We are off to a great start with Slippage Awareness Month… We’ve heard from Tim Faller with his blog post last week and we are looking forward to his Live Webinar, “From Slippage to Grippage: How to Raise Profits Without Raising Prices” on Thursday, June 15th at 11:00am EST.

This week we take a look at creating an internal planning team in order to minimize or eliminate slippage from your process, and ultimately increase your Gross Profit (GP).

Here are 6 things to keep in mind when putting your Slippage Planning Team together:

1. Get the right people involved: Have a representative from the Sales, Estimating, Production, Fulfillment and Billing departments on your team. In many instances this may be the same person for multiple positions, but it is important to make sure all are represented.
2. Commitment: Members of the planning team must understand how the plan to minimize and eliminate slippage will affect the company’s bottom line and be committed to the process of identifying and changing existing procedures and policies to be successful.
3. “We have always done it that way…”: This can be a killer phrase when it comes to looking at ways to avoid slippage and will stop any progress toward positive GP. The goal of this planning group is to come up with new ways to increase profits… Think outside the box, reach out to your Roundtable members for best practices, etc. Make it fun… any person who says that phrasein a meeting  must buy coffee, donuts or lunch for the group…
4. Creating AND Executing: Do not create this plan if that is all you are trying to achieve; “a plan simply for plans sake”. Understand why your team is taking this on… even if you need to create a mission statement and read it aloud every time you meet. Creating the plan is half the battle; Go execute and achieve greater GP!
5. Leadership positions: As Tim Faller pointed out last in last week’s blog, having a strong leader in production is essential in discovering where slippage is occurring in the process. This is holds true for other areas in your business as well, as production is only a piece of the puzzle when it comes to slippage. A bi-product of this planning process will be an analysis of leaders within your organization. Are they in the right position? Are they of value? Do they bring suggestions? Are they willing to change?
6. Attainable & Realistic Goals: Key components to any successful plan are smart goals and objectives. Knowing the end goal is higher GP, what are the steps needed to get there? What is each department responsible for what it comes to eliminating slippage? Sales & Estimating work with quotas every day, what are some targets we can add to their process that will help eliminate slippage? On the production side, keep objectives visible and achievable… As Tim pointed out last week, lumberyard runs are a huge contributor to slippage. What goals or steps can we add in the production process to make that process have less of an impact?