Work stops movingin six places.Always the same six.
An enquiry becomes paid work by passing through six stages, in this order, in every service business we have researched. The trade changes what each stage is called and what it costs. It does not change the order, and it does not change the fact that a stage nobody owns is a stage where work stops.
- Stages
- Six, in a fixed order, in every trade
- Systems published
- Seventy, with the delivery playbook for each
- Built at once
- One, proven before the next is started
- Figures on these pages
- Two, and both carry their sample and their publisher
Capture, respond, book,recover, retain, control.
The number on each stage is how many of the seventy published systems sit in it. They are not evenly spread, and the two that are furthest from even are the most interesting things on this page.
- Capture10 systemsEvery call, form and message logged, routed and answered fast, whoever is on the tools that day.What breaks here
- Respond10 systemsConsultations, appointments and site visits keep moving without anyone having to remember to chase them.What breaks here
- Book4 systemsOpen time is offered to the right people automatically, and the offer stops the moment it is taken.What breaks here
- Recover9 systemsThe quote, proposal or treatment plan that stalled gets an owner and a real next contact.What breaks here
- Retain10 systemsThe customer who came four times a year does not quietly become one who comes twice.What breaks here
- Control17 systemsOne short brief that says what needs a person today, and what stopped moving.What breaks here
Four systems in one stage,seventeen in another.
A framework that came out evenly across six stages would be a framework somebody designed backwards from the diagram. This one did not, and the lumps are the useful part.
Book has four, not ten.
Only four of the ten trades have capacity that perishes in a way a waiting list can refill: an HVAC slot, a dental chair, a treatment room, a salon column. A builder’s Tuesday does not work like that, so those trades have no system here and we did not invent one to fill the row.
Control has seventeen.
It holds both the ten morning briefs and the seven production and coordination systems. In a business with several jobs running at once, the expensive failure is almost never that nobody did the work. It is that nobody could see which decision had stopped.
Ten belong to all six.
Every trade has one end-to-end system that runs the whole path rather than one stage of it. Filing those under a single stage would misdescribe them, so they carry no stage at all and are listed below instead.
Ten systems that runall six stages.
One per trade, and the last thing we build rather than the first. Every one of them assumes the stages underneath it have already been proven separately.
- Executive searchThe Complete Search System
- Custom buildersThe Complete Build System
- HVACThe Complete Service-to-Install System
- Dental practicesThe Complete New Patient Journey
- Medical spasThe Complete Patient Visit System
- Roofing and exteriorsThe Complete Job System
- Smart home and AVThe Complete Project System
- Real estateThe Complete Client Journey
- Franchise developmentMulti-Unit Opening & Expansion Control
- Hair and nail salonsThe Complete Client Journey
Which of the sixis costing you most?
Most businesses can name it in a sentence once somebody asks the question in this order. On the call we work out which stage it actually is, and whether the first system there is worth building at all.