Welcome to CFF-U Business Series!
Welcome to the next chapter in CFF university. Boy, I hope you like what you’re learning here because I promise you I’ve done everything that we’re teaching here in my company. Everything that we’re teaching through, burn the ships and the results are amazing.
Why Companies Fail
Now let’s talk about why companies fail. You remember in a previous chapter, we talked about the seven deadly habits, right? Well, this is something that we’ve seen over the years as to why companies fail. And it’s so simple, just four points, but 90% of the companies that don’t do this well, fail point. Number one, they don’t have consistent communication. There’s no structured process to communication. We’re in talk about a methodology in a minute called 9 1, 1 meetings. That’s a daily meeting that happens every day, all hands on deck, But we don’t have the structure To communicate. We don’t have a set meeting in my office. We call them rhythms. We also have a scrum. Every Monday, everybody comes into the office and we communicate each department reports to the entire group of what’s going on.
SCRUM
Marketing tells us how many website visits we got and how many credit applications we got operations talks about what’s going on in their world. The office manager talks about the events that we may have going on. We celebrate people’s birthdays for the week or work anniversaries for the week sales reports on last week’s results and where we are for the month. It’s a, it’s a scrum.
We call it the scrum. It’s a rhythm. It’s a consistent communication in which everybody knows that they’re to be there for it doesn’t last long, 15 minutes, but we get everybody together and we communicate. That’s one of the number one reasons why companies fail. They don’t have consistent communication.
Allocate Resources
Number two, they don’t allocate resources, horses. They don’t spend money back into their business. The office looks like crap. The carpets are filthy dirty. The chairs are ripped. The computers are super slow. The trucks don’t run well. The driver shortage problem gets fixed when we give drivers better equipment, but we have to allocate resources into that department, right?
We’re trying to ring every nickel Out of every dollar, because we have to either take it for ourselves as the owner, by the way, bad for culture, bad for employment empowerment, we need to put money back into the business. We cannot use the business to extract for ourselves. The business is a separate entity that has to have re resources reallocated into it, to get everybody what they need to be more successful to spit out more Business. Number three, big one. You don’t have the courage to hold people accountable. And therefore we simply begin to, like we talk about in the seven deadly habits, we begin to tolerate mediocrity.
Have Great Accountability
Most people want To be held accountable. The downside is they don’t know how to be held accountable. In fact, it’s a real sort of, um, almost a passive aggressive kind of a mindset, right? Where oftentimes the owner, when they’re frustrated with the employee and they need to hold them accountable, it becomes a very contentious conversation, a very disruptive and uncomfortable thing. If the value system of your company says that we’re going to do what we say then holding people accountable is easy, but without the ability to hold people accountable, we simply tolerate mediocrity and we will never build great companies on mediocrity.
Great companies are built with great people and great people require accountability, help them with it. And the last one, number four is effective measurement. I didn’t say management. That’s important too, but effective measurement. Your salespeople don’t know how much they have to sell this month to be held accountable to the value system of your company.
Set Goals For Everyone
You have to set goals for everyone. We have to deliver X amount of loads. This month, We have to tow this amount of cars. This month. We have to quote this amount of business. This month, we have to run this many miles at this rate. We don’t have effective measurement within our businesses. So if you don’t want to fail like 90% of the companies who don’t do these four things, things don’t do them. If you want to win, do them.
Measure Their Effectiveness – Recap
Incorporate these four elements into your business today.
Number one, run a consistent communication meeting.
Number two, take resources and put them back into the business, clean the place up, buy better chairs, buy nicer trucks, celebrate more often, bring pizza in paint, the walls, clean the carpets, whatever you gotta do to get the business fresh Again.
Number three, Have the courage to hold people accountable to what they said they were going to do.
And number four, give people effective measurement in the form of goals. Do these four things and you won’t fail. We’ll see in the next chapter.
About Commercial Fleet Financing, Inc.:
At Commercial Fleet Financing (CFF), our pros have given smart advice to fleet owners and owner-operators in the transportation, moving, towing or construction industries for more than two decades. With CFF, finding the right financing solutions is a phone call away and most borrowers secure commercial vehicle financing with ease. To talk directly with one of our finance pros and get started with credit approval in as little as two hours, CFF’s phone number is (469) 281-2962.
