What would you document first if you had to train someone tomorrow?

For me, it would be the customer journey. What happens when someone calls? How do we document the lead? When do we follow up? How do we create the quote? What happens after the quote is sent? What happens after they become a customer?

I found that documenting the operational side first had the biggest impact because that's where a lot of knowledge was living in my head. Once we documented those processes, it became much easier to hand off pieces of the business. Our virtual assistant wasn't asking me what to do next because there was already a process for it.

The field work is obviously important too, but if I had to start somewhere tomorrow, I'd start with the workflows that happen before and after the job.

For me it was the field work first — and the easiest way I found to document it was through a Jobber job form attached to every visit. It's basically a custom job completion checklist your create to make sure things aren't missed.

You build it once, it shows up on every job. Mine includes a weather screenshot upload, a dropdown of every chemical I use with concentration and rate pre-filled, a fertilizer checkbox, completion photos of the front and back of the property, and photos of any existing damage. If a client ever claims I killed their plants, I have photos showing it was already like that when I arrived.

Clients can see everything through the Jobber client hub — what was applied, photos, all of it. They get notified before the treatment and when it's complete. I don't send manual updates anymore, unless it's something important.

Doesn't take long to set up and it runs on every job automatically. Start there. 

Great question Anthony. Here's a bit more of a macro perspective.

Field work and operations are actually both sitting inside the same workflow, Lead to Cash. Everything you listed, the yard walk, the gate check, the admin, the customer communication, that's all money coming in.

The workflow you didn't mention here is Procure to Pay. Equipment, supplies, fuel, subcontractors. Everything that has to happen before you can even deliver the service.

Most home service operators run that entire side of the business on memory and a credit card statement and then wonder why margin is hard to predict.

If I had to train someone tomorrow I'd start by mapping both flows first. Lead to Cash and Procure to Pay. Once you have those two on paper everything else becomes clear and you can break those macro processes down into micro processes. What to document, what to delegate, and eventually what to automate.

I’d probably document the field work first, but only because that’s where the customer experience can fall apart the fastest.

For us in renovations, the first things worth documenting are usually the repeatable site standards: how the site gets protected, how photos are taken, what gets checked before closing walls, how deficiencies are logged, how materials are received, and what needs to be communicated before the end of the day.

The admin side matters a ton too, but if the field process is inconsistent, the office ends up constantly reacting to problems after the fact.

I like your split between physical work and operations though. In construction, I’d almost add a third bucket: handoff points. The moments where information moves from sales to production, PM to crew, crew to client, or trade to trade. A lot of mistakes happen there. Learned that the hard way a long time ago.

Break up the training into tasks and days.  We have a 5 day training plan and each day we introduce something new, while repeating the day before. 

Revenue generates from the physical labor, so my efforts naturally went there first. Everything was always (and still is) subject to revision because the type of company we were to get to here isn’t the type of company that gets to the next level. Hope this helps!