Al Levi

How to Harness Staffing Power to Deliver Top-Quality Service and Win Life-Long Customers | The Home Service Expert

By Al Levi / March 3, 2021 / Comments Off

Ready to deliver top-quality service?

By harnessing Staffing Power, you will set your business on track to deliver top-quality service and win life-long customers. Host Tommy Mellow of The Home Service Expert podcast and I discuss this and more in Episode 188. It’s a must listen!

Listen to Episode 188 here!

Fleet Management Done Right

By Al Levi / March 2, 2021 / 0 Comments

Would you drive your personal vehicle 100,000 miles and never do an oil change? Ignore the flashing red engine light on your dashboard hoping it will go away? Continue to drive it after you dropped the front wheel into a deep pothole at 70 mph?

Of course not!

You would take steps to maintain and fix the vehicle as soon as possible. That’s because you are the manager of your personal fleet of one, two, three (or more) vehicles and you know waiting will only end up costing you more in the end.

When it comes to the fleet for your contracting business, however, the consequences of not being proactive has yet another layer of risk and a huge financial impact. That’s because each one of your trucks is a rolling cash register and every time one of your trucks goes out of service, your ability to generate revenue for your business goes with it. To avoid this, you need someone acting as the Fleet Manager. Someone has to have the job to make sure those trucks not only stay on the road but also are utilized properly by the Technicians who are operating them.

072 – Fleet Management Done Right

By Al Levi / February 24, 2021 / 0 Comments

It’s important that you keep your trucks rolling and safe. You can achieve this by assigning those responsibilities to your fleet management.

071 – Why Most Family Businesses Don’t Work

By Al Levi / February 17, 2021 / 0 Comments

Family businesses can be a great thing, but they’re not without challenges. An organizational chart, a master project list, and planning for the inevitable “5Ds” are the keys to success.

070 – The Goal Writing is on the Wall

By Al Levi / February 3, 2021 / 0 Comments

Want to achieve your goal? Start by writing it down. It will be the motivation you need to carry you through to completion.

The Goal Writing is on the Wall

By Al Levi / February 2, 2021 / 0 Comments

By the time you read this, most people’s New Year’s resolutions (aka goals) will be a distant memory and they’ll be back to doing the same things they said they were or weren’t going to do (lose weight, make more money, work fewer hours). Maybe you even have a few. Here’s the thing: Setting goals is easy. It’s the follow through on the plan of action that will create the change you want that’s the tough part. A famous author once said, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

That said, there’s a process for energizing goals properly, and the first step is to put the goal (or goals) in writing. This may sound obvious, but you’d be surprised at how much push back I’ve gotten on this one over the years. The reason is because if you never put the goal in writing, you don’t have to be wrong or miss. You can always be perfect in your mind because there’s nothing tangible to remind you of what you said you wanted. You don’t have to confront failure or any of the other negative messages in your head that say you didn’t deserve it anyway.

Here’s the thing: A goal is just a destination. The plan you create to get to your goal is your map or GPS. That’s it. You will inevitably learn new things along the way, and that may cause you to adjust the goal or the plan to get it. Even if you fall short, you’ll almost certainly be better off than if you hadn’t tried. As I told one client who was stressing over this, there’s no “goal police.” The sole purpose of a goal is to give you something tangible to shoot for.

069 – Marketing Information, Not Scare Tactics

By Al Levi / January 19, 2021 / 0 Comments

Contractors often struggle to put marketing together that communicates in an informative way and doesn’t scare people. To be able to hire you, they shouldn’t have to learn your trade. Stop! Provide marketing information instead.

068 – Checking In vs Snooping

By Al Levi / January 8, 2021 / 0 Comments

It’s important for you, your employees, and your customers to check in on employees, but there’s a difference in checking in and snooping.

Checking In vs Snooping

By Al Levi / January 5, 2021 / 0 Comments

In a bunch of management articles and blogs I’ve read in the last few years, there is more and more discussion about the ever-growing amount of time being wasted in the office (remember when all your office staff worked in the office?). It still happens with personnel there, at home, and also with staff in the field.

The issue I’ve had from the beginning of my first becoming a manager, then an owner, and now an industry-consultant is to find what is the right balance between checking in on staff and what amounts to spying on employees.

I will confess that while at work I’m all about work, and that is pretty much what I expected from my employees, and that’s what I teach my clients to expect from their employees. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a need for time to… just hang out, chat, and share a laugh. Remember, we come to work as much to socialize as well as just to collect a check.

To my mind, that time of coming together whether in the break room for office staff or at the local 7-Eleven ™ or Circle K™ is vital to team building. It’s worse when people are “stealing” productive time to do solo-time wasting activities.

Yes, COVID has changed things for now, but in the long run, I believe more people will be working safely in an office again or at least some hybrid of home and office. Productivity studies and issues of disconnection from the company are still pointing to the need for face-to-face time and not just FaceTime or Zoom Meetings.

A friend of mine who worked his whole life in big corporate America told me that there was an art to always looking busy whether it was pouring over stacks of reports in the old days when stuff got printed that then turned into staring at the computer when the stuff moved to digital. Productivity didn’t change much… People just found new ways to look busy.

067 – Holiday Bonus Blues Getting You Down?

By Al Levi / December 16, 2020 / 0 Comments

Are the holiday bonus blues getting you down? Get started on your Company-Wide Bonus Game now and make next year’s holiday bonus a Ho Ho Ho vs. a No No No!

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