Stay the Course with Your Business Strategy and Make Sound Decisions

Often, a total lack of action to surrounding circumstances can lead to a venomous painful death. This would be our similar to my old friend "Hem" in the Who Moved My Cheese book.

One of the solutions is a continuous and sustainable sense of urgency. Don't mistake panic for a true sense of urgency. Panic is running around doing things hap-hazard that do not fire your bullets at the targets that make a difference.

Urgency focuses efforts on the critical success factors that need to be accomplished, while allowing you to win as a team. You need to identify these success factors. And you need to act on them. Below I list a few that are universal to most contractors:

• Master accurate job costing.
• Increase lead generation by defining and expanding your marketing plan.
• Maintain or increase sales by pre-qualifying your sales leads.
• Cease chasing unprofitable jobs or ones that don't fit your capabilities.
• Follow-up, follow-up, follow up with all your prospects and customers.
• Curb all unnecessary spending.
• Make sure you have the right people on your bus and drive it to success.

Now you have other success factors that I have not identified. Identify them and implement solutions for them too.

Time to introduce you to the Parkinson Principal. The simple definition of the Parkinson Principal is: "work expands to fill the time available". Think about the essence of that statement.

If you give an individual a task and a long deadline, how often is the task completed early? How fast would the task have been performed if it was approached with a true sense of urgency?

If your workers' attitude is "We are going to get paid for eight hours today, and the work could be accomplished in five, but we'll take the whole eight hours." you have fallen prey to the Parkinson trap.

Stop that mindset fast in its tracks!

As a contractor one of you biggest expenses you have is labor. If you build a sense of urgency in everything your team does, you can win big.

The companies that are agile, willing to make changes; even if they are out of your comfort zone, face their fears and operate with a united sense of urgency are going to survive. Many will even be stronger in the future - won't you joint them?

Ron Roberts teams with Guy Gruenberg as The Contractor's Business Coach. They show contractors how to grow their businesses profitably. To sign up for their FREE Newsletter or join their Private Club, visit www.FilthyRichContractor.com.