Now is the best time you’ll ever have to take a hard look at how your company does business. When studying market-leading companies, you’ll find they have eight traits that make them stand out and stay at the top of their field. Make a list of top companies who are leaders in their marketplace. What sets them apart from the rest of their competitors and allows them to continually maintain market share, growth and profitability?
1. Start with an exciting vision!
What do you want to happen with your company and where do you want it to go? Leading companies start with an exciting focused passionate vision connected to the specific results they want. Some companies have a vision to be the best company in their marketplace with the biggest market share. Others want to be known as the best service provider, provide the best quality or offer the lowest price. Great companies ramp up their visions with more excitement.
2. Write and track your targets and goals!
After defining your vision, specific results must be written down and targeted to quantify exactly what’s expected for your company, departments, people and projects. What specific targets and numbers can you shoot for to realize your vision and get the results you want? To get the results you want, write down and track your targets to get everyone on the same page from top to bottom.
3. Draft your structured organizational chart!
Company managers and employees who don’t have written detailed job descriptions, don’t know what they’re 100% accountable for, don’t have authority to make decisions, can’t be held responsible for producing the results you want. It doesn’t take a lot of time to layout your perfect organizational chart. Each position’s duties and responsibilities must be considered, detailed, described, outlined and assigned listing the accountabilities and expected results desired and required. Only with these clear descriptions can people help the company grow and become great.
4. Know your numbers and make big profits!
Many business owners are too busy to be bothered with watching and tracking their numbers. You can’t make a profit if you don’t know what to charge and how much you need to bring in. The owners of great companies spend a lot of time making people accountable to achieve the numbers. They set specific targets and keep track of the progress towards them. With specific targets for sales, costs, overhead, accounts receivables, cash flow and net profit, you stay focused on the lifeblood of your company.
5. Set your company apart from your competition!
Experience shows that companies who specialize in a specific type of project or service do better work, are more competitive, have more loyal customers, and make a lot more money than their jack-of-all-trades competitors. Perceived experts are the first called when a customer needs a professional to complete a tough or special project. Experts get the first chance to propose on jobs which require complex engineering or technical knowledge. To set your company apart and get hired at higher prices, you must be the perceived expert in your market and offer more than your competitors.
6. Install a proactive sales and marketing program!
There are many ways to improve your profit margin. These include cutting costs, reducing overhead, improving field productivity, accurate estimating, making no field mistakes and having an excellent training program. All of these will give you small improvements in your bottom line, but not enough collectively to make a significant difference. The easiest way to make more money is to create it! Profit starts with revenue. The more profitable revenue, the more bottom-line profit. Revenue comes from customers. To make more profit, develop more profitable customers.
7. Replace yourself with operational systems!
A systemized business produces consistent performance and the same results every time. Great companies have and maintain written systems and procedures for all employees to follow. To organize and systemize your company requires time to get everyone doing business the same way. But the result is worth it. Systems will allow your company to be the best in what you do and allow your company to grow.
8. Seek investments to build equity and wealth!
The outward indicator of a great company is steady growth and profitability year after year. Every new entrepreneurial company that becomes great should create enough significant excess profits within the first five to seven years to start seeking wealth building investments. Wealth building investments deliver positive cash-flow without much effort or attention like real estate properties, joint ventures or stock ownership. If you can’t find enough annual profit leftover to invest, perhaps you need to change how you do business. Companies that continually struggle generating profits and never seem to get ahead, can’t become great.
Be great!
It’s not too late to be great. The choice is yours. What you do and the decisions you make deliver the results you get and determine your future. Take a hard look at how you do business. Do whatever it takes to figure it out. Hire a business coach or a new general manager or controller or director of business development. Stop postponing your potential, install all the eight great traits, and your company will become great.
George Hedley, CSP, CPBC, helps contractors grow and profit as a professional business coach, popular speaker and peer group leader. He is the author of “Get Your Construction Business to Always Make a Profit!” and “Hardhat BIZSCHOOL Online University,” available on his website. Visit www.hardhatbizschool.com for more information.
