Leadership Pitfalls: 15 Ways Trades Businesses Fail

Leadership failures cost trades businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars every year through invisible expenses that never appear on balance sheets. When your leadership team lacks clear vision, transparent communication, and consistent accountability, the ripple effects damage everything from customer satisfaction to employee retention.

Corey Berrier draws from years of industry experience to expose the 15 critical reasons leadership teams fail in HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and other skilled trades companies. He reveals how seemingly minor leadership shortcomings create major business problems—like how failing to enforce standards equally among high and low performers creates harmful inconsistency throughout your organization.

The financial implications are staggering. A bad hire costs approximately 50% of their annual salary when factoring in training resources, lost customer opportunities, and replacement expenses. For a company with 50 technicians cycling through just 10 poor hires annually, that represents a hidden $500,000 drain on profitability.

Beyond hiring practices, modern leadership requires embracing technological advancements that improve efficiency. Companies resistant to implementing effective CRM systems, digital tools, or service management software find themselves steadily losing market share to competitors whose teams can handle more service calls with greater ease and accuracy.

Perhaps most importantly, leadership directly shapes company culture. The best trades businesses have created environments so positive that they have potential employees lining up to join them, eliminating recruitment struggles entirely. Meanwhile, companies with toxic cultures perpetually struggle with turnover, underperformance, and customer complaints.

Ready to transform your leadership approach and unlock your business's true potential? This episode provides actionable strategies that drive profitability while creating a healthier workplace. When you serve your employees effectively, they'll naturally serve your customers exceptionally—creating sustainable growth and success.

https://coreyberrier.gumroad.com/

Chapters

• 2:50 Why Leadership Teams Fail
• 6:10 Building Clear Vision and Communication
• 9:39 Accountability and Hiring Practices
• 15:32 Adapting to Change and Avoiding Micromanagement
• 20:42 Company Culture and Employee Growth
• 26:19 Customer Service and Safety Compliance
• 35:56 Marketing and Frontline Feedback
• 39:55 Preventing Internal Conflict and Conclusion

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:25

Welcome to the Successful Life Podcast. I'm your host, corey Barrier. Today, folks, I am rolling solo, and so today we are going to talk about leadership 15 reasons why leadership teams fail in a trades business business. So running a successful trade business, whether it's HVAC, plumbing, electrical or any other skilled trade for that matter, requires strong leadership. Unfortunately, many leadership teams struggle, and when they fail, it affects everything from morale, profitability, and when they fail, it affects everything from morale, profitability, customer satisfaction, even employee retention, and so here are the 15 things that I've drilled down as what makes leadership teams fail in trades companies. So the first thing is the lack of a clear vision and goals. Now, when I say a lack of clear vision and goals, I don't mean do you have your core values posted on the wall? That is not what I'm talking about. You need to as a leader. Look, everybody looks at you as the person that's steering the ship, and the leadership team without a clear vision for the company creates confusion. Employees need direction, and if leadership is not setting and communicating short-term and long-term goals, the business will stagnate.

Speaker 1: 3:16

And you think about when you're, think about you've got. If you were ever, whenever you were in school, if the teacher didn't know what the hell they were talking about, then you lose confidence in that teacher. And if they do that two or three times you're going to think that teacher's a total idiot and so you're not going to follow that guy or that woman very long. It's no different in your business If you're all over the place and you've got ADHD, which God knows. Look, I have ADHD, so I'm not knocking you. If you do, and most of the guys in the industry do have ADHD, you got to figure out a way to rein that stuff in and figure out systems and processes to where you can keep the vision and goals moving forward. From the leadership team. It just trickles down and your employees then see that you're discombobulated or that you're not organized. And so what do they do? You walk out to their van and it's discombobulated and not organized, as well as our paperwork and everything else.

Speaker 1: 4:26

And so the second one is poor communication. How many leadership teams assume keyword here is assume that employees know what to do? But without clear, consistent communication whether that be through meetings or SOPs or one-on-one check-ins, which everybody should have Again there's confusion and inefficiencies that get spread throughout the organizations, which leads to mistakes and frustration, poor communication. I would almost argue that should be almost number one. Argue that should be almost number one because poor communication is if you think about the game of telephone, if I tell john something, john tells jim something, jim tells john b something, john b tells sally something jesus by the time it gets to the end of that communication or the end of the line, you've got something entirely different than what it started out as, and so you've got to have good communication in order to have good leadership and to have good employees.

Speaker 1: 5:47

So the third one is not holding your team members accountable. Leadership teams fail when they allow poor performance, bad attitudes or inconsistent work habits to go unchecked. If employees see that underperformers aren't being held accountable, it creates resentment and it lowers overall standards. Well, if Jim doesn't have to clean his van, by God, I don't either and that goes for not just the underperformers, that goes for your overachievers too. If you've got people that are crushing it in the business, this is where it gets really hard. It's really simple to focus on the guy that's underperforming. His van looks like crap. You can crawl up his butt because you got multiple reasons, but when you got a high achiever, that's not keeping his van clean, it gets a little bit more dicey because you don't want to upset the apple cart because he's bringing in all the sales, because he's bringing in all the sales. But if you don't hold that guy accountable, just like the underperformer, then there's incongruency within the organization, and incongruency means that what goes for this guy doesn't go for that guy. You can't have that. You can't have favorites, you can't have people that you always pick on, so to speak, because you got to hold people accountable.

Speaker 1: 7:19

People come in with their shirt tail. Highest performing guy comes in with his shirt tail untucked. You, as the leader, may be thinking well, he's still going to go out there and sell four systems today. But the underperforming guy that's got his shirt tail in sees that the overperforming guy doesn't. And what does he do? Well, he assumes that word again that the overachiever always looks like that. So what does he do? He eventually starts coming in the same way, or, at best case, he comes in with his shirt tail undone, shirt tail tucked in. And then, as soon as he gets in that van, what does he do? Untucks it, because, hey, he wants to be like the overachiever. So if the overachiever is crushing it without a shirt tail in. There might be something to that and it's pretty convenient. So might be something to that and it's pretty convenient. So you got to hold team members accountable at all of them.

Speaker 1: 8:16

So weak hiring and training practices. Many trade companies hire out of desperation instead of a strategy, and a weak hiring process leads to bad fits and poor training leads to employees that struggle to meet the company expectations. Great leadership ensures that hiring and training is a priority. Coming from the company that I was just with, whohire, I saw this the numbers of bad hires, the amount of money that it costs you in turnover every year when you hire somebody bad it is absolutely staggering what that is. So I'll just give you a quick example. If you've got a guy let's just keep it a simple math he makes $100,000 a year. It takes almost 50% of that guy's salary to replace him.

Speaker 1: 9:22

Here are the factors that you need to think about. When you bring somebody in and they're a bad fit one, you're going to hang on to them longer because you probably hired them and you want to see them succeed, because you just have faith that they are going to get it and they don't. So while they're not getting it. They're burning customers. They're underperforming. You're spending your time training. You've got somebody spending time training. All these are resources, not to mention you're paying the guy an hourly rate, probably, and gas and insurance, a truck Dude. The numbers stack up to an unreasonable amount of money. So let's just figure you've got 10 guys like that per year, which guaranteed you probably have more than that Any size company is. If you say you got 50 technicians which is a good size company, 50 technicians you are for sure going to cycle that through 10 of those a year. That's a half a million dollars. A half a million dollars a year.

Speaker 1: 10:23

Because you hired the wrong person, or you hired a guy that you thought was going to be able to do it or better. Yet you were desperate. You just put a butt in a truck and now you said, well, at least we got the truck on the road. Well, I don't know about that. The truck was costing you $2,000, $3,000 a day, I don't know. It depends on the size of your business. Whatever that number is, you say, well, at least we have the truck on the road. But how many customers is that guy costing you? You don't know because that number is not on the balance sheet right. The the cost of a hire is not at the end of the year. It's a blank spot on the balance sheet because there's no way to track it, so we'll go off on that too much more.

Speaker 1: 11:08

The second part of that's training practices. How much do you train your employees? This is vitally important for multiple reasons. One you want to constantly be training your technicians, your sales guys, role-playing, because that's what gets them better in the field. On your customers, because those customers cost you money for them to go out and practice. On practice in the shop. Role play in the shop, like.

Speaker 1: 11:37

I know it's uncomfortable and I know everybody doesn't like it. It doesn't really matter, as long as you set it up that way right from the jump. This is how we do things. Every new employee goes through the same thing and you have a system and a process. Every week you have two or three training sessions. Every week you role play. Every week you go through certain elements of the sales process. It becomes a part of the job and I know that seems for a lot of folks that may seem like a real pain, but guess what? It is literally costing you probably hundreds of thousands of dollars by not having a training practice in place.

Speaker 1: 12:20

And I don't mean here's what I don't mean by a training practice that you have a meeting and you scream at all the people that are not doing well and you're telling them how their numbers are down. They need to get their numbers up. That's not a training session. That's not what I'm talking about. In fact, you shouldn't be having those meetings anyway. If you're going to have a meeting like this, it should really be a one-on-one meeting with the people that are underperforming and one-on-one meetings with the people that are your overachievers, because you want to understand how you, as the leader, can be a better leader to lead these underperformers to a better spot, because guess what they're going to leave you if you don't do that. You've got to invest time. You've got to invest your own resources into building these guys up.

Speaker 1: 13:08

And look, the truth of the matter is, lots of times it has nothing to do with their work. It has something to do with their personal life. But if you don't take time to ask those questions, if you don't take the time to find out what could be on their mind, you're never going to know. And guess what? Then they don't know. You care about them and maybe you come across like you don't care to know. And guess what? Then they don't know you care about them and maybe you come across like you don't care about them, and if that's the case, then we got even bigger problems. Who wants to work for somebody if you think they don't care about you? This day and age, when you've got younger technicians, man, you got to have empathy, you got to have patience, you got to go give them attaboys when, even when you don't think they deserve an attaboy.

Speaker 1: 13:55

So the next one is lack of adaptability to market changes. A lot of trade businesses don't adapt to changes, whether it's technology regulations, customer expectations. Whether it's technology regulations, customer expectations those things fall behind. And then leaders who resist change instead of embracing new tools AI tools as an example techniques or business strategies, put their company at risk. And I see this a lot in the industry. Because if my dad didn't do it that way and he made $40 million, then why should I do it that way? Or my grandpa didn't do it that way, my dad didn't do it that way, I'm not going to do it that way and I'm not suggesting everybody's like that, but the folks that embrace technology that get behind especially. Obviously that I'm a little biased with that, but I understand also how important it is to implement. That would make your business move so much faster, more efficient, which leads to higher profitability and a happier workplace.

Speaker 1: 15:15

Think about your newer technicians. They're used to technology. Now, your 60-year-old technician maybe not right. He's probably not going to catch on to this because he doesn't want to catch on to it. And if you figured out a way to teach an old dog new tricks, by all means I'm open ears. But it's one of the hardest things to do, and especially with a guy that's got 20, 25 years in the industry. What are you going to tell that guy? And that's how he sees it, and it's going to be a challenge. That's why I know that guy and that's how he sees it, and it's going to be a challenge. That's why I know my buddy, andy Hobica, out in Phoenix.

Speaker 1: 15:54

They don't hire seasoned technicians. They absolutely unequivocally, without a doubt, do not hire experienced technicians, because it is proven that it's harder to train a technician with experience than it is somebody that's fresh off the boat, so to speak, fresh out of a new industry. They know nothing, they have no bad habits. Look, it's the key to building good talent because, listen, if you can bring a charismatic server from the bar down the street or a bartender in that's maybe making $50,000 or $60,000, you can show him, you can paint the picture of him now making $100,000 a year. I'm just using those simple numbers. Dude like it's a great opportunity to capture talent that are not even looking for a job in your industry because they don't know. They don't know that it's out there and unless you've got somebody out there going to restaurants and talking to people and giving people cards, it really should be part of the process for hiring new talent. And it works. It absolutely works.

Speaker 1: 17:18

So micromanagement is the next one Lack of trust. Micromanaging kills morale If your leadership team does not trust their team to do their jobs and employees feel disrespected and disengaged. Strong leaders empower their teams instead of controlling every single detail. If you've ever worked for somebody that micromanages you, it is a nightmare. It's the most uncomfortable thing in the world because you feel like you can't do anything right. And if somebody's got the time to micromanage you, then that means they probably nobody should have the time to micromanage anybody.

Speaker 1: 18:08

You've got to believe and trust that your team is going to make the right decision. And also you've got to give them the ability to make bad decisions. You've got to give them the ability to fail, because that's a learning lesson. I only learn when I make a mistake and I have to correct it. I only learn by messing up. You don't learn if you do it right every single time or somebody swoops in and saves you every single time. You might be thinking, well, corey, I couldn't let that deal go down, go sideways. Sometimes you need to let it go sideways. Sometimes you need to let that deal go belly up and then you can explain and teach and coach on why it went belly up and what they could have done a little bit better, but also highlight what they did right, provided they did do something right, and I'm sure they did. You've got to figure out what they did, but it's pretty important, and I'm sure they did. You've got to figure out what they did, but it's pretty important.

Speaker 1: 19:15

So the next one is ignoring company culture and morale. A toxic work environment oh my gosh, or a consistently negative work environment will sink a business faster than you can imagine faster than you can imagine. And leaders that cultivate a culture of respect, recognition and teamwork. Look, you're not going to struggle with high turnover if you can lead with respect and with recognition and with teamwork, but the ones that don't are going to struggle and they're going to struggle with. You're going to struggle with high turnover and underperformers, and nobody wants that. It's so, so, so important and, as a leader, you've got to live out that culture. You got to go over and above, because you're the person they're looking at. You're the example, and I don't mean just the owner, the managers, the service managers, the sales managers, the CSR managers. Company culture is so important that if you ignore it, the company's going to seek so poor financial management.

Speaker 1: 21:01

You got to track your numbers, dude. You got to track your numbers. You got a budget. You got to make sure your pricing is correct. You got a plan. You got to have cash flow. If you don't do those things, what's going to happen? Well, you're going to miss payroll. People are going to quit. Eventually, the business is going to fail. So you got to make sure that you're financially healthy, not just that there's money in the bank, but that there's consistent money in the bank. These things are.

Speaker 1: 21:29

If you've ever been at a company that couldn't make a payroll check. I've been at companies that couldn't make a payroll. You had to. As soon as those checks hit the, as soon as you could pick them up, you had to be the first one to the bank or you wasn't going to get paid, and that does not breed trust in your employees. I can tell you that 100%. So not investing. Next one is not investing in employee growth.

Speaker 1: 21:56

When leadership sees employees as replaceable instead of investing in their development, workers feel undervalued and they leave. A strong leadership team offers training, certifications, some sort of career growth opportunities that helps you to retain top talent. People want to know that they're not going to be necessarily stuck in this same position every year, and if they are and that's what they want they still want to have something to look forward to, whether that be that you send them to an event or you have somebody come in and teach them something new, or sometimes it's really just. It goes back to that culture thing. Maybe it's that you treat them out to a night with pizza and beer, whatever that thing is. But leadership but it's the leadership that is there is your responsibility. You can't look at people like they're replaceable.

Speaker 1: 23:04

In this current economy, it's hard to find people. It's hard to find people because there's a massive shortage. This is no surprise. There's a massive shortage of service technicians. What's interesting, though, you've got companies like Tommy Mello, who is literally cycling through 50 brand-new technicians a month. Now why do you think that is? Well, I can tell you. You go back to the two examples before this company culture. That's why People want to go work there because it's fun. He makes it fun, he feeds his employees, he makes it an experience where people want to come to work. And then guess what happens? They recommend their friends to come to work, and then they recommend their friends to come to work, and now you've got a pipeline of people lining up at your door wanting to work for you. Can you imagine that? Probably not. You probably can't imagine that, but that's the compound effect of having good leadership, the compound effect of having a good culture, investing in your employees and all the other things that I've listed here.

Speaker 1: 24:22

So next one is failing to prioritize customer service. Your customers are what keeps that company moving right, keeps the company making money. It trades. Business survives on its reputation, and if leadership doesn't emphasize great customer service, guess what happens? Bad reviews pile up, repeat business disappears and leads become harder to convert. Everybody's got a phone. All they have to do is look up and see where Jim just got a one-star review. Well, I can tell you I'm no different than you are. We're no different than the customer. We see a bunch of one-star reviews. What are you going to do? Keep on scrolling right and they only have to see one. So that's why every single call counts, every customer counts, every customer interaction counts, because they're all important, every single one of them. You can't think, well, it's just one bad review, because that one bad review, guaranteed, is going to lead to another bad review. Somebody goes on to leave a review and they go well, yeah, they could have a 50-50 experience with you 50% good, 50% bad. And they go on and they see Jim just got left a one-star review. Psychologically they're going to lean towards the lower half of those stars because they just saw Jim do it right. They just saw that Jim left a crappy review. So I want to be like Jim, so I'm going to leave a crappy review too. That of that 50% that went well just went to 20% that went well, just because the psychological shift that happened when that customer saw that review from Jim.

Speaker 1: 26:26

So resistance to technology and efficiency improvement. So a lot of trade companies don't invest in adopting new tools I mentioned, like CRMs, as an example. I won't harp on AI too much here. I'll try not to Dispatch software, digital invoicing, service type, things like that right, things that help the technician be more efficient. And how do you think a technician feels when they go from, let's just say, they go to the shop down the street. They've been using service Titan as an example at your shop and they go to the shop down the street and they're using some other crappy software that's cumbersome, it's hard to understand, it's hard to put the stuff in works. Sometimes it doesn't.

Speaker 1: 27:14

They wish they had never left, because now their job, who they left? For a dollar more an hour, because you had a shitty leader. Now you've lost probably a decent employee and now they've regretted leaving you. You might be thinking, well, they shouldn't have ever left to begin with. Well, the grass is always greener on the other side until you get there. So as a leader in this industry, you can't resist change because it keeps the business stuck in the past, and I see this a ton Now.

Speaker 1: 27:46

I said I wasn't going to try to go into AI too much here, but this is the only example I can give you too much here, but this is the only example I can give you Businesses that are not using AI. They're stuck in the past and guess what's going to happen? Mark my words and believe me, I'm correct on this. Believe me the companies that are not embracing this technology and they're stuck in the past. They're going to get gobbled up because you're going to slowly and surely lose market share to the guys that can do it faster, easier, quicker. Their employees are happier because guess what? A technician that can get to four jobs or five jobs a day with ease is going to be way happier than one that's struggling to barely get to three because the systems and processes with the technology aren't dialed in. So next one is overlooking safety and compliance. Ignoring OSHA standards, cutting corners on safety or failing to enforce workplace protocols can lead to injuries, fines and lawsuits. Smart leadership teams make safety a core company value.

Speaker 1: 29:01

I talked to a guy Ben Brown Did I say that right? Bill Brown, not Ben, sorry. He was a few episodes ago and he told us a story about how he knew this lady was working a little bit of overtime. Maybe it was 42 hours. She would take off the next week and only work 38 hours. So it evened out. Here is the issue with that the judicial system does not care if you let her slide on that 38 hours, but they damn sure care. If you've worked her 42 hours and didn't pay her overtime, they could care less about that 38 hours in their mind. It doesn't even out in their mind you were a negligent employer. And I cannot remember how much he said it cost him. I want to say $300,000, $300,000. And it. I can't remember and I don't remember the minimal amount he could have if he had just paid this lady. It was by far nowhere near that, not even 1% of that. So you can't cut corners on safety. You can't cut corners on you know. Look, you don't want to have a lawsuit, dude, you're going to have a lawsuit eventually. Everybody gets them. But you got to be able to win those and the leaders that enforce this stuff like.

Speaker 1: 30:34

Here's a silly example. It drives me up the wall. When a company comes, goes into a house, they don't put on their booties. I don't care if the customer says, john, it's totally fine, I got a sweep anyway. Don't worry about that. You're good. Don't fall for that trap, dude, because you best believe something goes sideways.

Speaker 1: 30:59

Well, johnny didn't have his boots on, I didn't have his booties on. He scratched my floor, dude, I'm telling you, I went one of them. So I went to this lady's house, such a pain in my butt. So one of the technicians went out. No installation team, sorry, the install team went out, put a system in and this lady lived out in the middle of nowhere. It took me an hour to get to her house. The scratch on her floor was so small that she had to shine a flashlight on it and make the floor wet in order for me to see it. It was all I could do, not to say you got to be effing, kidding me. But of course I did not say that because I'm not an idiot. I tried to smooth it over.

Speaker 1: 31:52

I dealt with that lady for three months. I went out to that house three different times. So you figure, an hour out there, an hour there, an hour back. That's three times three, that's nine hours of time that I spent on that lady. And guess what happened? Guess what happened? We wound up making less money on the job than what it cost us because we had to also discount it and pay for her stupid floors.

Speaker 1: 32:20

So she would pay the bill because the sales guy didn't go out when he was supposed to and collect the money. He was like, oh it's Friday afternoon, I'll go out there on Monday. He screws around and doesn't get out there till Wednesday. Well, now the system's already in and now there's scratches on the floor. Well, we can't. Who knows who got those scratches, who knows where those scratches came from? But it doesn't really matter, because if the sales guy would have went out when he was supposed to go out, then that wouldn't have happened. But he didn't. He waited five days Friday, saturday, sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday. Five days, right, three business days, whatever Point is. That's laziness. I don't care if it's Friday afternoon. If you need to go pick up that payment, you need to go pick it up exactly when you're supposed to pick it up if you haven't already run their credit card after you got their permission.

Speaker 1: 33:18

So there's ways to mitigate these things that look. It costs the company a fortune when these things happen. Not to mention we had to send yeah, I won't go on, I won't drive that into the depths of whatever. So lack of strategic marketing and lead generation. Many trade companies rely on word of mouth alone, which is wonderful if you've got a great name and that works, but leadership teams that don't invest in marketing, owners that don't invest in whether it's online or social media or all of them community outreach, you're going to struggle to keep a steady pipeline of new business. That's just a fact, and so you've got to invest in all of those things.

Speaker 1: 34:06

Now, which one works? Well, it's hard to say, but one of the things that for sure works is getting a five-star review, because that's a word of mouth right. Then that whoever gets the five-star review, if they got a list of those, all they got to do is show that to the customer that they're trying to sell, and it sells it right. So there's one example You've got to do. You've got to obviously got to do Google, you've got to do some sort of social media and the community outreach is. Here's how you win at community outreach Host a community event, feed people, do a charity.

Speaker 1: 34:39

I've got a buddy up in York, pennsylvania. He owns a great roofing company called TC Backer. His name is Ty Backer, one of my buddies, and he didn't do this for this reason, just to be clear he's a good-hearted guy, he's got just a heart of gold and just a good human being, and so he started every year, the day before Thanksgiving, frying turkeys. Now, part of this is he wanted to win. He wanted to get the Guinness Book of World Records for the most fried turkeys at one time, or something like that, and he got it and he got it and he got it. But here is the direct result of that it has become so big that when he does that event to feed people who don't normally have food which is an amazing reason in itself to do it Every TV station's coming on there and they're filming, they're talking to them, they've roped off all downtown for him. He didn't do it for that reason. He did it because he wanted to help the community. But doing stuff like that, you get instant credibility in the market, instant credibility, and it's work. It's just, it's amazing what he's done.

Speaker 1: 35:58

So next, not listening to frontline employees. Technicians and field workers are the ones interacting with customers every day. Leadership teams that ignore their feedback miss valuable insights on pricing, customer concerns, job efficiency. So you got to talk to your guys and see what happened, and I don't mean you got to yell at them why didn't you close this sale? That is not what I mean, like, talk to me about what the customer said. Help me understand. What was their pushback, what was their? Why did they not move forward? Let's just talk about what the process was, but just have a general conversation with them. This is not an opportunity for you to pounce on this employee. Hear me when I say that's the last way you want to do this. They're already feeling defeated. The last thing they want to do is come in and talk to their manager and him hand them their ass because they didn't close the sale. Well then, what does he do? He dips out, he avoids the manager and then you don't get that feedback.

Speaker 1: 37:01

So it's really important that the emotional intelligence portion of your job as a leader, that you rein that in and you really pay attention to how you speak to people, your tonality, your body language, how do you interact with your employees, because that stuff is dude, like it'll go so far if you just take it back a notch. If you're heated, maybe don't have a conversation right then and there, but you got to be able to have emotional intelligence in order to even recognize that you're doing that, and that takes work and it takes practice and it takes you pumping the excuse me, pumping the brakes when you want to rip somebody's head off. And look, we've all been there. We all want to rip somebody's head off at some point, but it's just not a really good quality of a good, solid leader to rip your guy's heads off. It just it costs you a fortune in the end.

Speaker 1: 38:05

Internal conflict and ego clashes is the next one. So when leadership teams are filled with power struggles or conflicting visions, it trickles down to the entire company, and if the leadership isn't unified, the company suffers. If the service manager is saying one thing and then the supervisor under him is saying something different Goes back to that incongruency. It's confusing. People don't like to be confused. They like that very clear communication and it needs to be uniform across the entire company, and so that's where it's important that all your leaders have meetings together. It's even more important to have leadership in the technicians and the sales guys all in the same meeting, because then they hear it all the same way and ask for feedback, ask for questions.

Speaker 1: 39:12

Make sure that it's flushed out, because if there's confusion, what does a confused mind do? Doesn't make a decision. That's what it does, just like your customers. If they're confused about what you're selling, they don't want to make a decision. Especially if you're asking them for $15,000 or $20,000, you got to make sure it's clear. For $15,000 or $20,000, you got to make sure it's clear. You got to dumb the language down Not that your customer is dumb but you got to put it to them in non-jargon ways, not jargon Jargon. I think jargon is a lotion Anyhow. So.

Speaker 1: 39:51

And when you get egos involved and look, we're a male-dominated industry, so there's going to be some ego clashes. But as the leader, how do you handle that? Do you allow two of your employees to cuss each other out in front of other team members? I hope not, because if that happens it doesn't look like you're the leader, it looks like the two people cussing each other out or running the show. And if you can't handle separating those two people or calming them down or getting that thing solved and the other team members see it, man, now you've got other team members that think they can talk to other team members that way and it trickles down, just like these other things I've talked about. And so your company is only as strong as its leadership team In avoiding these common pitfalls will create a business that runs smoothly, keeps employees engaged and delivers top-notch service to the customers. So this is so important, but it's also one of the areas that I see lacking the most.

Speaker 1: 41:11

All of these things that I've listed today even though there's one to 15, they're all important. If one of these things is not working, then you're going to have things fall through the cracks, and if a couple of them are not working right, then you're going to have problems. Heaven forbid you have four or five of these not working right. Your company's going to be losing money and if you're wondering why it's hard to keep customers coming back, look at some of these things because it's important and it all matters. Like I said before, every customer matters, every customer interaction matters and it should matter. The goal is to serve people and make money and provide a healthy environment for your employees. If you're the leader, that's your job. The customers are your technicians and your comfort advisors. That's their people, right? Your people are your employees. If you're serving your employees, we'll serve your customers. So I appreciate you guys listening today and we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening.