There is a giant whiteboard in my office and it is never clean. I write on everything. If it is a flat surface, it has my handwriting on it. That habit has made me more money than any piece of software I have ever bought, and I build software.
Here is why. In my business, deals do not usually die on the roof. They die in the handoff. The caller books the appointment, the inspector shows up, and somewhere between those two people a detail falls on the floor. Wrong contact. Wrong expectation. Nobody asked who actually signs. The inspection goes great and the deal still dies, because the plan was never written down anywhere.
The meeting before the work
So before anything happens on a project, everything goes up on the board and everybody sees the same picture. Not a novel. A handful of questions with names and dates next to them:
- Who is the decision maker? Not the contact. The person who signs. If we do not know, finding out is the first task on the board.
- Does anybody else need to be involved? Ask it out loud before the visit, not after. A partner, a spouse, a board, a property manager. Surprises here kill more deals than price does.
- Who is standing where, and when? We send one calendar invite to the customer, the field rep, and the caller. Three people, one date, one time, zero telephone game.
- What happens right after? If the owner is on site, our inspector presents findings on the spot, because the moment right after an inspection is when decisions actually get made. If the owner is remote, the follow up call is scheduled before we ever climb the ladder.
- What could bite us? Every job gets a line for the thing we cannot see yet, and money set aside for it. When the surprise shows up, and it always shows up, it is annoying instead of fatal.
That is the whole meeting. Fifteen minutes in front of a whiteboard before the first hammer swings, the first truck rolls, or the first proposal goes out.
Why writing it down is the trick
I also record my business conversations, with everyone aware, because after thirty or forty calls in a week you will not remember what you promised anybody. The board and the recordings do the same job: they take the plan out of your head, where it is soft, and put it somewhere everyone can attack it.
When the plan is only in your head, every gap gets discovered on the job site at full price. When it is on the board, the gaps get discovered in the office for free. Somebody looks up and says, wait, who is meeting the adjuster? That question costs nothing on a Tuesday morning. It costs a whole deal on a Friday afternoon.
You do not need my software, my industry, or my team size. You need a flat surface, a marker, and the discipline to answer five questions before the work starts. Blue collar work ethic gets the job done. Writing the plan down first is the white collar half, and it is the half your competition skips.