Words: George Hedley
Setting out to build a profitable construction business starts with knowing what you want, designing a business plan to make it happen, and then keeping track of progress towards hitting your goals. Working hard and keeping busy is not your big picture or long term goal. Finding more jobs to bid, winning more contracts, building faster, being more productive, and having a little money left over at the end of the year is not what you really want to accomplish. While these are great tasks to work on, they are activities that keep your head down focused on day to day supervisor functions required to find work and get projects built.
Building a successful organized business that runs itself like a machine, maintains steady growth, and produces superior profits is actually what you want your company to ultimately achieve. The benefits and results of owning a company that is on-target, on-track, and works for the owners include increasing company value, creating profitable investments, and developing wealth that allows for the owners to focus on what gives them the biggest return on their time. To keep on-target and on-track, you must set your overall priorities focused on doing what’s required to keep moving towards hitting your big picture goals.
Stay focused!
What do you keep track of every month to make sure your company is staying on-target and on-track? Waiting until the end of the year to review your numbers won’t give you valuable information needed to build a ‘best in class’ profitable company. Relying on your bookkeeper to do the books and not reviewing them on a regular basis isn’t a way to hit your profit and net worth goals. Not meeting with your foremen, superintendents, and project managers monthly to review their job goals and production results won’t help you meet your overall budget targets. When you don’t update and take time to track your estimated success rate, sales revenue, job profit, field productivity, or overhead budget every month, you’ll never reach your overall long term goals.
Could you imaging playing on a professional sports team without knowing the score or all the details and statistics of every player on your team? You wouldn’t be able to determine what play to call or which player is performing and achieving to their ability. As the head coach of your business, you must have an updated scorecard to know and track your numbers, statistics, results, progress, and the score at all times to stay headed in the right direction.
Determine your key success factors!
In order for your business to be a success, what key success factors should you keep track of every month? Begin by listing out every key business performance indicator you need or want to know in order to achieve your annual and long term goals. In our mastermind peer groups comprised of like-minded construction business owners, we worked together to develop a list of these key success factors to be included in their company BIZ-Scorecards. Each performance target starts the year with an annual goal and is tracked monthly to determine actual results, and if they are on-target and on-track.
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BIZ-SCORECARD
Financial Scorecard
Sales Revenue
Direct Job Cost Expenses
Gross OH & P Margin
Gross Margin %
Mark-Up %
Company Overhead
Net Profit
Contract Backlog
Gross Profit Backlog
Sales Scorecard
Bid Volume
# Jobs Bid
Bid-Hit Win Ratio
Average Job Size Bid
Bid Award Volume
Bid Award Cumulative
Bid Award Gross Profit Award
Bid Award Gross Profit Cumulative
Marketing Scorecard
Sales Pipeline
Marketing Activities
New Customer Sales Meetings
Repeat Customer Meetings
Referrals
Project Scorecard
Projects On / Over Budget
Projects On / Over Schedule
Field Productivity
Project Safety
Investment Scorecard
Investment Acquisition
Investment Cash-flow
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What else do you want or need to know every month to build a great company that works for you and delivers the long-term results you want? Some construction companies are focused on increasing their profit margin by attacking new customers and markets. To keep track of this goal, track your sales results, customers meetings, proposals, and contracts with these new targets. Other companies might want to set a goal to improve field crew productivity to reduce their installed cost. By tracking field crew targets and results, you can watch the improvement on a monthly basis. And many construction company owners want to start investing in real estate opportunities. Add this key activity to your scorecard and make sure you do something every month to reach your goal.
By determining what you want to achieve over the next several years, you can create a monthly scorecard to keep track of your progress. To help you get started with you BIZ-Scorecard, email GH@HardhatPresentations.com to get your copy of ‘Write Winning
Targets & Goals To Get Your BIZ To Work!
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As a professional construction BIZCOACH and popular industry speaker, George Hedley helps contractors increase profits, grow and get their companies to work! He is the best-selling author of “Get Your Construction Business To Always Make A Profit!” available at his online bookstore at www.HardhatPresentations.com. E-mail GH@HardhatPresentations.com to sign-up for his free e-newsletter, join a peer mastermind BIZGROUP, attend a BIZ-BUILDER Boot Camp, implement the BIZ-BUILDER BLUEPRINT, or get a discount for online courses at www.HardhatBizSchool.com.
George Hedley CSP CPBC
HARDHAT Presentations
Phone: (800) 851-8553
Email: gh@hardhatpresentations.com
website: www.hardhatbizschool.com
