Hardwood Floors December 2025/January 2026

Sales Savvy (Continued)

LEANING THE TEAM THROUGH BETTER PROCESSES Often times, we have the right strategy, a good reputation, a capable team, and we still struggle to perform as well and as profitably as we would like. Business owners would do well to look at their processes, find waste, and embrace the notion of continuous improvement as part of their culture. We see the benefits of better processes in that they are lower in cost, put less stress on the team, and create a better customer experience. When it comes to process improvement, we want to do more than just look at all of our processes and brainstorm ideas. For this, I like to use LEAN methodology, about which much has been written and it is relatively easy to start implementing. LEAN was born out of the Toyota Production System and is a very methodical approach to continuous improvement that engages the whole team and recognizes that the best ideas for improvement come from those who are actually doing the work. Key steps toward continuous improvement include: • Select one process (or one segment of a process) to focus on based on the impact it would make on the business to improve it, the control you have to change the process, and the ease in making a change in that area. In other words, we look for the low-hanging fruit. • Next we map the current process (what we actually are doing) step-by-step, recording how much time each step takes. • Then, we identify waste in the process. This includes such things as waiting time, time spent reworking mistakes, excess movement of people and materials and other such things that are in the process but don’t bring more value to the customer. • Then we brainstorm the future state by asking, “In a perfect world, what would this process look like?” • From this we choose improvements to make and monitor their impact. Think about your long-term goals, your commitment to profitability each year, and how you can drive your profitability through your people and your processes.

To learn more from Doug Howard, check out his Competitive Edge courses in the online NWFA University at NWFA.ORG/ NWFA-UNIVERSITY/.

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Doug Howard is the president of Growth Team Strategies, based in Sykesville, Maryland. He specializes in helping wood flooring contractors develop strategic plans, streamline processes, improve profitability, and navigate growth. For more information, email him at doug.howard@growthteams.com or visit growthteams.com.

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