Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Hi.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: We're together.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: We are in the same room. This is awesome.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: Oh, this is so cool.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: So for our listeners, we don't usually broadcast from the same room. Like, you travel a lot, and. And so you're kind of all over the place.
My home base is in Alaska, of all places, and so we usually use our technology to make it work, which is awesome. But we have found ourselves both in Minnesota this week, and so we connected, and I get to see you. That's awesome.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: So great that it worked out. What a. What a background 100-year-old building.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: We get to host in. This is phenomenal.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Yeah, this is really cool.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Looking forward to diving in. So I know you wouldn't give me the answers, but you've got the questions this time, so.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Yeah, this is a little unscripted, which is not typically our style, but it'll be okay.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: Take her. Cool. I know that's usually at the end, but we're just gonna prompt that.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Well, so this episode is all about stop selling jobs that break your business. Okay.
You're booking work. You. Your calendar is full, but your stress level is through the roof.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: And it doesn't work.
So let's talk about selling the wrong jobs and how it's killing your profit and kind of how to fix it before it buries your business. Okay.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: My first question is this. What does it look like when a job breaks the business?
[00:01:36] Speaker A: That's a great question. So breaking the business, you feel like you're compelled to put the number in. So you.
You want to get that work.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: But you're not confident that you're coming in with a strong margin. So it's that. It's almost like you're building an insurance layer. And if you know your margins and you have control of coming into a bid, it's kind of like landing an airplane. An airplane has a systematic way to approach the Runway, because if it just fell out of the sky, it's going to crash. No difference with bidding. It's like knowing your numbers, being comfortable with their numbers.
It has very little to do with what the competitors have because their numbers aren't your numbers. So it's. I think sometimes we get lost in the noise, and we just have to really focus in on what is going to make our business profitable.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Sometimes your competitive advantage is the fact that you have a better relationship with a vendor and you've negotiated a better contract so you can draw your price down. Sometimes your competitive advantage is that you have an exclusive contract with a vendor. That delivers a product or a piece of your, your end product in a better way.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: And so you can leverage that as well. So your numbers are not your competitors numbers. And that's not what necessarily what you guys should be, what you should be paying attention to. Right.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: And alongside that, knowing your numbers because you have your piece of equipment, whether it's an excavator, a shovel hammer, what have you, that's your cost to you. So you need to be specific to that, put it into your bid and make that work. So that's a competitive advantage. And these are going to filter their ways through to success by the ways of if you're not chasing your bids with numbers that don't make sense and the other people are, the field will thin itself inherently.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, so why do so many business owners say yes to work that doesn't fit? Let's talk about some of the top red flags for a job that's a bad fit.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: So I think they refer to that as chasing the shiny things. So whether it's, it's a big name that you want to do work for, but they may cut your prices to get you to do the work cheaper, or you feel the urge to keep your employees busy at any cost. And that's a big one.
It's that dedication to your people. But if you do that enough and you go out of business, you didn't do them a favor. So it's knowing where the happy medium is so you can actually land that job comfortably and be comfortable whether you get it or not.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: Your margins might be too tight or unclear. The timeline could be compressed based beyond what is really feasible.
Your client is unclear or unrealistic about the scope of work.
Maybe you have to bend your process in order to make it fit. And so those are just some things that you know that we need to look out for. That not a good, not a good fit for your business. And so the gut check is, are you saying yes out of fear that you're not going to have enough work and be busy enough, or are you, are you saying yes from points of confidence?
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: Right.
How do you spot some of those red flags before the bid goes out?
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Well, we use tools like performance margin. And that sets a margin goal.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: And our tool will give us a red indication that we're not hitting that target. We can go back in and look at our bids to see where we're not making that target.
It'll go black when we've hit our target. And it's really that discipline to know where that comfort level is, if you're trending through the year and your profits are good, you have that balance where you can come off that, that black, hey, we're good to go with this margin. But not enough to cut into your.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: Profits makes it so easy for anybody bidding the work.
How about creating a no list for your sales team?
[00:05:52] Speaker A: That's a really good idea.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Define the type of work, the type of client, what kind of conditions and so on that are off limits for the team. Right?
[00:06:02] Speaker A: Exactly.
There's the analogy of the piece of paper that I always comes to mind that people hold up the piece of paper, and if you try to cut the paper with your fingers out, meaning you're trying to be experts in five different things, you can't break the paper, but if you turn your hand in one direction, one swipe, you'll rip the paper. And that's, that's the analogy that, that keeps coming back to me. And I'm a master of creating chaos. So when it comes to focus, that's where we're trying to get everybody to that bullseye, that crosshairs and keep focused on one thing. Because it's tough being good at everything.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: And I think there's an element of leadership that can lead your team in choosing what not to do. Right.
And teaching your team how to say no without burning a bridge. So how do you say no gracefully to somebody? And you know, the language that, that you use so that you maintain a relationship with that client in case they do become a good fit in the future.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Right. And you can always rely back on is really. We're not the experts in that field, but we have somebody that we can refer you to that may be a better fit for you. So do it respectfully. And if they, they can't respect that, it really is out of your control. But try to show them that you're interested in their work, but you want to respect their time and their money by not just giving it a. Give it a good try.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: I don't think. I mean, I've had people say that to me before, and I've never, I've never felt any resentment or anger for being turned. As long as they point me to somebody, like, if they're helpful.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: They point me to somebody that can help me and just say, he, hey, you know, that's really not our area of expertise. I think you're going to get a better experience over here. We do work closely with these guys. As long as there's a personal recommendation there. I think highly of that you know, of the recommendation. But I also have respect for the person that is turning down my money. Right. Like, how often does that happen, really, for somebody to be that really focused on their business?
[00:08:04] Speaker A: Another one is timeline. If you realistically have to squeeze this into a schedule to make it work, the chances are that the schedule is not going to go as planned. So you're possibly creating that conflict right out of the gate and in having to internalize that and potentially making your customer happy. So that'd be another one to definitely highlight.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: So our challenge for the week for our listeners is to audit your last 10 jobs. All right? And take a quick look and see which ones made you money and ran smoothly, which ones made you money and ran smoothly, which ones drained your profit and your patience.
All right? And then make a list of those patterns and start saying no to the work that breaks you.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: And that's. That's what we're looking for, because you're.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: Trying to put energy in, not take energy out. There's enough energy draining just in the process of being successful.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: And we're going to talk in an upcoming episode about burnout as well, so of how to avoid that and how we can help you with that.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: I look forward to that.
[00:09:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: Awesome. So performance margin is the software that we use to. To drive many of the recommendations and the. The clients that we work with and how we manage to accomplish some of these things. So give us a call, and we'll help you, help you figure it out.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: Absolutely. We're always available. And always remember, take her cool. Take her cool. It's all going to be fine, all right?
