A lot of contractors don’t get consistently good results because their habits are working against them. The most effective contractors however are ruthless about optimizing their behavior so that they and their businesses can be as effective as possible.

After working with hundreds of contractors over the past few years, I’ve noticed there are 7 habits that contractors who are killing it consistently have in common.

(Note: I included only things that can be done daily because true habits are done daily. Tasks repeated every week, month, or year are just repeated tasks.)

1. Getting the prospect’s budget before setting the initial meeting

Nothing feels worse than driving out to meet with a prospect and doing 5-10 hours of sales & bidwork between you, your employees, and your subs to put together a proposal … just to have the prospect respond that it’s out of their budget. That’s a whole hell of a lot of wasted time and gas.

So the most effective contractors always talk budget the very first time they’re on the phone with the prospect, right after the prospect gives a description of the work they want done.

If the prospect’s budget is reasonable, set the meeting. If it’s not, tell them why. If they don’t have a budget, help them get an idea of what it might cost and get their approval before driving out there.

(And if they refuse to tell you their budget at all, poke them a bit and if they still refuse… just get off the phone and move on. That’s not someone you want to work with because they have probably trust issues.)

2. Dressing professionally on sales calls

The best contractors are always looking for ways to get a leg up on their competition, and professionalism is a big one. So if you want an instant advantage over 40-60% of your competitors, go the extra mile and clean up nice and sharp before every sales meeting. Get home early, shower, then suit up in a branded long-sleeve dress shirt, black dress pants, a belt, and black wingtip shoes.

(When I established this dress code for meetings in my own company, I saw an immediate 29% increase in close rate!)

3. “Over”communicating with prospects & clients

Homeowners want to hire a contractor that they can trust, and they are terrified of hiring one who will disappear or not be fully present during the construction process. So as the company providing the service, it is your job to alleviate that fear before and after the sale.

A good way to do that is by “overcommunicating” with your prospects and clients. Now what I mean by that is that you spend extra time explaining every little detail when they ask a question, and then asking followup questions yourself to make sure they truly understand.

Overcommunication also includes tactics like sending text reminders of upcoming appointments, touching base 1-2x a week, or telling the homeowner daily what you got done and what you expect to get done tomorrow.

This communication style helps the homeowner feel that you have everything covered and that you are always there, which will massively help with closing sales and overall customer satisfaction.

4. Listening to audiobooks on the way to and from jobsites

Most contractors don’t read, and that’s a damn shame. Some of the smartest people in the world have written books about how to get anything you could ever want out of life, but people just aren’t interested in reading them.

The best contractors are different however, and they never miss a chance to improve their skillset. Got no time? No problem. Just get a cheap subscription to audible.com and listen on the way to and from work. If you spend an average of 1 hour driving each day, you can easily chunk through dozens of books in a year.

If you’re looking for specific examples of what to read to improve results, check out this post I wrote about the 5 books that have made my business the most money over the past 2 years. (Reading and implementing the material from just these 5 has made me over $490,000 in extra revenue.)

5. Religiously using task management software

By task management software I mean programs like Asana or Monday that serve as digital to-do lists. Going from not using a TM software to using one will normally 2-3x your productivity immediately… which is INSANE from a profit-per-hour standpoint.

The reason you get this kind of improvement is because a TM software does a lot of beneficial things simultaneously:

• It declutters your memory by getting all your to-do list items from now until the foreseeable future out of your head and onto a written list.
• It makes it super easy (much easier than a physical list does) to add, edit, and take away tasks when your schedule changes.
• It allows you to easily organize and prioritize tasks on your list with a drag-and-drop ordering system.
• It allows you to create accounts for each employee, and assign tasks digitally to each of them including due dates.
• It’s organized in a checklist format which is proven to be the format that is most effective at making sure you and your employees actually perform the listed tasks.

6. Prioritizing sales over production

Until you can completely separate your production team from your sales team, there will often come times in your business when you will have to choose between spending your time building a job or selling a new job. The correct answer is normally to spend the time selling a new job because while a day of production can feed your field employees’ families for a day, a sold contract can feed your entire company for a month.

Now there are obvious caveats here, but on average the contractor who continually prioritizes sales over production will win out over one who does the opposite.

7. Saying NO to bad prospects

There are some clients that just aren’t worth to close and construct for.

Example: Last week I showed up to an initial meeting and despite repeated text reminders beforehand, the homeowner had forgotten that she had picked this time to meet with me. I knocked on the door and after answering with a confused look on her face she said, “I don’t remember setting this meeting; we’re eating dinner right now.”

So I had 2 choices: I could either pull out my phone and show her the email she sent to me where she picked this date & time and try to force the meeting to occur … or I could just leave.

I chose the latter, and it was 100% the right call. After all, if a homeowner can’t remember setting a meeting for me to drive out there to give her a service SHE REQUESTED, then the odds are pretty good that she would be unreliable if I were to build for her.

I have no guarantee that she would “remember” to pick out selections, or even “remember” to pay me on time. Building for homeowners that aren’t punctual and organized is normally a nightmare, so I simply refuse to do it. The headache just isn’t worth the money when I could be using my time more productively elsewhere.