Do you feel like you are stuck in a rut with your construction business? Would you like to become a trade mastermind and take your business to the next level?
As part of my construction business coaching programs, I get to meet a lot of construction business owners. During our chats, I have noticed that they often fall into one of two categories. They either have a plan to scale their business but are finding it difficult because they are focusing on too many things at once, or they have no idea where to start. I understand that it can be overwhelming, and make you either want to stick your head in the sand and ignore it or alternatively try to do it all and end up not getting very far.
So how can you mastermind their business to achieve even higher sales and profits while growing in a sustainable way?
In order to do this successfully, you need to get laser-focused on what you need to work on. Take for example a professional archer that you might see at the Olympic games. In order to be successful at their sport, an archer needs to be laser-focused on their target. This is not always easy. They not only have to concentrate on what they are doing with their movements but also make sure they are not distracted by other things going on around them, like birds flying or noises happening in the area. We want to do the same thing in business, focus on one thing at a time, laser in on that specific thing and not get distracted by what may be going on around us.
So what can you focus on as a construction business owner? There are five things you can focus on when looking to mastermind your business, I like to call them the 5 pillars. These 5 pillars are at the foundation of my Trade Mastermind program, a consulting course designed to help you grow to between £1,000,000 and £5,000,000 of sales.
The 5 pillars are:
- – Plan
- – Attract
- – Convert
- – Deliver
- – Scale
In this article, we will look at each of these pillars one at a time and see why it can be useful to get support while growing your business.
Plan
It’s not surprising that the first of these five pillars is plan. In order to get anywhere, you need to have a clear roadmap of where you want to go. Do you have a plan for this year for your business? The next five years?
To start it can be helpful to ask yourself a few questions:
- Do you know what your turnover targets for this year are?
- What are your profit margins goals for the year?
- Have you written these down somewhere where you can see them or refer to them easily?
Having a clear goal in mind and knowing your destination will help you to put a plan in place to reach this goal. This can help you avoid roadblocks that may come up periodically because you will have taken the time to see where you are and what your resources are. Roadblocks are a natural part of any journey, so if you are included in your planning stage then you can be forewarned and forearmed. If a problem does come up you will be in a better position to reassess and push forward.
Attract
When you go through business growth you may find that you need to change the clients you aim for. It might be that when you started your business you looked on Checkatrader and places like that for your clients, but now you are a larger company you want to aim for architects and property developers. These kinds of larger contracts will help our business continue to grow. It is not always as easy as knowing the larger clients you want to gain for your business but you need to attract them.
In order to attract the right kind of clients, you need to do three things. You need to:
- – Find your USP (Unique Selling Point) – What makes your business different to your competitors? Once you have identified this make sure that your whole team knows and communicates it in every area. If you need some help working out how you are unique compared to the other businesses in the area then look at this article here on our five tips to finding your USP.
- – Build your brand – Looking at your marketing and how your values are communicated is vital to attracting the right kind of customer. Your brand is a vital part of your visual identity and is more than just your logo or any signage. Your website is often a good place to start and looking at some inspirational branding can help you. Also, ask yourself if your brand was a person what kind of person would they be? This can give you some language to start working from.
- – Fill funnel – What do you need to be doing across your channels to make sure you are attracting your ideal customer? Thinking about and taking action to push people down your sales funnel is another key when attracting the right kind of clients. Are you using your social media channels to help your potential clients to get to you and trust you? You can schedule some posts around your team and recent projects you have worked on.
Convert
Being a trades mastermind does not just mean you can attract the right kind of customers, but that you can then convert them. Maybe this is where you struggle and could be the area you need to focus on.
Again this area can be broken down into three main points:
- Profitable pricing – Is your pricing profitable? Does it leave you with enough to not only run your business but invest in its future? This is where having a good knowledge of your finances is helpful and makes sure you will not underprice and end up undercharging.
- Nurture leads – In order to win jobs, it is not enough to just introduce your business and what you do. With any kind of investment, it can take a time to grow trust in a company and feel happy. So on our side, we need to nurture the leads we have, warm them up a bit and help them to get to know and like us as a company. Do you have a marketing system in place to help with this?
- Pitch perfect – Once the potential client knows you and is ready to hear your pitch, do you have the relevant information ready in an appealing way? A good pitch is an art, and worth focusing on if you are finding you do not always win the jobs you go for.
Deliver
Once you work on the first few pillars you will find you have more success attracting clients and converting them. It feels great to have a full pipeline, and now the next step is we need to deliver! The only way to make sure you do this consistently is to have a strong structure in place, both on-site and also in the back end of your business.
- Are you leveraging other people’s time in the best way possible?
- What do your on-site operations look like? Make sure you have planned your timeline and stick to it, if projects go over time by just 10% it can be hugely expensive over the course of the year. Having a dedicated project manager on-site can ensure they run smoothly.
- What about your off-site systems? Have you got the backend sorted? The ordering? What about your numbers? Do you have a team member who handles the paperwork? What CRM system do you use? Asking these questions can help you access where you may need to tighten up and improve the backend of your business.
Scale
After we have nailed the first four, we can finally focus on the scale. This is what all business owners are aiming for, growing and scaling their business in a way that is sustainable and essentially moving away from the day-to-day running of the business to think about larger goals. A strong team is the key to this stage. You want to attract the best tradespeople and then be able to gain their loyalty to encourage them to stay with you. Having in place a strong team that you trust will give you some peace of mind. You need to be able to attract and retain the best staff, but this can be easier said than done. I have found that there are two keys to this, firstly you need to be able to attract the perfect candidate psychologically and secondly, you need to invest in their career so that they stick with you.
After looking at these pillars broken down into a bit more detail you might be thinking – Greg, this all sounds great but I just do not know where to start. I understand that it can be difficult to look at your business objectively and see where it is that you personally need to focus on to become a trade mastermind in your industry. That is why I have created the trade Mastermind program, to help you do a deeper dive and really develop your business strategy.
The course is designed to help high-growth construction companies with a current turnover of at least £250k per annum to grow between £1,000,000 – £5,000,000 of sales. It is ideal for all you hard-working company owners who have the resources to delegate tasks and want to work with me on strategy.
The course is delivered in 7 modules which are worked through over 12 months. During that time you will be looking much deeper at these strategies:
- – Realistic target setting based on data and current financials
- – How to find your ideal client
- – How to find and promote your USP and deliver unrivalled service
- – Effective branding, marketing and social media strategies
- – How to use analysis reporting to adapt and improve
- – Staying in control through fast growth
- – How to attract and keep exceptional employees
- – Using operating systems to run a well-oiled machine
- – Achieving a positive cash flow position so you never worry about bills
- – Understanding your financials to achieve exceptional profits
If you would like any more information or to see how this Mastermind course could help you and your business then book in a ten-minute call with me here today.
I have been through the highs and lows of running a construction business, and am here to share with you the strategies that have helped me to become a trades Mastermind.
If you would like a taster of what the Mastermind course can bring to you and your company check out these previous articles:
