spending versus investing

You’ve no doubt heard this story, but just in case, here’s a quick recap.

I want you to imagine you have a bank account opened in your name.

It’s a special bank account that only you can access and every day at midnight, the balance of the account resets to it’s starting figure of $86,400.

No matter how much you’ve got in the account at 11:59pm, when the clock strikes 12, bingo! You’re back at $86,400.

You can’t leave money there or it gets wiped and you start the next day at $86,400.

What would you do?

If you haven’t figured it out already, the $86,400 is actually a metaphor for how many seconds of time there are in each 24 hour day.

Cute.

There’s a big lesson here though and that’s one of spending versus investing your time (the same way you’d draw all the money out of the magical bank account and invest some of it so you could access it in future, right?!)

Too many trade business owners spend too much of their time on tasks, people, activities that don’t return enough (or anything) for the future.

Take quoting for example. It can often be a time consuming and time wasting task. What if you could ‘save’ some of those seconds and invest them elsewhere? Like with your team training, developing systems, marketing or perhaps even on your exercise or your family and relationships? 

What would your future look like if you could get one, two or more hours ‘back’ each week?

Better yet, what if you could still convert enough prospects to customers to enable you to hit your financial targets and make everything work nicely?

There’s a simple way to do this that a surprising number of trade business owners overlook.

It’s called a sales process and it’s as easy as following a predetermined bunch of steps to make sure you’re not gambling away your seconds on dodgy bets!

By simply 

  • mapping out the contact points you have (or should have) with prospects, 
  • developing a few basic rules for who you will (and won’t!) invest your time with for site visits, measures and quoting, and
  • jotting down some key questions to ask prospective customers before you withdraw from your ‘time bank’

you can literally save thousands! (of seconds) and invest them where you’ll get a much greater return on investment.

What we see happen almost without fail is that the number of tyre-kickers and price-shoppers you spend your time with decreases, you get more time to spend with the better prospects and you’re happier, less rushed and more productive as a bonus.

There’s a catch.

Perhaps the greatest barrier to making this change is fear. 

Fear of becoming the “no we can’t” business.

Fear that enquiries might dry up.

Fear that your competitors will take the work.

But what if you keep doing things the way you are now? How many more times are you willing to drop everything, race to a job to prepare a quote, only to be told you’re too expensive/too slow/too fast/too keen/not keen enough… you get the idea right?

This magical change to how much time stays in your bank account all starts with you making a choice.

The way you’re doing it now (and the results that go with it) 

OR

Some simple changes that could see you enjoying your business more, working with the people who deserve your time, making more money and perhaps most importantly of all, reaping the rewards you hoped for when you got into business in the first place.

Ask your family and friends what they think the best move is and then click the link below to get started on making the change…

CLICK HERE to book a FREE 15 minute informal chat with Waz and Nic to take the first step to ‘breaking the cycle’

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