If you want to be successful in the storm restoration industry, you must be organized.
It doesn’t matter what your position is – if a general manager isn’t organized, jobs won’t get produced. If an office manager is sloppy, employees or contractors might not get paid correctly. If a sales rep is careless, it could ruin the relationship with the homeowner and affect sales. Every aspect of this industry depends on timeliness and organization.
We’ve compiled a list of four tips that ANYONE can use to keep organized.
1. Create a schedule and stick to it. Distractions will pop up every day if you let them. Don’t let them. Instead, block out time to focus on the important things you need to do and don’t let anything interfere with the time block.
- GMs – this means you should have set times each week to check-in jobs and write your install schedules. Make sure your team knows your schedule, so they won’t interrupt you unless it’s an actual emergency. If it’s not, tell them to come back later.
- OMs – have a standardized process for payroll, applying for permits, checking in jobs, etc., and stick to it.
Sales Reps – create and stick to your door knocking schedule, have set days/times to schedule inspections and set times to follow-up with homeowners.
2. Always put your appointments in your calendar. Our second tip goes hand-in-hand with the first: make sure you put all your tasks and appointments on your calendar. If you block off time on your calendar (and actually use it), you’re more likely to complete your scheduled tasks and you’re less likely to forget important meetings.
Make using your calendar a part of your routine! At the beginning of every day, check your calendar, voicemails and prioritize your to-do list. At the end of the day, review your calendar for activities that need to be done first thing in the morning.
If you typically work in the field, make sure you have access to your calendar on your phone. Set up notifications on your phone and choose not to ignore them.
3. Organize and prioritize your inbox. We live in an email-heavy world and it’s easy for important emails to get lost in the list. You should prioritize and clean out your inbox on a regular basis to avoid this mishap.
- Choose a time and frequency that works for you to review and clean out your inbox.
- Mark emails you still need to follow up on as “unread,” so you know anything in the inbox is stuff you still need to deal with.
- Prioritize emails with deadlines. If you want to be really organized, put the deadline on your calendar.
- Once you have followed up on an email, move it to an appropriate folder. This way it won’t leave your inbox cluttered but you will know where to reference it later if need be.
- Long-term projects should have their own folder to hold all the correspondence for that project.
4. Break big tasks into smaller, more manageable tasks. Some processes can be long and tedious. We recommend breaking up the process into smaller tasks AND using checklists to make sure you don’t miss any steps. You can create your own checklist for any process you have. We especially recommend companies use:
- Inspection Checklists
- Photo Checklists
- New Supplement Checklists
- Project Checklists
- Job Paperwork Checklists
Want some more tips? Check out these videos on YouTube:
- Time Management: https://youtu.be/XJBoFiJ0Wno
- 3 Tips for Creating Your Roofing Production Schedule: https://youtu.be/Tfn4fwdZRrA
- Why Paperwork is So Important for Your Roofing Business: https://youtu.be/YNoIOBL4BxY