Not making enough money on your projects? Is your estimate right?
Q: When I look at my financials I am not making the money I should be. How do I know if my estimate is wrong or something else is wrong?
A: There can be many things that cause us to lose profitability. The 3 key areas to look at first are productivity, overhead and market conditions.
In today’s Coachcast I am making the assumption that the overall estimating practice is sound and done based on crew production, not a plug and play unit price number.
Productivity
Your estimate should be based on productivity – that is a crew should complete so many units per hour
Track your projects to determine if you are getting the same or better production then you bid
Be careful of using best case productivity for your estimates
If you are not getting the productivity then find out why and if you can correct it
Overhead
Are you making money on the projects only to lose money in the business?
Make sure you have accurate overhead mark-ups
Can you lower overhead, cna you increase mark-ups and still win
Market Conditions
Is your pricing being controlled by market conditions – you wouldn’t win if you raised your price
Make sure that is the truth – many people say that then find out they actually win more with higher pricing
If you cannot raise your prices then you have two choices
Lower costs by increasing productivity and cutting expenses
Take advantage of the sharing economy when your business demands shift.
The construction industry has peaks and valleys – busy times and slow times
Our workload constantly changes
It’s hard to determine when to staff up
How do you meet demands without breaking the bank?
Outsourcing
Welcome the “Sharing Economy”
The new landscape of business
Stay at home workers / part-timers – Freedom Workers
You can find just about any service you can think of
On sites like upwork.com, freelancer.com,
There are hundreds of these Freedom Workers out there ready to help you
Need help with a take-off? Estimate? Purchasing? Pricing? Collections? Social Media? Website?
Next time your business ebbs and flows consider
Outsourcing – assign you tasks to others
In-sourcing – take on tasks for others
Co-sourcing – share the services among several businesses
If you only need a bookkeeper for 15 hours a week then find another business or two that needs a part-time bookkeeper too. Together you hire one and all save money and time.