Bob has a small, but vibrant house design business in remote Queensland. He’s been operating in the region for almost 20 years and has built a strong, ethical business with reach far into the community. Like many remote communities Bob’s competition has moved to the busier realms of the city so he has become the only accessible designer in the area.
Bob never has to look for work, and is in fact so inundated that he is running behind and employs Cate a for three days a week to help him with the workload.
It’s a scenario that many of us yearn for, little competition and too much work. Yet Bob is frustrated.
Why?
Because Bob is well known in the area, his mobile phone doesn’t stop ringing with questions from locals, and some blow-ins from outer town. Because Bob’s the only designer around he gets calls about every aspect of building. He gets so many calls that he can’t finish his work on time.
Bob needs to take control of his work day and not let his mobile phone dominate his time. He needs to prioritise the calls that he takes.
How?
Bob generally has six to eight active jobs that he is undertaking. He needs to have the contact names of the people important to those jobs, the owner, the builder, the council supervisor in his phone.
In many smart phones you can allocate these contacts to a group and you can set up the phone only to receive calls from that group. And you can have Bob’s wife and Cate and others in another group that can also ring in. So now Bob can only receive calls that directly relate to his current jobs… and his wife.
But what about all those other calls that he receives during the day? Won’t the callers get annoyed that Bod has ignored them?
No, not if he sets up his messaging on his mobile phone correctly. He can state, “Hi, I am currently busy and can’t take your call, HOWEVER I will listen to your message and call you back if needed between 4 and 5pm this afternoon. Otherwise check out the website as we have many answers to the ore common questions right there, www.bobsdesign.com.au. Cheers Bob”
To make this work and for Bob not to lose potential customers or alienate existing ones, he MUST check the messages at 4pm and respond to each message by 5pm. This may involve calling the person back or sending a SMS acknowledging the message.
After discussing this approach with him and Bob taking the big plunge to not answer his phone to everyone, he found that he was less frustrated at work, was achieving more tasks and he only had to respond to a third of the other caller who actually left messages.
Take the time to think about your relationship with your phone and if it is taking up too much of your day, make a change.