Episode 11 Podcast Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Resist the temptation to be sucked back out on site when things get crazy from an operations point of view. Hi everyone. Rob Kropp here and welcome back to another episode of the Trade Den podcast. Welcome back Dan. Great to have you back.

Speaker 2 (00:20):

Great to be back. Hello everyone. Big topic today, something we talk about a lot, but before we do, also some exciting stuff happening. I know you’ve been busy, busy preparing for one of our live events coming up.

Speaker 1 (00:32):

Yeah, can’t wait. Just putting on the final touches of our lifestyle mastermind event coming up very, very shortly. Can’t wait. It feels like a lifetime ago since we’ve got all our mastermind clients together, hasn’t it?

Speaker 2 (00:48):

It does. Well, we do them every quarter and it feels like this has been a big quarter since we sat down in Melbourne. We’re heading off to Sydney, so looking forward to it and hearing what everyone’s been up to. We get a good feel through the community obviously, but to see the guys shake their hands, look ’em in the eye, it just makes it a bit different. That atmosphere is something that you really look forward to.

Speaker 1 (01:08):

Yeah, I love our quarterly events. It’s an opportunity for our lifestyle clients, which draws seven figure plus trades and construction businessmen. It’s just a really great opportunity for them all to fly into a location from all around Australia. We celebrate our wins, we focus on new habits for the up and coming quarter. We have client feature sessions, which I can’t wait for this one. Then we just run with a good theme. We’re talking about all things systems and processes, this three day event, so I can’t wait. Got a couple of guest speakers. You are running a session. I’m running a session doing a client activity. It’s going to be awesome. Isn’t it?

Speaker 2 (01:45):

It is. Speaking of client activities, if you’re in Sydney and you see a bunch of about 50 guys running through the city screaming out for directions or asking for weird stuff from strangers, that’s probably us. So say hi, say good day. Don’t be shy, we don’t bite, but it’s going to be a lot of fun and really can’t wait.

Speaker 1 (02:02):

Yeah. Awesome. Well let’s get stuck into today. Hey.

Speaker 2 (02:05):

Yeah, so today we’re talking about the peaks and troughs of what we call the Win Work Do Work cycle. It’s something for me, it’s all trades businesses. And Rob, I’m keen for you to start off by describing what we mean by what the Win Work Do Work cycle actually is.

Speaker 1 (02:22):

There’s this real cycle that a lot of trades, every trades business goes on over a period of time. A lot of people think that it’s industry driven, market driven or external factors driven and no doubt that those factors contribute to some of the natural cycles we go on in business, but this is more of an internal cycle that a lot of business owners and businesses go on, which is a real reflection of where over a period of time generally the owner, what they prioritise their time, time and energy and focus on. And a lot of business owners go through really peak busy times of delivering from an operational point of view and they go all in operationally. And that’s often then at the expense of them having their bum in the seat pricing work, following up work and winning work for their future pipeline. And so they chew through all that work and then they hit a bit of a trough and they are scratching around for their next job.

(03:33):

They’re wondering where they’re, how they’re going to keep their guys busy and their ground crew and they quote like crazy and they, and this is often a high stress period because they don’t have a lot of work and then they start winning the work and they move into another high stress period because they’ve got too much work. And when they’re in this too much work, instead of them focusing more on, well, how do I continue my pipeline and building that out to take my business to another level? They get sucked back out onto site. They get busy in delivery mode again at the expense of quoting and getting more quotes out the door and winning more work to be able to keep pushing ahead and then the cycle starts all over again. So if you are listening to this episode, if you can think you go through high peaks, low troughs, high peaks, low troughs, and that’s the cycle that we talk around with this win work, do work cycle. And unfortunately a lot of business owners get caught in this cycle and they just get stuck in it and they aren’t able to break it.

Speaker 2 (04:36):

And the reality is you’re doomed to stay in it unless you do break it. Once you’re in it, it’s very hard to get out of because we’ll talk about this in a moment, but the things you do to think you’re going to break out of it only really move you to the next phase of the cycle. So you think you’re taking really positive steps, but all you’re doing is going backwards and forwards.

Speaker 1 (04:54):

So if you feel like you’re on a never ending cycle of Win Work, Do Work Win Work, Do Work where you live in extreme business, then extreme have levels of stress because you’ve got no work that you can keep you guys busy, then this episode is absolutely for you. We’re going to break down the symptoms, we’re going to be able to break down the root cause and the three main solutions on how you can break this cycle for good. So let’s get stuck into it, hey.

Speaker 2 (05:20):

Yeah, let’s do it. I think the first place, and you said it is let’s break down the symptoms because it’s very easy to be stuck in a cycle without being able to recognise you’re in it. It’s one part that you’re in, you don’t see the cycle for all the steps and components that you outlined and we’re going to dive deep into that today. But before we do, let’s go through some of these things. So check this off as I read them through as you listen and figure out if you are any of these are happening, chances are you’re probably in the cycle or have suffered it before or about to repeat it again. First one is you’ve got no time to deliver the work you’ve already won. And that’s that feeling of where am I going to find the time? That absolute panic and the chaos of I just can’t even get through what we’ve got, let alone think about something else or to go out and try and win more would be just crazy. I can’t even deliver what I’ve got. Second symptoms would be quotes are piling up on your desk, you’re getting queries, you’re not answering them and that pile of submissions is all waiting for you to do. And the more that they pile up again, the stress starts to build, the frustration starts to build, you start sacrificing different things and you don’t really get anywhere with those quotes. They just sit there as a reminder of what you’re not doing.

(06:34):

Our third one is that over the course of a year, if you really think about it, and we talk about the hamster wheel a lot at Pravar, but the hamster wheel is being stuck in that real busy cycle. You’re just running, running, running, running, but you’re not getting the results. And I think that’s what the symptom of the wind work do work cycle is you start to plateau over time and by that what we mean is you can have really bump a quarter. So you’ve won all this work, you’ve delivered, you’ve invoiced, the numbers are looking great, the next quarter you’re in the trough. So being in the trough means that there is no money, there’s no invoices going out the door, you haven’t got the work to do. And then when you level out over the course of a quarter or a year or whatever it is, you start to see that your results are pretty much plateaued.

(07:16):

So over that sort of quarter high quarter low, if you average it out, you’re sort of breaking even and that’s about it. So a lot of guys find themselves in that space as well. The last one then is, or the second last one I’ll talk about is cashflow, which is sort of a knock on of the financial impacts of being in peaks and troughs. It’s pretty straightforward, but if you find yourself asking Where’s the money going, then that’s probably a symptom that I’ve been busy but I’ve got nothing to show for it or we’re out of money. We just went through that really busy, what happened? Chances are it’s a Win Work, Do Work cycle where you haven’t got the consistency you need. So cashflow is always on the cards and I think the worst problem with this Rob then in the last one I want to talk about in terms of symptoms before we turn our attention to solutions is being caught in a constant state of stress at home.

(08:04):

I mean if you add that up, if you are in a position where any of those four that I’ve just outlined are for you and sometimes it’s more than one at a time, chances are home’s going to be pretty stressful. If you’ve got quotes piling up on your desk and you are working nights to get that done on weekends, chances are you’re not prioritising family as much as you’d like to. And when that happens, the stress starts to build, the demands get higher, it’s just one more thing that you are not doing that you feel like you should be yet you’re sitting there, how am I going to deliver all this work that’s on my plate? So all of these conflicts add up and create tremendous stress at home.

Speaker 1 (08:37):

Yeah, I think that stress shows up in different phases of the cycle when you’ve got too much, like you were saying, when you’ve got too much work on the stress shows up in working long hours and not being present with your family or not having the time to be with your family due to the sheer amount of work you’ve got to deliver by the deadlines. And then the other end of the spectrum is when you’re in the trough phase of the win work do work cycle, the stress shows up. It’s still stress but it’s a different form because it often shows up in financial stress or stress around how am I going to keep my team busy without losing money? And so they’re ultimately two ends of the spectrum where one’s a shit, how are we going to get this work done stress. The other one is shit, what’s going on financially we’re losing money, we’re going backwards and I’ve got guys standing around, they’re not making their money so it’s still stress, but they’re just showing up in lots of different forms. But that stress often shows up in the owner, but then it shows up in the family dynamics which then further compounds the situation.

Speaker 2 (09:47):

And I think what you’re talking about, those things that you’re talking about compound because when you start to look at solutions, if you start to treat the symptoms, all you’re going to do is move yourself through the cycle. There’s no way to get out of it. All you’re going to do is go, well, I’ve got quotes piling up, I’m going to do those quotes now. I’m going to feel more stress at home now because I’ve sent those quotes out. I haven’t delivered on the work I’ve got. So it becomes this sort of self perpetuating hamster wheel if you like that you’ve got no way of getting out of you’ve just got one thing to do, then the next, then the next and before you know it, you’re back where you started. So when we talk about what can we do about it today, we’re not going to talk about dealing with symptoms. We want to break down what we’ve seen over thousands of clients in terms of trying to find the solutions that can break the cycle for good. So Rob, have you got, I know you do, but have you got in your memory what you would say would be some of the top things that help break the cycle for good?

Speaker 1 (10:43):

Yeah, before we get into the three main solutions, I think it’s important to remember that we focus on the things that we can control, not focus on the things that we can’t. And like I was alluding to before is a lot of business owners go through these cycles, but they’re too busy blaming external factors of why they’re in these cycles around the economy, around the marketplace, what’s going on in the industry, interest rates, other sectors being quiet, so therefore we’re quiet. All those things happen regardless. But what we’re going to talk today around these solutions is let’s focus on three solutions that we can integrate into our world so that we can succeed and build a sustainable and scalable business regardless of what’s going on out there in the greater economy and what’s going on out there in the marketplace. So if you are listening to today, we get it that there’s challenging times right now in the marketplace and there’s all these external factors, but what we’re trying to do is challenge your thinking and get you to be a hell of a lot more strategic in terms of what you are prioritising and focusing on internally in your business because that’s what’s going to break the cycle and enable you to keep moving forward regardless of what’s going on around you.

(12:12):

I think that’s really important that if you are listening today that you can really let that point hit home.

Speaker 2 (12:20):

It’s that cracking things. If you can stop the noise and really hone in on this and what we’re about to talk about, then you’re going to feel much more like you’re in the driver’s seat, right? The emotions run high, don’t they? We talk about a peak at a trough. You don’t have those without the emotions that go with it. You have to feel those things and they don’t feel pleasant when you go through them.

Speaker 1 (12:39):

Agreed.

Speaker 2 (12:40):

Alright, so let’s break it down then and let’s start talking solutions. The first one I know you want to talk about is knowing this thing called a gestation period. Do you want to break that down for the listener and tell us how that builds a solution to breaking the Win Work Do Work cycle?

Speaker 1 (12:56):

Yeah, if you are listening today, what I want you to think about is the work that you are doing at the moment, the work you’ve either started this week or are working on this week, I want you to think about when did you price that job, when did you start that job and when are you expected to finish that job because those three factors there help you understand this thing, what we call a gestation period of the timeframe from when the initial lead came through the door to when you got the quote out the door to when you actually got your foot on site to actually start the job. And so by understanding your gestation period within your business helps you plan better and it helps you manage your pipeline to be more consistent in your ability to deliver consistent work.

Speaker 2 (14:01):

I was going to say, how does knowing that it takes me a long time equal breaking out of the cycle. I know it takes a little bit of time. I know I’m busy. If I’m busy, I should be out of the cycle, shouldn’t I?

Speaker 1 (14:14):

Not necessarily. Because if you are in the service and maintenance game, you can get into lead in inquiry into today and you can be on that job this afternoon tomorrow or next week. And so that cycle can be quite short, it could be a very short cycle, but if you’re in more of the project game, that cycle can actually be quite long. And we work with a lot of clients who are in the B2B space or the business to business space in the project game and that cycle can anywhere be between three to 6 to 12 months time. And so if you are getting a lead in today and it takes you a couple of weeks to be able to turn that around to be able to get it to the point where you drop that back on your builder’s desk for example, that builder is then compiling that quote, submitting it to their customer, then the builder then has to win the work and then they’ve got to start that job and then you’ve got to wait before you get into that job to get it started. And that period can be anywhere from like I was saying before, 3 to 6 to 12 months time. And so if you run that style of business and you need work today, it can often be too late. You’re trying to win work now and your ability to turn around a job that quick, unless it’s a live job now that you can just magically quote it and get on there on site next week, it’s impossible. And this is where a lot of the problems appear for those business owners who don’t understand their gestation period.

Speaker 2 (15:59):

So this is an issue and I know it affects everyone, but it’s an issue the longer that gestation period is the higher the dip or the higher the trough or the peak’s going to be or the longer it’s going to last. So understanding either how high or low the trough is or how long it’s going to last for, that’s what sets you up to be able to prioritise what you need to or to really understand how much work you have got for a certain period of time.

Speaker 1 (16:26):

Correct. And so we’re working with Matt, he’s a plasterer and at the moment he’s seeing a bit of his pipeline dry up at the moment. A couple of jobs got pushed out. It’s going on in the industry at the moment where obviously the cost of living is going up and everyone’s getting a little bit cautious around where they’re spending their money and demands for services is coming down due to cost increasing and obviously inflation rates and everything. So that’s going on out there in the marketplace. And with Matt, he got a couple of jobs push out in his pipeline, there became a gap and he started scrambling for work and in coaching he started going, guys, why is it that I’m not winning work at the moment? I need work now to be able to keep my guys busy. And so when we asked Matt those questions going for the work you’re doing at the moment, when did you price the job?

(17:22):

When did you start the job and when are you set to finish the job? The realisation that he had over a couple of weeks was that the work that he was doing today was the work that he won six months ago. And so for him in his business, the gestation period was six months. So say this conversation was going on in February. If we backtrack that six months, the work that he did back in August, September, October was lining up the work that he was delivering in January, February and March. So the work that he does from a sales point of view today is what he’s going to be delivering in six months time in around July, August and September. And so it’s actually delusional to think that if you’ve naturally got a six month gestation period, it’s very, very hard to be able to wave a magic wand and land a job today. That’s when you’ve got to be able to manage efficiencies and effectiveness and manage during this trough because there’s naturally a longer gestation period within that style of business.

Speaker 2 (18:34):

And I think the other thing is if you think about that, and this is pretty scary actually, but if you think about the fact that if you’ve got a six month gestation period and you are in a Win Work, Do Work cycle and you’re only going through that cycle, that means you’re going to be engaged in selling twice a year, which I dunno about you, but I’d be very uncomfortable saying to almost any business, Hey, we’re going to go and sell twice a year and that should be enough. That’s pretty frightening.

Speaker 1 (18:59):

It is, and I think’s where’s what continues the cycle going on is because a lot of people don’t understand their gestation period. So when they are in a trough, they business develop, they account manage, they quote like crazy, they get all these quotes out the door and they do that over a one to two to three month period and then all of a sudden work starts to roll in from these quotes and then they go, shit, we’re busy. And then boom, we’re all boom suck back out onto site and then the first thing that drops off is their quoting and then they execute, execute, execute, and then they go, shit, pipeline’s dried up. Oh shit, where’s their next job coming from? Stress, stress, stress, stress, stress. Quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote. And so that’s the cycle that continues and so unless we break that cycle, we are going to continue to go through that cycle quarter on quarter six months on six month, year on year.

Speaker 2 (20:06):

Yeah, and I think you’re right and I think then if you looked at it in terms of understanding that gestation period, you go, well not so much. What was I doing last week? Hey, we were busy this week, we’re not. I need to sell this week. When was the last time I sold like this? Oh, six months ago or something like that. It’s like, no wonder you’re in this cycle. So that’s why this is so important. I think the other thing you mentioned, which is interesting is where our focus goes, and I think this is our second part of the solution, but we’ve got a choice in terms of we can be focused on external factors like you alluded to before, market conditions, economic conditions, what everyone else is doing to us, what time of year we’re in. Guys love to bank it up against, well it’s the end of the year or it’s January and everyone’s off in January so I can’t do anything. That second thing is well, how do we turn internal and where should our focus be?

Speaker 1 (20:54):

Yeah, I think the second point and the second solution to breaking this cycle around this is being consistent in quoting activity and pipeline management and the key word there is consistent. That’s absolutely the key word around this. And so when you’re at your busiest time from a project or job deliverable point of view, you as the owner always have to be thinking, what’s next in terms of my pipeline? So it’s about asking yourself that question when you are starting to come out of that trough and you’re going into peak deliverable time, it’s not that you take your focus off sales and put purely onto execution of delivery of the work. You’ve got to have the ability to compartmentalise the different functions within your business that yes, you have to deliver that work. Yes, you’ve got to be productive. Yes, you’ve got to manage labour and materials and the schedule and deadlines and maximising margin on those jobs.

(21:59):

So you’ve got to be able to have the ability to compartmentalise some part of your week to manage the deliverable of that, but you’ve got to be able to have an element of your week where you are consistently punching out quotes, you’re always focusing on business development, you’re always thinking around account managing, existing relationships that you’ve got. You’ve always got to be thinking what’s next? Otherwise, like you said, you go through those periods of extreme deliverables, extreme quoting, extreme deliverables, extreme quoting. What we want to do is break that cycle and be consistently quoting always throughout the year and that’s how we stack growth on top of each other rather than going through big peaks and big troughs like you’re explaining earlier.

Speaker 2 (22:52):

What about, I’m mindful of clients that sit or the owners that tell us that I’m not consistent, but there’s those owners that love to be on the tools. Any excuse will do so be I understand that I’ve got to be consistently sales and pipeline led and the desire to do that is high, yet I’m pretty hooked on being that guy. I don’t mind being operational. I like to make sure we deliver. We’ve got in clients, I could give you a million reasons why or how I need to be involved in delivery. Can you come up or share with the listener anything that would come up in terms of, well, how do I rubber meeting the road sort of tactics to make me be consistent or more disciplined in managing that word you used? Managing my sales pipeline?

Speaker 1 (23:39):

Yeah. I think the first thing you can do is have a genuine target to be able to hit from not only a sales target you’ve got to be able to meet, but also having a quoting target of how much quotes you’ve got to be able to get out the door. And this is a big element that we focus on a lot in our coaching programmes and clients have sales targets that they’re striving towards on a monthly basis, a quarterly basis because the principle here is that you can’t hit a target that you can’t see. And so what I mean by that is a lot of business owners have the mindset of they want more sales, more revenue, more profit, what’s more, but let’s set targets around, well this month we’re going to do $120k and then next month we’re going to do $125k and then we’re going to work our way up to a $130k, $140k, $150k over a period of time.

(24:35):

And so the key to this is let’s get in there and set some sales targets, which gives you then something to be able to aim towards from a revenue deliverables point of view. But then you’ve got the ability to be able to reverse engineer that to be able to go, well how much quoting do I need to get out the door on a consistent basis to be able to ensure that I’ve got the ability to consistently grow my revenue over a sustained period of time rather than going on these big peaks and big troughs of workload that they go through.

Speaker 2 (25:07):

So it breeds the activity, but out of that activity and having the target, you then generate some data to be able to make some decisions. I think it’s a good sanity check is the idea of, and ask yourself this as you listen, I’m in a situation where I know I should quote and I’m in a situation where I know I’ve got a deadline that I must hit and unless you have that target in place to say, well, at least there’s something to balance this out, that deadline I must hit’s always going to win over, I should quote, it’s just going to feel really different.

Speaker 1 (25:37):

Why do you think that is? What drives that urgency to get that job done do you think?

Speaker 2 (25:44):

I think there’s a few things. I think there’s the idea that one guy’s a genuinely passionate, you don’t have a successful trades business become a trades business owner unless you’ve got some passion for the industry. So you want to do well, you want to serve your clients well. You understand the necessity of good relationships and some of those are genuine relationships you’ve built up over time, so you don’t want to let those go. So you value those highly and they’re there. So I think there’s a level of certainty that you’re dealing with when you’re dealing with work that you’ve won work you’re delivering and all that sort of stuff. The uncertainty creeps in when it’s like, well, what is that opportunity going to do? Am I going to win that work, not win that work? Are they going to say yes? Are they going to say no?

(26:25):

Are we going to make money or not? It’s more of an uncertain world, but the minute we get that sort of ability to go to what’s more certain we take it or that thing that makes us feel better or more in line with our identity of who we are. So if we think we’re someone who’s been on the tools for, I don’t know, let’s say 20 years versus someone who’s now been in the office selling one or two days a week for three months, that’s going to be a really hard thing to break, but that’s why I think this focus is so important. That’s why having a sales target in place at least gives you something to play the game against. Otherwise there’s just this sort of void of cloudy space that you’re working in versus this really space that and love and you can see value in.

(27:05):

So I think you’re always going to fly to that thing that you’re most aligned to. So I think we’ve got to be really careful on how we set that up. I think the other thing as well is having systems to help that as you learn and go, it’s not like you have to go into this and say, I’ve got to be sales focused. I’ve got to start from scratch and figure out how to sell this stuff. People have been doing it for hundreds of years. So I think in terms of systems, and I’m keen to know which out of all the systems that we teach and coach would you say would help someone consistently be sales and pipeline led?

Speaker 1 (27:37):

Yeah, I would say there would be two main systems, which is your quoting system and then your follow-up system and they would be my two main systems, regardless if you use software or not is the software is what supports the system. Your ability to have something that enables you to efficiently get quotes out the door where you’re constantly refining that and the system enables accuracy of your quote, but your system also over time helps increase the speed in terms of how you can get that quote done. So what it means..

Speaker 2 (28:18):

So you can get more quotes out the door.

Speaker 1 (28:20):

So it means you can get more quotes out the door so you’re getting more done in less time. That’s leveraging, that’s the whole idea of a system. It creates leverage. So by having a quoting system, A it makes you more accurate and B, you just get naturally more out the door at the right price and so that’s what makes that system, but then there’s no point just punching quotes out the door if you’re not going to follow it up, the money’s in the follow-up and that’s just a genuine, that’s just a sales strategy 1-0-1 and we see it all the time, don’t we, where business owners are just punching quote after quote after quote after quote, and then they come up against a bit of a pipeline dip and then we say, well, when was the last time you followed up some quotes and they’re like, oh, I’m followed up in anything six months. Why? Because they’ve been bloody busy just naturally winning work and they’ve got hundreds of thousands if not a couple of million bucks worth of work they’ve already quoted. Let’s just get in there and follow that up. It’s just natural sales, isn’t it?

Speaker 2 (29:25):

It is. And if you’re looking for even tying it to more quotes, this follow up process is it staggers me how many times we see guys just leave it. There’s no system for follow up whatsoever. The quote goes out the door and we’re onto the next quote. Or if you’re in the win work, do work, you’re probably getting straight back out into site or just trying to make up for time lost with family. But if you can have a follow-up system, you’re going to start to maximise, and I think this is the difference, the quotation system, if I’m hearing you, the quotation system lets us get more quotes out the door. The follow-up system sort of puts a cap on that to make it okay, because if our follow-up system’s good, then our conversion rate should go up. And I think let’s talk a little bit about what a conversion rate is and how having a follow-up system ties into conversion rates and then the amount of quotes we’ve got to get out the door.

Speaker 1 (30:15):

If you put out a million dollars worth of work and your conversion rate is at 50%, I’m just going to use very round numbers, then you know that you’re going to win half a million dollars for every million dollars worth of quotes that you put out the door. But if you can then go use a quoting system and increase half again as much of work out the door, then you’re naturally going to put out $1.5 million worth of quotes and even if you hold your conversion rate at 50%, then you’ll start winning $750k worth of work. But if you can then couple that with a really good follow-up system, which takes your conversion rate from 50 to 60%, not only are you then getting more quotes out the door and if you can convert better, the multiplication effect between the two is what drives revenue, which is what increases your revenue run rate over a period of time, which goes a very long way of breaking that cycle of Win Work Do Work.

Speaker 2 (31:17):

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it is leveraging your time as well, which we always come back to with this stuff. So you get to a point where once you get enough quotes out the door, you don’t have to keep just going, how do I get more and more and more, which is what guys do when they don’t have that follow-up system in place. It’s just like, well, I’ve got to keep quoting even more and there’s no end to it, but if we get better at converting the ones we’ve sent, then all of a sudden what you find is not only do you have to do less quotes because you’re winning more work, but because your follow-up process, and this is probably a great idea for a next episode or a follow-up episode at some point, what is a follow-up process? But what it allows you to do is to uncover more opportunities because investing in the relationship because you’re ringing, what else have you got on? Are we successful with this one? What’s happened to that last one? All of those questions reveal information which lets you stay target in the sales and quotation processes that you should be doing. So you’re doing more of the work that matters and counts as you do this.

Speaker 1 (32:12):

Yeah, absolutely. If you haven’t done so already, a great little episode that you can listen to is episode nine from the Anthony Renzis from HyPower Story, a cracking story around how Anthony went from $1m in revenue to $3.6m across two businesses in a 40 hour week in 2.5 years. And the turning point for Anthony was him getting real sales and pipeline focused. He had to get off the tools because he recognised that he was no good on the tools, he couldn’t drive the business forward while he was being ineffective on site. But the real turning point for him was really getting sales focused and driving that business forward and that’s what has enabled him to achieve amazing success that he is today. So if you haven’t listened to that episode, make sure you go back and listen to that because it’s an absolute cracker where Anthony shares some of the stories around that.

(33:11):

If you are listening to this and you are wondering, well, I don’t have sales targets and I’m struggling to be able to get quotes out the door, and if you’re thinking, well, I’m not sure what I should be striving towards and how do I create sustainable growth in my business despite maybe having holes in your pipeline right now, then jump into the show notes and follow the link in there, book in a call with myself and let’s have a chat about where you’re at at the moment, what’s some of the challenges you are facing in around your pipeline and where you’re getting your work from. Maybe we can unpack some around your gestation period and helping you get a bit more sales focus and let’s put some strategies in place to be able to see how we can help you to be able to break some of that cycle. So if that’s you jump into the show notes, click the link, let’s get a call booked in and let’s talk really soon.

Speaker 2 (34:03):

Yeah, that’s bonus solution by the way, for the listener. That’s solution number four is put your hand up and ask for some help. Get some coaching on this stuff to break out of the cycle rather than just try and blindly hack your way through it. Put your hand up if it’s not us, we’d love it to be, but if it’s not us anyone, just ask someone who’s not in the same place of you learn and get better. That’s really what we want to talk about and I think as we come to our third point that’s sort of part of this is how do we get better or I think resist that urge of getting dragged back onsite. We’ve talked about we’ve got to break the cycle by being sales focused, but that means I’ve still got to be able to stop having to be in that delivery space. So let’s talk a little bit about that as we round this out. What would you suggest in terms of not so much resist the urge to get back on site, but more just how do I break the need for me to be back on site?

Speaker 1 (34:54):

I think we’ve got to accept that for a lot of trades business owners, they’ve come from being on site, so site is a comfort zone from them. And it also comes back to the whole urgent versus important conversation that we’ve been talking a lot in this podcast over the last few episodes is that the ability to be able to get work done by certain deliverable days has a high amount of urgency attached to it. And so naturally when you’ve got a pipeline of work and you’re in the midst of chewing through that work to be able to get it done by a certain deadline, then that’s naturally what’s going to bring your focus and attention to that. And because site is also a comfort zone, what happens is you naturally find yourself get dragged back out onto site to be able to fill in the gaps.

(35:52):

And so the way to be able to break this cycle around this is that when you are on the upswing out of the trough within your business, when you are starting to hit that peak in terms of where it peak capacity for the amount of work that we’ve won, instead of thinking I’ve got to be the one that can fill in the gaps, the owner, you as the listener has to think, you’ve got to ask yourself that question, who do I have to hire and who’s my next resource to match my revenue profile of where we’re going? So if you are coming out of a trough and you dipped back down to 80k months and you’re building up $80k, $90k months and you are starting to hit a peak in the capacity of the amount of work that your team can deliver is a hundred grand months, instead of winning $120k and you be the guy that delivers that $20k a month, you’ve got to ask the question going, we’re on an upward lift in terms of where we’re going. Who do I need to hire? Tradesmen leading hand apprentice labourer? Who is that person so that they can chalk out my team and the team can deliver the work, not me be the guy that jumps in and supports the team to deliver the work. It’s a slight distinction, but a very, very powerful question because then you are forcing your team to deliver the work, not you be the guy that gets sucked out there to get into delivering it for them.

Speaker 2 (37:41):

Yeah, I love that question and I think this is the thing if you are asking yourself that question, great, most people in our experience would be asking the question, how do I get this work done? And that’s what sets you up for the wrong thing because your brain then focuses or gets really obsessed over that question, how do I being the business owner get this work done? So now you’re already taking on the responsibility for delivering on the work that you’ve won, which is not the right focus you need to have, if you ask the question, who do I need to have in place to help get this work done? Completely different set of answers that you’re going to get and set you off on a whole nother trajectory. But the minute you start asking, how do I get this work done? You’re already starting. You’ve got one foot back in the hamster wheel.

Speaker 1 (38:27):

Correct. It’s not how but who. And this is how over a period of time when we’re working with our clients, sure there’s natural highs and lows and there’s never a straight line to success. It never exists. But most business owners have big peaks, big troughs. But the way that we overcome this with clients is that they have sustainable scalable growth over a period of time and they break the cycle because they understand their gestation period. They’re marketing and sales led and really focusing on filling their pipeline, but then they’re constantly building out their operational team and chalking in their ground crew where as they go from a $100k months to $120k to $130k to $140k to $150k to $200k to $225k, as they’re growing their top line, they’re building out their ground crew around them. And that’s how the business continues to grow by matching their revenue to their resourcing plan like we spoke around in a previous episode, rather than the business owner getting caught sucked out on there. And when you get that right, that’s how you break this Win Work, Do Work cycle for good.

Speaker 2 (39:44):

And the worst thing we see, and I think this is a bit of a nightmare scenario where guys go on the drop off and they start getting rid of guys as you were talking, I was reminded of the story of Chris, the roofer in terms of, and he went through that, right? He unfortunately had to get to that point where he let guys go and then when it picks up again, you’re in that double whammy of shit, I need guys now I’ve got to find out who’s going to do this. And there’s no one there. So you’ve got two choices. You either find ’em quick, smart, hopefully, depending on again, market condition sometimes can really determine that, but if you don’t find the right guys who’s going to have to do all that delivery, it’s going to be you again and no sooner are you going to deliver that work, then you’re back at the bottom again. So I think maybe, and his story is way bigger than that might be worth telling in terms of finishing up that the whole Chris, the roofer story maybe over the last six to eight months.

Speaker 1 (40:34):

Yeah, it’s actually probably further than back than that. It’s probably a good 12 months because he spent the first true half of last year selling like crazy. He spent the first, and I loved it, he was out there quoting work bashing down the door of builders because he is like, right, I’m on a mission, I’m going to grow this business. And he spent the first half doing that, filled his pipeline for the second half of the business and it was almost a year of two halves. It really was. First half was sales, second half, half was deliverables. Now Chris made this major mistake. He got found himself on the win work do work cycle because when he then got into the back end of last year, his guys were flat out and he was just all about operations. He was so consumed around delivering the work. He had builders breathing down his getting deadline

(41:38):

Deadlines, he had to get certain things done. He was absolutely feeling the pressure. Quotes were piling up on his desk. He was letting his customers down because they were like, come on Chris, get that quote back to us. Yeah mate, I’ll get that done. When he did it, the quotes were wrong, they’re at the wrong price because he was doing them after hours and all those types of things. Then he got to the start of the year and his pipeline was empty. And naturally a lot of business owners find that in January and February and guess what? They blame Christmas. So they blame Christmas and he’s like, oh, it’s because of this happened and that happened. No, Christmas wasn’t the problem. The problem was in the last part of last year you didn’t focus on filling the first three to six months of this year and this year’s pipeline. And that’s when he was then got to January, he was laying off blokes. And that was a real issue for Chris, wasn’t it? He started laying off blokes.

Speaker 2 (42:45):

Yep, it is. And that’s where you are repeating for that next phase of the cycle. At that point you’re now set up that the only way to go is that you are going to have to deliver whatever work you win unless you almost win the lottery of finding the right guys to join your team. It’s very hard to, you talk about Win Work, Do Work, win work and win guys at the same time is almost harder for business owners in the businesses that we deal with.

Speaker 1 (43:13):

And so for Chris, he then had to lay a couple of blokes off the stress crept in because he was busy than ever from an operational point of view because you know what? It’s like you’re listening here today when it’s harder to manage operations when you’ve got no work, it’s actually harder because the schedule, it’s harder to schedule when you don’t have enough work. That’s the issue. So when you’re in peak business period, yeah, it’s hard operationally to manage that, but when you don’t have enough work and you’re scratching around, it’s bloody stressful because you know you’re going backwards and you’re working extra because you’re constantly chopping and changing the schedule just to fill in the gaps and you’ve got a price and the stress of money and pipeline then starts weighing on you. And so with Chris, well he was a stressful first part of this year.

(44:02):

He’s been getting in there and he’s been pricing and pricing and pricing and pricing and pricing and we unpacked it in coaching just very, very recently where he had to accept that he went through that Win Work Do Work cycle in the last 12 months and he’s adamant, he’s learned his lesson now he recognises that he won’t make that mistake, but he’s back on the waggon now. He’s pricing consistently. I think the key message that you can take away from Chris’s story is that when you’re at your peak busiest time from an operational point of view, don’t make pricing work and following up your last thought, it still has to be a primary focus for you. Otherwise you’re destined to repeat that cycle. Now with the least Chris, he’s recognised it, caught it, and we are coaching him through breaking that cycle now, aren’t we?

Speaker 2 (44:57):

Yeah, he’s got that recognition. Absolutely. He’s understood that gestation period. I think he understands and has been focused. I think that the challenge for Chris is going to be making sure that he doesn’t lose that lesson. You get in front. He could be booked out and guys say this all the time, I’m booked out till August, I’m booked out till September, the rest of the year is booked out. Awesome. And then they take their foot off the gear. The secret is when you get ahead, you want to stay ahead. That’s the secret. You’d never want to see that come back under a certain period. No matter if you’re on a two week cycle, a four week cycle, whatever it is, if you can get out six, eight weeks, your goal should be to stay six to eight weeks out, not get caught at that time because that stops when that works being delivered.

(45:44):

If you’re going to stay ahead, the sales never stop, the quotations never stop. The targets are always in place. The systems are always being followed. And I think for Chris, the danger is don’t say that you’ve righted the ship because now I’m selling again, because if you don’t learn the lesson, we’re not going to know for a few months because he’s got to go through that. Well, we’ve got to deliver that work, but I want to sell through that delivery phase rather than have to do the work myself. So there’s another chapter to come with that, but he’s had a rough time of it. But he definitely is well aware of these three solutions that we’ve talked about today.

Speaker 1 (46:18):

I think that the big issue is a lot of business owners blame blame times in the calendar for quite periods. They blame external factors. And those natural factors are Christmas and New Year’s, Easter, end of financial year and school holidays. They’re always the same factors. Now what’s important to remember is regardless of what your gestation period is, whether it’s one month, three month or six month is if yes during that Easter period, like we’ve experienced this year, there’s school holidays, there’s public holidays, and there’s Anzac day in there as well. So you naturally have less time to less available hours to deliver a certain amount of work. So yes, your revenue is going to be less, but we’ve got to compartmentalise the conversation between delivering work and winning work. That’s what we’re trying to split the conversation in here because in Easter this year we’ve got to manage our workload to be able to maximise revenue in the available hours that we’ve got for our team.

(47:35):

But that workload was probably one at either the start of this year or the end of last year to get it ready for Easter. And so that’s where we’ve got to split this conversation because if you didn’t do the work in November and December, when most trades businesses are in their peak deliverable times coming into the Christmas rush, you’re naturally going to hurt in quarter one, quarter two of the year. And it’s not that time of year, it’s the issue is because you didn’t do the bloody work before Christmas to be able to set yourself up for a really good year. And so if you can face the facts around that, that’s how you can also take control for breaking the internal cycle that you are running in your business rather than the external cycle of what’s going on in the calendar year.

Speaker 2 (48:29):

Yeah, absolutely. It’s that quote, and you and I both love this. It’s that quote about don’t be disappointed with the results you didn’t get from the work you didn’t do, because that’s what it comes down to. So at the end of the day, it’s like that quote that you and I both absolutely love, which is don’t get disappointed by the results you didn’t get from the work you didn’t do. Because at the end of the day, facing the facts on that is what’s going to help set you free. Now you’ve got the strategies and the tactics for it. That’s the key to unlock that capacity. That’s the key to taking your business and your life, reducing those stresses at home. Getting all of that to the next level really does depend on breaking this cycle. But the ultimate truth is no one’s going to do it for you as a business owner.

(49:10):

This cycle is yours to own as is breaking free of it. No one else is going to make that decision for you. The demands aren’t going to stop the holidays. The gaps in the year that Rob’s just outlined aren’t going to stop the amount of work or inquiries hopefully aren’t going to stop these things. And these demands we have to deal with are going to keep coming. But you having the ability, the capacity, the focus, the discipline, everything that we’ve spoken about is what breaks you free of that cycle. So really no one else is going to do this for you.

Speaker 1 (49:39):

Yeah. So I think what you can do is to be able to break this cycle is not control external factors, but take control of what you can do internally within your operations. And so to recap that, where we’ve landed on today is number one is know your gestation period. You’ve got to know what that period looks like for your business. Is it one week, one month, three months, six months or longer? What is that for your business? Because once you know that information, you are armed with that to be able to make far better strategic decisions around your business. Number two, it’s be consistent in your quoting and follow up. And the key word there is consistent. It’s not going hell for leather and doing six months worth of quote in one or two months because you’ve got no work on. It’s consistently over time, hitting your sales targets, hitting your quoting targets, and using those couple of systems that we spoke around to be able to make you more efficient, more effective, and increase your conversion rate.

(50:39):

And then finally, it’s your ability to increase operational capacity and resist the temptation to be sucked back out on site when things get crazy. From an operations point of view, yes, you’ve got to be able to go out there and be on the tools where you need to. Yes, you’ve got to be out there and show face and project manage jobs and make sure that they’re safe and you’re delivering them on time and on budget, but you’ve got to think, who not? How am I? And that was the key distinction between those two. So hopefully you’ve enjoyed today’s episode. There’s and lots of golden nuggets in there, but today is all about breaking this win work, do work cycle, and that’s in your control more than you probably realise. But it’s your ability to break through this cycle and be able to create sustainable and scalable business, a growth for your business, which is going to be able to give you the time and the money and the freedom that you know want for your business. So if this episode helped you share it with one of your mates, because there’s so many businesses out there at the moment who are struggling in one of these cycles in the marketplace at the moment, share it with one of your mates and hopefully that can help them so that they can set themselves up for an amazing 12 to 24 months ahead. Thanks very much for tuning in today and we’re looking forward to coming back to you next week with another Ripper episode. Thanks guys. See you on the next one.