PowerTips Unscripted – Details, episodes & analysis

For many, determining the compensation for an employee is nothing more than doing a quick Google search, or in our members case, maybe asking their peers what they pay for a particular position.  But Tom Miller doesn’t really agree with that methodology.  Instead, his company helps businesses apply the best compensation strategies that help recruit great talent.

Tom is the founder and president of The VisionLink Advisory Group, a compensation design firm that services private businesses across North America. Tom and his firm have served over 600 companies across all industries. 

In this episode, Tom discusses how to help small businesses apply the best practice compensation strategies that help recruit great talent, encourage the execution of the business plan, and growing a company.

Victoria, Mark and Tom talk more about:

• The starting point for building a great compensation plan in small company.
• The most common mistakes employers make relative to compensation.
• How to build an effective incentive plan in a private business.
• The best way to handle employees who want stock in the company.
• Setting and managing salaries for different employees.
• And more…this 

The post Creating Great Compensation Programs that Help Grow Your Company with Tom Miller – [Best of PowerTips Unscripted] appeared first on PowerTips Unscripted.

In this episode, Jeff Talmadge discusses how he and his team created a point system for his design staff to spread their workload.  Each designer is assigned a predetermined number of points, weighted by criteria such as permitting, scope, and complexity of the job.  The team tracks points weekly and has found that designers are less stressed, customers are given more accurate timelines, and production can plan their workload better.

Jeff Talmadge is the president of Talmadge Construction, a large, premium design-build firm based in Aptos, CA.  Jeff and his team pride themselves on their commitment to customer service, quality workmanship, and a strong team culture.  

Jeff’s five words of wisdom – patience, persistence, never give up.

Listen as Jeff, Victoria, and Mark discuss:

• Increasing job satisfaction across the company by managing designer workloads
• Improving customer service by managing expectations with accurate timelines
• And more…

Want access to more proven strategies like Jeff’s?

Join a Remodelers Advantage Roundtables Peer Group and connect with high-performing remodelers who share real-world solutions to the exact challenges you’re facing.

Learn more and apply today

The post Gauging Your Designers’ Workload Effectively With Jeff Talmadge – [Best of PowerTips Unscripted] appeared first on PowerTips Unscripted.

Our Roundtables members share their financial metrics at every meeting, in what we call the composite report. But there’s one field that’s almost always reported as zero.

It’s the proactive outbound sales call metric. It’s confusing to many, not just as a field on a spreadsheet, but as an activity.

Abe Degnan says this metric is valuable to all remodeling companies, and making those calls builds his own company’s sales pipeline.

In this episode, Abe joins Victoria and Mark to explain the proactive outbound sales call, how to track it, and what it can do for your company. 

Abe is president, problem-solver and life changer at Degnan Design Build Remodel in DeForest, WI. He also manages day-to-day business operations — and as a long-time Roundtables member, Abe knows how important it is to measure what is managed.

This statistic isn’t just for replacement companies with a call center, says Abe. A proactive outbound sales call also doesn’t have to be a phone call. It occurs any time you follow up on your sales process in a way that is outside of your established sales routine or is something your client isn’t expecting you to do. Abe talks about what those follow ups can be, and how to track them, including:

• Why sales needs to do it, not marketing
• Sending handwritten note cards
• Calling on cold leads
• Contacting a lead that fell off your radar
• Networking for leads
• The number of activities you should do
• The ROI on the effort
• Who you should reach out to
• Including it in your marketing plan
• How long it can take to convert
• And more …

Making proactive outside sales activities a part of your business can get, and while it’s a marketing activity, it has to be carried out by the sales staff to be effective.

The post Unraveling the Undervalued “Proactive Outbound Sales Call” Metric with Abe Degnan – [Best of PowerTips Unscripted] appeared first on PowerTips Unscripted.

Henna Pryor joins us to talk about digital messaging and sales psychology to help business owners improve their online presence. Henna discusses the 5 biggest mistakes people make when they use digital messaging including not sounding like robots and not being self-centered in our writing.

Henna Pryor is an in-demand speaker, executive coach, and workplace performance expert, who was a #1 top seller and leader at a $2B firm for over 14 years. She’s speaking at TEDx in NYC in September and is publishing her first book, Awkward & Upward, in 2023. 

Victoria, Mark, and Henna talk about:

• Biggest mistakes people make when marketing online 
• Improving subject lines 
• Focusing on benefits not features 
• And more 

The post Ep.190: Sales Messaging Mistakes We Must Fix Today appeared first on PowerTips Unscripted.

It’s easy to be successful in a great economy. You can get away with a lot of bad habits, lack of systems, and high overhead when jobs are large and margins high. But when the economy contracts, job sizes shrink, and margins erode, those bad habits can have a huge affect on the health of your company. Focusing on the right things when times are good are key to recession-proofing your business.

In this episode, Dave Edwards talks to Victoria and Mark about the lessons he learned and the changes he made to create a healthy company following the last recession, and how that positions it to survive and even thrive in the next downturn.

Dave is the founder and president of Earth Bound Homes, a home-building and remodeling company in San Jose, CA. Before he joined Remodelers Advantage Roundtables in 2014, Dave spent 12 years learning all the different ways to not build and run a profitable construction company. 

His path to recession-proofing his company came after watching other remodelers and builders go out of business in the last recession. After his company almost went bankrupt in 2011, he joined Roundtables and also went to counseling. He talks about his path to success in business and in his personal life, and how he has built a company that can withstand an economic downturn, including:

• His metrics for success
• Recognizing when someone else has better ideas, and running with them
• The Stop/Start meeting to improve the company
• Making project management a source of income
• Identifying bad habits and how to fix them
• How unbilled labor can cut into your profits
• Why he cut his field staff to boost his revenue
• And more …

The post Recession-Proofing Your Company with Dave Edwards- [Best of Powertips Unscripted] appeared first on PowerTips Unscripted.

If you’ve ever visited any Disney theme park across the globe, you may think nobody does customer service and experience like Disney. Although the execution is complex, the baseline concepts are quite simple. 

In this episode, Pete Blank shares customer-service strategies from Disney with Victoria and Mark, and shows you how to apply these lessons to your remodeling company to boost your own team’s customer-service performance. 

Pete has been developing leaders and improving service levels of organizations for the past 25 years — 13 of those with the Walt Disney Co. and the past 12 in local government. He loves inspiring others with ways to enhance their organizational culture. You can learn more about Pete Blank at his website: www.peteblank.com, or on his LinkedIn page. 

Growing up near Disney World in Orlando, Pete says he knew he always wanted to work there. After a few years as a sportscaster in Alabama, Pete went to Florida and began working at Disney World. He, his wife and family moved back to Alabama and he took  what he saw as a temporary job in local government, where he still uses his customer-service strategies. The biggest challenges to providing outstanding customer service and experiences are speed and expectations. Technology has changed the speed and convenience with which goods and services can be delivered. You have to align your clients’ expectations with what you can actually deliver. 

Mark, Victoria, and Pete talk more about:

• The difference between customer service and customer experience
• How social media amplifies all experiences —good and bad
• Making customer service part of you mission statement
• Looking for what “above and beyond” looks like in the future
• How emotional connections create relationships
• How to measure your customer-service success
• The power of follow-up surveys
• And more …

The post The Magic of Disney’s Customer-Service Strategies with Pete Blank – [Best of PowerTips Unscripted] appeared first on PowerTips Unscripted.

Laura DiBenedettoBest Selling Author  

“The Six Habits are behaviors that we act out every day, minute to minute. These are the habits that define our relationship with ourselves, and our relationship with the world around us.”

  Remodelers Advantage is dedicated to helping remodeling business owners become more successful, while creating an environment that allows them to lead a more balanced and satisfying life.

Victoria and Mark welcome best-selling author, Laura DiBenedetto, to the show to share the truths that reveal the pathway to the truest freedom a person can have.

TEDx Speaker and author of The Six Habits, Laura teaches us how to create the life of our dreams without sacrificing what we love. As Founder and CEO of Vision Advertising, she has helped hundreds of companies build and grow profitable enterprises. Laura lives on Maui with her husband.

Victoria, Mark and Laura talk more about:

• How entrepreneurs can find the time to nurture, heal and grow themselves
• The kind of habits that determine our journey through life
• How we can begin to master those habits
• What actions you need to take to begin to change your life
• Building your business around yourself, not the other way around

Mentioned in this episode:
Laura’s Website
The Six Habits

The post Best of Powertips: Ep. 117: The Six Habits That Can Change Your Life with Laura DiBenedetto appeared first on PowerTips Unscripted.

There are many legal challenges that can appear suddenly for remodelers, builders and business owners. It is imperative to build your business on a foundation that can weather the storm so that, as our guest today puts it, it doesn’t matter.

In this episode, we talk more about the process of “shatterproofing” your business with America’s Legal Coach, Scott Reib.

Scott is the owner of ReibLaw, a full-service law firm with over 20 years of Business Law and Estate Planning experience. For the last two decades, Scott has been helping business owners, entrepreneurs, coaches, and service providers to “shatterproof” their businesses and succeed in the professional world.

Victoria, Mark and Scott cover:

• How Scott became known as America’s Legal Coach.
• The difference between a legal coach and a lawyer.
• What is meant by a “shatterproof” business.
• Why a business would need to be shatterproof.
• The biggest legal mistakes Scott sees businesses making.
• And more…

The post How to Shatterproof Your Business with America’s Legal Coach – [Best of PowerTips] appeared first on PowerTips Unscripted.

The “Shiny Object Syndrome” can be easy to fall victim to in remodeling. With so many goals of success, there are a lot of “shiny objects” that can distract remodelers from reaching their full potential.  How do you avoid them? Guest David Wood joins the show to share the five steps to success and doubling revenue in less time.

David Wood is the CEO of Focus.CEO and his goal is to create the world’s largest coaching business. He now coaches rock star entrepreneurs to double their revenue faster, overcome Shiny Object Syndrome, and be a more extraordinary entrepreneur and human. 

Victoria, Mark and David talk more about:

• Why the “Shiny Object Syndrome” is an epidemic among entrepreneurs
• Why choosing the right goals and plan is so important
• Going from “Shiny Object Syndrome” to peaceful, focused action
• The five steps to doubling revenue in less time
• And more…

The post Best of Powertips: Double Revenue by Focusing on Less with David Wood appeared first on PowerTips Unscripted.

Wayne Ottum joins us to talk about the 9 components of extraordinary leadership and outlines some basic steps to help businesses owners become more effective leaders. Wayne discusses the importance of creating a company vision, building the right culture, and the difference between leadership and management.

Wayne is a senior consultant at Remodelers Advantage and is the president of his own consulting firm Ottum Enterprises LLC. Wayne has over 30+ years of consulting experience and has over 15 years of experience working with Remodelers Advantage.

Victoria, Mark, and Wayne talk more about:

• Creating a vision 
• Leadership in the Remodeling Industry 
• And more…..

The post Ep. 189: The 9 Components of Extraordinary Leadership with Wayne Ottum appeared first on PowerTips Unscripted.