Phase 1 Programme
Every tool in the CTA Toolkit was designed specifically for trades and construction businesses. Configured to your operation, not applied off the shelf.
These are not templates downloaded from the internet. Each tool has been built specifically for trades and construction businesses and is configured to your operation during the programme.
The CTA Toolkit
Eight proprietary frameworks, calculators, and planning tools. Each one addresses a specific commercial weakness common to trades owner-operators. Together, they form the commercial infrastructure your business currently lacks.
A structured job-by-job profitability calculator configured specifically for your trade and your job types. It breaks every piece of work down to its true net margin, accounting for every cost that most trades businesses either forget or guess at: labour including all on-costs, materials at the correct margin, subcontractor costs, travel, fuel, allocated overheads, and your target profit percentage.
Most trades owner-operators cannot tell you which job types actually make money once all costs are properly accounted for. Many are actively prioritising their least profitable work because the turnover looks good. This tool makes profit visible at job level, not just at year-end.
Configured in Week 1 using your real job types, labour rates, and materials costs. From that point forward it becomes your pricing bible. Every quote gets run through it. No more gut-feel pricing. No more discovering a job lost money after the invoice is paid.
A scored diagnostic framework that produces an objective baseline assessment of your business across all six commercial audit areas at the start of the programme. It is the same framework that underpins the free Business Health Audit on the website, but applied in full depth with your actual data and honest answers rather than self-assessed scores alone.
Without a baseline, it is impossible to know what to fix first, or to measure whether anything has actually improved. Most owner-operators have a rough sense of where the problems are but no structured picture of severity, priority, or interdependence. This tool creates that picture.
Completed at the start of Month 1 to establish the baseline. Revisited at the end of Month 2 and again at programme close in Week 12. The score comparison gives you an evidence-based measure of commercial improvement over the 90 days, not just a feeling that things are better.
A structured pricing audit tool that works through every category of margin leakage in your business systematically. It covers minimum charge levels, travel and fuel recovery, materials uplift benchmarks, call-out pricing, quote-to-invoice variance, and rounding discipline. It is deliberately applied early because it produces the fastest, most tangible return of anything in the programme.
Margin does not usually disappear in one big hole. It leaks in small amounts across dozens of habits and assumptions: not charging for travel, rounding quotes down, forgetting minimum charges on small jobs, buying materials at cost and not uplifting them correctly. This tool finds every leak and quantifies it.
Applied in Week 1 or 2 against your actual current pricing. The output is a set of concrete pricing corrections with a projected impact. Corrections are typically implemented within the first billing cycle, meaning the margin improvement shows up in real money before Month 1 is finished. Most businesses see 5 to 20% gross margin improvement from this exercise alone.
A process mapping template built specifically for trades businesses that documents every key operational workflow in your business: quoting, job management, invoicing, client communication, materials procurement, complaint handling, and team onboarding. For each workflow it captures who is responsible, what triggers it, what the steps are, and what the correct output looks like. The end result is a one-page visual that your team can actually follow.
If every process lives in the owner's head, the business cannot function without the owner. Things fall through the cracks not because people are incompetent, but because there is no defined system for them to follow. This tool externalises the knowledge, creates consistency, and makes delegation possible.
Built in Week 5 during the systems design phase of Month 2. A draft is created, reviewed in session, iterated through Month 3, and finalised in Week 9. The completed version is handed over in Week 12 as a permanent operating document your team uses going forward, not something that disappears with the engagement.
A structured sales pipeline tool with probability-weighted revenue forecasting, built to give trades businesses genuine forward visibility for the first time. It defines pipeline stages clearly, sets follow-up discipline at each stage, tracks conversion rates, and produces a rolling 30, 60, and 90-day revenue forecast. Simple enough to maintain consistently, detailed enough to be genuinely useful for business decisions.
Most trades businesses operate with zero forward visibility. Work either comes in or it does not. There is no structured picture of what is in the pipeline, what is likely to convert, or what the revenue outlook looks like next month. That makes planning, resourcing, and cash management essentially guesswork. This tool changes that.
Configured in Week 6 with your actual pipeline stages and conversion assumptions. From that point it becomes a live document reviewed in every strategy session. Conversion rates are tracked and improved over time. The 90-day forecast feeds directly into the cash flow model, so your financial planning and sales activity are connected for the first time.
A framework for scoring every inbound enquiry across four dimensions: job value, margin potential, client type, and likelihood of conversion. The output tells you which leads are worth pursuing hard, which are worth quoting on standard terms, and which are quietly costing you more in time and resource than they will ever return in profit. It also scores your lead sources, so you know which channels produce your best work and which fill your diary with your worst.
Busy owner-operators tend to chase every enquiry equally because they feel they cannot afford to turn work away. The result is a schedule full of low-margin, high-hassle jobs and no capacity for the work that actually builds the business. This tool creates the discipline to direct sales effort where the return is highest.
Applied in Week 6 alongside the Pipeline and Forecast Model. Particularly powerful for businesses with high quote volumes but inconsistent or disappointing conversion rates. The source scoring element feeds directly into marketing and lead generation decisions, so you stop spending time and money on channels that produce low-quality work.
A structured action plan built specifically for your business at the end of the Month 1 diagnostic. It takes the findings from the full commercial audit and turns them into a prioritised, sequenced list of actions with clear owners, realistic deadlines, and defined success measures. It is not a wish list. It is a working document reviewed and updated in every strategy session for the remaining two months of the programme.
Knowing what is wrong is not the same as fixing it. Many owner-operators leave advisory conversations with a good sense of the problems but no structured plan for addressing them in the right order. Without prioritisation, urgent tasks crowd out the important ones. Without accountability, good intentions stall. This tool connects diagnosis to action.
Created collaboratively in Week 4 from the diagnostic findings. From that point it drives every subsequent session: what was committed to, what has been done, what has stalled, and what needs to be adjusted. The document evolves through the programme and is handed over at Week 12 as the business's commercial operating plan for the period ahead.
A framework for segmenting your existing client base by four criteria: revenue generated, margin delivered, longevity of the relationship, and ease of working with. The matrix produces a clear picture of which clients are genuinely valuable, which look valuable on turnover but destroy margin in reality, and which relationships are quietly costing you more in time, stress, and resource than they return in profit.
Trades businesses often have a handful of clients who generate a lot of work but erode margin through constant scope changes, slow payment, excessive demands, or habitual under-pricing on repeat jobs. Equally, some of the most profitable clients are the quietest ones, underserved because they never shout. This tool makes client quality visible and actionable.
Applied in Week 3 as part of the cash flow and financial review. The outputs inform pricing decisions (certain clients may need repricing), communication priorities (high-value quiet clients deserve more attention), and growth strategy (your best existing clients are your highest-probability source of additional revenue). It also informs when it is commercially correct to end a client relationship.
Get Started
The toolkit is included in Phase 1. Everything is set up during the programme, configured to your actual operation, and handed over in full at Week 12. Not borrowed back. Yours permanently.
Phase 1 includes