The 3 P's For Electrical Contractor's Success
During one of our power-packed electricians' success podcasts, Rob Kropp shared the ultimate strategy for hacking sustainable growth in the electrical contracting business. It involves the 3 Ps and their implementation.
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The 3 P's - Number One - Electrical Contractor's PRODUCTIVITY
To understand productivity, you have to understand the rock, sand, and pebbles analogy.
The rock is what matters the most to you. Think about all the stuff and tasks that are important to you and have the capacity to accelerate the growth of your career. You can include strategies, business plans, recruitment decisions, and opportunities to increase your market share in rock time. Now, structure your schedule in “rock time” so that your work gets done. Here you have to understand that what gets scheduled, gets done! So, structure your time properly.
To be an effective electrical entrepreneur, you have to get your guys focused, schedule and protect your time, and execute efficiently. You can also use a time-tracking app. Do it for two weeks and see how it goes. It would also be great if you could make (and complete!) to-do lists by putting Rock/Sand/Pebbles next to each task.
When scheduling, you have to answer this question:
Where do you want to be?
Stop a moment, and think: “This is where I am and where my time is going, this is where I want my time to go.”
So, graph your time and learn to let go a few unimportant things.
The 3 P's - Number Two - Electrical Industry PERFORMANCE
The next key step is performance.
To increase performance across the board, you have to structure your business in a way that it grows. To do this, you should time-and-again improve the core systems. Think about how you can make it better and more functional every day.
Your time is important. You can’t be everywhere at once. So, recruit rock people in rock position. The transition from tasks that don’t need your constant attention. To leverage your time, you have to delegate jobs.
As a business owner, you have got to step back from operations and focus on other things. You can look at everyone’s performance on a weekly basis, while the operations manager looks at it on a daily basis. As Response Electricians, the day-to-day productivity and schedule are managed by the operations manager. We also include sick days and time off because, in the end, it does have an impact on the team’s overall productivity.
The 3 P's - Number Three - PROFITABILITY in your Electrical Business
To survive in the long-term and to generate profit through years, you have to make sure that your prices are competitive. It shouldn’t be expensive or cheap. In short, you have to honestly charge what you are worth. Here, you have to consider your skills, knowledge-base, and time. Make sure you are doing a good quality of job costing and not under-quoting for your services or materials.
For more profitability across your business, you have to build a strong relationship with your suppliers and negotiate. Try to get the best price you can.
As a business owner, you just can’t afford to keep under-performing electricians on your team. It not only costs you in terms of time but also profits. So, it is really important that you track the productivity of your guys.
Sometimes, when your business is not making profits, you have to understand that the whole cash flow is not the problem. Instead, there are things impacting it. You have to sit down and see where your expenses are going. Take a stock of your situation and review your finances.
And every time, you have to choose to run a lean-and-mean business that is profitable. To do this, scan and learn your P&L sheets at Xero. Always know where your money goes and where it comes in from! Because, if you can't manage money well, your growth will implode eventually, and take everyone down. So you need to get right money management skills.
The 3 P's - Implementation Mistakes
When you set out to implement The 3 P’s process, the biggest mistake that you can make is not having a plan on how to do it. You have to visualise and plan it out per the three factors we just discussed above.
Another mistake is when you trying to do things too quickly. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Change and transformation take time. It is a sequential and a SLOW process. You won’t see results overnight. So stick to your plan and give it some time. While you do this, do not get jaded. Stay motivated, believe in yourself, and the plan you have. You can do this.
Many scientific studies show that multitasking is ineffective and unproductive. So when you try to do everything at once, you are running backward. Do not do it. Instead, you should choose the one thing that requires your attention and focus on it.
Time is money. I can’t stress this enough. To be at the top in the electrical industry, you have to get your time under control. Time management skills matter because it can be the difference between having additional free hours and overworking yourself unnecessarily.
Lastly, do not forget to execute. A plan of paper (or on screen) is meaningless unless it is put into action. You have to understand and know the difference between knowing and doing. So, do it. I know you have got it in you to do the best work for a better life!
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