—good or bad. This is why it is important for you, the manager and/or owner to adapt your personal style and become more aware of the affect you have on other people.  Infectious attitudes and positive work environments start from the top.  Be a good influence and you will have a good team.

Are You Running Your Business or is it Running You?

“It’s Thursday morning at 1:45 a.m. I just finished work…I haven’t even had supper yet…guess it’s too late for supper anyway. I will try and make it to the seminar, but I’m not sure if I will make it. I may get there late.”

This was an actual email sent in by a contractor to our office not long ago. He was scheduled to attend a morning meeting at our offices, but as you can imagine, he didn’t show up. I can look at the bright side and say at least he was considerate enough to email our team, but that is not what this column is about.

Why was he working so late? Probably he had a deadline and the job just had to get done. He made a commitment to his client and he certainly would never let down a client. But why so late? The real reason is that he is not running his business, his business is running him!

I guarantee that the next day he was exhausted and not productive at all. If he was going the next morning, it was slow going. He didn’t see his family or eat dinner. Is this why we get into business? Where is the glory in living this way? Unless he makes a conscious decision to change and get out of this type of work all I can guarantee is more 1:45 a.m. days. To break this absurd cycle we have to systemize our business and all of the processes around our business. It begins with a plan and a question.

What is the real purpose of your business? You may recognize this theme—I speak often about asking this question of ourselves. If you answer, “To make money,” then what is that focused upon? I don’t care what region of the country you are in or what the state of the economy is, what happens inside our own companies is up to us.

Here are 10 simple questions. If you know the answers your business is going in the right direction. If you can’t answer, then you need help.

1. What is your gross margin?

2. What is your asset-to-liability ratio?

3. Do you have a written business plan for the upcoming year complete and ready?

4. What is the real value of the inventory in your company?

5. Have you negotiated the upcoming year’s pricing with your suppliers yet?

6. What is your direct-labor percentage?

7. What is your overhead or administrative percentage?

8. Is the upcoming year’s marketing plan written and ready?

9. Do you have a daily report to track your company’s results?

10. Do you have receivables? If you do are they less than 60 days old?

If you cannot answer these simple questions you may be destined to work until 1:45 a.m. You need help and you need it fast. It may be time to consider the real purpose of your business. Take the time to start getting ready today. Then, hopefully, you won’t be the type of contractor working until the wee hours of the morning. Instead, you’ll have a full action plan that will guide you to a profitable future.

Rising Tides and Sinking Ships

It’s been hard to avoid stories of companies failing over the past year, but when a company finally goes under, sifting out the real reason isn’t always that tough.

Companies don’t fail.  People fail.

When a company throws in the towel, it’s often because leaders have failed to lead and managers have failed to manage.  The problem is that often leaders are not great managers, and often managers are not leaders.

As the owner of a contracting company, chances are you need to be both, so how do you excel as a leader and manager?

Leaders:  Creating and Communicating the Vision

If your business is a ship, then the leader’s job is to point the ship in the right direction.  You need to create the vision and paint it in a way that inspires everyone to get on board with one common purpose.

Great leaders inspire others to want to achieve the desired goal and then provide the means by which it can be done.

Pointing the ship in the right direction will only get you there if everyone else on board believes it is the right direction.  When they believe that, they’ll go to work on making sure they get there.  Or as General Eisenhower one said, “Leadership is getting people to do what you want them to do, in the manner you want it done, and getting them to believe that that’s what they want to do.”

If your vision is to add a second location to your company, it’s the leader’s job to paint that picture and inspire everyone else to want to achieve it too.

Managers:  Executing the Details for Achieving the Vision

Management is the process of coordinating and overseeing all of the team’s tasks that go into achieving the desired goal.

For example, if the vision is to add that second location, where will the location be?  Who will staff it, and what advertising should be placed to make the phone ring?  Those are some of the tasks that are involved in turning the vision into reality, and it’s the manager’s responsibility to see them through.

A good manager will look for ways to achieve the vision faster, more efficiently, and more profitably.

The Main Difference?

Great companies need great leaders, and great companies need great managers.  And more often than not, both responsibilities fall on the same person.  After all, management is a component of leadership, and leadership is a component of management.  The two are separate, but they do overlap.

To excel at both, you must realize that while management can be learned, leadership must be earned.  Getting your team to believe in your vision take earning their trust, and that can take time.  To do it, you can build your credentials so others see your track record, and you can persuade others to follow your plan.

When companies fail, the ship starts sinking and crew members jump overboard, and it’s often because the leader didn’t create an exciting vision or the manager didn’t manage the tasks necessary for a successful voyage.

To operate a successful contracting company this year and next, make sure you have both strong leadership and management in place, and if you’re weak in one of the other, now is the time to make a change.  If you’re a great leader, but not a great manager, it’s time to build a management team around you that can successfully execute your vision.  And if you are a great manager, but not a great leader, now is the time to make a commitment to increase your leadership skills.

If a lack of leadership and management is why companies fail, your prescription for success is to make sure your company is strong in both of those areas.  One of the ways to that is to attend leadership building events like Success Day with other successful contractors.  You can avoid becoming a sinking ship by improving your leadership skills and rising with the tide.

For more information on great leadership building opportunities, contact AirTime®500 at 1-866-362-3455.