Toolbox Talk

So the first three shifts were marketing and sales and delivery (or operations). Build scalable machines that can grow bigger than your ability to hold each one together and extract yourself from them so you can enjoy yourself.

Jon again, fresh from a hard day trying to get people to change the way they run their business so they can get themselves a better business. One that makes them more money and takes less time and gives them fewer ulcers.

One thing that is very clear about running a trade business is that it is very stressful. Soooo many balls to keep in the air.ress and busyness are a funny thing. It’s a known fact that you’ll never have all the work done.

I’ve been talking about how you can spend less time quoting and more time on the selling part - remember, price is only a small part of why people choose one supplier over another. It is mostly about trust.

So if you put all your effort into quoting - giving someone a price - and you neglect to work through the rest of the decision with them, you are doing yourself a disservice.

Today I’d like to think about corporations because they spend a lot of money and are, of course, worth your attention but they are a peculiar, don't just quote. Build relationships with the people who are running the projects and don’t believe very much of what the procurement people tell you.

Often, people ask for a quote because that’s all they know what to ask of a tradesman, right? OK, a little aside. There are different types of trade businesses and this discussion about quoting applies to them in different ways.

Quoting for jobs you don’t win is a waste of time. Most tradesmen do lots of it and regret the time they waste. Is this you? So what to do instead?

This is the art and science of not spending your time measuring up and writing up a quote for someone who isn’t going to buy from you. We’ll talk later in this series about what to do for them instead but this week, I’m thinking about how to spot the time waster.

When your time is money, wasting it on people who end up buying the same thing from someone else instead feels like crap. So wouldn’t it be good if you could spend less time doing it and win just as much work?

Of course it would, who wouldn’t like that? I want to ask you to think about is this - Qualifying out.