The process (or lack thereof) within any organization will define the organization. "Done beats perfection" and "get comfortable being uncomfortable" are two sayings that I have engrained into my businesses.

Get familiar with them before diving into the art of developing processes for your company. “Who Moved My Cheese?” is a wonderful short book to read to help illustrate why adapting to change is actually a necessity. In the book the cheese represents where the characters want to be in life, but they are caught in a maze that represents their situations that are either helping them or preventing them from getting the cheese.

Done Beats Perfection

Many entrepreneurs and managers are guilty of being perfectionists. While this may seem like an admirable trait, it quite often hinders progress.

While the perfectionist manager is so busy trying to make it perfect, the other manager who has realized that 95 percent is good enough to start with, has already implemented to new changes. Aim for excellence as part of your values the quality of your output will be high.

This mindset is what allowed me to stay ahead of my competitors. Perfect is a lie. No matter what you do it will never be perfect. The goal isn’t to be done or finished. The goal is to implement something that is better today than yesterday, then keep improving it.

You set the tone as the leader in your organization. A new expectation must be established as the new benchmark. Expecting others to work at a level of perfection will lead to frustration. You determine this new benchmark and to what level of imperfection is acceptable. This new benchmark will establish the cadence or speed at which processes can be developed and implemented. I’m not dismissing the importance of quality, but quality will never manifest without simply getting started. But I cannot stress enough that “done beats perfection” should be your top priority.

Case in point

McDonald's does not sell the pinnacle of quality (as in perfection) but their consistency and process is elite. This is what has allowed them to scale to their size and be the leader in the highly competitive fast food industry.

Thank goodness the HVAC vertical isn’t this competitive. Our processes are simple, well-defined, easy-to-understand, and implementable with minimal training. If we can strive to create consistency and process at a level that McDonald’s does, then our HVAC businesses can scale.

How to apply my easy four-step process

1. First, ask yourself: ”What is the challenge we are facing and how does it impact the customer from the customer’s perspective?

2. Next ask: "Where are we today with this challenge/concern / process? What do we do today to meet the challenge?

3. Then ask yourself: "What is needed to improve this situation

4. Last question "Is what we developed today / this week / this month (always near term) better than what we had yesterday?"

This is a true example of how done beats perfect. Once you have produced an output, keep striving for a better version of done. Trust me, it adds up. You’ll be so happy so just got started how ever many weeks, months, years ago it was that you put the stake in the ground and simply got to work instead of waiting until the perfect situation (that never comes.)

Getting Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

An organization is always going to be limited to growth, excellence, success (whatever term you want to give it) by that same ability of its leadership. A company can only mature as the leader(s) mature. Maturity in leadership comes much as maturity in adolescence comes, with much pain and struggling with not wanting to take the next step in fear of the unknown. How many of us say,"If I only knew then what I know now." Being courageous to take the next step comes with getting comfortable with continually being uncomfortable. In the moment you might not enjoy what you are doing, but you will like the results… and results are the rewards.

Innovation is key

After identifying a challenge and determining something needs to be done, resist the urge to imitate another company.

With imitation, the most you can do is match their success, but that is the possible BEST case scenario and quite often your efforts to replicate what your competitors own won’t work.

So, rather than hinging your success on their success, think of the root of the challenge. Within every challenge is an opportunity. Discover your true opportunity. There are dozens of examples in our industry where innovation could be created. Proactively eliminate the objection from the customer by solving the challenge. This is the opportunity zone.

How to apply this

1. Celebrating even the smallest of successes that your team earns helps to build their self confidence. As their self confidence builds they will become more courageous with innovation.

2. Support a company culture that understands, the worst that will happen is you go back to what you were doing before you made the change. People who are selfless adapt to this culture the best, while people who are selfish tend to underperform in this environment.

3. Start using personality-based test. in addition to your existing hiring practices. Adding this behavioral trait to a personality test will be beneficial. Teaching skills can be challenging, and teaching traits is impossible.

4. Celebrate the wins. Measuring the success of any innovative platform and celebrating it consistently helps to keep that innovative spirit alive and well.

Again, I implore you to read “Who Moved My Cheese?” It’s a quick read and will set the tone for everyone I cover here.

Process:

Process starts with structure. Some of these elements may seem trivial and unnecessary in the beginning of a business. However, as the business matures, an appreciation grows (as well as a need) for these foundational blocks.

The foundational blocks are an organizational chart, role titles, role responsibilities, role expectations, role pay grades (with next steps to the next role), pay scale structure, performance review system with expectations, incentive systems aligned with company initiatives, company goal or vision statement, company and employee goals.

Many other elements could be added to these, but these represent the core fundamentals. Process is what takes you from working IN your business to working ON your business.

There needs to be a process for everything—yes, everything, a written, easy to follow process.

An example issue to solve with process

Finding technicians is in fact getting more difficult, we all agree on that.

How to start tackling the problem

First we clearly define that the challenge of finding technicians is getting increasingly difficult. We decide today we will place a job opportunities advertisement.

To further improve our situation we add an element to our process. We decide that we need to market for technicians like we market for customers. We also add a step in the process where we will create a maintenance tech position in which entry level techs can be trained over a six-month period to start running basic calls or already sold repairs.

This position could also reduce techs being at the office by delivering parts to the tech and/or running to get parts for them. Is our solution “perfect”? No. But it is better than what we were doing yesterday. It is done. Time to celebrate that small win.

Other examples of some process in a home service business would be sales process, hiring process, training process for each position, call handling process, marketing process, recruiting/retainment employee process, and many more that can be given proper structure.

Another book to add to your arsenal of knowledge

In addition to “Who Moved My Cheese?,” another book I recommend is "The E Myth Revisited,” which addresses the assumption that an individual who understands the technical work of a business can successfully run a business that does that technical work. Sounds like many of us in the HVAC industry, right?

The people within an organization are the recipe for how good the company will be. You don’t necessarily need a bunch of superstars. Actually, it would be better not to have any superstars but rather to have people who are slightly above average in performance and very coachable.

The more coachable one is the more that person can mature as the business matures. The first “people” we want to discuss are techs. Techs typically are very technical nature, enjoy fixing things, but do NOT enjoy charging people to fix said things or selling things. They also typically want to perform the repair as they see what is “needed” rather than providing various options.

On a residence, the main problem with this strategy is that all future liability was just transferred to the repair company. If something breaks on that unit in the near future, what you will hear is, “Tech Johnny was just here and he said all I needed was XYZ, now it is broken again, doing the same thing.”

The reason why this is discussed in “people” category, is because it is so important to understand people and the dynamic they play in the business. Also designing systems that assist the people and the customer are important for a successful customer experience. You can start to see how “process,” “people,” “product” are starting to blend together. This is why working with a business coach to get your pillars right is so crucial.

With a system in place one could offer various repair options, by simply asking the customer “which option works best for you Mrs Smith?” After all, it is her checkbook and her system. This puts the liability, right where it should be, with the customer. It is the customer’s choice to choose what the WANT to do with their system, not what we may think they NEED to do with their system. Also by using an option based approach the technician does NOT need to be a salesperson, which they loath but rather a diagnostic advisor.

Customers are part of the “people” category as well.

Ensuring you have a good understanding of your customers wants and expectations is vital. Setting the bar above the standards is very important.

Imagine if you set the bar in the customers mind that a shoe covers are always worn by everyone in your company, or a phone call is made every time to just to let the customer know you are on the way is performed, imagine how powerful this becomes. In their mind it becomes the new standard to which all contractors are measured.

If they ever leave you for whatever reason, you set the bar for the next company to follow. What do you think happens once the next company doesn’t meet those expectations?

Your odds of getting that customer back increase greatly by your ability to set the standard. Retention of customers should be as much as (if not greater than) the focus as acquiring customers. As you work more ON your business and less IN your business your role becomes more of providing leadership and direction to your team members through process and innovation to solve the needs of the customer.

Also, the motivation of the people within the business to follow this structure will become paramount to achieving your goals. Organized weekly meetings with agendas become the communication style in order to embrace thought leadership with good communication. Not only are you a steward to your customers, you are also a steward to your people. The more self-aware you as a leader become, the easier it becomes to lead. Also being proactive vs reactive solves many challenges within an organization.

More good reads: “Insight” by Tasha Eurich, about the power of self-awareness, and “Dare To Lead” by Brené Brown, which teaches us about putting leadership ideas into practice.

Aligning with a strong product offering can help tremendously with branding. Strong product brands are widely recognized and provide many attractive offers to not only consumers but also to home service providers (contractors).

Whether it be rebates, promos, financing, co-op funds, or training opportunities there are many benefits to this synergy. Many of these vendors teach us technical skills and technical knowledge.

While we are technical in nature, Suzy homeowner may not be. When it comes to products many home service companies do a wonderful job talking about the product’s features. However, this tends to end up being a technical conversation and would be better served as a benefit for the consumer conversation.

This is why less technical trained technicians typically outsell their more trained counterparts. Furthermore, this conversation can start off as a benefit conversation but needs to evolve into a “why the choice of the company is more important than the equipment (product) is” conversation.

In today's fast-paced world most customers want an efficient version of their choices in a digestible manner. They want to rely on you to be the expert. They want long warranties and little to no hassle in the event of a failure. By offering a money-back guarantee add some real “teeth” to your offering and you will rarely ever have to use refund someone’s money.

We have sold 1000s of systems simply because of the guarantee, yet only had to refund two customers over all the years of offering the guarantee. This is a good example of getting over a fear of trying something new.

Product also encompasses how you offer product. Offer multiple choices not only on replacements but on service work instead. One of our choices on the service side should be to get a replacement quote if this system is “x” amount of years or older. Service repair isn’t the golden egg we are all after, the tech-generated lead is!

Pro Tip: The closing rate on a random caller is approximately 35 percent, while a tech-generated lead can be as high as 85 percent. No matter how much service work you do you can never outsell system sales generated by a strong tech-generated lead program.

Promote, the last P

When promoting a business is discussed usually the first thing that pops into mind is lead generation. Lead generation is important but there are many things to consider before getting on the lead generation bandwagon.

I have seen many a business be poor marketers because all they focus on is lead generation. A few identifiers need to be determined first in order to determine what capacity of lead generation is required and how impactful the lead gen campaign would be. Look at lead generation like gas to a fire. If you have good containment or firefighting ability, select good dry wood, stack it neatly, then pour the gas on this is the perfect scenario, now imagine if you didn’t have all of those elements the chaos or lack of performance that could follow.

The worst-case scenario, which is fairly common, is to pour gas on fire but there is no wood there! How great will this fire be? Think of branding & your call to action as the “wood” and the gas is PPC (Google Pay Per Click) and GLSA (Google Local Service Ads). You can pour all the money you want into PPC but if you don’t have your branding right and a great call to action or two that aligns with the customer then it will be pouring gas on a woodless fire. Lastly being able to measure the market penetration resistance allows you to budget properly for an effective PPC budget & campaign.

Score we use: MPI, FPI, & P2P score explained

MPI or market penetration index is simply a score to illustrate in your given market currently how deep have you penetrated it and how much market penetration remains. This is also an indicator of how competitive your market truly is.

We all believe we are in the most competitive market but this takes the subjectivity out of the conversation and makes it more factual. Market “hardness” is measured with various indicators such as overall population density, and income demographics compared to regional expenses, finally, cross-referenced to regional digital market spend penetration versus other regional markets to determine an analytical score. The score is then cross-referenced to a P2P score for a more formalized determination of marketing effectiveness.

P2P or Proximity to People is a score used to determine the homeowner population density of your service area compared to the geographical location of your service location (as listed with Google) then cross-referenced to ranking of digital marketing as well as organic marketing potential.

The final score is a FPI or Footprint Presence Index which is a score that is to determine your brand presence versus your competitors brand presence. Quality as well as quantity of reviews, number of your service trucks in the population density vs theirs, years in business, organic listing position, digital presence score, your P2P score, and existing radio or tv spots, all are cross-reference to compile the FPI score. This score it is used to help identify if additional branding is required to improve your lead generation activity.

As you can see from the illustration above there is much to consider before just increasing PPC or running an ad. Based upon this data above also may dictate your offer or call to action. For example, in a more competitive market, you will be required to not only spend more on branding but also have a very strong offer in order for the marketing to connect. One way to improve branding even with just a few service vehicles is to purchase the exact same type and make of vehicle and then letter or wrap them the exact same way. This way people see the wrapped vehicle more frequently, it is all about impression views just as in digital marketing. For example, you could put salespeople in empty service vans so the public thinks your service force is far larger than it is.

It took us years even as great marketers to understand the relationship of all of these numbers. We can help you as well.