I came away from a client meeting last week with a building company owner really pleased to hear that a new staff performance review system we had introduced had been a great success with the field staff. There is always a risk of these more “corporate-like” processes being resisted strongly by the guys on site…
At a recent finance and legal seminar I co-presented with Trina Lincoln (construction law specialist) one of the key topics of discussion and frustration by the builders present was securing the final payment on a project. Several builders recounted past issues of being strung out by owners at the end of a project, being asked…
Can you identify with this situation? You are very good at what you do. You are a great tradesman and take pride in completing jobs to a high degree of quality. You enjoy being on the tools. This is what you enjoy most. But the other parts of your business also have to be done.…
Let’s face it. Most tradies would rather be forced to watch replays of marathon chess matches than put time into creating a budget for their business. I can understand their reluctance, but I would also like to show them the error of their thinking. Creating a budget for your business can be one of the…
Over the past couple of months I have been working with two semi-group coaching programs, called the the Business MasterClass. One at my office in Albany and one in Greenlane. Participants are well through the early modules and already seeing the benefits of coming on-board. I knew from my experience that participants would receive tremendous…
This week I hosted a mini seminar for a software developer who has produced a simple, cost effective and smart costing and project management program for builders. I am always on the lookout for tools like this to help my clients make their business more efficient and this program was no exception. The developer was…
Want to know the best way to respond to a question from a prospective client on why they should go with you? The following is the beginning of a post on the INC.com website that I read the other day. While they were primarily talking to salesmen in big companies, the 2 suggested sentences are…
I had a great meeting with a client this week. We are a couple of months into our 6 month Business MasterClass with him and were going through our second 1:1 meeting. We were covering some specific marketing tactics he will be implementing, and also reviewing the foundation strategies from earlier meetings. His comment, “I…
“According to a study by the Centre for Small Enterprises at Massey University, during the next 10 years 64% of business owners intend to exit their businesses. For the North Shore, where I live, that means about 16,000 businesses may come up for sale during the next 10 years. That’s 130 a month, every month,…
Having the right culture in your company is vital to its success. The culture that exists in a company can make or break it, so it is important to make sure the right culture is proactively developed. By not taking a proactive approach the culture will simply evolve in a random way by usually drifting…