The Construction Business Blueprint #046 - 7 Instant Money Moves for Construction Businesses

Most construction business owners think the answer to more profit is more leads, more jobs, and more work.

But in many cases, the money is already sitting inside the business, it simply hasn’t been collected, charged for, tracked, or properly managed.

In this episode of Construction Business Blueprint, Marc breaks down the hidden profit already available inside your trade or construction business and the practical moves you can make to unlock it.

We cover five common profit leaks, including unfinished jobs, underpriced work, poor handovers, lack of control over your diary, and chaos disguised as being busy.

Marc then walks through seven profit levers you can use to improve the business without automatically adding more workload: selling more of what you already quote, creating new offers, raising prices, improving conversion, increasing client lifetime value, reducing waste, and building strategic partnerships.

You’ll also get a practical 24–72 hour action plan covering unpaid invoices, unpriced variations, old quotations, project overruns, and unused equipment.

You do not need to pull every lever at once.

Choose one or two, execute them properly, and start collecting the money your business has already earned.

Subscribe for weekly videos helping trade and construction business owners get more time, more profit, and more control.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction to instant money moves

00:27 - The hidden profit already inside your business

00:54 - Why more work isn’t always the answer

02:19 - The five biggest profit leaks

05:42 - The seven profit levers

06:02 - Sell more from the work you already quote

08:03 - Create new offers and increase client value

09:14 - Raise your prices with confidence

11:08 - Improve conversion before chasing more leads

13:58 - Reduce waste and inefficiency

15:23 - Review supplier prices and invoices

17:13 - Build strategic partnerships

18:45 - Fast cash moves for the next 72 hours

20:10 - What’s coming in part two

Transcript

Instant Money Moves Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So today we're going to talk about something that's hopefully going to excite everybody. We're going to be talking about instant money moves inside your training construction business. And again, if you haven't subscribed to this channel, please do. This is going to be again part one of a two-part series that we're going to talk about here. Like always, we keep things short, sweet, direct, and to the point. And we always leave with something that you can go and implement straight away in your training construction business. So if you haven't already, hit the subscribe button and be sure to catch every episode every week.

Hidden Profit In Work Done

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Okay, so this video we're going to talk about the money that you've already earned. And it's going to be we're going to kind of edge this on hidden profit that's already in your business right now, you just haven't collected it yet. Everybody in this industry thinks that the answer is more. More work. Okay, so more projects, more leads, another big job, another day, another week, but it's not. Okay, most of you don't need more work. You need control over the work that you already have. Most of the stress that you feel day to day isn't due to lack of opportunity. It's due to open loops. So it's unfinished snags, projects not getting over the line, it's unsent invoices or invoices not being worked out yet, it's additional work variations, change orders, whatever you call them in your world, not being priced, just being done and missed on, or jobs dragging on and taking way longer than you'd planned and letting down other clients to know that you had coming up next because nobody's checking in. So they're the things that cause you distress day to day. It's not the opportunity. And look, most guys that come to me, and I'm sure most of you watching this channel are very good at what you do. Like, I only work with successful established businesses in the trading construction industry. Most of the guys, the problem is not that they're not getting enough work, it's usually the quality of their work, but more often than than not, it is how they are carrying out that work and how the business operates day to day that causes the real stress. Maybe that's not always what they identify, but that's always the root cause. So the point I want to get across in today's episode is the money is already earned. It's already sitting there, you just haven't collected it yet, you haven't charged for it, you haven't systemized it or closed the loop on it yet. So this isn't work harder or double ARs. Most business owners aren't drowning again, like I say, because they don't have enough work. They're drowning because they do not have enough clarity, enough control, or enough structure around the work that you already have.

Five Profit Leaks To Plug

SPEAKER_00 2:19

So let's talk about why the profit disappears or why the profit you know isn't there to begin with. And let's talk about five leaks. Five leaks in your business that you need to plug straight away. Number one is open loops everywhere. Jobs not closed out, snags hanging out here, there, and everywhere, extras brushed all over the show that you haven't really pinpointed or collated for or actually brought to the client's attention. So it's kind of preventing you from getting to the next thing. Number two is a massive one. Underpriced work. Okay, and that's usually because quotes are getting rushed. You're not really taking the time to survey the project, you're not really getting time to go over the contract or the schedule that works or the scope. You're not clear on your overheads, you're not clear on your margins, you haven't really put an exact sound on how to price a job because you've never just had the time. I even have guys come to me now pricing jobs through ChatGPT or Claude, which again is crazy, guys. If you're leaving it up to somebody else to make decisions on what you should be charging, and without really having a good understanding or good grasp on it, you're clutching at straws and it's it's a bit chaotic. There's also the fact that you don't have the time right now to check whether the last few jobs actually made money or not. And realistically, that's the only way to check whether your pricing is actually on point, to prove it at the end. You know, I put 30% markup on this project, do the costing at the end of the project, or you should be doing it throughout the project. And if you don't know how, again, drop me a message, happy to help. If you don't know, if you can't prove that 30% work, you never know whether your estimate or your your your your quotation was actually right in the first place. So you have to prove or back up your estimate every time after the job has been complete. Number three would be poor handovers. Okay, so that could be because the team is unclear on the scope, the team are getting pulled from pillar to post, and nothing's really getting finished correctly, so you get rework, you're getting callbacks, and you know, or you're getting extras or variations that haven't been priced for, and that's where your profit's going. You know, if you're only really left with a small margin at the end of a job, and then you're going back and repeating stuff, you're going back and forth to the job, and that's because maybe you're taking guys from one site to another site, then they're going back to finish this, then they're going back to do that. Of course, something's gonna get missed. Per handovers could also be not bringing the client around the project or getting their sign-off and confirmation that this is how it's left, this is how it's done, it's all been done really well, and they're happy with it. You know, what you're doing is you're leaving site, the client's not even sure whether you're coming back or not, and then they're going around snagging the job for you. You're leaking profit everywhere there, too. Number four would be no control over your own time or your own diary. Everything's urgent, nothing's strategic, everything's reactive and not proactive, and you're just putting out fires all of the time. Number five would be chaos disguised as busy. Okay, so this kills margin faster than anything else. Being too busy to actually work on the things in the business, again, doing the the founder work over the operator work is the thing that's going to actually kill your business faster than anything else. Because these are the things that actually move the needle. So if you're not taking the time, I'm not talking about admin and stuff, I'm talking about you know, strategy, looking at better ways of doing things, better ban, fixing your pricing, things that actually work on the business that nobody's asking you to do, but the things that the business absolutely is crying out for. If you don't have those times because you're too busy, being stuck on the weeds and doing the day-to-day job, which again has to be done, that's going to kill your margin faster than anything else. So the business you think you're running and the business that you're actually running are usually two very different things. So

Seven Levers That Drive Profit

SPEAKER_00 5:40

let's look at the seven profit levers. So the seven profit levers are you know, every pound of profit or every euro of profit or every dollar of profit, whatever your currency is, runs through one of these seven things. And owners go wrong, again, working harder instead of pulling a lever, instead of trying to, you know, fix one thing they're trying to are or they're trying to put all seven at once. Okay, so let's go through each one one by one. Number one is sell more. So most guys don't realize in this industry that again when you're sending out a quotation or you're trying to win a project, that's sales. Okay, so selling more is important, and it's from selling more from work you've already quoted. I don't necessarily mean upsell, that's next. Okay, but follow up every quote at least three times. Don't send it out and then go quiet. You know, even look at how you're presenting your quote. You know, make sure quotes go out fast because again, speed sales, if you're leaving it for two weeks and and they've moved on because somebody else has got in there faster, then that's a problem. One guy you may be competing against has mapped everything out, it looks really professional, it's really clear, it's taken the client through every aspect. They've done maybe a side auto pro, which all of my clients do. There's photographs, there's a description of what needs to be done, the quotes nicely broken down, and then you've sent a WhatsApp with a figure, and they haven't got a clue what they're getting or what they're not getting. Okay, so selling more again, looking at how your quotes are going out the door, the speed you're getting quotes out, the explanation or the description you're giving with each quote is important, and the follow-up. Never just send out a quote and hope. Okay, send out a quote. Again, we've talked about this at length in other videos in here. When sending out a quote, agree a tate a date and time when you're out surveying that job of when you're going to send that quote and stick to that deadline. Okay, that's setting the expectation from the beginning. Then, as you send a quote, ring up and say, I just want to make sure you've received the quote and you understand it, okay. And then 24 hours later, check in, 72 hours later, check in, and so on and so forth. Always be following up, never just send and hope. Also, guys, don't don't be afraid to sell on the spot if you're very clear on your figures, if you're very clear on your numbers, get out there, do it in the van or wherever you can, and don't be afraid to sell on the spot. Be up front and say, when would you like this to be done? Let me check my calendar. Look, you know what? We can actually fit you in here in three weeks' time. Okay, all we need to do here is take care of the deposit and we can start to get everything organized straight away. Don't be afraid to sell, don't, don't, don't be thinking that somebody else has to think about it. People are ready to make a decision. You know, you just have to believe and know that they are. Number two would be sell new. These are clients. Do you you have a list of clients or maybe a book of clients or you should have a list of clients who already trust you? Okay, so you could think of new offers, packages, service lanes, maintenance plans, premium finishes. You know, maybe a step, look, this is what we're pricing here. But you know, we could do this again. That's like an upsell design and build, yearly checks, fast tracking people as well. So offering somebody, look, you know, I know we said we're gonna do this in October, but actually, if we bring this forward into here, we can actually do it, but you know, it's gonna cost me a bit extra or whatever else. So, look, we can always be talking things up and thinking strategically about different things. So, if you're in an industry of service and boilers or or boiler repairs or something like that, we've done that successful with another client. Bring out a membership, bring out a membership of for X amount of pounds a month that covers your annual boiler service and maybe one breakdown. If you do home maintenance, if you're doing landscaping, or if you're doing cleaning of any sort of shape and form, you could always package up some sort of an offer, some sort of membership or subscription, whatever this may be. If you're selling or are fitting kitchens, whatever it may be, rewares, you can always sell some sort of a maintenance package, certification package, check-in, follow-up, warranty, you name it. There's always something that you could sell new to. Number three seems like an easy one. Raise your prices. It's the simplest lever, but it's the one that most business owners fear the most. So the next quote that you have to send out, play with your margin. If you're somebody like one of my clients who is particularly clear on their margins and we're adjusting prices based on your conversion rate, then that's fine. But if if you haven't got all that figured out and you're not really too sure on your pricing, the quickest lever you can pull straight away to bring an extra revenue in your business is increase your prices by 10 or 20%. And look, it's always better to go high than go low. If you go high, you can always come down. If you go low, you can't. What I want you to do, and the next time you send out a quote, put 10 or 20% on, whatever you've came to the conclusion of, stick 20% extra on, submit it to the client with confidence, again, making sure the quote is submitted correctly, it's submitted well. And again, that conversation with the client could go back to you and say, Do you know what? That's a bit high. And you could say, look, let's talk in percentages here. If we were to take 10% off that, how would you feel about it then? You know, and then they could say, Do you know what? I could live with 10%. You've still, if you've been done 20%, you've still increased your price by 10%. So when you're increasing by a set percentage every time, you can always come back, but you can never go back from going low. You also may be in a position where you haven't increased your prices in years, and that's out of fear of losing jobs, out of doubt of losing jobs. So if you actually thought about it, and if you're you know a business owner sitting here now, frightened to increase your prices, going, God, I you know I hate the thought of it. Every time I look at a price, I take money off it. Never mind, put it on. Actually, think about how many jobs you've priced and how many jobs you've won. That's your conversion. If you weren't aware of that, you know, if you're sitting there pricing, I I win every job that I price, then you are in a prime position to increase your prices by at least 20 or 30 percent instantaneously on the next quote. If you're not, if you're somebody who struggles, you need to look at other reasons why. And again, we've gone through so many other videos, we've got an extensive library on here now. We've talked about all those things in length about submitting quotes and whatever else. So if you wanted to, or even if you want to reach out and you're one of those guys, please do, and we'll be happy to help. Number four, improve your conversion. So, again, I've already touched on it. You don't need more leads, you need to close more of what's coming in. Just talked about conversion loop, you need to be tracking your conversion. So, of how many jobs you priced, how many jobs did you win? Your price is the last place to look. Your price isn't always why you're losing work. This starts from the conversation up front. Are you in front of the right client? Ask the client what is your budget? If somebody's looking for a 10k garden for a 5k budget, or maybe you know, I get these scenarios where someone's looking at a 40k job for a 10k budget, then they're not the right client. No matter what you submitted to that client, they're never gonna go for it. What you could also do is ask the client, are you ready to go now? If they say no, look, it's just something we're talking about, then no, no wonder when you submit that quote, you hear nothing back. That client's just shopping around or window shopping, they're just roughly saying how much things cost. So we need to ask what their budget is, are there are they ready? Then you always need to look at how your quote looks or how you're submitting your quote. Are you providing a breakdown? Are you capturing everything they've asked for? Who are you competing against? You know, ask them how many other quotations are you getting? You know, where are we coming in around that figure? So always ask questions, but improving your conversion, which just means getting better at your sales, actually close more jobs in your winning. So if you've got a conversion rate of 60% or below, there are so many things you can do without even touching your pricing, without dropping your pricing. There's probably so many things that are untouched and untapped right now that you could do in your business to increase that to maybe 60 to 70, maybe 80% instantaneously. Just by how you present the quote differently or how you're closing out in quotes, it could be getting back faster, it could be sending the quote faster. So many things you could do to improve your conversion rather than doing anything else. It's already available to you right now in your business. Okay, number five is similar to the previous point: extend client lifetime value. So sell more to the same client during and after. So we've talked about this. This client already trusts you, they've already enlisted and trusted you to do whatever it is they need to do in their home. So you could talk about upgrades, doing things a better way, a better method, better materials, better aftercare service plans, offer a warranty that no one else offers. You know, if you've just done a landscaping, you could potentially, you know, say you've done a patio or a garden or whatever it may be, offer some sort of maintenance or cleaning package after that. If you're if just fitted a new boiler, offer an extensive warranty package. You know, you could you could think of these things, and again, that's where you could play about with Claude or ChatGPT to get these ideas. But of course, obviously with my clients we map these things out very, very clear from the beginning. Maybe you don't offer any sort of warranty or guarantee at all. Maybe you're just saying to the client, you know, if anything goes wrong, give me a shout. But maybe offer a six-month and twelve-month guarantee at a monthly figure. You know, that could maybe get them to come, you know, you're staying relevant to that client, you know, you're still staying right on top of their phone book and you're always there for them. So if anything ever else needs done, if there's a referral, everything's there, you're top of mind. So that's always a bonus, and it costs you, it could always maybe in the end cost you nothing. Number six, reduce waste and inefficiency. This is the silent profit killer. Okay, so not just materials, but dead wood as in people and time. So track actual job durations against estimated, track actual costs against estimated, you know, be really, really clear on ordering materials, like over-ordering materials, having materials laying around, so many things, wastage of materials, damage of materials, how materials are stored, or a silent profit killer. You know, you just think they're part and parcel of what has to happen, but it's not. Like I've seen this time and time again. Even if you're maybe unorganized and you're ordering materials ad hoc, you're running back and forth to the merchants all the time. That's killing speed, it's killing efficiency, you're probably overordering, you're probably not getting the best prices over the counter, you name it. For every project, keep a sort of issues log, as well as tracking the projects. You know, track where you like if you estimate a job is going to take eight weeks, track what it's coming in at, track it as you go along. Okay, this is coming into maybe week nine, week ten. Next project, keep that issues log, keep an issues log of every project. Here's what went wrong, here's what went well, here's who is working well, here's who's not working well. It seems like every job that I put Jimmy on, it doesn't go well. Every time I put Johnny on a job, it goes very well. Keep a track of those things because the only way to fix them is to identify them, keep a log of it, and then again, once you once you know what's happening, you can prevent it from happening again. A huge one that I know that most guys, and again I have evidence of this time and time again, aren't doing. You're not going out for quotes and you're not reviewing your supplier prices. Okay, so this is kind of a double-edged sword here, or it comes at you from both ends, but we'll say you're not shopping around for the best quotes. You've just gone with a supplier and you always have, but that supplier has now kind of taken it for granted. They're not trying to give you preferential rates. Maybe someone else who wants to win your new work will give you better rates. That's why maybe in a maybe a larger project, yes, if you're a guy who goes out and gets a wee bit here, a wee bit there for a small bit of maintenance, fine. But if you're pricing a project and pricing materials, shop around. That's where you know people you need to let your suppliers know that they're competing with each other and that they have to serve you better. Another one is checking your supplier invoices when they come in. Now, this is really inefficient if you're not using purchase orders, if you're not tracking invoices, because then you're having to go through every single invoice and remember what you've what you've done or what you've ordered. But if you're tracking this, it's already all there. If you're using purchase orders, everything's tracked and everything's logged. You're just taking one value and comparing it against the other. But trust me, with managing over 80 million pounds worth of revenue in projects, this was a massive profit killer. When I reviewed invoices, I would could have had maybe across a few projects a quarter of a million in projects that were the invoices were on hold because the discounts weren't on. There was double invoices, double quantities. I even had invoices that were from other companies. You will be surprised what suppliers either intentionally or unintentionally do again. You're relying on human error. Don't assume that every invoice that comes across your table is correct. You could be paying double what you were first quoted, and you're just signing things off and paying bills blindly. And I know that a lot of you are guilty of this because I have the evidence coming through from everybody that comes on here and I speak to every day. That is a huge, huge profit leak that you can fix immediately in your business that will save you thousands upon thousands per year. Number seven, strategic partnerships. This is a way that you can actually scale and grow your business very, very fast and bring in more revenue without having to invest in any sort of marketing or whatever else. Now we're not knocking marketing here, it is crucial for business, but there are fast ways to grow your pipeline without marketing, and that's through partnerships with architects, designers, developers, estate agents, management companies, and also other trades and suppliers, including competitors. Okay, so that may be tough for some people to understand, but I have clients who are in one discipline in a certain trade who are using other clients of mine and they are partnering up and they're both winning. Okay, so they're making their sharing work, they're everybody's winning, there's enough to go around. So whether it's taking or taking the load off somebody else, you maybe can't cope with the demand, maybe it's you're a spark partnering up with a plumber to do bathrooms, maybe you're a plumber partnering up with a teller to do bathrooms, maybe you're whatever. Whatever it may be, trades all complement each other. You know, a journey and a plumber for kitchens, you name it, a builder, whatever it may be, there's always somebody you could partner up with. And again, if you're a builder looking at larger scale stuff, architects, designers, also if you're in the commercial world, making partnerships like that and being named in specs, named in contracts and whatever else that people have to go to you for your services is crucial. It costs nothing. Building relationships is the fastest way to grow your business. So I'll give you seven ways you can instant money moves in your business in your trading construction business right now. You don't need to pool all seven, just pool one or two properly, and you will get a massive return.

Fast Cash Actions This Week

SPEAKER_00 18:46

So let me just finish this by something you can do over the next 24, 48, 72 hours, okay? Some of this that you could bank a lot of money in the next three days by doing these moves very, very quickly. Chase your unpaid and unsent invoices right away. The longer you wait to send an invoice, the longer you will wait to be paid. Follow up on any quotes that you've sent out you haven't followed up on straight away. Take one live job, go through it with a fine tooth comb, check for any variations, changes, extra works, track them, notify the client and have that tough conversation now rather than later. Clean up any project overruns. So if there's a project that's running over, give it all your time and attention, get some dates in the diary and get it closed off. Do whatever you can to get that project closed off as soon as possible. Stop any overruns. You make money by finishing jobs faster, not making them run on. Another quick money move, again, something that most people never look at, is sell the idle kit. Get rid of any unused gear, machinery, equipment that just gathers dust you maybe thought was a good idea that wasn't. Okay, don't hold on to those things out of pride, get rid of them. They're not making you money, they're not making a return, and I know that this happens all the time where guys want to buy shiny objects, but they're not really getting a return. Get rid of them fast. Don't leave with 10 things. Again, I've given you a couple of levers to pull there straight away in the next 24-48 hours that can give you fast cash in your business

What Causes Leaks To Return

SPEAKER_00 20:06

straight away. But pick one or two levers, one big cash move, and do them this week. But look, in this video we talked about profit leaks, but here's the thing there's certain leaks that keep coming back for a reason, and that reason is you, your team, or whether anyone else can even see you. And that's on the next video, so we'll see you there.