Summer is here, and for many in the service business, it’s considered harvest time… When your hard work pays off and you reap some serious revenue. But there’s danger to this line of thinking.
Hello there friends, this is David Boyle again, your Client Success Manager for ESI and AirTime. When talking about farmers, their job is very linear: He preps, he plants, he fertilizes, and he harvests. Each occur during a very unique time period. It’s very linear.
Contracting shouldn’t be the same. If you’re only focused on reaping revenue during the summer and surviving droughts the rest of the year, your mindset must change for the long-term health of your company.
Our business should be far more simultaneous. That’s to say that, yes, you’ll have more business in the summer, but that doesn’t mean your responsibilities as owner and operator should change based upon the time of the year.
If you do what you need to be doing every single week of the year, not only will your summers be far less stressful, the rest of your year will be far more successful.
Here are a few things for you to focus on:
- Have the “Service First” Mindset. I know that many fall into this trap: Your people feel like they’re too busy, and they stop doing complete inspections on every call, and when inspections stop, so do additional recommendations. That shouldn’t be. It’s on you to remind your team what they’re in the home for—to completely service that customer. And a complete service should always include the inspection, recommendation, and education of every single customer. Let your people know it’s YOUR job to worry about how to handle all of the calls; it’s their job to handle EACH job like it’s the most important they’ll ever have.
- Never Stop Training. This ties into point number one, but just because you get a bit busier this time of year is no excuse to stop your weekly training. The moment you stop training is the moment performances start to slip. Instead of your techs have a great month, they could be having a record-breaking month. Stop. Training.
- Watch Your Numbers. For many of you, there is seasonality. Because you know it, it means you should be prepared for it. For example, if you knew for the past five years business takes off around April 15th; and you know it take 30 days to get a technician ready and capable to run calls for you; and your window to recruit and hire is 45 days; shouldn’t you be looking for technicians in January? Right?
- Recruit, recruit, recruit. Too often we live in fear that we won’t have enough work to keep everyone happy during the shoulder seasons. Don’t allow that mindset impact your number one responsibility as an owner, which is to always be on the lookout for superstars. Every day you should seek potential superstars. When you believe you have one, you hire him or her. Superstars have a way of keeping themselves busy and making the most of their opportunities.
Be mindful of these four points during these summer “harvesting” months, and you’ll enjoy even greater success. Be mindful of these four points every single day, and you’ll enjoy record-breaking years.