[PSUscaper]

Bill.........that is one TALL order for a foremen.

Master plumber? Electrician? Irrigation? SRW expert? and....doesn't smoke!!!

I could care less if the guy smoked 5 cigarettes at once all day.......if he could do all that, and I would ONLY have to pay him 100k.....then I would hire him, give him the keys to the office, and tell him to send the checks to a island in the carribean which is where'd I'd be because I wouldn't have a job anymore.

I think you need to first start thinking 'team'......as in a group of people who work together on one task. You're looking for a head coach who dosn't just coach the offense, but the defense ....who doesn't just coach, but who kicks, passes, runs, tackles, does funny dances in the endzone.......who doesn't just coach, but drives the bus from game to game, while doubling as the team trainer and fixes injuries.......who doesn't just coach, but is.................well.....YOU!..........lol!

Have you thought about buying another company out and trying to get the owner to work for you????? Because the only person you are going to get with experience like that is someone who was in business for themself..

And if you need someone with that much knowledge, then you better expect them to want more than just a paycheck....they are gonna want a piece of the business. For if they are smart enough to know all that stuff, then they are surely smart enough to know what their knowledge is worth, which may develop into more than you own.......which brings me to the point of, are you willing to give up some of your own power in return for growth?

And I will say that salesmen have their own array of problems.....I just started doing work for a company this week who lost almost 2 million in sales this year because their architect/salesmen couldn't handle the pressure and left them cold and dry in the middle of the season due to 'personal' reasons.

I think its Dr. Covey who talks about the switch from 'supervisor' to 'manager'......i like this idea because many contractors always talk about this idea of 'working on your company, not in it' and believe that being a 'supervisor' is considered working 'on' the company. Its' not. It's still working in it.

You've already said it yourself. If you hire a salesmen, you are going to 'review every bid he brought to you'......that's not management.....that's supervision.

I believe that a sales team is going to be needed in the not so future, but firmly believe that before that should really be engaged, you should work on having your jobs to the point where you are 'managing' them.......not 'supervising' them. Instead of hiring one key person, I would start delegating the power out, and develop a team of independent units that accomplishes the same goal as this 'superman' foreman you have been trying to hire.

Work on developing/hiring employees who can perform one task/a few task very well. Work on developing a system, or back to football, a 'game plan' that can be followed on every job that will achieve the same results as if you were there. Once this is done, then you can start to attack the sales end, the office end, and the new growth end, developing employees and systems the same way you did in the installation end that produce the same results you would expect if you were personally doing them.