Surveyors should say NO sometimes.

Rule 14:

You don’t need or want all the jobs.

It’s really hard to say “no.” I know that, you know that, and everyone knows that. But sometimes we need to discipline ourselves to do it.

We have all had clients who are simply not good clients. They are slow to pay, or chisel every dime they can, or are just hard to work with. Sometimes they are unbearably demanding or just won’t recognize that you have other clients besides them.

In all of these cases, we would be much better off letting someone else do their work. You don’t need to finance your clients, and there is no reason to put up with unreasonableness.

If you send them away, they will hire someone else in your service area that is not so disciplined. You can do this automatically in some cases by obeying rules 2 and 12. If you price your services on the high side, and require up front payment, the kind of client you need the least will probably not want to deal with you. There are plenty of surveyors in every market who are willing to finance their clients and will work on the cheap.

Once you are rid of these customers, you can provide a better service to your more desirable clients, and that effect tends to improve your business geometrically. You will have good clients who are willing to pay a premium price for a premium service, and understand the cash flow requirements of your business.

You have to perform that premium service however. Remember what I said about these rules all being related. You cannot expect clients to pay a premium price for ordinary service.

Good Clients, Bad Clients

What makes good clients good and bad clients bad? You probably know the answer to this based on the feeling in your stomach when you pick up the phone or open an email from one of your customers. Is this a client that values your time and expertise? Are they speaking to you respectfully? Are they being pushy and making unreasonable requests?

The good news is that you can actually say no to a client you have a bad feeling about. The bad news is that it’s hard to tell unless it’s someone you’ve worked with before. The best filter really is to charge a premium, in my experience price-sensitivity correlates with all of the other qualities that make it hard to do business with someone.

Good Jobs, Bad Jobs

It’s not just a client that can make a job bad for you, sometimes it’s the job itself. If you’ve been surveying for a while, you may have a sense for what kind of jobs make you money and which ones lose you money. Maybe you do well with anything oil & gas, but never make money on residential boundary surveys.

Again the good news is that you get to pick which jobs you accept, and where to focus your sales and business development. But, apart from a hunch, do you really know which jobs are the best for your firm?

Let the Data Decide

An online database program like Cyanic Job Book may be the answer for you.

This program, which is specialized for surveyors, allows Administrators and Project Managers to see the financial patterns that normally only your accountant would have access to.

Cyanic Job Book automatically calculates the financial burn on each job, and compares it to your budget and estimate. Along with comprehensive Job Setup that allows you to tag jobs with any number of job categories (ex., Constuction, Legal, Mining, Municipal, Oil & Gas, etc.) and job scopes (ex., 3D Scanning, Boundary Survey, Pipeline Survey, Topographic Survey, etc) over time you’ll be able to see exactly what kind of jobs make you the most money, and which ones to avoid.

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