The sale is only the beginning
When I look at a business, I want to understand what happens after a customer says yes.
How does the promise made during the sale become a completed job? Where does the work slow down? Who notices when something goes wrong? And how long does it take to collect the money?
Those questions can reveal a great deal about the health of the operation.
Consider a home improvement business. A signed contract moves through measurement, product ordering, scheduling, installation, completion and payment. Each step may belong to a different team. Each team may be working hard and meeting its own targets.
The customer still experiences one company.
If information is missing, an order is wrong or an installation has to be rescheduled, the customer experiences the delay. The business absorbs the additional labor, repeat calls, rework and delayed cash.
Some of that cost is easy to see. Some disappears into overtime, administrative effort and the daily scramble to keep things moving.
My starting point is to follow several actual jobs from the original sale through final payment. Include a smooth job, a delayed job and one that required a return visit.
Compare what was supposed to happen with what actually happened.
Was the scope complete? Were the sales commitments practical? Did the next person receive what they needed? Where did the job sit, and why? Could someone see the problem early enough to act?
That review usually produces better questions than a department scorecard alone.
I also want to understand the age and condition of the backlog. Two branches can have the same dollar value of outstanding work and very different problems. One may have healthy demand moving toward completion. The other may have unresolved orders, customer disputes and jobs nobody quite owns.
The improvement work starts with those distinctions.
Define what a job needs before moving to the next stage. Make exceptions visible. Give someone responsibility for resolving them. Track time, return visits, completion and collection alongside sales.
Then use that information to change the work.
In my experience, employees often know exactly where the process breaks. They have been compensating for it for months. Bringing their knowledge into the operating decisions can improve the customer experience and make their jobs more manageable.
A growing business needs to know whether its delivery operation can keep the promises its sales team is making.
That is where I look for the next improvement.
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