Bryant Gillespie: Guys, welcome to the fourth edition of the
better sign shop podcast.
I've got my friends, Mike Riley and Peter Cark with me.
I don't, we still haven't settled on a nickname for you yet.
Mike, are we gonna settle the debate this time around or no?
Michael Riley: What are you thinking?
I can't live with sign money, Mike.
That's terrible.
maybe we could get
Bryant Gillespie: you like a gold chain for the next one
Michael Riley: with a big clock on it.
Yeah, dude,
Bryant Gillespie: that would work.
Michael Riley: That'd be nice.
Our big Jim and I letter on it, maybe.
Peter Kourounis: What do you think about letting our audience vote for a name?
If we put out a poll on our Facebook channel, or do you think
about letting them just decide?
Michael Riley: I have very mixed emotions about that.
I feel like it would be great for, engaging with our audience, but
at the same time, I really don't know if I, how I feel about that.
Peter Kourounis: Lila gave me the sign, shop, Yoda name.
I didn't come up with that.
And I just accepted it.
I said, sure.
That sounds great.
Let's do it.
Michael Riley: All right.
Yeah.
Let's throw a pull up.
let's let him drag me through the mud.
I,
Bryant Gillespie: I, I think it's gonna end up being signed money or signed bunny,
Michael Riley: like I'm down with sign bunny.
that's been like my personal brand for 15 years as the weird
dude in the pink bunny suit.
So I just lean into it.
but if the audience has a better suggestion, I will, well, we'll leave
Peter Kourounis: it up to the audience then that's what we'll do.
We'll put out a poll.
Hopefully when we record the next episode number five, you'll have a new name.
Michael Riley: can't wait, well, make can't wait.
Peter Kourounis: We'll make that announce.
We'll make that announcement.
this'll
Michael Riley: be fun.
Yeah.
Yeah, it will.
Bryant Gillespie: Okay, so what's what's the new with you guys?
Peter Kourounis: Well, I just got back from sunny, Florida.
Nice little convention.
Happy to be back where.
The weather is approximately in the nineties and not upper one hundreds.
so it's nice to be back.
Bryant Gillespie: Don't walk outside and start sweating.
Mike
Michael Riley: doesn't like Florida at all.
I'm not a Florida fan, no offense to our Florida listeners, but
well stick with my Oregon weather.
Peter Kourounis: I can easily see why you don't like Florida.
I mean, it was, I went to Disney.
I went to Disney.
There's tons of kids running around, but I have absolutely.
I was thinking about this the other day.
What is Disney's monthly electric bill like, like that is, they think you got AC
in every room, all these like fireworks and pyro techniques and lighting.
I'm thinking to myself, do they spend, is it like 50 million a month in electric?
Like I have no idea.
Do they generate their own electric?
It caused it stem like a huge conversation between me and my counterparts, but.
Because of all how hot it was.
It was so hot that if this was like it, their ACS pumping out
64 degrees everywhere you go in lobbies and restaurants, I'm like,
and it's all owned by Disney.
So I'm wondering myself, what does that look like?
Michael Riley: Peter's having an existential breakdown
over to Disney's power bill.
Yeah, man.
No, you know what I mean, think about it's really super hot there.
So you want to go inside one of the buildings and cool off.
Right?
Well, all those buildings are trying to sell you shit.
So for them, it's probably just a loss leader to get people,
to buy more stuff inside.
Unless they point they make a billion dollars a minute too.
So it's dropping the bucket.
Peter Kourounis: Unbelievable.
Anyway, I'll go back.
I like Disney.
I like Epcot drinking in, in, in Germany was like my favorite part of the trip.
Gotta love those grapefruit beers.
I had a couple of them.
They were really
Michael Riley: amazing.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah.
When it's 90 degrees outside.
Yeah, nothing better.
Yeah.
A hundred hundred, hundred degrees.
Peter Kourounis: well, anyway, happy to be back I'm I'm in the, I'm
in the trenches now with my staff and my partner at my sign shop.
There's a lot to catch up on, but definitely, definitely happy to be
recording our next episode here.
Bryant Gillespie: Excellent.
Well, Mike, you got an update or no?
Michael Riley: outside of designing signs.
My life pretty much revolves around this house renovation
that I'm in the middle of.
my, my future wife and I bought a house.
We were bored during COVID.
we just didn't have anything to do cause everything was closed.
So we're like let's buy a fixer upper and remodel it.
So two years ago we bought a house that was definitely a fixer upper.
And we, got a $40,000 budget and three month timeline to get it
remodeled and moved into we're.
August 1st will be the second anniversary.
And we just crossed the $200,000, marked on
So
Bryant Gillespie: you're way under budget then way under budget.
Michael Riley: Yeah.
And we're, I mean, it's like half done.
Like we can live in it, but the house is no joke.
It's only like halfway there.
We got a lot of work to go.
So the last week I've been spending a lot of time in the yard.
We've completely demoed our yard and I've got some excavation
equipment coming here tomorrow.
So if I'm not designing signs, I'm just completely drenched and sweat outside.
And 90 degree, Oregon weather digging holes in the yard and trying to revive it.
So that's pretty much all I do my for time often.
Bryant Gillespie: How often do friends and family give you like the money pit joke?
Michael Riley: Almost daily, but I mean, like it's, I've
leaned into it at this point.
If anybody's ever seen that movie, that is the most accurate portrayal of.
My life that you'll ever see it's well, I actually, I can't watch it.
Money pit, old eighties movie with Tom Hanks and Shelly long, they buy
a fixer upper and like everything that can go wrong will go wrong.
and it's really, that's a funny check it up, but yeah, it's worth it.
I can't bring myself to watch it cuz I'll just start crying the
second it comes on, but yeah.
I, and I was laying in bed the other day thinking okay, we paid, we spent
half a million dollars on this house.
Not including what we put into.
And then literally the only thing left on this house is the land that it sits
on and the roof and the framing, like everything else has been completely
ripped out of it and replaced.
So I spent a lot of money on a pile of two by fours essentially.
And it's something I have to live with every day.
Well, I wish I
Peter Kourounis: brand, it looks
Bryant Gillespie: nice, man.
It looks
Michael Riley: nice.
It's good.
Thank you.
It's getting there.
Peter Kourounis: I take it that you did not hire like a contractor.
Michael Riley: No, I have done, he
Bryant Gillespie: signed money, Mike dude, he could build his own house.
Michael Riley: Yeah.
I have done 99% of the work on the house, myself.
The only thing that I've hired out so far was a plumber to come in and
set our bathtub and our one of the shower pans, because of everything
that goes in the building, a house, most of it is a technical kind of
skill that you can easily learn.
Plumbing is a freaking art and there's witchcraft involved and it's not for me.
So anything that involves like heavy plumbing, I've outsourced, I have re
plumbed like half the house myself, but I just didn't wanna mess with that.
But yeah, we've rewired the house.
All new flooring, subfloor, drywall, insulation, like
everything down to the stubs is new.
And it's all been by.
Did you sold your
Peter Kourounis: pipes or did you crimp your fittings?
I actually, I hear on, I hear that crimping is becoming more and
more popular with piping a house.
Yeah.
Michael Riley: Yeah.
So I, I did a little bit of both.
I did some copper, which I'm not a huge fan of, but I did.
And then most of it is actually re plumbed with, the pecks plastic piping.
Yeah.
The press fit fittings.
which hopefully, I don't know, like we only plan to stay in this,
like the, to add insult injury.
Like we plan to live in this house for two or three more years in the room sell it.
So I don't really care if the plumbing leaks, after we move out.
Peter Kourounis: I feel bad for that home buyer.
Yeah.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah.
got the numbers, stumble, belong to this podcast.
You're fucked.
Peter Kourounis: Yeah.
Whoever buys Mike's house do not listen to this episode.
Bryant Gillespie: 5, 5, 5 main
Peter Kourounis: street, full one, 800 plumber when you need it.
Michael Riley: We're we're keeping a blog of our progress on the house actually.
So, maybe in the show notes, we'll put a link to our blog up there.
If anybody wants to like commiserate with me or just make
fun of me and say, what's asking,
Peter Kourounis: oh, that's nice.
So you are document.
So you are documenting the process.
Huh?
That's cute.
I like that.
I would like to get that link, send it to me.
I will look to, to see how you're
Michael Riley: doing.
Yeah.
Feel free to make all the fun of me that you want.
Cuz I deserve
Bryant Gillespie: it.
He owe you want for the fast
Peter Kourounis: signs.
yeah, you guys just.
That's true.
I do owe you want, but I'm not gonna make fun of anybody.
I'm the one that gets made fun of, so it's been my life.
It's been my life.
So ask my buddy, Matt, my buddy, Matt we're damn near 40 years old.
He still makes fun of me.
Like we're 10.
Bryant Gillespie: At least you're not getting made of
fun of by your four year old.
Michael Riley: not yet.
Could
Peter Kourounis: we, not yet.
Bryant Gillespie: I've started taking, Hey, our middle daughter
fishing a lot more and actually just twice in the last week.
And we went once or twice before she, nobody caught anything after
two and a half hours in the hot sun.
You just sitting there like she's, I'd look over she's kicking rocks.
so finally this last time that we went out, she caught like 12 fish.
I call it one, because I'd spent most of the time loading her, pull up with worms
and untangling, whatever mess, but she had the, the audacity after we were done to
tell me that I wasn't a good fisherman.
And that she could help me, ah, learn how to catch fish.
Nice.
Peter Kourounis: That's get right on the chin.
got to
Bryant Gillespie: all the time.
All right.
so today's topic.
This is a fun one.
apparently Mike's future wife said he's not a football guy, so this will be fun.
The topic today is stop fumbling, the handoff, like what does
stop fumbling the handoff mean?
Michael Riley: Well, apparently I'm not a football guy, so I can't define that one.
You don't even know what a handoff is or a fumble.
this is not true.
Go bucks.
I love football.
so a lot of the problems that we regularly encounter in a lot of shops,
are communication breakdowns just from one department to the next and, how jobs
can fall apart, fall through the cracks.
When it changes hands from say, sales to design or design to production
or production to installation.
that where that handoff takes place.
I would say 80 to 90% of the shops that, that I've worked with.
And I think Brian, you and I have talked about this.
This is probably true for you too.
They all, in some ways shape or form mess up that, that handoff there between
department and that a lot of times is not the only factor, but one of the biggest
contributing factors to missed deadlines, margin drain, customer experience.
Right?
Yeah.
pretty much any problem that a sign shop faces seems like can be
tracked that back to that in some way, shape or form in most cases,
Bryant Gillespie: you gotta say shape form or fashion
Michael Riley: shape, form, or fashion.
Yeah.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah.
We've got, I mean, West Virginia, we've got a governor, his name's
big Jim and that is his tagline.
he started doing the COVID briefings after he saw Andrew
Cuomo on there and he was, he.
He thought he was gonna score popularity points.
And there was one where he was like trying to put the mask on his face
and it covered his eyes and they like everybody in the state started
making memes about him and stuff.
But, that's what he says, guys, we gotta get vaccinated in whatever
shape, form, or fashion that you
to derail you there.
Oh, no, I we'll add some of the memes to the show notes as well.
, Michael Riley: I'm fascinated by West Virginia politics.
So that's where my mind is at now thinking about Joe mansion.
Bryant Gillespie: Oh yeah.
Yeah.
He's another character as well.
Michael Riley: He's a winner.
yeah, so I think that's a really critical thing that, that every
shop owner, really needs to look at.
I mean, it, it falls in line with what we, especially Peter always
preaching, systems and processes.
you, I think that's.
It's almost like such a big, all inclusive thing that is just so woven
into a daily operation of your business.
That, I think a lot of people almost miss it.
It's kinda like a forest for the trees kind of thing, but it's definitely
something that I think should be addressed in top of mind for every
sign shop owner is something that you should always be trying to improve on as
efficiently moving that job from person to person or department to department
with minimal, friction in there with
Bryant Gillespie: minimal loss.
Yeah.
and I think it, when you're small, it's a lot easier, because there's four
or five people they're, everybody's wearing different hats, but the
communication flows a lot easier at that point, because it's like, Hey, I
could just reach out and yell at you, especially if you're in a small facility.
Michael Riley: Right.
Or it's just you all day.
If you're just a one man shop, there's nobody to hand it off to.
It's all in your head.
Bryant Gillespie: But yeah, as soon as you start to grow, that handoff and
you start formalizing the different roles and, and instead of one person
having three different roles, that person just has one dedicated role.
this problem compounds at that point.
I think
Peter Kourounis: yeah, there's a lot to be said about this.
This is a very interesting topic.
And Mike, I'm actually glad that you wanted to run with this here on our fourth
episode, but you know, as you look through a small shop or a large shops systems,
right, you have, let's just break it down pretty simply for our listeners.
You'll have your sales department, you'll have your design department,
your production and department, possibly even your installation department.
So that might like you sent Brian, that might be two or three people.
, but for the sake of this conversation, let's just assume that you have
that broken down into departments.
Now one person handles two or three of those roles then so be it.
But for the sake of this conversation, let's break it down to sales production,
sorry, sales, design, production, and installation in that flow.
So where does that break down?
It breaks down in the cracks of each department, right?
So in between sales and design, that's where it breaks down in
between design and production.
That's where it breaks down.
So what is the key differentiator there?
What's the common denominator of that problem?
It seems to me like it would be communication.
Right.
Would you agree with that?
That the common denominator of where we can fumble the
handoff is in communication?
right.
would you agree?
Michael Riley: I agree.
Yeah.
It's definitely a fundamentally a communication problem.
Peter Kourounis: So at the surface, if you're having a communication
problem, that's where the plug in the system needs to be generated.
If you need to fill those cracks, it's inside the communication.
So what can you do as the owner of your company to fill those cracks?
Now I have some ideas, in my shop for many years, almost since the day I started
not quite since the day I started, but almost morning meetings, morning rally
meetings, every morning, apple does it.
Every apple store does it.
That's where I got the idea from morning rally meetings.
Let's go over some talking points.
Let's go over some points, any it's 15 minute meeting between 8, 8, 15
in the morning, or depending on what time of the day you guys get started.
But if you could dedicate a portion of your day to arriving
on that time before you put.
You're bag down or you turn on your computer.
You're just gonna participate in a rally meeting where okay.
Go through the pipeline once more, anybody have any questions on what they
think that they're supposed to be doing?
Mike, you're gonna, don't forget about this.
I may have forgot to tell you that yesterday, but don't forget about
getting in touch with this guy today.
I want an answer from that problem, or I want an answer from that customer today.
So just those healthy daily reminders from in a team building
exercise can really go a long way.
Bryant Gillespie: do you guys have a fast signs, like song that you
sing or like a chant or anything?
Peter Kourounis: Yeah.
Hey, Hey,
Michael Riley: fast signs.
Hey, Hey, fast
Peter Kourounis: signs.
Yeah, no, no, we don't.
We don't do a seance or a song or a kumbaya or anything else that
you Virginians want to call it?
No mean I,
Bryant Gillespie: I have got a couple cousins that used to work for Walmart
back in the day when they used to do all that, like the rah rah stuff.
Peter Kourounis: I mean, listen, if you're listen, there's a bunch of brands.
One that comes to mind right now is called horsepower brands and they
ha they're like amazing at that.
You know, the whole clapping, applauding rooting for your colleague to succeed.
If they succeed, we succeed like that culture.
To me, one of the best types of cultures there are.
So if you can infuse that type of RA rawness into your
business, I'm in favor of it.
Even if you have four people or 40 people, that to me is, it's
exciting for your customer base.
You wanna announce that do blogs on it, do video content on it.
Because that to me is a big differentiator between what you're, what you could do
and what your competition is not doing.
So that's just another fact toy that I like to throw in here, but getting
back to my point, Communication.
those rally meetings tend to lead to other types of communication points, right?
Maybe you want to have a once a week meeting for two hours with your staff,
put it in the middle of the week on a Wednesday, so that you had the
beginning of the week to talk about and what you're doing the rest of the
week to talk about, that's a really great glue point sticky point so that
you can mend these cracks that you have in your system in communication.
I'm not saying that there's any
Bryant Gillespie: the concept of a team meeting.
Oh, go ahead.
Sorry.
I jumped right in.
I thought you were done.
Go ahead.
I killed him.
Michael Riley: He just crashed.
He just like, he shut down.
Peter Kourounis: Why do you interrupt me?
Yeah.
I, why, what is it about, what is, what was it about my last sentence
that made you think I was done?
I don't know.
Okay.
Bryant Gillespie: Don't do it.
It's the internet.
it's slow.
It's slow.
Peter Kourounis: Yeah.
Yeah.
Blame, blame your internet, the internet.
Bryant Gillespie: You got it.
Slow internet.
I got it.
Peter Kourounis: very good point.
There it is.
So you were saying you really like the idea of a weekly meeting.
Go ahead.
Bryant Gillespie: Going.
I do.
I do like the idea of a weekly meeting and I wish more shops
would actually implement that.
and number one is just, you gotta have that FaceTime between departments, because
communication is all about relationships.
And when you're a small shop, those relationships come pretty easy because
you're working right alongside everybody.
But if you've got a formal structure and you've got 10, 15, 20 employees,
you've gotta have that FaceTime between departments, whether that's
just department heads that are working together with each other, But you
gotta have that time and space for them to come together and say, okay, Hey,
here's the list of priorities this week?
what are some of the challenges that, that you guys are having?
What are some of the issues that have came up?
How can we help if I'm sales out?
How can I help design?
Or if I'm design, how can I help you guys?
I think those,
Peter Kourounis: yeah, if you come, if you come into those meetings with
the, as an owner, I'm speaking to my owners right now, not the employee side.
If you're owner, if you're an owner and you're coming into those meetings and
you have absolutely no idea what to talk about, I wanna tell you that's okay.
I wanna tell you I've done that many times where I just wanted to like,
take the temperature of my team.
I wanted see what I could do to help, or if they were seeing something
that they didn't like, I wanted to hear about, it was an open forum.
So if you don't have an agenda to these meetings, here's a little tip.
If you put your meeting in the week of, in the middle of the week, on a
Wednesday, if you're open Monday to Friday and you put it on a week on a
Wednesday, talk about what happened to the past two days and talk about what
you're gonna do the next two days.
It's a very simple conversation.
Make it an hour.
If you wanna have it for two hours, I recommend you could do that too.
But this is a way it's a culture building time.
It's a way to glue your cracks in your system, but when you infuse
technology into it, which is my next point, I want to bring in.
So don't interrupt me again.
Bryant, when you bring in the technology piece, how are you able to really
supercharge your communication?
Right?
So just like in our, just like in our, better sign shop
community group on Facebook, like everybody communicates there.
If you can create a forum for which employees can communicate
with owners in and out of the.
Right.
Managers are in and outta the office, salesmen are in and outta the office,
installers are in and out of the shop.
So if you could create like a group chat, a slack channel, a wor a Facebook
workplace community group for your business, depending on your size, this
is a really great opportunity to just put in a great place, different channels.
if you have ideas, create a allowing your staff to have a voice with
technologies, a really great tip.
Number two, if you will, for what I think is a great way of com padding
your communication, improving upon your communication with your team, and also
subsequently building up your culture.
Would anybody like to comment on that?
Michael Riley: Yeah, I, I, a hundred percent agree with
what Peter just said there.
I think removing friction from the communication process is critical.
And with technology now, you mentioned slack, I think slack is great, cuz you
can, message anybody at any time and get a response right back on a job without
having anything fall through the cracks.
And you can even automate, Brian and speak to this, but you can
obviously, automate some things to automatically send messages in slack.
If a job reaches a certain milestone in your system or whatever.
So slack is definitely a, a really powerful tool.
To help eliminate some of that friction in the
Peter Kourounis: conversation process.
All right.
So for our, for, so for our listeners out there, Mike, let, I'm gonna put Brian on
the spot here for our listeners out there that for our listeners out there that are
don't use slack, don't know what slack is.
We use slack here at the better sign shop community.
We use slack to communicate with one on our, I don't even have Mike's cell
phone number, but I do communicate with Mike every day through slack.
So Bryant, here's an interesting question for our listeners.
Give them a tip.
What type of automations can they do within the slack environment
that can help improve poor communication within the team?
Bryant Gillespie: Poor communication within the team with slack?
yeah.
So with slack, one of the nice things and it basically slack is
nothing more than like a team.
A work oriented group chat, basically you set up different channels.
I can message someone directly.
the nice thing about slack is all these integrations that it has, like
these apps that are built into it.
or you could use something like SAP here or some of these other, no
cold, no code tools to actually pipe information from the different apps.
So, let's say if something happens inside the design department, maybe
you're using Trello or some other system to do your design management.
If somebody adds a comment to a card inside Trello, you could
potentially post that in slack.
and slack kind of becomes the hub for team communication.
so there's a lot of little things like that.
It's really hard to spout something off the cuff without
knowing the specific use case.
what kind of tools people are using, but it is really nice that
you can put information right.
Where you are likely to see it most.
Michael Riley: Yeah.
One I like you mentioned there, it would be like you said, Trello.
So if you have, different columns that are Trello board for, each department,
you've got a column for design and one for prepress and one for printing, and
then one for whatever you can, when that card is drugged from saving the
prepress column to the print column or whatever, you can set up an automation
that, sends a slack message to your printer operator that says, Hey,
this job has been released to you.
Basically.
They just get a, you can use it almost just as a notification system, as much as
a, two-way communication tool, that will ping them on their phone or whatever.
Assuming they've got the slack app on their phone, it just keeps everybody
on the same page and moving forward.
And that's, I think that's a really, something like that's a really great one,
whether using Trello or air table or.
Whatever tool you're using, you can usually set up some sort of
a similar integration like that.
When a job changes status.
Peter Kourounis: One of the things that I use in my shop,
I, we use slack in our shop.
So when our POS system, when a customer makes a payment,
it'll notify the sales staff.
When, you could do that in an email, but if you have multiple members of
your staff, if the owner wants to know, if the salesperson wants to
know, if the CSR wants to know, you can centralize those communications to
know oh, we got received the payment.
now what has to happen in our next step of our process?
Or if a design was approved, it'll not only will it alert the designer, but the
alert will come into a design channel.
And all the members, including the owner, maybe the project manager, maybe
that designer will all be notified.
So a little bit of a way to bring in more communication, because we all have emails,
but we don't read each other's emails.
In other words, I have my email, Brian has his, so if he gets an alert,
only Brian will be able to know.
So if you bring that alert into a public space where everybody can be notified
of what's going on, that's not even an automation, that's just simply changing
the email address in your POS to notify when this alert happens, set it up to this
slack channel address instead so that, everybody can see it in a public form.
So that's another way.
And just another tip of how slack is a really great tool.
I think I did a video on slack of many months ago on my
former YouTube channel here.
And I believe Slack's a really great tool.
To help, not only create that game plan, but also enforce the game plan.
If you're gonna emphasize communication, as your primary bottleneck in
your cracks in your system.
Well then firming up that communication with technology is a
really great opportunity to do that.
And, you can monitor everybody's engagement, you can see, who's
actually paying attention.
Who's not paying attention.
So it's a really great from a manager and owner's perspective, really great
tool to help, communicate better.
Yeah.
But again, solve that problem.
I'm gonna,
Bryant Gillespie: I'm gonna throw one more out.
there's an app that I've been using.
I've put a couple clients onto this.
It's called missive is the name of it.
M I S S I V E if you're looking for it, it's missive app.com.
It is actually a team inbox.
So instead of everybody having their own like separate inbox, all your emails would
come into one single source of truth, one inbox that everybody shares, and then
they can collaborate inside that inbox.
and one of the things that I really like about it, it, it functions like a regular
email client, like an outlook or Gmail.
But the difference is if I, if you're on my team inside submissive, I can
mention your name and we can have our own conversation inside an email thread.
So if I need to get your input before I have to send out an email
to a client, maybe about a quote or, know, maybe Hey, what are,
what were the design specs on this?
Again?
I can mention it right.
In context of that email, you could see the email chain reply right
back to me, or even help me write the draft email to the client.
Wow.
So you kind of short circuit that like taking it from
email and posting it in slack?
Peter Kourounis: yeah.
That's there really is like an app.
There really is an app for everything isn't there.
Yeah.
There is.
I mean, that sounds so cool.
I didn't even know about that, but, yeah, that sounds great too.
And that might be a little easier for some of our non technologically
savvy listeners out there.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah.
it does take a while to get used to, and like I've one of the clients has even been
able to do SMS messages through there.
So like they've got set up where somebody can text message the
business and those text messages go right into the same inbox.
Right.
So they've got emails, texts right in the same place.
Michael Riley: I wanna go back and hit on something else that Peter talked
about there early on is, and that's just a team meeting in the morning.
I think.
I think that's something that a lot of people miss as well or overlook the
importance of is just a face to face interface with everybody on your team.
I see a lot of shops that don't do that.
And I also, the flip side of that is I also see a lot of
shops that take it too far.
It, I think having a morning kickoff meeting with your team, is critical,
but it doesn't have to me really more than five or 10 minutes,
in most cases, just, quickly run through what's being done today.
A and really the point of that meeting, shouldn't be telling
people how to do their jobs, right?
Like your staff knows how to do their job.
There's your staff knows how to read your work orders and know
knows how to go through your work and progress list and everything.
If they don't, you have a bigger problem.
And that meeting isn't the place to address that.
Right.
But it's a great opportunity for your staff to raise questions and
concerns about active jobs that they otherwise may not have time to, or may
not feel like they've got a platform to, part of effective communication
in a sh in a shop is making sure you give everybody involved, a
free, safe space to ask questions.
Even if those are really dumb questions that, that, they feel like, or you
may feel like shouldn't be asked.
I, if they have the question, they need to be able to ask it and get a direct answer
to it so they can go on with their day and without giving them that platform.
And that space to do that job will go into production.
And they're probably just gonna say, screw it, I'm gonna do it.
However, I feel like I can do it without, any of that clarification.
And that's a lot of times where mistakes happen.
So shops that implement just a quick morning, a quick morning
rundown type meeting, where they address those concerns and questions
tend to operate a lot, smoother.
in my shop, I did a morning meeting like that.
That was, generally wasn't more than 10 minutes or so, just going
through the day's priorities and what needs to be addressed and what
questions and concerns the staff has.
And then every Monday morning, we did a larger, more like a full blown, 30
to 45 minute production meeting where we really went into detail, the week's
priorities, things that are going on.
And that's, and we've talked about this in the past too.
We had a Kaban type or Kaizen type session where, everybody was, encouraged to bring.
Fresh ideas to the table to improve processes and flows.
but that can be a separate conversation from just a quick morning.
Hey, let's all get on the same page type of a meeting, but that's critical.
Don't overlook that, too many shops do.
so it's really important to, to, that's a great way to get buy in from
your staff too, and get them all, excited about what you're doing and
encourage them to take ownership.
And what they're doing,
Bryant Gillespie: would you say that needs to happen like at the shop level?
Let's say there's a shop with 1520 employees.
Is that happen at the shop level or is that like by department?
Michael Riley: I think that the, like the bigger, like I said,
like the Monday morning meeting, like that's a little bit longer.
I feel like that's more appropriate to have the entire shop involved.
all departments, an all hands on deck type meeting, because there's a
lot of alignment that has to happen from department two department.
I think the quick morning rundown type meeting that you do every morning,
doesn't need to involve the entire shop necessarily, especially if you're a larger
shop with 20, 30, 40 employees or more that can become a really cumbersome thing
to organize and get everybody together.
But I, I think that should at least be done on a, on a
department by department basis.
The sales team should have a quick meeting like that.
The production team should have a quick meeting like that design should and so on,
and you can all do it at the same time.
So the entire shop is meeting, doing this at the same time.
and then most of the larger shops that I've worked with that really
are divided up into, hard and fast departments with each department has
a manager or department head in it.
most of those shops that I've seen prior to doing these individual,
department type rundowns, the department heads will all meet for five or 10
minutes first, and they'll all align and be on the same page for the day.
And then they'll go and distill that information down, see their.
Their individual respected departments.
that can be done the first 30 minutes of your day.
sounds like a, a big time commitment if you're doing it every single day,
but, I think the benefits of it far outweigh, spending a few minutes,
aligning with everybody else in the shop.
Bryant Gillespie: yeah.
I agree with you a hundred percent.
I think that alignment, if you have managers in each department,
if they're not communicating well, then you're up shit Creek, right?
Michael Riley: Like it's bad.
and it's amazing in this industry, like that's really pervasive.
I've talked to so many shop owners that they don't do anything to make
sure that installation team is on the same page as the production team.
And if you.
if you're producing a lot of say electrical science, channel letters,
monument science, things like that.
The installation part of it is part and parcel of production really in, in the two
key together and have to go hand in hand.
And if there's no, no daily alignment between those two teams, when something
comes outta production, it's gonna be just a complete shock to installation, right?
and then installation's caught with their pants down and they've gotta
figure out how now to get this sign on the wall, but doing those daily rundowns
really quickly between departments.
Well, you're, your sales team can, your sales manager can say, Hey
production, we've got this job coming down the line and be prepared for.
And a production can say, Hey, this set of channel letters is
three days out for being completed.
So installation, you need to, be thinking about getting that on the schedule now
versus in three days when we get it done.
tho those little things like that can save fires on the back end.
If you just put a little bit of forth on, into communicating.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah.
I wanna back up for a minute and ask both of you, Michael Peter, as far as
what are some of the symptoms of this miscommunication or this fumbling, the
handoff for, let's say we're talking to an owner out there that, may or may not
know that they're having this problem or they're not sure the root cause.
Like what are some of the symptoms that they can be able to pick up on that?
Okay.
Hey, we've got a problem here at these handoff points.
Peter Kourounis: Well, a lot of that might actually come from the
customer, customer complaints.
If you have some customer complaints and it's set it around
communication, there that's a telltale sign of it being a problem.
If that's happening more frequently, you might wanna address that.
If you're having customer, I'm sorry, not customer.
If you're having employee arguments or altercations, or maybe even just a
disagreement of some sort, and that's becoming a more common occurrence.
That's another sign, sometimes the, yeah, the signs are not gonna be something
that you have to like search for.
You'll they'll be front and center.
They're usually fires that you have to put out.
Right.
Where does the fire start from?
Is it a communication issue?
Is it a disagreement?
Is it, he said, she said, is it, you forgot to do this?
And I put it here that told you to do this.
So those things are gonna come naturally.
They'll if you're an, if you're an owner and you're saying that you don't have
these problems, I don't believe you.
but.
Because listen, you're small.
Most of us are small business owners.
You're medium sized business owners.
You're gonna have problems.
If you don't have problems, call me.
I want to invest in your business.
I, I'm not
Bryant Gillespie: saying they don't have problems.
I'm just saying they might not realize okay, here's this is
actually the root of the problem.
And not just, like something on the surface.
Peter Kourounis: I don't know if Mike's going to agree with me or not, but what
I'm trying to say is that the problems will present themselves, you don't,
as an owner, you're not gonna have to look for what caused that problem.
You're gonna know
Michael Riley: that I definitely agree the problems are gonna be
there and you're going to see them.
I think a lot of, from what I've seen, a lot of shop owners fail to recognize
why those problems are there though.
what's causing them.
One of the things that I've seen at the most that I think at least
internally is a great indicator, is.
It's just the level of frustration that your staff has, especially
past the sales department.
I mean, once you get to design production and installation, you
can usually read the pulse of your employees and a a good conscientious
employee wants to do a good job.
And they, in order to do a good job, you can't really have that many surprises
that just pop up throughout your day and completely derail what you're working on,
whether you're designing, whether you are, 40 feet up in a bucket truck, or whether
you're fabricating a set of channel letters, get into a flow, you get into the
zone and you wanna keep working on that.
And when you have an interruption to that flow, it's frustrating
and it's legitimately frustrating.
and even, your dude, that's just glue and trim cap channel letter faces it.
If he's constantly having to change gears throughout the day, and he's.
Oh crap.
I, they just threw this rush job at me or this one just popped up
and I didn't know about now I've gotta switch gears and do that.
That can be really frustrating to that person.
And that prevents him from doing his best work.
And again, a conscientious employee wants to do their best work and
they don't like those things that prevent them from doing it.
So watching that, that employee frustration level, I think is a really
great indicator of this because that's a lot of the times what it's related to.
I, I agree customer feedback as well.
although a lot of times, I mean, not that it really matters in the context
of this, but a lot of times that can be a lagging indicator of what's going on.
Cause really you don't get the feedback from the customer until it's too late.
I mean, you can still use it to, to look forward and solve problems, but you know,
in, in the heat of the moment, you're not gonna be able to rely on that right then.
And there
Bryant Gillespie: one of the ones that I would point out is if
customers are following up with you.
if you're, if you told them that you were gonna give them a quote a
week ago and they're following up on that quote, that's a problem.
If you are in production and a customer is following up and
asking, Hey, where's my job at?
That's a big problem or a big symptom of that's
Peter Kourounis: a react.
That's a reactive approach.
your shop's being reactive at that.
At that point, you're not being proactive with your communication.
Absolutely good point.
good point.
And Mike, good point there on the delayed barometer of when you know, the
customer's gonna give you the information before, when it's too late, right.
They're already upset.
So you have to, if it's an employee dispute, that's one thing,
but you have to be the owner.
That's gonna find out those answers before the customer gets.
But yes, I agree with you there too.
good point all the way around,
Michael Riley: another big area of communication breakdown that I see
all too often, especially from.
The seat that I'm in currently as a designer is, the quality of
the design request to your design department from theoretically your
sales department, sales team, right
Bryant Gillespie: name the sales team.
Michael Riley: I feel like that's a common thing.
No, it is.
And a lot of times it's, it is legitimate too because sales people,
I hope no sales people that are listening to this take offense of those.
I don't mean this offensively, but sales people are a different breed
and they don't necessarily think things through, in a systematic way.
In most cases, some do, we just did the AMA with Dylan and he is somebody
who is very systematic in the way he purchased sales, but that's rare.
And that's why Dylan's a really good sales manager and runs a really good
sales team because he's very process driven, but most of them are sales is
just a completely chaotic department.
It's pretty much go sell anything you can to anybody.
However, you have to close the sale, make it happen.
And that's the mentality that a lot of sales people operate on is just
there, there Hells on closing the deal.
and then once it's closed, they wanna move on to the next sale as quickly as
possible because that's their livelihood.
That's how they put food on the table.
and in the process of that, generally the handoff between sales and the
next department in line, which is usually sales or estimating or
designer estimating, usually that handoff is pretty rough at best.
So I, I think developing some sort of system or process or just form,
if nothing else, that your sales team is required to fill out, jump
through some hoops to communicate that information effectively to the next
person in line is really critical.
I mean, everybody's gotten an email from an, a salesperson that says, I need a
channel letter sign that says Bob's used tires and that's all the detail you get.
and then that's a designer's nightmare, right?
It is.
And it happens to us on a daily basis.
I can relate.
I
Peter Kourounis: can relate.
Michael Riley: Yeah.
I mean it, and then you like, okay, well, what color, how
big, what, where are my photos?
Or, and that's two, go ahead.
Two
Peter Kourounis: key words for you there.
Mike required fields.
right.
Well, yeah, I mean, I've, that's gonna
Michael Riley: solve the problem.
I've seen shops that are two, $2 million plus at revenue and the
design request process is the sales rep just forwards the email string
from their client to the designer.
Oh, it's awful.
like how the hell designer supposed to figure out what to do with that?
I mean, you want your designers to sit there for 45 minutes and read
through an email thread to figure out what this customer wants.
That's insane, but that's standard operating procedure for
a shocking number of sign shops.
And that's such bad business, it's it?
It makes me cry.
I lose sleep for forget at night.
yeah,
Bryant Gillespie: don't make sense.
Money cry.
Don't make a promise.
Yeah.
Peter Kourounis: Don't make money cry as a salesperson.
If you're listening out there, be diligent with your notes to your design
team, make sure that you're giving them all of those results because
it's gonna make their lives easier.
And truthfully it'll make your life easier as well because you won't
have the constant back and forth.
If you take the time out initially to give those instructions to
your
Michael Riley: design team.
Totally.
There's a, so I just, for my sign design business, I just started using a new
web-based app to, to manage my jobs.
it's called many requests and we'll put a link to that, online as well.
This app was created for.
Companies that are in the graphic design business that basically sell, a
monthly subscription and they give you unlimited designs thinking like design
pickle, or many pixels type businesses.
I started using it and I, and I recognized that this could easily be
adapted as an internal tool communication tool between sales departments and
design departments where your sales team can create requests in it.
It'll submit it.
And then your design team basically has a job ticket that's automatically
created in a running job queue, a tool, whether it's that tool or something else.
I mean, some sort of a job management tool specifically for the design process,
is really critical to streamline that, that, that communication, like you
said, required fields, like having a form that says, okay, for channel
letter signs, what depth is the return?
Are they, what, what color are the faces?
Is it Raceway monitor?
Is it remote manager and all those questions that might take a sales
rep 10 or 15 minutes to fill out.
We'll save hours of back and forth in messed up jobs.
And reproves on the back end.
if you can just get them to fill it out correctly, the first time, I
think that's a huge area that shops fall short on that really need to
focus on and address that more.
Bryant Gillespie: I'm gonna come to the defense of the sales
reps that may be listening here.
I agree that it is garbage in garbage out, but I also believe that in, in this
spirit of good communication, if you're not getting the information that you
need on the design side, like you gotta communicate that back to me as well.
And it like, give me the, what I need to effectively get you that information.
Let's say, like getting you proper artwork.
We know that is a huge issue for just about every side shop getting
artwork that you can actually use in production from a customer.
Crapshoot.
Totally.
and more oftentimes than not whoever's taking that order or selling that job may
is coming across some of that artwork.
And as a sales rep, I'm, I may or may not be a graphic designer, but, yeah,
I'm not gonna have that same skill set or that experience that a designer
would and how to interpret these files or, Hey, is this good or is it bad?
So,
Michael Riley: yeah, I agree on that a hundred percent and I feel like
that's top, that's like a rabbit hole.
We could go down for hours or at least I could go down for hours here,
but yeah, totally like education and communication go hand in hand and yes,
you can't communicate what you don't know.
You need to communicate.
I think that's a really super important point there.
So training and education and, cross training to some degree from department
to department is really important.
So that yeah, your designer or your sales rep knows.
The right questions to ask and the right things to, get from the client before
they even hand it off to design in the design team, conversely needs to make
sure that the sales team is educated and can speak intelligently about those
things that will eliminate a lot of the friction between those two departments.
Just putting them on the same page like that.
That's a really good point, Brent.
Bryant Gillespie: Thank you.
Michael Riley: I think
Bryant Gillespie: you're this the first compliment I've got this
Peter Kourounis: is episode.
That'll be the one and only compliment the one and only that you'll get today.
Bryant Gillespie: All right.
So, the next question I've got for you, Mike, is how does the structure of the
business factor into this handoff issue?
As far as like the way that the organization and the roles are structured,
not necessarily Hey, is this a LLC or an escort, but I like the organization chart.
Michael Riley: I think, no matter how large or small your shop is assuming you
have an employee beyond just yourself.
I think it's important to structure something.
the larger, the company, more than likely the more departments there are
gonna be the more department heads.
and the more disconnect the pages that there are, that need to
all be brought together to one.
so I think the larger the company and the more granular the organizational
breakdown, the more important this is first and foremost, it's the
more critical it is to herd all these cats onto the same page.
and I think the larger the company, the more important it is
to probably have that manager's.
Puddle first, every morning, so that all department heads are on the same page and
then they can distill that information down to their individual departments.
I think that's really critical if you have, even if you're not huge, but
you say you have three departments in house, say sales, design production,
let's say four, an installation.
And even if you only have, 10 employees total, there's probably
one person that takes ownership of each one of those departments.
and most shops, there's a, a production lead and there's a design lead
and there's a installation lead.
Even if they're not a, a true department manager, even in a scenario like that.
I think it's really important that those leads, at least huddle up and communicate
and bring themselves onto the same page.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, well it, Hey, this has of come up in one of our
conversations in our mastermind calls.
I want to throw like a specific example at you of, Hey, like sales is not
getting enough information and design is saying, Hey, it's sales is saying,
Hey, I gave you everything you need.
Neither one of them want to take ownership and communicate with the customers.
Yeah.
Is this like a handoff problem or a structured problem?
Like, how does this, how do we
Michael Riley: solve this?
I don't think that's a structural problem.
And I ultimately, yeah, that's a handoff problem, but I think there's probably
another layer of problem in there on top of it just being a handoff problem.
There it, a handoff problem implies that you've got the systems in
place to, to make a smooth handoff and somebody's not doing their
job on one side of the equation.
and in a case like that, if there's probably not really much of a process
for the handoff in the first place, and there's probably not much, like
we talked about cross education between those two departments.
and it's just like a wild west scenario where there is no real laws or rules,
like the design department's gonna do whatever the hell they want.
And the sales department is gonna do whatever the hell they
want and, screw each other.
If those two things don't align and know they're gonna clash.
I mean, that's just how it works.
so that's, I think that's more a lack of just higher level structure,
or rules in place, and education.
So I think in a scenario like that the, those two departments
need to train each other.
The design department needs to train the sales department on what they
need and what their job entails.
a lot of sales people, or a lot of non designers are not
really necessarily sales.
I shouldn't say single sales people out, but just a lot of
people don't know what goes into.
The design side of things.
They think you just slap a logo on a picture of a
building and there's your sign.
There's a lot more to think through than that.
Bryant Gillespie: Just moving pixels around on screen, man.
Right.
And how hard is it?
Michael Riley: Totally.
Exactly.
and really like the sales department, what they're doing is driving the
overall scope of the job and the look and feel, the customer wants a sign
that looks like this, and they want it installed here in the building.
Right.
But a lot of the details are left up to the design department to fill in,
above and beyond, very high level stuff like colors and sizes and
maybe basic material or construction.
there's a lot of details the design department has to fill
in and make educated guesses on.
So design teaching sales, really what goes into creating that proof
and using real world examples.
Like they should, take an actual design request they got and say, okay, let's
dissect this and figure out, for me to complete this and do a good job and
create a drawing, that's going to be.
A sellable presentation for you in the sales department.
This is what I need, and this is what I go through.
And then the flip side of that is sales is really hard too.
And there's a lot that goes into it that people don't realize.
And don't understand.
I feel like I've been picking on sales people a lot.
and I, I don't mean to salespeople are, the engine that drives a sign
company without salespeople, the same, company's gonna wither and die.
Oh yeah.
But they're just a different breed.
It's a different personality entirely.
So sales, educating design on what they do in their process, is really important
too, so that the designers at least are empathetic to what sales is going through
and how hard it can be sometimes to get a vector logo from a customer or, the prove
pan own color and designers, tend to have a bit of a, I dunno what the word is.
I should use here crusty.
They can, we could be crusty.
we can be primadonnas.
Sometimes and designers need to meet the sales team halfway.
And I've seen so many designers that say, I will not design this for you, unless you
get me a clean vector logo and PMs colors.
And that's not always possible.
And designers don't necessarily get that, I mean, so they need to be able to
recognize that sales is hard sales reps go through hell and back to, to get that job.
And sometimes they just can't get all the answers and there's gotta
be some collaboration between those two in some way where they can both.
I think that's the
Bryant Gillespie: biggest thing, right?
This is just being open and collaborating instead of ah, Hey,
like they're not giving me what I need
Michael Riley: or so I'm just not gonna do it, right.
Yeah,
Bryant Gillespie: yeah.
or Hey, this is, this one's fuzzy.
So I'm gonna do this other job.
That's I've got the details for right.
Michael Riley: It's right.
so it just.
I think being sympathetic to both of those respected departments
and what they go through and understanding, their walk in this
industry, I think is really important.
And that's true of any department.
That's not just sales design.
I mean, the same can be set of design to production and production to installation.
I mean, these are all very unique, specific disciplines that, and the
people that are doing them are gonna have their own unique personalities.
And it's always oil and water.
I mean, they never perfectly mesh.
so, like we said, just creating that environment or that, that
culture where there is two way collaboration and communication
and empathy for those departments.
Yeah.
We'll go.
I like the,
Bryant Gillespie: I, I like the idea of forced job shadowing or
Hey, you do somebody else's role for one day or a week or something.
And, especially like new employees or if you hire a new sales rep, Pair
them up with the designers for a week or the production guys for a week.
Yeah.
and just have them do actual production work, I think that was,
Michael Riley: or at least, I mean, sometimes you can't put a sales rep
and if you're, fabricating big monument sign, like here's a welder yeah.
Bryant Gillespie: Right.
That's true.
but, if you're the the smaller vinyl side shop,
Michael Riley: right, right.
Yeah.
That's a little more realistic, but either whether, whether they're actually
hands on helping or whether they're just standing there and observing and
taking notes, visually seeing something, experiencing it firsthand, whether you're
doing it or whether you're watching an expert, do it goes a long, towards, I keep
using the word empathy and I don't know.
I feel like that's the best word I can come up with.
just understanding what it takes to build that sign.
yeah.
I think empathy is a good word for.
Yeah.
I mean, I've, there's so many sales reps that don't know what it takes to build
a sign or so many designers that don't know what it takes to build a sign.
And there's so many fabricators that don't have any idea what it takes to
sell that sign that they're building.
So that goes a long way towards putting everybody on the same page and just
reminding them that at the end of the day, we're all on the same team, even
though we're separate departments.
And I feel like we're in way competing with each other at rivals,
we are all on the same page, we're on the same team and we're all
working towards the same end goal.
And we're all just part of that process to get there.
and realigning based on that,
Bryant Gillespie: let's jump into some more like tactical recommendations.
Hey, if we're dropping the ball on this, what are some of the things that we can
look at and start doing to sort it out.
Michael Riley: Well, I think first and foremost would be, to me, it
would be interviewing your staff and finding out what their frustrations
are, what they perceive as, what's causing communication breakdowns,
or what's causing these difficulties in their, their particular role.
having the knowledge and understanding information and what your employees go
through, I think is first and foremost.
Cause if you don't understand what their complaints or concerns or
frustrations are you really can't just take a stab in the dark at that.
You're not gonna be able to address it very well.
So, and that's not really a, I mean, that's just taking 'em out to lunch
and having a conversation with 'em, whether it's one-on-one or whether
it's, in an entire department.
Yeah.
I'm a huge fan of one on ones.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, absolutely.
Michael Riley: Yeah.
It might have, I mean, if you have 60 employees that might not be realistic
to, to do that with everybody.
That's true.
Correct.
Right.
But you, I mean, I think you could, I, I think you could definitely
take that entire department, take your entire production department
out for pizza and beer, and just, and encourage them to speak openly.
And honestly, and as you as an owner of the person in, tasked with resolving this
problem, like you've gotta be ready and willing to hear their criticism, openly
and not criticize back and point fingers.
And, and that's,
Bryant Gillespie: that's a challenge in and of itself.
Sometimes
Michael Riley: that's real hard.
and I, honestly, I would say that if you really wanna get down to the
meat potatoes of why communications breakdown, communication, breakdowns
happen is because the powers that be are closed off to hearing that criticism.
And they're not willing to, to look introspectively on, on why
it's happening, but starting there documenting what's happening, why it's
happening, interviewing your staff is, has gotta be the starting point.
and I, I think throughout those conversations, once you've talked to
everybody in your shop, I think the.
Maybe not the solution, but the path forward the road you need
to take is going to float to the surface and present itself to you.
and then from there you just need to start implementing whatever tools
and systems and processes that, apply to your particular scenario.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, absolutely SOPs and checklists and things like that.
Come up a lot in our Facebook group where we talked to all these owners.
so I absolutely think you've got to, once you've identified those problems, you
gotta dive into that side of things and start saying, okay, here's the way that
we get files from customers or here's the way that we document that handoff.
Okay.
You're the sales rep.
Here's everything that you need to enter a job properly.
And there has to be accountability on the other side of it as well.
So, whether that's you as the owner, that's providing that accountability
or there's the sales manager or an operations manager, like it.
There has to be somebody who is reviewing that and paying attention to it.
Because one of the things that I've seen a hundred times, and you've seen
this at shop box as well, is like the owners will implement a process.
Things go well for two weeks, they step back and do something else and then come
back 12 weeks later or a month later.
And Hey, we're no longer following that process.
because something happened, somebody, it wasn't communicating
somebody called in audible to, to get back to our football analogy.
and then that became the default play from there on out.
Michael Riley: Right.
I think regardless of the topic, if you're implementing systems and processes
and SOPs, that's a continuous process.
You can't just do it once and walk away from it and expect it's gonna, hold up.
You've gotta, it's something that you've gotta constantly reinforce and, Refine
and fine tune and keep on everybody's, at the front of everybody's mind.
it's impossible to implement systems and processes and then just walk
away and hope that they stick.
It just doesn't work that way.
especially in this industry where everything is, everything is rush
driven, everything is deadline driven.
Everything is custom and has to pass through multiple hands in departments.
And there's a lot of waste and errors and mistakes and other human factors
that play into how quickly something goes from point a to point B in a shop.
and that's where, when those things happen, that's where the system is
in processes break down, because now you're behind the eight ball and
you've gotta reprint something and shit, let's just get it done really
quickly and skirt the system so that we can get it in the customer's hands
Bryant Gillespie: hundred, hundred, hundred percent.
Yeah, that was gonna be my next point.
before I died, there was, is that, If you, if everything is a rush job,
or if you haven't communicated the right expectations to the client up
front, and like you're continually just like the stress level is high.
The tensions are mounting in the shop.
like those handoffs are gonna be stressful, even if you've
got great systems in place.
and a lot of shops that we talk to, obviously don't, so that's where
the problems compound and grow.
And it really cause
Michael Riley: expensive mistakes.
Right.
that's a really good point too, is, we're talking about internal communication here.
but there's also communication with the customer and there's handoff with
the customer too, just like there is from department to department in your
shop and that's the two are one are two sides of the same coin, whether you're
communicating with the customer, you're communicating with your production
manager or whatever, and having those systems in processes in place.
Not only for when jobs go smoothly, but also, when things go off the
rails, we'll make the communication with the customer a lot easier and
smoother and just establishing realistic expectations front for your customer.
And this goes back also to training sales, whether it's the design team, training,
the sales on what they need, or the production team or installation team.
if sales, if your salesperson or your sales team is a hundred percent
up to speed and on board with what everybody else in the shop is
doing, they're going to be able to communicate realistic expectations
to your customer on lead time.
And, there's material shortages left and right right now, so, we're
gonna put this into production, but there could be delays.
We, you need to expect that there, we can't control when
we get this material in.
And if we're not able to get it to meet your deadline, we'll figure out a plan
B, but you know, know this going into it, that this might be an issue that arises.
Things like that, planting those seeds in your customer's head at
the point of sale at the time of sale will eliminate a lot of that
frustration on the customers end too.
And then having to follow up with you constantly, but it all goes back
to internal communication so that your salesperson or your project
manager or your customer service rep is able to communicate effectively
with the client of the first place.
Bryant Gillespie: Absolutely.
Well said.
Well set.
All right, guys, let's bring this one to a close, what's a,
the rapid fire takeaways today.
Peter
Peter Kourounis: use slack.
If your communication sucks.
Bryant Gillespie: I like that one.
I like that one short to the point Mike
Michael Riley: sign.
I like it.
lean on sign, bunny, sign money, lean on tools and apps and integrations
to streamline, communication.
But don't forget.
Just face to face conversations and meetings and go a long way towards getting
everybody on the same page and having an op open environment for communication,
where communication and questions and concerns are encouraged to be brought
to the surface is hugely important.
Bryant Gillespie: I'm gonna, I'm gonna go on your side here, Mike, make the time and
space to work on the relationships with your employees and between departments.
It's critical.
Absolutely critical.
Can't stress it enough.
You want good workflow?
I got it.
When you fix your relationships inside the shop.
Peter Kourounis: all right, guys.
See you on the next soon.
Michael Riley: All right.
See you guys see you guys