A new client bet me that he could increase his gross profit margin from 24% to 28% in six months. Laughing, I told him that it couldn't be done — in 15 years of working with remodeling companies around the country, I'd never seen anyone capable of increasing their field efficiencies to that degree...
Remember Pareto's Principle? Also called the 80/20 rule, it says that 20% of the input provides 80% of the value. Stated another way, 20% of your activities account for 80% of the results. Last month we applied the rule to job costs control. Now let's use the 80/20 rule to help develop an annual...
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Ever struggle with too much information? Do you look at your financial reports with no idea how to find the few important numbers? Are you continually befuddled by your inability to locate the true risks in project management despite the amount of detail in your estimates?
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Owners and employees often operate from a different or an incomplete set of facts. For example, if a company didn't pay profit-sharing bonuses this year, employees might think that the owner was being stingy. They were busy all year so they assume that the company made money. The “missing facts”...
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Backlog is essential to a healthy company, but it needs to be predictable and dependable. Too little and you'll spend all your time focused on selling the next job; too much and you risk making clients on the wait list unhappy. The trick is determining the amount of backlog that is “just right” for...
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With all the uncertainty about the economy, now is the perfect time to play “What if” with your business.
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A benchmark is like a line in the sand against which we measure ourselves. But comparing actual performance with a benchmark is a static measurement. Unless we've reached the goal, we have no idea whether we're moving closer to it or further away. A benchmark can help us find out where we are, but...
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