Hey folks and welcome to another episode of Builders Business Success Podcast!

Now in this particular episode gonna be talking about something that can be profoundly effective or otherwise in a building business in fact, any business but particularly affects building businesses.

And it’s something that were found that can cause the majority of business failure. If your business doesn’t fail it can cause a hell of a lot of unnecessary problem and unnecessary pain and a focus on it makes everything so much better.

So we’re going to be talking about that in this particular episode.

Also going to have Q and A and the question is being asked again I know we’ve covered it before but how much should I charge for a quote? So we’re going to address that. And then I’ve got the idea of the week simply so we can give you a shot of a floating light bulb.

‘Cause that’s important. If you’ve never participated, engaged listened to, watched an episode of the Builders Business Success podcast it’s purpose is to eliminate unnecessary pain from a building business.

Most of the problems in building businesses are very, very common in between them.

And so we have a group of builders called Builders Business Blackbelt and we’re constantly talking about the common problems coming up with solutions to those problems testing them in all sorts of areas whether it be in the west of the country or the east of the country or New Zealand or in regional areas or populated cities, doesn’t seem to matter.

The problems are the same. The solutions are also the same.

So all of this stuff is tested and tried before we talk to you about it here on the podcast.

*Transcription of the show*

Jim Rohn an incredibly intelligent articulate interesting person. I think he was just one of the best business coaches ever. He’s no longer with us.

Unfortunately we lost him a few years ago but in one of his recordings I remember him talking about process. And he’s basically saying that if you don’t have a process to follow you’ve got to accept the fact that so from a business point of view if you don’t have a process to follow you’ve got to accept the fact that you are going to become victim of and getting sucked into your client’s process.

And so this episode is talking about the importance of process and procedure in your business. Now a long time ago, when we first started business coaching, well before Blackbelt we were kind of just general business coaches within small business area which isn’t really a niche, but, you know I didn’t know that at the time thought it was, but it wasn’t.

And a statistic that I was hearing a lot was it was around about 80% of any small business that started back then would fail within the first five years. And I thought that was extraordinary.

Like how, how could that be? And, as it turns out, as the years and decades have passed it hasn’t improved. It’s gotten worse. And it’s much closer to 90% of a small business or 90% of small business that would start today will fail within the first three years. So, you know, it’s just definitely getting worse.

There’s a bunch of contributing factors to it. It’s not just one thing but there are some things that seem to be more important than others and other statistical analysis tends to suggest that businesses that, and I’m not saying franchises I’m saying that adopt the franchise-style model tend to succeed 75% of the time.

And what I mean by a franchise-style business is that they’ve the focus of the business is very much on procedure and process. Measurement and reporting, but definitely the process the procedure, and a constant focus and commitment to the never-ending improvement of the processes and procedures.

And so I hope this makes sense and I hope it starts to get you thinking about your level of commitment and your level of focus on the procedure and process of your business. Now, Wayne O Richmond Tiges is with us live by the look of it. And he has said, hi, so hi back at you. And that reminds me, thank you very much Wayne O, to, if you are watching this live can you please put in the comments #live?

So you could be watching it in any number of platforms. You could be watching it on three different Facebook platforms and two different YouTube platforms or channels and no matter where you’re watching it if you are watching it live, please put in #live. If you end up watching the replay can you do us a solid and put in #replay into the comments? That would be very, very cool.

If you’re watching live and you want to make a comment or ask a question, love you to do that as well. Also, you will find there’s another link in the comments but only in Facebook, not in YouTube. And it starts with chat it’s chat.restream.io/FB for Facebook. If you click on that link, what that does is just gives our platform here that we’re broadcasting on permission to see who’s making the comments.

So obviously Wayne O Richmond Tiges has done it but somebody else has gone #live and we don’t know who you are. And I’d love to give you a shout out. So if you click that link, we’ll know who is talking to us.

So, excellent. As I said, Jim Rohn said, if you don’t have a process you’ve basically got to accept the fact that you’re going to be drawn into your client’s process. And the thing is with process, people absolutely love process and procedure and steps, a clear pathway forward. It’s a must for pretty much every person.

And when you have a step-by-step process that clearly shows you the steps to get the result that you want, it gives you confidence. It gives you certainty. From the client’s point of view if a business has a process, a procedure and they can clearly see the steps to get the outcome that they want not only does it give them confidence it gives them a sense of professionalism by the company.

So we’ve spoken before on a previous episode that, the product of your building business isn’t what you’re building at the end of the driveway. It’s trust. We’ve often talked about it in the sense of that your product is the quality of your customer’s experience but when you drill down into that it is it really, the essence of it is the level of trust that your client has with you and your business and your team.

And if a client can see and experience and know the steps to your process and can clearly see that by following those steps it helps them to get where they want to go not just in the outcome that’ll show them how the building will be built it will show them how they will avoid unnecessary pain unnecessary costs and just unnecessary frustration and disappointment and time delays and all of these sorts of things. So having a process is absolutely essential.

If you don’t build trust with your client if you don’t have a focus on that then they will, they won’t want to trust your process. So even if you mention that you’ve got a process but they don’t trust you personally they’re not going to trust your process either.

So I’m going to talk about how to make that happen in a little minute, but we’ve got to make sure that your focus is on having a process that really addresses their desires and also their frustrations or their fears.

Now, if your prospect has built before they will want to avoid any sort of problems that they’ve had before. I mean, I think that it’s almost World Guinness Book of Records worthy a building project that had no problems. I mean, there are always problems and many of them out of anybody’s control, it can be weather it can be, you know, all sorts of circumstances that we can’t control.

Of course, having said that, many of the problems most of the problems that are experienced are avoidable and are avoidable by better planning and better processes. The ability to prioritize the ability to communicate.

Many, many of the problems can disappear if there is a focus on those areas and they’re improved but if somebody has built before obviously they wanna avoid the problems that they’ve experienced last time.

Now, if they’re coming to you if they were building with you previously obviously you did a great job and they trust you enough to come back for a second go.

But it seems fairly plain to me that, you know unless they’ve moved out of the area if you weren’t the original builder that they built with, the first on the first project and they’re coming to you now, what does that say? Well, it says that they potentially didn’t have a good experience with the previous builder.

So they’re trying again but what you’ve got to be aware of is that they are going to need to protect themselves from the problems that they experienced last time from the things that made the experience less than enjoyable.

So you’ve just gotta be aware of that. And so probably not consciously but subconsciously maybe consciously, but mostly subconsciously their decision making process is the process that they’re going to use to protect themselves in the future now that they’re going to be working with you.

So, they do have a process in play but it’s not necessarily a conscious process but they do want to avoid repeating the same mistakes and the same problems that they had in the past. Now, if you just allow that to happen and you get sucked into their way of doing things you can probably bet, London to a brick that it’s going to cause you problems. It’s going to cause time delays.

It’s going to create pressure because they will have a process which basically means that they will need to think about everything because of this lack of trust. Think about it. If the used car salesman comes up to you, you know and presents the great deal and all of that sort of stuff 99 times out of a hundred, you’ll say oh, we’ll think about it.

Even if it seems like a good deal you will say, I need to think about it because there is this level of distrust between you and the salesman. So you wanna step away from that and mull it over. They will want to do the same thing.

If you haven’t got a clear pathway forward we’re going to default to their process and their process will be analyzing and thinking about things and they will do that so they feel like they are controlling the process.

They are making all of the decisions and you are just basically the flunky and they are telling you what to do when to do it, how to do it. And they’re making all of the decisions. It doesn’t seem like a great way to manage a building project.

So how do we fix this? Well, number one, after everything we’ve just said you need to understand that the problem is trust. So we’ve got to build the trust. So the key to this is outlining your process in relation to how it will satisfy address, and fix all of the fears, the frustrations, the wants and aspirations of your prospect and then continuing into the build process as a client.

So how do we do that? Like, it’s not a matter of saying well, here’s our process and here’s how it fixes this, that, and the other. The people need to feel listened to first, okay? So through your quality client pathway at least that’s what we call it in Blackbelt.

And that’s that the period of time between that first contact, whether it’s an email a text or a phone call or a walk in to the office from that point through to the signing of the contracts and beginning the build process we call that the quality client pathway. And there’s lots of opportunity in there to understand what your prospect’s fears are what their frustrations are what their concerns are, what their wants and desires are. And if you show them that you have a process that addresses those fears and frustrations it protects them from what they’re worried about.

It eliminates the frustrations that they’ve probably experienced on previous projects. If you can show them a step-by-step process that protects them from that that will give them confidence, that will build the trust.

If you can show them how your step-by-step process will give them the best possible outcome and the best possible value for their investment it builds trust. And so that’s fundamentally what our quality client pathway is.

Now, once they become a client, we then move into what we call in Blackbelt the deliver plus process which is, again, it’s a trust building exercise throughout the build because a very, very good friend of mine who’s in the print industry but he’s an absolute master marketer he’s a legend in many of these areas. And he said to me, particularly in the building industry the sale starts at handover.

We don’t really think about that much but that’s when the sale starts because you’re now recruiting that client, past client into your attract team the team that is out there telling everybody else about their experience about your business, they will run into people who will want and need your services.

And you’ll start to tap into the trust that they have with their circle of friends and colleagues and what have you, based on what they talk about in relation to the experience they had with you and I can guarantee you, it won’t have anything to do with the quality of your work. That may get a tertiary mention but mainly what they’re going to talk about is how you made them feel.

And if you understand that if you allayed all of their fears, you addressed and protected them from all their frustrations you delivered on their wants and desires. How would that make them feel?

It would make them feel fantastic. And the bottom line is, and we’ve said it many times before they won’t remember what you said. They won’t remember what you did but they will remember forever how you made them feel. And this whole process addresses this area of trust and connection. And so building trust, absolutely essential.

How we do that is outline the process and have them understand and feel how that will be how that will work, how that will protect them how it will support them, how it will guide them. And when they have massive trust in your process guess what happens to their desire their need to follow their process?

It just disappears because they go, well, his processes much better than our process. Let’s follow that process. It delivers everything, but you’ve got to have it in place. And you’ve got to be able to communicate that process. And you’ve got to be able to show it. So it’s not an explanation, okay folks? You can’t just explain your process. That has to be mapped out. It has to be documented. You have to be able to show people the process and the steps with things like flow charts and, you know, documents with steps in it.

So, and the way that the steps need to be communicated aren’t just about what happens. It needs to have the why, what and how formula put into the communication, you know. Why it’s important to address this. This is what we need to do, and this is how we do it.

So it’s got this incredible clarity but it addresses the thoughts and the fears and the desires that are going on in your prospect’s and then eventually your client’s mind. And that’s the secret to building trust. We talk about it a lot in Blackbelt with, you know, really what communication is is not talking.

It’s listening and feeding back to your prospect or client what you think they’ve communicated to you not only what you think they’ve communicated to you but how they feel about what they’ve communicated to you. It’s a powerful, powerful skill. And it’s one of, if not, the most powerful way of building trust with any person is have them feel that you completely understand their fears their frustrations, their wants, their desires from their perspective.

If you can do that, you will build massive trust. And if you’ve got a step by step process that delivers that for them, they will trust you implicitly. They will want to work with you as a team. There will be openness, transparency. The barriers will drop down. And pretty much the majority of unnecessary problems that happen in a building project will disappear if you can master this.

So, process absolutely critical. Part of this process is over-communication. Don’t think that because you’ve said something once that’s all that’s necessary. Regular communication and showing them this is where we are in the process. So you get your map back out and go, this is where we are.

This is what you need to expect next. This is what we need from you. This is what we’ll be delivering to you. So they’re seeing and feeling and experiencing this amazing process in train. So they’re experiencing it in real-time. It’s not just some sort of promise that you do at the start.

And then it all turns to custard afterwards. And I’ve seen builders do that. And they wonder why they thought they had great clients or prospective clients at the start. And then through the project the client turned into a nightmare client. No, they didn’t. You dropped the ball, you stopped following the process.

You didn’t communicate. You didn’t deliver on their expectations that you set up in the beginning. So we’ve got to make sure that when we promise something we’ve got the ability to over deliver on that promise throughout the build process and beyond. So over-communicated, I’ve got it written in my notes here.

Over-communicate in big capital letters with a couple of exclamation marks. You cannot communicate too much. So you’ve got to have a process. You’ve got to be able to communicate that process and you’ve got to be continually bringing them back to that process, showing them where they are, what’s next.

And it just gives them that clarity certainty, and confidence, and it completely changes the dynamic of a building project. And it turns them into fans. You’ll end up with raving fans by doing this. And, so there’s a lot more to it than what I’ve been talking about. We’ve just been talking about the systems and processes that are necessary for the client communication and the prospect communication.

But what I spoke about right at the start is that the franchise-style businesses survive significantly more healthily than the standard garden-variety type business that don’t really have processes and procedures. So you’ve got to have a lot of internal processes and procedures as well.

So we’ll potentially talk about that sort of thing on another episode, but in this episode just think about what is your process to deal with your prospects. And then when they become a client what is your process then? As I said before, we use all of that in the Builders Business Blackbelt group.

We’ve got a thing called the quality client pathway. Then we’ve got a strategy in deliver plus which works with your team works with the systems and procedures to manage the build and the communication with your client all that sort of stuff. It’s forever being implemented and improved and refined.

And that’s the sort of stuff that I want to share with you on this podcast. So I hope that makes sense. I hope it inspired you to start to think, well, what are our procedures and how can we improve our processes?

And if you have that at the front of your mind on a daily basis, and start to recruit your team into contributing to the improvement of how you do things you will be well on the way to improving your business out of sight.

So, and if you need help with that we’d love to help you, you know. There’s a link in the Facebook comments. There’s the link in the YouTube description. If you’re watching this on the blog there’s a button underneath where you can get in contact with us. You just hit that, fill our little form.

Books, takes you to our calendar so you can schedule in a quick call and we can talk to you about these things. Find out where you are, what the issues are for you. Where you want to end up and we can point you in the right direction that will suit where you are right now to help you to get to where you want to go as soon as possible with the least amount of friction.

So jump on that conversation. We’d love to talk to you. We’d love to help you and point you in that right direction. Also, just a quick reminder, if you are watching live put in the #live. A couple of people have done that already. Thank you, muchly for that. And if you end up watching the replay I’d love you to put in #replay into the comments as well.

Q & A

So the Q and A, we have talked about this before but we’re going to talk about it again because it’s been asked a number of times again. And the question is, when I’m charging for quotes or proposals, as we call them in Blackbelt is how much do I charge?

And what I want you to understand with this and I’m not going to answer the question as far as you charge this much because it’s like asking the question, how long is a piece of string? It really depends on, you know the amount of effort, the size of the project. Really there’s lots of variables but I just want you to think about the purpose of the charge in the first place.

And the purpose of the fee is simply it’s a behavioral hurdle because the majority of people aren’t used to paying for quotes from builders. So they go, what’s going on here? And if you haven’t developed the skill and the process like we talked about before there’s a process for that as well for being able to make it simple for you to be paid for your proposals or even your site visits.

It’s basically a behavioral hurdle that if you can show them the value by doing it this way they will trust in that process. And they will prefer that process. That’s the feedback that we’re always getting is people prefer this process.

They prefer to pay than go down the free track because of the benefits they get from it. They can clearly see that this pathway gets them what they want in a much better way a much more effective way a much more cost-effective way. A much more pleasant and enjoyable way than the standard garden-variety process that most builders use, which is the free process.

So all you’re basically doing by putting this in place is creating a hurdle. So the price doesn’t to me, doesn’t matter that much because the price that you put on it needs to be a price that you are confident about because it’s your certainty and your confidence when you’re talking about the reasoning and the value of investing in a professionally prepared proposal is the thing that they buy.

You know, if you feel that you’re ripping them off they’re going to get that as well. So you’re never going to get it across the line but if you understand this process and understand that this is the best way this is the best thing for you your confidence, and certainty will come through. They will buy into that.

And if you can show them the steps, they will go, yep. Let’s do it this way, that makes sense. And also, you’ve got to remember that the ideal situation to get into is becoming the trusted advisor rather than being paid for the proposal. The next level is being the trusted advisor where no one else is even involved in the project.

They’re not asking for quotes or anything like that. They just so trust you that they get you involved in the project, right at the start. And you are being paid for your consultation for your knowledge, for your intellectual property for your experience, right from the start to help them build and manage this project all of the way through.

So they are the ideal projects the ones where you are positioned as the trusted advisor. You don’t have to worry about being paid for proposals and all that sort of stuff. So I hope that makes sense. Hope that answers your question.

Idea of the Week
It’s floating light bulb time. It’s idea of the week time. So we get a shot of the flow floating light bulb no point in me buying a floating light bulb. If we don’t have a reason to show it to you. I still sit there and it amazes me. It just floats there.

I have seen on the interwebs where we got this one from just by the way, you can get floating pot plants so you can do the same thing. And it’s got a pot, a flower or plant in the pot plant and it’s spinning around floating in mid-air. It’s quite amazing. I think they’ve got a Globes world, world Globes, you know.

That spin around and light up and all that sort of stuff. It’s quite amazing technology.

Anyway, idea of the week, get a flooding light bulb. Isn’t the idea of the week. The idea of the week is think about the environment in which you put yourself in whenever you are doing any deep work. Now, what do I mean by deep work? Read or listen to the book Deep Work for a start.

That’s just an incredible book but what it’s all about is having the ability to not be distracted by all sorts of things around us so we can get our mind to focus on the one thing that we’re working on at that point. And when you can do that, you will find that you do much higher quality work.

So when you’re planning something out putting a quote together doing things that when you’re working on your business or planning your own personal or professional goals things like that, things that really, really matter. That stuff is super important. And we need to put ourselves in a state where we can focus on it without distraction because it’s like, if we’re working on something important but we’re using, you know I use the magnifying glass theory.

If you’re trying to get the fire started you need to get that thin beam of light coming through the magnifying glass, you need to hold it still. You can’t be waving it all around the place like a madman because nothing happens. You’ve got to hold it in one spot for a certain amount of time to get that heat happening so the fire starts. And that’s the same idea about deep work.

You’ve got to get your concentration in one spot for a certain amount of time, uninterrupted to get the fire started. When you do get into that brainwave state that alpha brainwave state it’s very difficult to get distracted. You’ll be focused. You’ll get better outcomes. You’ll do things far quicker.

So if you can create an environment and this is the idea, create an environment that you can go to for when you’re doing deep work. So I would suggest to, you know, for instance our Builders Business Blackbelt members and Blueprint to Blackbelt members we encourage them to do a thing called a personal success ritual every day. PSR, do that in an environment where you don’t get distractions. There’s no computers going bing, and phones going bing and noises and things in your peripheral vision that can distract your attention.

If you can create an environment like that you can get yourself into that state far more effortlessly and not be distracted out of it. So it’s a very, very powerful idea to get significantly more done and improve the quality of the work that you do on your goals and your business. Hugh has just made a comment.

He made it a little while ago. He said, “if they choose not to go with your proposal be happy about it and refer them onto another builder. It’s a win-win.” And somebody else, we don’t know who that is, it says “late, but #live.”

So they’re here, better late than never, as they say. And just a quick reminder, if you’re on this live and if you intending to be on lives in the future I’d love you to click on that link. That’s in the Facebook comments area and it’s the chat restream one, if you click on that it just gives us, gives the system permission to see who you are.

So I can give you a shout out and know who I’m saying, hey, to. So idea of the week, create an environment for your deep work and your planning. It will be an incredibly worthwhile investment and get yourself a copy of Deep Work too. It’s just amazing.

Takeaway & Jump On A Call

So what’s the takeaway? The quality of your processes determine the quality of your business. Invest in them. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that, okay? That’s it. I was just about to say something else but I said, that’s all I’m going to say about it. So that’s all I’m going to say about it.

Invest in the quality of your procedures and processes continually. Always do it. So I hope this was valuable. I hope it got your brainwaves thinking.

Your brain box working, stimulated about what you can do to improve your business through procedure and process because it is one of the best investments you can make in your business apart from working on yourself, you know showing up to these podcasts jumping into our Facebook group the Builders Business Success forum asking questions in there.

You know, you are the most important factor that determines the success or otherwise of your business. It’s not out there to completely in here.

So, you know, participate in these podcasts. Jump on live, ask questions, jump into the Facebook group ask questions and let us help you create the building business that you’ve always wanted. We’d love to talk to you.

As I said before, there’s links in the Facebook comments. There are links in the description if you’re watching on YouTube. If you’re watching it on our website in the blog area, there’ll be a button underneath.

If you’re just listening via Spotify, Apple Podcast all of those platforms just listening to the audio only version. All you need to do is navigate to buildersbusinessblackbelt.com.au. There’s buttons all over the place that will allow you to schedule a call.

We would love to talk to you, find out where you wanna go. What’s in the way? Where you are now, and we can point you in the right direction super fast to get you moving in the direction you want to go. So we’ll be talking to you again next week.

Next Tuesday morning at 10 on Facebook, on YouTube wherever we’re going out live for another episode of Builders Business Success podcast. I’m Mick Hawes from Builders Business Blackbelt. That is it for this episode. Bye for now.