Fix the systems that are costing your business time or revenue.
Working Order helps established owner-led businesses improve the way they attract customers, handle sales and run the work behind the scenes.
I start by finding the first problem worth fixing. Then I build the fix and, if there is a good reason to keep going, work through what comes next.
A 90-minute working session with me, followed by a written recommendation within five working days.
The first problem worth fixing was enquiry follow-up.
At its best, the sales process converted around 70% of quotes into jobs. But it depended on one person running the follow-up manually. When the owner had time, it worked. When he was busy, it stopped. Conversion had fallen to around 40%.
A lot of businesses reach a point where the way they work becomes the thing holding the business back.
Working Order is built for established owner-led businesses, typically at £500k to £5m turnover and 5 to 30 people. That's the point where messy systems have become expensive, while the business is still small enough to change them without a six-month internal project.
- The owner still pulled into day-to-day operations.
- Important numbers maintained in spreadsheets somebody has to keep alive.
- You can't tell which marketing is producing paying customers.
- Information copied between systems by hand.
- A CRM the team works around rather than in.
- Jobs handed from sales to operations differently depending on who's involved.
"Summarised beautifully. I'm eager to start as soon as possible."Scott Wilson Owner, after reading the Working Order Review
The question is simple: where would I start?
You do not need to know whether you have a CRM problem, an automation problem, a marketing problem or a software problem. That is what the Review is for.
We spend 90 minutes going through the parts of the business that feel slower, harder or more dependent on people than they should. I take the conversation away, work through it properly, and send you a written recommendation within five working days.
The conversation usually starts with what you're trying to achieve, where the business feels held back, what's frustrating you, and what you've already tried. Then how the numbers actually look. The specific mechanics of enquiries, quotes, handoffs and reporting come from that context, not from a checklist.
Where it helps, I'll also look at the numbers or get into the systems you're already using before I make the recommendation.
The report
A decision document you can act on whether or not we work together.
The diagnosis
What I think is actually causing the pain, in plain terms.
The evidence behind it
The numbers, quotes and observations that led me to that conclusion, so you can pressure-test the reasoning.
What it's likely costing you
My best commercial estimate with the arithmetic shown. Where a figure is an assumption, I'll say so.
What to fix first, and what to leave
One contained project ranked ahead of the alternatives, plus the things I noticed but do not think are worth doing yet.
A practical first-project outline
Scope, timeline and rough investment for the recommended fix, so you can decide.
£500. 90-minute working session, written recommendation within five working days.
Already booked six to eight weeks ahead, turning work away for capacity.
The owner came to me to look at his marketing. He was spending around £600 a month on ads and management, but nobody could tell him which booked jobs that spend was actually producing.
That immediately changed the question. More enquiries were not obviously what the business needed. It was booked out already and turning work away for capacity, not for price.
So my recommendation was not to rip out the ads or introduce a big new system. First, make the marketing measurable. Then use the fact that the business was already turning work away. Averaged across the year, a working day was worth around £1,100 to £1,300. But the larger commercial and heritage contracts the business is genuinely equipped for work out closer to £4,000 a day when total invoice is divided across the working days on the job. Being pickier about which enquiries he accepted, and firmer on price, would push the average up. Even £100 a day of that shift adds roughly £24,000 a year, and almost all of it is profit, because the working days themselves don't change.
The owner did not need me to implement a large project. That was fine. The useful part was getting to the right problem before spending money trying to solve the wrong one.
The uplift comes from the same working days, so the cost of those days does not change.
Usually the sensible thing is to start small.
I know what it feels like when the business still depends on you.
I have spent around twenty years building and running businesses of my own. For a long time, I was also the person they depended on.
On the morning of my wedding in Italy, I found myself dealing with a broken boiler back in Stockport, because I was still the only person tenants could call. Nothing about the way the business was set up allowed anyone else to handle it.
A few years later, my wife and I sold our house, moved onto a boat and left the UK. I thought hiring someone before we left had solved the problem. It hadn't. Too much still lived in my head, processes were informal, and I was expected to step in whenever something unusual happened.
That first year away made the weaknesses hard to ignore. We rebuilt how the business worked. Recurring work moved into systems. Decision-making stopped defaulting to me. Information got structured so other people could act on it. Eventually the business ran without me in the room every day.
Before running businesses of my own, I managed complex technology projects at Procter & Gamble.
Working Order sits somewhere between those two experiences. I understand what it feels like to run the company. And I am comfortable getting into the technology underneath it.
More about Mike →What does it cost?
- Working Order Review
- £500 A 90-minute working session followed by my written recommendation within five working days.
- First projects
- Scoped after the Review Based on what actually needs building for your business.
- Further work
- Agreed as we go Another fixed project or an ongoing arrangement, depending on what actually needs doing.
The things people actually ask.
Is this an AI consultancy?
No. AI is one of the things I use, but it does not define the problem or the answer. Working Order is about improving the systems the business runs on.
Do you just advise, or do you actually build things?
Both. The Review is diagnostic. If there is something worth implementing and I am the right person to do it, I can build it as well.
Are you going to tell us to replace all our software?
Probably not. Replacing systems creates cost, disruption and risk. If the existing software can do the job properly with some changes, that is often the better answer.
Do we need to know what we want before booking?
No. In fact, I would rather you did not arrive with a specification you have already decided is the answer.
Tell me what is frustrating you, where things get stuck, and what you would like the business to do better. We can work backwards from there.
What if the Review says there is nothing worth doing?
Then that is what I will tell you. You still get the report.
How is this different from a marketing agency?
A marketing agency normally owns particular marketing activities or channels. Working Order can look at marketing, but also at what happens after marketing does its job.
For example, generating more leads is fairly pointless if nobody follows them up properly. The problem could sit in marketing, sales, operations or in the handoff between them.
How is this different from an automation agency?
Automation agencies generally start from the assumption that something should be automated. I do not. A bad process does not become a good one because it runs automatically.
Can you work with our existing staff, agencies or developers?
Yes. I would rather use good people and good systems that are already there than replace them for the sake of it.