Mainly asking those of you who are either working solo or with a very limited staff. How are you managing client expectations and keeping a steady backlog as a one man or small shop? I realize my scenario is slightly different than most doing this, as I started out just a couple years ago and went full time roughly 15months ago. Many clients and potential clients know I'm capable, but almost every one of them who has called me in the past couple months is doing so because their mainstay surveying or civil engineering firm can't keep up. Which is good for me but I'm starting to slowly build a back log myself.
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At this point, I'm putting projects on several white boards around me in the home office - engineering projects on one white board & surveying on another. I'll log the project name & client, project needs, date called and roughly when they need something started by. Of course, everybody says "I needed this yesterday" but we all know how that goes and many don't want to pay that price (I will let those go too). I typically can deliver something within anywhere from a few days to a couple weeks once I get started, depending on the project type and needs. But I have a few questions for those of you who do it solo:
- Do you set aside hours only for work? My phone and emails go nonstop from 7am until around 7pm most days. This hurts production but you have to find a way to solidify business too. How best do you all manage this?
- Scheduling & Organization - how are you all registering incoming projects/work and tracking critical points or deadlines for each to either get started on the work or deliverables or notifying clients of potential delays, whether external like review agencies or internal setbacks such as equipment in the shop, IT issues, employee is off or sick days? None of us are immune from these issues so how best to deal with them?
- How do you prioritize your projects, especially from a cash flow perspective? Some may have significant invoices and the clients usually pay in a timely fashion. But they may take several weeks to finish. Do you dedicate 100% of time to that just to finish while others wait or try to tackle a little bit of each all at once, which may not result in invoicing for a while then a bunch hits at once? Do you handle them chronologically as they come in or re-prioritize for certain projects which might be "low-hanging fruit" for a quick turnaround/payment? Recently I've been trying to dedicate 100% focus to finishing whatever I'm on while building up the backlog for when I wrap that up.
- What is a safe backlog? 3-4 months of work? I know this varies upon the business size and cashflow needs but what's realistic? Are customers really going to be there still after waiting several months? Some just seem too impatient to be honest and throwing a random proposal together without some research into the project or a site visit just seems foolish.
- How do you convey hold ups to a client's schedule when they've teamed you up with another service provider, and that person lets you know they're not ready to do their part? Especially if you have to work with that individual on multiple things and yet the client is under the impression your part is the next to be done but that 3rd party isn't sharing with the client that they're the delay?
First in First Out. I keep all tasks in a to do list when more than a few jobs running that to do list is sync'd on all devices. Try to balance expectations at the beginning and then work to beating them. Best to under promise and over deliver.
First in first out is ok only if all your clients are of the same quality. I prefer to rank the quality of the clients (pay on time, happy to pay for value, reasonable time expections given your market) from A to D. A's get the attention, you try to turn B's into A's, C's are only for quiet times and D's, run for the hills.
Good clients are reasonable about timeframes where you communicate well. Regarding your 7am - 7pm problem that is also a client training problem; don't answer them out of your office hours. Burning yourself out will make problem worse.
When I really need to concentrate on a task I close my inbox so I can't get distracted (and if I got a large volume of calls turn phone off too). I then just check inbox at start of day/lunchtime/end of day. Surveying is hardly ever a life/death matter, if clients can't wait half a day then they are usually not great clients to have.
Surveying is hardly ever a life/death matter, if clients can't wait half a day then they are usually not great clients to have.
Since I could only like it once, I had to quote it as well.
FIFO with an exception for wonderful clients asking for help. I use an income list in Word to remind me of work in place and I update that daily. Also, I don't mind working seven days (I'm astonished at how many of our peers work 40 hours and that is it). I understand work balance but there will come a time when the phone won't be ringing and you better have accumulated funds and paid off debts to cover slack time. I'm very efficient in both surveying and drafting, and I regularly keep my flip phone off to avoid disturbances and wonderful investment opportunities.
First in first out is ok only if all your clients are of the same quality. I prefer to rank the quality of the clients (pay on time, happy to pay for value, reasonable time expections given your market) from A to D. A's get the attention, you try to turn B's into A's, C's are only for quiet times and D's, run for the hills.
Good clients are reasonable about timeframes where you communicate well. Regarding your 7am - 7pm problem that is also a client training problem; don't answer them out of your office hours. Burning yourself out will make problem worse.
When I really need to concentrate on a task I close my inbox so I can't get distracted (and if I got a large volume of calls turn phone off too). I then just check inbox at start of day/lunchtime/end of day. Surveying is hardly ever a life/death matter, if clients can't wait half a day then they are usually not great clients to have.
agreed - I try to follow the FIFO method but a good/fast-paying client with a reasonable request will get a bump in the pecking order if I can help them.
as for concentration, I may need to start doing that then and just setting aside time to contact clients back while I get work done
as I read through this
and I'm still working on getting my first license,
it makes me want to get licensed in several States so then I can do kind of like what physicians do and traveling nurses do you like locums
come in and help and shake and break down the workloads to take some of the backlogs off
@jitterboogie back around 1995 a licensed guy solo operator subbed himself out as a crew chief much like that. Helped him keep cash flow and get his equipment and such paid for and stock pike funds. A few years later i heard he had opened up his shop and had 3 3 man crews running all trucks equipment and payroll stocked no debt and was doing great. He was a good guy he subbed to us and i was a i man for a month with him. He had a well thought out plan and truly did it right. Saved built up his nest egg and had a jump start as a solo/small shop. I have never started a survey business but it doesn’t take much to figure out you could go belly up if no plan was made and a slow down hit and a large set of bills with no cash flow. Very similar to farming and equipment. It cost a lot for the tractor and implements and then you get nickled and dimed on the little things. A hammer here tripod there prism pole . Flagging nails just the little things. Much easier to handle those little things when the big items like data collector plotters/printers computer data collectors are all paid in full. I been setting a little to the side. But I am pretty happy where i am. I don’t know if the wife would like to see all those dollars spent on surveying equipment when i have a big set of assets in farm machinery as well.
Tend to group projects by the county in which they are located. Try to research all at the same time and work on as many as possible the same day, if there are some easy ones.
So, what is normally FIFO can change quickly if an easy project can be stuck in with others.
Accomplished one of those on Thursday. Got the call on Monday. It was from a very solid fellow and all he really needed was to have me find the four bars I had set in 2005. We were on-site for less than one hour. The side trip consisted of an extra four miles as we traveled from Job #2 to Job #4 for the day. Easy $500 and the client was very happy. No paperwork required as all four were less than a tenth from our expected location, although two had been driven down over a foot by the client in 2005.
I typically do FIFO unless there is a closing involved on one or something like that. I will also shuffle things around based on weather and distance, etc. Right now I am trying to deal with recovering from covid and throwing out my back all in a span of a couple of weeks.
