What’s your plan for 2022?

That’s the question you should be asking yourself. In this week’s episode of Conversations that Convert, we share 4 keys to crushing it in 2022. Whether you’re a remodeler, home builder, or home improvement company, these 4 tips will help you succeed next year.

Watch the episode to find out…

1. How many goals you should set next year (Hint: less is more)
2. The core element of your plan (I guarantee you’re overlooking this one)
3. What to do so you never have to think about where your next sale is coming from
4. How to use your production capabilities to drive sales

Stay tuned for part II of our series, where we’ll discuss more specifics. For now, dive into the first episode of our Business Planning Series by clicking on the video below.

We’ll continue our discussion of business planning next week. How have you prepared for 2022 so far? What are your goals for the upcoming year? Let us know in the comments of the video!

Builder Lead Lead Converter helps home builders & remodelers grow sales revenue and margins while navigating supply chain and labor market issues. Find out how https://www.builderleadconverter.com/

Transcript:

Today on Conversations that Convert. We’re gonna talk about how to crush it in 2022. This is part two of two. So let’s get started.

Welcome to conversations that convert every week, we’ll spend about 10 to 15 minutes tackling relevant lead generation marketing and sales topics for remodelers, home improvement companies, and home builders. Conversations that Convert is brought to you by builder lead converter, your perfect sales assistant.

And now here’s Rick and Daiana. 

Rick: Daiana.

Daiana: Hi, Merry Christmas.

Rick: Merry Christmas to you. Merry Christmas to everyone else out there. I hope you are getting ready to have wonderful holidays and get everything that you deserve from Santa this year, right? 

Daiana: Yes, absolutely. 

Rick: So we’re giving away, we’re giving away a gift too, right, Daiana? 

Daiana: Yes. What’s our gift? I’m so curious. 

Rick: Well, our gift is how to crush it in 2020. 

Daiana: Oh, exactly. Yes. So that’s, if you, if you, if you accept it, then you will crush it.

Rick: Right. That’s right. If you accept it, it’s not like what’s the gift that nobody wants to get fruitcake from your aunt, hopefully, this will be better than the stale fruitcake that your aunt is trying to give you. But yeah, we started last week and how to crush it in 2022 with part one, which really talked about the four things that you need to make sure you’re incorporating into your business in 2022. And now we’re gonna get into a little bit of the, how to, you know, what does that planning look like? So we are calling this our end-of-the-year planning series. This is our final episode of the year. So before I forget, thank you to those who’ve been watching and joining us, and Daiana, thank you for all of your helpful insight, during this time. But today, the focus is gonna be on a one-page business. One-page business plan, because so many people overcomplicate business planning and it really doesn’t have to be complicated. And in fact, the more complicated you make it, the more likely you are to not follow through on your plan. And of course that, that’s the pitfall we plan, maybe we’re good for the first 30, 60, 90 days of the year. And then we just forget about the plan. We just get into the rut that we came out of the previous year, and that is the rest of the year. And then we never really take our business to that next level. So, Daiana, last week you were talking about goals, and you said, hey, you know, focus on three and no more than five goals each year. You wanna give us a little reminder of what you were talking about? 

Daiana: Yeah, I think it’s important to discover what’s the area you want to improve. If it’s a professional, if it’s your career, it’s in, if it’s financial or you have some business goals and choose no more, than five, let’s say three to five. And then what I will recommend is to, to put them on paper. It’s very good for our minds to see them outside of our minds and then establish 25 ways of, of, of achieving or, or, or starting to achieve these goals. And what I would recommend today to move forward is after you have clarity on the goals, it’s important to maybe split them in, in free columns. If you, if you can visualize so you have all the ways, the 26 ways, 25 ways in one column and you call that column to-dos. So those are things that I can do to accomplish my goals during this year. And then it’s important to move one item at a time to the actual activity and to, and planning column. So you move them from, to do to action. And here it’s the trick to not take more than three things into action in the action column because you will be overwhelmed by the activities you’ll have to do. So choose one or two and move one at a time in the second column of actions. And then when it is done, you have a celebration column called done. So you just move the, you move the activity from, from action to do. So, you can also create a return around the remote celebration. You can eat something or you can go out or you can, I don’t know. You can treat yourself and…

Rick: Pamper yourself. 

Daiana: Exactly. 

Rick: For getting something done. I like that. It reminds me of there was a famous commencement speech. And it was given by I think, an Admiral in the Navy. And he said, the most important thing you can do every single day is to make your bed, every single day, you get outta, get outta bed in the morning and you make your bed. And he kind of says, he goes, he and his and out his thought was is that if you don’t get. Anything else accomplished during the day, at least you’re starting the day with getting that done. And I thought, wow, that is, that is so true. It’s like, yep. I made my bed. Okay. Move on to the next thing. Yes. But that’s a really good point in that you, you do oftentimes, I mean, that’s sort of human nature. We take on too much. We think we’re supermen, we think we’re superwoman and we try to do too much at once. We get overwhelmed and we just shut down. And so then we just scrap it all. So to do little bits at a time, now, what I’m gonna talk about, you know, coming up here is looking at the EOS method, which is called the entrepreneur operating system. And that’s from the book called traction from, I think it’s Wickman is the author’s name, I apologize that that’s wrong, but the book is traction. And they talk about taking those to-dos and you break them into 90 day increments. So in other words, you take those three to-dos, he calls ’em milestones and you work on 90 days completing those milestones and then move on to the next set and the next set, the next set. So your business plan is broken really into four sections, one for each quarter or each season. 

Daiana: That’s amazing. And what ideas do we have to crush it in 2022? 

Rick: Well, along with the three to five goals you’re gonna have on your business plan, there are four other items that you really want to identify and solidify as, as, as a business. And the first one is gonna be your core values and the focus of the company. What is important and why do you do it in other words? What, what do you do? Do you know? So you’re not just a builder. You’re not just a home builder. You’re not just a remodeler, but what do you really do for people? And, you know, the hint that I will leave you with is that nobody builds a home or remodels a home because they want, you know, more square footage or less square footage or they want something that has you, more granted in it or more hardwood floors or, you know, they don’t do it for that. It’s always based on a lifestyle. So what you are, the core focus of your company should be around helping your clients achieve their desired lifestyle. Everybody goes into a project because they have hope for a lifestyle, and they’re hoping by building that home or changing around their home, that they can achieve that lifestyle. Now here’s so in a couple of days we have Christmas. On Christmas Eve, a lot of people entertain. That’s one of the biggest reasons why people are gonna change their living situation is because they’re inviting friends and family over to their home. And the home just doesn’t flow right. Some of the spaces are too small. Some of ’em are just in the wrong place, you know, older homes always had formal living areas. Now everything is informal. So everyone grabs in the kitchen, but then these kitchens and old homes are too small or you’re not using the formal dining room or formal living room as much. And so that’s the impetus for actually making a change. So it’s always around hope for lifestyle. So that should be the focus of your company is helping your clients achieve that lifestyle. Now what that is, that’s you gotta figure that out. And, and it’s really gonna be based on your core values. Core value is not only for you as the owner to make sure that you understand your leadership team, for your employees inside your company, but it’s also for your trade partners. So your suppliers, your subcontractors, and of course your clients and customers as well. So that’s the next thing you would go to is identifying those core values and core focus. 

Daiana: Oh, that’s exciting. And, and wondering what else, what are the other three? 

Rick: Well, the target market is next. Now, the target market is important not only from a demographic standpoint. So who do you want to be your customer and where do, do you want them to live? It’s important to identify who and where they live, but it’s more important to identify, you know, who they aren’t and where they don’t live. cuz if we make a mistake during the year it’s we have these precious few opportunities to make a sale and we sell to the wrong person in the wrong area. So perhaps it’s in an area that’s too far away. And I end up having to drive a lot and spend a lot of time driving back and forth, or perhaps it’s just not the right fit from a demographic standpoint or even a psychographic standpoint. A psychographic standpoint is really more based on values. So make sure that your customer’s values align with your values as well. Psychographic standpoint, the two primary are gonna be a principle-oriented or status-oriented customers. So you gotta have that onto, your business plan and make sure that everyone understands it, including your salesperson don’t sell to the wrong target market.

Daiana: That’s very important. And two more to go. 

Rick: Yeah. The last two, are your processes. So your process not only relates to sales but also fulfillment and then warranty, you’ve gotta have a proven process and it needs to be documented. So not only do you understand it internally, externally your trades understand it, and also your clients. So proven pro-process is very important. 

Daiana: The last thing, but not the least.

Rick: Last but not least is that you know, a lot of people don’t think of this, but what’s your guarantee? In other words, what do you guarantee that you will do for your target market? And this is something that takes a little bit of time, a little, little bit of energy. I think the best guarantees are part of your sales process. Because again, if you think about it, why don’t people take action? It’s usually fear of the unknown. It’s usually a fear-based reason. I don’t wanna spend too much money. I don’t wanna spend too little money. I don’t wanna pick the wrong builder. You know, to do my job. So there’s always this fear of, of the unknown. So guarantees work very well to quelch that fear. And if you strategically place them into your process, that the customer has to go through in order to get them to contract and fulfillment they can really help improve your conversions. So a typical guarantee might be, a fixed price guarantee. You know, once you give a contracted price to the customer that unless they change something, the price doesn’t change. I mean, something as simple as that you always hear this fear of like, oh, well, we got hit with all these unknowns. so we’re building this home or we’re remodeling in our home. And then we had this percentage of overruns. And so that’s, everyone’s greatest fear is that they, they run into something that they didn’t expect and it’s going to make the project really difficult to, to finish. 

Daiana: It’s, that’s very powerful. Thank you for sharing all that. And yeah. That’s, I think I like that one. I, I know about return on investment and that’s a new thing, return on energy. 

Rick: Exactly, return on energy. So this is really the, I wanna leave everyone with this. We talk a lot about time management. You hear all this time management, it’s only so many hours in the day, you know, you gotta spend your time wisely. Don’t waste your time. Well, that is true. We all have the same amount of time in the day. And once the time is gone, we cannot get it back. But what we do have that is unique is we have energy. And when I say the return on energy, it means that each of us has a peak amount of energy. Each and every day that we could put forth into our job, the typical Workday is eight hours, but we don’t have great energy during all eight hours. In other words, of us, all of our bodies are programmed differently where some of us might peak in the morning. Some of us might peak in the afternoon. Some of us peak in the evening. Where we really work best in the evening the problem is, is that when we are at our peak with energy oftentimes we are focusing on projects or items that we get a low return on. So the classic example is, is I’m talking to a salesperson. I say, look, you have two leads. one lead sees value in your service, and you’ve built some trust with them. they are the right demographic. In other words, they have the right, their values match your values, and their location matches where you wanna build their project is a good project. And the natural conclusion to that relationship is a sale. Pretty low amount of energy to expend, to get them to the sale. Now, the other lead is the wrong target market. They don’t see the value or are struggling to see value in your product. They do not trust you. And you spend tons and tons of energy trying to sell them. And if you do happen to sell them, they suck even more energy out of you while you’re trying to build a job. And then after the job, it’s a nightmare too, because it is complaining that it, you know, something is wrong. So focus your energy on where you get the highest return, that, that means to say no. We have to eliminate things in our day, what we can eliminate when, and which is the wrong type of prospect or lead, but we also need to delegate so things that we’re doing that we can have somebody else do. So again, If you wanna accomplish your three to five goals and you really wanna take your business to the next level here in 20-2022, you have to maximize your return on energy. In other words, focus on those things that give you the greatest return while your energy is the highest. And don’t get sucked into things that can be eliminated or delegated.

Daiana: That makes sense. So focus on energy, pay attention to energy when, and where your time is going. That’s…

Rick: That’s right. 

Daiana: Yes, so, and that’s how we will crush it in 2020. 

Rick: That’s how we crush it in 2022. And you know what to get started, let us help you out, you know, take our 30-day lead in the booking challenge. Start selling that extra one to three jobs every month without lifting a finger. This is the done-for-you system, where we’re booking 20 or more appointments for our clients every single month, where they can then pick and choose the best leads. Sell what to the right prospect, the right demographic with the right core values, maximize revenue and profit from every single opportunity, every single opportunity they have, and not be wasting energy on bad leads and chasing bad projects.

Daiana: That’s very exciting. So, what’s next? 

Rick: The new year. Yeah. So, in the new year, we have a new series. Exactly. We’re not gonna meet next, next Thursday, if you’ve been joining us live, but we are going to start talking about how to maximize your revenue per sale. This new series starts on January fifth, and sixth, excuse me, Jan-January 6th. And it’s something that we’ve been working on as part of our revenue and profit strategy, and really showing you here is what you need to do to backlog your production, backlog, your design, backlog, your leads. So you have more than one opportunity for every job that you can start and, and fulfill in 2022. And that’s gonna allow you to grow your business without necessarily growing in units. Most of us are not able to produce more next year than we were this year, just because we’re limited by supply chain and labor. So we’re still gonna grow the business. We’re just gonna up our revenue and up of our profit.

Daiana: And that’s it from us and have a wonderful end of the year. Happy new year, Merry Christmas. And let’s hope we will crush it in 2022. 

Rick: We, absolutely. And for my brothers and sisters in Christ, be the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. The love of God and the fellowship of the holy spirit. Be with you all. Merry Christmas, happy new year, everyone. We’ll see you next year. Bye bye.

Daiana: Bye.