
About this episode
Jon Dale discusses the importance of measuring job profitability and the common pitfalls that can lead to financial losses in business.
I taught this workshop in my recent client Intensive - how to measure job profitability. It’s part of my program - they paid to get it. You’re getting it here for free.Most people don’t measure job profitability. It feels like an admin burden that gets in the way of doing work you get paid for, it’s hard to do well (or, at least, it takes effort and attention) so people put it to one side and focus on other things.I understand that - you have lots of demands on your time and this has to compete with them.It’s also probably costing you a lot of money. You quote a job, win it and someone in your business does it. When you quote it, you quote it with a margin in mind - say 30% gross margin.There are many ways that margin can be eaten away between the quote and the finish. You can estimate it wrong, get your costs wrong, give a discount. Your team can take too long, use too much stuff, make mistakes that need correcting; you can fail to charge for variations, get the scope wrong and not get paid for the whole thing …..and on we go.I’m sure you’re aware of the ways things can go wrong - nobody ever listens to me say this stuff and says “that never happens, Jon”.The point is that you…
People in this episode
Host: Jon Dale
Topics covered
- job profitability
- business management
- cost estimation
- profit margin
- financial analysis
Keywords
- job profitability
- margin
- costs
- estimation
- financial management
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