Craftmanship or Systems: Which is best?

The Mountain Equipment Co-Op building in Ottawa, one of the award-winning projects of Christopher Simmonds Architect.

Yesterday, I met with Chris Simmonds, an Ottawa architect who won the Peoples' Choice Award in the recent Greater Ottawa Home Builders' Association housing design awards competition for a luxurious home in Mississagua, near Toronto. (He entered the home in the "open" category as it is obviously far away from the Ottawa market area.) His practice -- he has a team of about 10 -- has built luxury residences, community facilities, and environmentally sensitive institutional buildings. "Underneath the hood" is an incredibly brilliant designer with a great sense of style and function. He conceptualizes big things with the little details -- and his staff, with various capacities and specialities, execute the vision.

Meanwhile, I'm watching the work of Stephen Sellers, whose "Professional Contracting Association" I discovered by monitoring his Adwords ads. In my conversation with him a few weeks ago, he described a small, part-time business, based on systems. Cautious to give him an unconditional endorsement -- after all, he has a new business, and his market credentials haven't yet been established -- I've been watching as various pieces of his marketing material arrive in my in-box, all building the base for his vision of a stream of increasing income from contractors looking for practical marketing solutions.

As far as I can tell, Sellers built his system in a box; a really comprehensive system with well written and strategized materials. There is a lot of skill in doing this right, but once he's done, his business should virtually "run itself" and generate money, consistently.

Which approach is better? You can't replace the quality and individual attention from Chris Simmonds and he gets to do the type of work he loves. Sure, Simmonds has systems within his practice to allow him to handle the volume of work -- and he certainly appreciates the basis of publicity and communications: Entering competitions where he can win recognition, and then find new business.

Sellers, meanwhile, described systems gone wrong. He had purchased a franchise which simply wouldn't work -- he paid for processes which hadn't been validated in the market. A systems person, he decided to learn everything, and get it right. I think he has.

I think both the systems and craftsmanship models have place within the industry. If you want to grow a really large business, you will probably need to move more in the systems direction, but if you are really good at what you do, you can indeed "have it your way."

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Systems, authenticity and marketing

How important are solid business systems? In the last month, we had more staff turnover and disruption than I would wish on anyone; individually the reasons all make sense and, while we can draw some collective conclusions for the reasons, the losses were painful.

But the business is rebounding effectively, operations continue uninterrupted, and while client service continued seamlessly through the transition, it will now improve because of lessons learned and new processes and improvements put in place.

Systems, of course, saved the day. I turned on our "recruiting and employee selection" system several times, and it worked to quickly allow us to make the correct choices. But we modified the rules and processes by adapting, listening, and respecting some flexibility --- this allowed me to speed up some critical hiring decisions, while minimizing risk of bad choices.

Then, the new employees (in one case, a returning employee) generally knew what to do because we have established operating procedures. They of course need some guidance for the exceptions and special circumstances that occur less often, but generally, they could find out what to do and when.

Fair enough. Systems can save a business. But can they make one?

Systems-focused people advocate building the systems into your business from day one. They say you should visualize your end-result and then design all your operations to fit a structured, systematic model -- to avoid the seat-of-your-pants and chaotic environment where your personality and bad choices rule the day.

There are merits in these approaches; you certainly wouldn't want to make all the mistakes I made in my early days (and still do now!)

But there is a problem with this approach, and it is "authenticity". I sense if your business is excessively systematized at the beginning, the creative spark which defines it may be lost. You also risk putting on airs about being something you are not.

If you are operating a part-time, one person Internet marketing service you are not a "Professional Contractors Association" even if the materials you have systematically devised are as good as any I've seen for truly professional associations. (Is that a mixed review? Yes, but you should really read Steve Seller's stuff. His resources are excellent. See yesterday's blog posting for the relevant links.)

Then, can you solve your marketing problems with marketing systems? Here, again, the answer is yes, with a big caution. I'm really wary of prepackaged and ready-to-go solutions sold by third party vendors. These are probably much better than the seat-of-your-pants and hope-for-the-best approaches most start-up businesses use, but I sense the best systems are the ones you build yourself, by combining the best practices and advice of others with your own personality, temperament and values.

Sellers acknowledges he is a systems person, but he learned (through purchase of a bad franchise) that systems themselves don't work if they aren't right for the particular business and market you are serving.

One-size-fits all marketing solutions for contractors may deliver core value and can save you a lot of time on the learning curve, but they won't respect your individuality and may be a mismatch for who you actually are.

In other words, learn from others, use systems, but be sure to devise something that is right for you. And be real.

(P.S. The bi-weekly newsletter is a little late -- I expect it will be ready later today but you may receive it tomorrow morning.)

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Vapourware? Maybe not.

I don't believe a part-time business just three weeks in operation qualifies as a "Professional Contracting Association" and hate the cheesy squeeze-page set up on Steve Sellers' marketing materials, but behind his site are actually some useful free resources.

Steve Sellers from Professionalcontractingassociation.com, based in New Jersey, responded to my email inquiry when I prepared the Vapourware Marketing posting yesterday. In my email to him, I asked:

If I'm wrong in my assumptions, we should communicate so I can write an accurate story. If I'm right, don't worry, no one should be able to trace you from this posting and I never name individuals/organizations (negatively) publicly in the blog.

If the truth is somewhere "in between" also let me know -- while I can't write an artificially positive review, we can still share notes.

His answer:

"In-between" would be the most accurate. This IS a new venture for me, although I am not new to Internet marketing. That being said, I owned/operated a small construction company in New Jersey (you are right about the Eastern U.S.), and no, this is not my home address--it is an office.

Long story, but we are shutting down our construction business this month... I'll be happy to share all of the torrid details over the phone...

I've tried very hard not to over-inflate my claims and if it appears that I have done so, then any feedback would be highly appreciated!

He followed up with a phone conversation and emailed some rather interesting material behind the site, including a marketing e-book and a six week course on how to effectively structure and operate a contracting business.

It turns out he has a contracting business which he would like to sell or quit; a manager is operating it while he works at another full-time job and he tries to make his Internet marketing business viable.

He told me he got into trouble when he purchased a maintenance franchise; the franchiser didn't know the business, and it lost thousands of dollars until he ditched the franchise and learned how to do things himself. Last year, the business turned a small profit.

"Why not validate your approach by making your contracting business truly successful," I asked him. He said he is disillusioned with the business and the harrowing experience the ill-fated franchise put him and his family through. He is burned out. His manager would like to purchase the business, but of course doesn't have the spare cash.

Sellers' Internet business, meanwhile, has been in operation for three weeks. He has sold one marketing system, a newsletter/email follow up management system provided by The Halos Marketing Group.

His Adwords budget is $10.00 a day, and this generates 15 to 25 leads -- of which about half of one per cent convert to a request for a free newsletter subscription. But since the system operates on autoresponder, it may turn out to be a modest part-time business if he can sell two or three marketing packages a month.

Fair enough. Is this vapourware? Digging beneath the surface, maybe not. Sellers has hard-knock experience. His e-course, which is right now free, is quite well presented and provides practical and useful materials. (Free is also a rather good price!)

I'm not sure I'd pay the fee for the marketing/newsletter package, but you might want to check his free course at http://www.6weekbusinessremodel.com. And since his marketing e-book is also free, you can check it here: http://www.professionalcontractingassociation.com/Marketing.pdf.

I still wish he wouldn't use the word "Association" when he is operating a small, part-time one person business. And I really hate the cheesy squeeze page "Internet marketing technique" format. Every time I see this sort of site, I feel like running for the hills.

Nevertheless, the free stuff is quite good and he really has been in the business, so I'll keep my mind open and grant him a hyperlink for his blog at http://professionalcontractingassociation.com/blog/

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Opportunity in crisis: Throwing the rule book away

This morning, we're beginning to absorb the consequences of one of the most surprising (and rapid) business turnarounds I can recall.

Last Friday, I feared we faced a significant operating loss this month. Realizing this loss would be unsustainable, I extended deadlines by a week and then allowed, in fact encouraged, employees to sell without regard for some of our usual constraints.

(The constraints are operational, not ethical.)

These constraints are part of business systems developed over the years to increase efficiency and productivity, and avoid time-wasted effort on futile projects. They kept things simple, and prevented us from having to redo our work, or stress out totally on last-minute volume.

When I lifted the constraints, we discovered the shocking results that sales increased by 25 to 40 per cent on the same intrinsic potential business volume. In other words, our well-intended rules had cost us thousands of dollars in potential sales, every month.

Wow.

(I'm not detailing specifics here -- this is a public blog and, after all, these discoveries represent private competitive advantages within our industry -- but it doesn't take a rocket science for anyone to realize that if a little extra work and confusion can generate this much yield, you should take the results very seriously.)

Sometimes it helps to throw your rule book away.

We now are building new systems to accommodate our discoveries.

Do you have similar opportunities in your business, masked by long-established and reasonable operating procedures?

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