Kenny Chapman breaks down three pillars for service contractors: clarity about your market and model, company-wide engagement through training, and accountability from leadership. He draws on Army experience and visits to contracting businesses to show how execution separates winners from the rest.
Hey everybody, Kenny Chapman here, the blue collar coach, coming to you live with this week's video version of Freedom Friday focus, where over the last few weeks I've been talking about operations and execution and getting things done. And here's the thing. I've been to some of the best companies in the country over the past few weeks. I had that great week at Comfort Tech last week. Interviewing talking to successful business owners, leaders, managers in this industry that are getting it done. And here's the thing. This week I want to talk to you about three things and it has to do with execution. And number one, the first thing that all successful companies have is clarity. I don't care what business you're in, I want you to know what business you're in. Because in our industry there's all these different things. We do this and we do that and say yes to this and say yes to that. You've got to get clarity. You've got to get focused on specifically what is your market? Are you a residential service contractor? Are you a commercial contractor? Do you spend a little bit of time in both? And if you do, what are the models for both of those? And when I see the most successful companies in this country, what I see is they know who they are. They know who their target customer is. They know the demographics, they know the market that they're going after. You know, last week I spent some time with the great Ron Smith from the H Vac side of our world. And you know, he's built some great companies in this world. He's consulted for years and years and he knows that it's all about knowing your model first and foremost, find clarity of what your model is. Then we go to number two, engagement. And what I mean by engagement is once we have that clarity, we have to have ultimate engagement, not just with us being engaged and our management team being engaged and trying to execute the things we need to get done. Being engaged, I'm talking about company wide engagement, people understanding what we're doing, why we're doing it, and so they can get behind it. However many trucks you have, that's how many brands you have. And they have to be engaged in your process, they have to be engaged in your training. They have to be engaged in executing your vision and what you want. So how you speak about what you're doing and talking about it and developing a culture of engaged people executing a vision is directly tied to your success. Last and certainly not least, we have to talk about accountability. Accountability first and foremost. With you and me, we're leading it, right? So it has to be with us first and foremost. And then we have to have the ability to hold our team accountable. People crave accountability, ladies and gentlemen, but they're not going to come out and say it. One of the greatest things that ever happened to me was when I went in the United States army as a lost soul and a lost kid trying to find my way, and I needed that accountability. I didn't know I needed it. I didn't want to want it at the time, or so I thought. But it really helped improve and change my life. And people want to be held accountable. People are very seldom held accountable to accomplishing, achieving what they really can do. One of the things we do in the schools that we teach when we have our service sales success school is all about raising that level of accountability. And we teach a process about internal accountability to help us drive the best result we can. Whether it's from the president of the company or the newest hired apprentice, this accountability has to come to fruition. You got to have clarity, you got to have engagement, you've got to have accountability. And this is what makes execution work in our industry. I'm Kenny Chapman, the blue collar coach. Until we talk again, have a better than fantastic week and I'll see you next.
