E229: You’re Selling too FAST. Why You Need to Slow Down to Grow Your Sales (For Tradies): Trade, Leadership, Sales

When I'm with you, I feel like I can step out of the business and actually start thinking about our future. Welcome to Trade Sales Made Simple, the show helping 7 to 8 figure trade, construction, and industry leaders finally end the stress of inconsistent sales by simplifying your sales systems so that you can close more deals and grow faster. I'm your host, Ben Wright, and over the last 15 years, I've helped hundreds of trade and sales leaders grow their businesses. And generate over $200 million in additional revenue by simplifying their sales processes. Let's get started. A day doesn't go past where I work with a trade business and they are worried about what's going to happen in the future. And it's generally something along the lines of, Ben, I just don't have time to worry about what's ahead of us. I have so much to do now. I need to get this right. And so for right now, for me, my focus is on today, tomorrow, and actually just keeping the business going. So common. And for me, really, really tough as a business owner. The moment things are not getting easier for business owners because Sales deals are taking a long time to close. We've got government tax changes coming in that aren't going to help us. And then at the end of the day, we're in a world where macro changes such as fuel price changes can have really big impacts on how we run our business or how profitable we are. So as a leader, finding time to be able to step out of your business and focus about your future is so important. But the reality is most leaders obviously don't have that time. So I'm going to step through a process that you can go through today. There's 3 areas to it that will allow you to really quickly take stock of where you're at as a business now and give you some guiding principles, some north stars, right? If you want to use buzzwords, or actually just give you a few things to do each and every day that can help you move your business forward to where you want to be in the long run. Okay, so I had a great quote when I was a younger man around Mark McClure, who ran a really large marketing agency globally. And I always forget how to pronounce his name, right? And for me, that's not important, right? We try to acknowledge quotes from people when we hear them, but the most important thing for me is the message that came from it. And that is something like this: strategy's easy, pick what you want to do and then implement like crazy. And I have absolutely lived with that across my sales life and really encourage our trade business leaders to do the same thing. But how do you do it without needing to devote a huge amount of time, right? Or how do you do it when you're not sure around how you focus on the future of the business? So I also received some great advice when it came down to how you do strategic planning from one of my previous business partners. We were together for 10 years and had a terrific relationship for 9 out of those 10 years. And his approach to strategic planning is one that I still do now. And it goes something like this. It certainly wasn't his field of strategic planning, it was something that he learned, right? But I really liked the approach and still use it now in my strategic planning. So before we get into the 3 areas that we focus on, this is an exercise that you can generally get done in 2 hours. So you can do it on your own, no doubt. You can do it with key people in your business if you have those, or key people that are helping you. So if you have a mentor, if you have a coach, this is an activity I'd really encourage you to do with them. This is one area of your business that, uh, regardless as to whether you have coaching or mentors or not, I would strongly encourage you to be bouncing it off others because what you'll get to see is some different perspectives, and different perspectives are so powerful when it comes to growing businesses, particularly when we're in a business each and every day and can't always slow down to look at what's ahead. So find yourself a couple of hours, uh, do it on a Friday afternoon, do it on a Saturday morning, do it on a time when you think the phone is likely to ring less, or divert the phone to someone in your team if you can. So finding that 2 hours, we're sitting down. The first thing that I suggest you look at is where are we now, right? So what are we doing well? What are the things we're not doing so well? If we went out to any of our customers or suppliers or people known to the business, what would they say that the business does now? So let's run this as an example and say that you are a plasterer. So you're a plastering business that right now has 10 staff. You are doing residential work in new builds. Your strengths are coming into new build projects that are very similar, very straightforward because you can run your team in and out of jobs really quickly, really efficiently, and deliver a great result for customers without needing significant complexity in the job. Quite a nice chunky place to be. You know exactly who you're servicing, new builds. You know, the type of new builds that you're servicing, right? Generally, you know, straight off out of the box homes. So rather than architectural designs, and you might add to that that you're doing certain geographical regions, you're doing certain size homes, single story, double story, certain types of demographics, new family owners, couples, big families, right? Whatever, certain cost prices for new homes. But you get really clear on where you're at now. And then from there you can sit down and say, okay, are we happy with this? Right? Where do we want to get to? Or where do we want to play? So the first one is where are we now? And the second one is where do we want to play? So are we happy with that? How are we a business that's actually happy to keep playing in that field of residential new builds, you know, straight out of the box cookie cutter type of projects, but we just want to do more, or we just want to have a higher margin, or we just want a higher selling price, right? Or we want to do them more efficiently and effectively. Very, very much okay to wanting to be in that. Or are we a business that says actually we're so good at this, perhaps we can start to move from residential into commercial. Perhaps we can start to move from basic builds into more architectural builds, right, and different type of decorative cornice work, for example. Perhaps we can start to focus on renovations. Perhaps we can start to focus on working with more builders. Perhaps we can start to focus on different geographical areas, right? But we sit down and we say, okay, we know where we're at now, we know what we're good at, but where do we want to play next? And my advice here is generally to open up one front at a time. Right, we've had lots of stories about wars being lost because generals open up too many fronts in the battle. Very, very much the same in business, right? If we want to be moving into different areas, having a think about where we want to play next, right? But picking one area is absolutely where I see businesses succeed. So where are we now? What are we doing well? And where do we want to play next? So sit down, start to have a think about the areas where you want to do next. Then what comes at the end of that is picking the areas we want to play in. Now I'm absolutely simplifying this because there's sometimes a little bit of work in understanding market size, but also there's a lot of power in simplicity. And I back most of the trade business leaders that I work with to really know their market and to actually identify where they want to play next because they're so experienced in it. What they need though is the support around how they get there, and that's the trickiest stage when it comes to strategic planning. But when we look at this really simple framework around where we are now, where do we want to play, and And then how do we get there? That allows us to say, okay, well, that's that plastering business. We are going to pick to move from residential into commercial work as well, because we think commercial work really matches the base build, the consistent residential work we do. So let's get into it. Okay, so what do we need to do to make it work? Well, first of all, we need to run some experiments, go and work with some of our residential builders who also do commercial jobs and get them to help us test them, refine it, get it right, and see what works and what doesn't, right? See if the hypothesis, right, if the goal is actually right, if it's going to work for us. Then number 2 is we need to start looking at more of those. So where are we going to generate our leads from? Number 3 is we need to bring in some different type of equipment, right? So commercial tilt wall buildings, for example, we're going to need to be doing more work at height. So we need to negotiate some scissor higher rates or we need to buy a scissor lift because it's going to be far more economical for the business, right? We start to have a think about all the things we need to do to get there. We need more plasterers, we need more experienced plasterers, we need more trade assistants, right? Who are able to do a lot of the cleaning up because the commercial builds move a lot faster because there's less corner cuts and so forth. So whatever it is that we need to do to get in there, we actually allow ourselves to plan it out. We then get to put timelines next to it, who's in charge, and what success looks like. And for me, as an approach to strategic planning, that is really, really competent. Where are we now? Where do we want to plan? How do we get there? It simplifies it. It allows us to sit down and pick an area that's going to work for us without putting significant stress onto the business. But most importantly, it gets us rolling. It gets us moving forward. I talk a lot about progress over perfection. It's one of the key things that I really recommend businesses focus on to grow, even close rates, right? Back in episode 224, we spoke a lot about that, right? But once you get that mindset approach to strategic planning working really well, just like this customer did, who quite openly said, you know, whenever I'm with you, I actually feel like I can improve my business. Now, this was a leader of a pretty big business, actually. They were doing about $300 million a year. It's a pretty experience at a strategic level, but even at that level, was able to openly say, hey, when I'm with you, I can sit down, I can simplify, and we can move things forward. So they're the 3 areas that I would really encourage you to take out of today. I'm very grateful for you listening. Thank you. Right, but have a think about how you can sit down, take 2 hours out of your day on a Friday, who you can get with you, and then sit down and think about where you are now, what you do well, where you want to get to, right, where do you want to play, and then how do we get there. Because if you can get those 3 things right, that's the broad structure of strategic planning, and you're off, right? You're off and firing, and you're welcome to contact us when you need that support. But in the meantime, if you're not getting to that strategic planning yet, and certainly if you're in a position where you are frustrated because you're quoting sales and you're losing way too many deals, the key message we have is that if you don't change something now, you will keep getting those frustrating results over and over again, which is going to mean working much longer hours. It's also then going to mean less money in the bank. So we've built a free quote quiz that you can take in 1 minute. It's through the transcript, through the links. You just need to find the free quote quiz link that's in there, jump in, do it, we'll come back to you really quickly and it will help you move the dial. And more importantly, once you get into this strategic planning that you need to do, it will actually allow you to focus on some of the things you need to get better at. That's it for today. Keep up the 1% better each and every day approach. It will make all the difference. Bye for now.