What a Coaching Relationship With Jerry Isenhour Looks Like

A coaching relationship with Jerry Isenhour and CVC Success Group is designed to be much more than an occasional conversation about business problems. It is an ongoing working relationship focused on helping business owners and managers identify where they are today, determine where they want to go, and develop the strategies, systems, people, and accountability needed to get there.

Jerry’s approach is especially focused on home-service businesses, where owners often begin as skilled technicians or entrepreneurs and eventually discover that growing a successful company requires an entirely different set of skills. The challenge becomes moving from working in the business every day to effectively leading, managing, and growing the business.

A Two-Day Onsite Visit to Understand the Business More Deeply

After the initial conversations, Jerry conducts a two-day onsite visit with the client. This is an important part of the coaching process because there is only so much that can be learned from phone calls, financial statements, and reports. To truly understand a business, it is often necessary to see it operating firsthand.

During the visit, Jerry spends time learning about the company, its staff, leadership team, operations, systems, culture, customer experience, workflow, and the challenges affecting performance. He talks with team members and looks for areas where opportunities may be hidden or obstacles may be preventing the company from reaching its potential.

Sometimes the problem is a lack of systems. Sometimes the right systems exist but are not being followed. In other cases, the challenges may involve leadership, accountability, communication, pricing, profitability, recruiting, sales, customer service, or company culture.
The purpose of the onsite visit is to gain a realistic understanding of the business so that the recommendations that follow are based on what is actually happening inside the company.

Developing a Strategic Plan

Following the onsite visit, Jerry prepares a strategic plan designed to guide the company forward. This plan is built around the information gathered from the owner, leadership team, staff, financial information, and observations made during the onsite visit.

The strategic plan identifies priorities, opportunities, challenges, and specific actions that can move the business toward its goals. Instead of simply saying, “We need to grow,” the plan begins answering more important questions: How will we grow? What must change? What should happen first? What systems need to be developed? What people need to be developed? What numbers must be tracked? Who will be responsible? What obstacles could prevent success?

The objective is to transform broad goals and business dreams into a practical roadmap for implementation.

The Relationship Continues After the Plan Is Written

The strategic plan is not intended to become another document placed on a shelf. Once the plan is developed, the coaching relationship continues.

Jerry works with the owner to address the challenges that arise while implementing the plan. Business improvement rarely happens in a perfectly straight line. New problems emerge, employees change, markets shift, priorities evolve, and unexpected situations occur. Having an ongoing coaching relationship gives the owner someone to turn to for perspective, guidance, accountability, and problem solving.
This relationship helps the owner remain focused on the larger goals of the company while dealing with the realities of operating the business every day.

Onsite Training for Owners, Managers, and Staff

An important part of the coaching relationship is onsite training customized to the needs of the company and its people.

As needs are identified, Jerry can work directly with the owner, managers, technicians, CSRs, salespeople, and other team members to strengthen the skills necessary to move the organization forward. Training can address areas such as leadership development, management, sales, customer communication, technician development, company culture, accountability, processes and procedures, profitability, waste reduction, and other areas identified through the coaching and strategic-planning process.

This is important because sustainable business improvement cannot occur through the owner alone. As the business grows, the people inside the business must grow with it.

CVC Virtual Academy for Every Member of the Staff

Development does not stop when Jerry leaves the company. Coaching clients also receive access to the CVC Virtual Academy for every member of their staff.

The Virtual Academy provides an ongoing training resource that allows employees to continue developing their knowledge and skills throughout the year. Rather than relying exclusively on occasional training events, the company has a resource that can become part of employee onboarding, continuing education, technician development, management development, sales training, and overall professional growth.

Providing access for the entire staff also helps create a culture of continuous learning. Employees understand that development is not reserved only for owners and managers—the company is willing to invest in helping every team member become better at what they do and prepare for greater opportunities.

Coaching Is About Asking the Right Questions

A coach should not simply tell an owner what to do. An important part of Jerry’s coaching approach is helping owners and managers think differently about their businesses.

Sometimes that requires asking difficult questions. Why aren’t we making more money at our current revenue level? Why are callbacks occurring? Why aren’t technicians achieving expected results? Why do good employees leave? Why isn’t the manager holding people accountable? Why isn’t the sales process being followed? Why is the owner still making decisions that should be handled by managers? Why are we doing something simply because “that’s the way we’ve always done it”?

These conversations are intended to uncover the root cause of a problem rather than continually treating its symptoms.

Numbers Become Part of the Conversation

Successful coaching cannot be based entirely on opinions and feelings. There must be measurements. A coaching relationship with Jerry places significant emphasis on Key Performance Indicators and financial performance.

Revenue is important, but revenue without adequate profit does not build a financially healthy company. The coaching process may examine gross profit, net profit, EBITDA, labor percentages, average tickets, conversion rates, technician productivity, marketing performance, callbacks, waste, job costing, and other measurements appropriate to the company.

The principle is simple: You cannot effectively manage what you do not measure.

Developing the People Around the Owner

Business growth eventually becomes a people-development challenge. As companies grow, owners need technicians who can become trusted advisors, employees who can become crew leaders, and managers who can lead people and accept responsibility for results.

Jerry’s coaching therefore extends beyond the owner. Depending on the company’s needs, it may involve helping managers improve their leadership skills, establishing accountability, creating career paths, improving recruiting and onboarding, developing SOPs, strengthening communication, and building a company culture that attracts and retains quality people.

The combination of individual coaching, onsite visits, onsite training, annual SWOT meetings, strategic planning, and the CVC Virtual Academy creates a development process that can reach throughout the organization.

The objective is to help build a company that does not depend entirely on the owner to make everything happen.

Building Systems and Processes

Many recurring business problems can ultimately be traced to one of three conditions: there is no process, there is the wrong process, or the established process is not being followed.

Coaching helps identify those gaps and build repeatable systems. This can include sales processes, customer service procedures, technician expectations, morning meetings, follow-up procedures, estimating, job costing, recruiting, onboarding, performance reviews, compensation programs, inventory control, safety, and management accountability.

The goal is to create a business that operates according to established systems rather than depending on individual personalities and constant intervention from the owner.

Accountability Is an Important Part of Coaching

Knowing what needs to be done and actually doing it are two different things. A productive coaching relationship creates accountability.
Commitments made during coaching sessions become points of discussion during future sessions. What was completed? What was not?

What results did it produce? What obstacles appeared? What needs to happen next?

The purpose is not criticism. It is to keep important initiatives from being pushed aside by the daily emergencies that inevitably occur in a home-service business.

Building a More Valuable Business

Ultimately, the objective is not simply to create a larger company. It is to create a stronger, more profitable, more manageable, and more valuable business.

That means developing leadership, improving profitability, reducing waste, creating repeatable systems, developing employees, establishing accountability, strengthening the customer experience, and reducing the company’s dependence on its owner.

Whether the owner’s long-term goal is continued growth, financial independence, developing a management team, bringing family members into the business, acquiring another company, or eventually preparing the business for sale, the coaching relationship should continually move the company toward that larger vision.

Turning Business Dreams Into Business Realities

A coaching relationship with Jerry Isenhour and CVC Success Group is not about having someone run your company for you. The owner and management team still have to make the decisions and do the work. Jerry’s role is to provide experience, perspective, strategic direction, accountability, resources, training, and the challenging questions necessary to produce meaningful change.

The relationship begins by understanding where you are, what challenges you face, and where you want to go. It moves into a two-day onsite evaluation to understand the business and its people more deeply. From there, Jerry develops a strategic plan to guide the company forward.

The relationship then continues through ongoing coaching, annual SWOT meetings, onsite visits, customized onsite training, and access to the CVC Virtual Academy for every member of the staff. Together, these resources are designed to help the owner and the entire team continually develop and move the business toward its goals.

The ultimate objective is to move from ideas to actions, actions to systems, systems to measurable results, managers to leaders, employees to teams, revenue to profit, and business dreams into business realities.