Episode Transcript
Don’t Make Things More Complicated Than They Need to Be
The Simple Thing We Did That Turned Our Finances Around
Last week, I discussed the question: How Do We Know What to Do? This came up while we were struggling with building a new business coaching and consulting website. I shared how I’ve been working on building the coaching and consulting business over the past few years.
Every year, we set revenue goals.
Over the past couple of years, we increased our coaching and consulting goals while decreasing our construction goals to give more time and attention to coaching.
As a result, this reduced the construction revenue significantly.
As we planned for this year, we became aware that we needed to do something different this year.
We understood that if something didn’t change, we risked losing both Timber Creek Construction and Solution Building businesses. After reviewing financial results from the past few years, we decided to increase the construction goals and reduced the coaching/consulting goals.
This meant that we needed to do more construction.
So, how were we going to do that?
To get construction projects, you need to have project leads, timely proposals, and signed contracts. The problem we faced wasn’t a lack of leads, it was because I wasn’t doing as many proposals. I was being selective and focusing my time on coaching and consulting.
We were aware of the problem and understood what we needed to change: do more proposals, get more signed contracts, and complete more construction projects.
We needed to be intentional and take action!
After we set our construction revenue goal for the year, we knew the total dollar amount of proposals we needed. This is where one of our business building tools—The Production Tracker—comes in.
This tool tracks our proposals and signed contracts monthly and quarterly, helping us see where adjustments or extra work are needed.
It also tracks three different dollar amounts for completed, signed, and average signed proposals, as well as the percentage of proposals signed. It gives us some other information as well, but for this discussion, we’re just focusing on the dollars.
Historically, 53% of our proposals are signed, with our project dollar amount averaging 31% of proposals. Using these percentages and our revenue goal for the year, we calculated how many dollars in proposals we needed to have completed and signed by the end of the third quarter. And we did it.
Even though we’ve reached our revenue goal for the year, we can’t take our foot off the accelerator. We need to be lining up work for next year.
This is pretty simple; it comes down to being aware, understanding, and taking intentional action.
If you’re working on a construction project and you’re running over budget, you’ve got to make some changes. If you’re running behind schedule, you have to make some changes. The right tools can help you to stay on schedule and on budget.
Building a business is not that different than construction. With the right tools and a clear understanding of how to use them, it makes building a successful business much more likely.
If you would like to learn more about our Production Tracker tool, you can schedule a free 30-minute meeting.
