Many complex moving parts are involved in operating a profitable construction company, but at its core, business success hinges on just one thing: customer relationships.
This is why Customer Relationship Management software is vital for contractors who want to grow their business.
A CRM solution helps your construction company nurture and improve client relationships by maintaining centralized data on all your leads and existing clients. With access to a history of customer transactions and communications, your team can make their next move with confidence while offering highly personalized customer service.
Construction business owners know that to find a loyal client base, they have to stand out from their competitors. One of the best and easiest ways to do that is to have outstanding customer service. How you treat your customers reflects your entire business. People think positively about companies that treat their customers and clients well.
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Topics:
Contractor Challenges,
Contractor,
Contractor Tips,
Contractor Operating Tips,
Construction Productivity
Be honest: is email helping or harming your construction business?
Remember when email was new and novel, and everyone thought it would vastly improve communication while freeing up time? It did improve communication - especially in the construction industry, where you have a team working on the field and in the office - on some levels, and freed up employee time at first. Now, however, email has become a productivity killer.
Construction business owners and workers have to wade through hundreds of emails in their inbox each day. Many contractors working on-site, choose to deal with email as it comes in rather than all at once. This takes the focus off their work and makes it difficult to concentrate on their tasks.
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Topics:
Contractor Challenges,
Contractor,
Contractor Tips,
Contractor Operating Tips,
Construction Productivity
A new contractor meets an experienced customer, and money changes hands and not the way you expect it.
Typically, this is what happens when you first get started: You bid on a project, and you are the low bidder. You are given the client's standard contract, which contains the client's favorite set of commercial terms and conditions, to sign as a condition of getting the project. You close and sign the contract because you don't want to ask for changes in the terms or consult your construction attorney. You put the signed contract in your bottom desk drawer and pray hard nothing will happen during the project that will cause you ever to have to reread the contract.
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Topics:
Construction Bookkeeping,
Processes,
Contractor Challenges,
Contractor,
contractor bookeeping services,
Contractor Tips
Owning a construction business means you understand that bookkeeping is just one of those mundane, nasty, dirty, aggravating, grubby little chores you get stuck with along with its rotten scoundrel cousin the Monthly/Quarterly Tax Reports.
If you have employees - look out! On top of everything else you have payroll to process, in some cases, you may decide to provide cash advances to your employees to keep them focused on the job and not on personal issues, and finally there are all the Payroll Taxes you need to keep track of and file the reports for on a regular basis.
Smart Contractors know their time is more valuable spent meeting prospective clients, putting together bids, managing job sites, and a whole lot of other things other than bookkeeping. So they find someone else to do it.
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Topics:
Construction Bookkeeping,
Processes,
Contractor Challenges,
Contractor,
contractor bookeeping services,
Contractor Tips
Owners of small construction companies like you are the men and women who keep everything moving in the right direction. When the economy changes, you quickly adapt because you are a survivor, not a large giant behemoth dinosaur unable to respond promptly and dies in its tracks.
Most articles about Job Costing are for large contractors with dozens of employees, doing millions of dollars in sales every year. This article is not about them; it is about you!
Job Costing links the money you spent on a job against the money you received to do a particular job.
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Topics:
Construction Bookkeeping,
Processes,
Contractor Challenges,
Contractor,
contractor bookeeping services,
Contractor Tips
Cost is what you see; the profit potential is what you don't see. High-profit construction company owner's focus on both and understand that "It Takes Money To Make Money."
Strategy comes from the office. Fieldwork is vital - labor, material, and subcontractors get things built, maintained, and repaired; however, efficient operations and fast workers who give 110% cannot overcome lousy strategy. Office and field are separate but equal. Each skill-set requires different working styles and different cultures. It is your profession as the business owner to help everyone come together and understand each other's job and how it fits in the grand scheme of things.
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Topics:
Processes,
Contractor Challenges,
Contractor,
Contractor Tips
As a construction company owner, you are getting paid, paying someone, or both. Contracting is all about money and taxes. With your job being not only physically demanding but also mentally draining, have you considered valuing your efforts? I understand how challenging it is for you to keep tabs on your employee's schedule, but make sure you also track yours.
The primary reason to track Owner's Time On Jobs is to have a more accurate Job Costing Reports. You need to know how much money each job is making or losing. As an employer, you need to adopt the use of a time tracking software to assure accountability and improve productivity in the workplace.
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Topics:
Payroll Processing,
Contractor Challenges,
Contractor,
Contractor Tips,
finance,
Contractor Operating Tips,
Payroll For Construction Contractors
Contractors want money; banks want to lend money, what's the problem?
Think of all the times:
- You loaned money to a friend or relative
- Provided labor and material for somebody's home or business without a deposit check
- Did change order work that you never got paid for doing and never will
- Gave employees an advance on their paycheck that you never got paid back
Multiply that by 100,000, and you will begin to understand why banks seem so tight-fisted about loaning money.
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Topics:
Contractor Challenges,
Contractor,
Contractor Tips,
finance,
Banking
Today's Guest Article Is From David Hawke and Randall Soules
A real remodeling system designed to generate more wealth with less work.
I know it sounds like a cliché, and possibly even far fetched, but in this podcast episode, you’ll hear how this system came to exist and what gives its users the path to more wealth with less work.
That said, success is not a guarantee. It does take work, but if you have the desire, the Scientific Remodeling System will give you the systems and processes needed to not only thrive as a remodeler but also have the money and freedom to enjoy a personal life with friends and family.
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Topics:
Contractor,
Project Management,
Scientific Remodeling System
Contractors have often told us that they're "one job away from making it big or losing everything". Our clients usually wonder why some of their competitors appear to be making a lot of money than they do when they seem to be doing similar work.
Not everyone seems to realize that in construction, money is not made in the field by working and pushing boundaries of tactical efforts - working harder and faster. Money is made in the office developing and implementing strategy.
For example, a backhoe takes longer and more skill to mobilize and demobilize on and off a job site than a shovel. Tactics mean using a shovel for all earth-moving projects. Strategy means knowing when to use a backhoe and when to use a shovel.
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Topics:
Key Performance Indicators,
KPI,
Contractor Challenges,
Contractor,
Contractor Tips,
finance
