Cost Of Doing Business, OKRs & More At ASTI 2023
Our team had a blast at the ASTI (Annual Service Training Institute) 2023 conference this year! We look forward to this event every year and the opportunity to meet new faces, network and share invaluable industry insight. Thank you to everyone who attended, sponsored and taught courses this year! And, of course, thank you to the United Appliance Servicers Association for hosting this incredible event. This year, AAA Appliance members James Dolbeare and Cate Bloom were honored to teach classes to share their knowledge with fellow industry professionals. If you weren’t able to attend this year, keep reading for key takeaways from these classes!
Know Your Numbers – The Cost Of Doing Business
When it comes to the appliance industry, solidarity among businesses is essential. Companies of all sizes should know how to effectively set prices to set themselves up for success and avoid undercutting their services. Ineffective pricing can drive companies out of business completely or, at the very least, prevent them from making any profit. For example, signing contracts for warranties at rates below break-even, or even at a profit loss, can be a critical mistake that sends businesses to their breaking point.
To be a profitable industry and better serve our clients, it’s imperative for the appliance repair community to set realistic rates and never undercut other businesses. When large organizations aren’t able to dictate prices, we all benefit. On the flip side, when a competitor has enticingly lower rates, they can become the standard, making everyone lose in some way.
Knowing the cost of doing business is key for long-term success, increased profit and customer satisfaction. To know whether or not you’re losing business, it’s important to evaluate how flat-rate fees stack up against the price to complete the work. Unanimity in setting realistic pricing expectations prevents unsustainable rates from becoming the norm and reinforces our duty to one another as industry leaders.
OKR’s & LEAN: Strategies to be More Effective
Objectives and key results, or OKRs, are strategies that many large organizations use to propel their businesses into long-term growth and prosperity. These goal-setting and strategic planning tools benefit your company as a whole as well as each individual employee, giving them a clear target to work towards. OKRs can be simplified into one formula: I will ______ as measured by ______.
OKRs are all about setting objectives based on your company’s values and then utilizing key metrics to track progress toward the established goals. Objectives are simply what you want to achieve, and should be focused on something you consider essential to your company. The idea is to make your objective challenging, but realistic. Key results are benchmarks that help you track where you are on the path to your objective. These results shouldn’t be considered hard stops, but they need to be measurable.
When setting your OKRs, you want to think about what values are most important to your company. For example, your objective might be to improve sales performance across your whole team. This objective is challenging but grounded in action and a good motivator for team members to do their best. To measure your progress towards this goal, you may set key results like increasing closing rates from 22% to 27% or growing your average deal size from $10k to $20k. With a concrete idea of where your company is headed and how you will get there, OKRs should be evaluated and shared with your team at least yearly, quarterly or even weekly to measure progress. If you didn’t increase closing rates or grow deal sizes like you set a goal for, don’t lower the goal. Continue to review and adjust your goal it, set higher expectations and watch as your company gets closer and closer until eventually, you’re well beyond that initial goal.
When you set objectives, identify key results and commit to actions, success comes naturally. Having a clear road ahead will keep you from getting distracted by all the extra noise and shiny objects keeping you from your goal.
Don’t Overthink Your Path To Success
When it comes to business strategy, things can easily get overcomplicated. Terminology and formulas meant to help a company succeed can often feel overwhelming and largely inaccessible. Breaking down concepts like OKRs and the cost of doing business helps you apply them to your own unique goals to foster your unique success. Having a clear goal in mind, deciding the best path to get there and keeping your team inspired along the way is at the heart of your long-term success. We hope you find these tips as useful as we do in planning for continued prosperity and better client service. We’re committed to education, growth and remaining a leader in our industry! We can’t wait to see you next year at the ASTI conference!
