Wow, I fell off the wagon for a month!

Wow- how time flies.

I had a great week of blogging then fell off the wagon. I guess it took me a month to catch up from vacation...

Its been a rocky month. August was less than stellar sales wise. September started off with a bang, but this past week has been ROUGH!!!! We usually slow down a little the middle 10 days of the month - cant say why exactly but I do have some ideas. Its been slower than expected this middle 10 days though. Excluding Sundays (our slowest day) we had our worst sales day of the year on 9/17/08!!! WOW!!! Unusual, we had some days similar back in winter/early spring but nothing like this!

Our pipeline of work is also at its lowest point since winter, although it is filling up (to an almost acceptable level) again after healthy lead flow for the past few days.

SIDE NOTE: Got a great referral a few weeks ago from a vendor that is part of a vendor network we are in. Funny how these things work. I always mildly question our participation in these types of networks but it never fails - at least once a year we get a fantastic referral from it. Basically one good solid referral (like the one we recently got) covers the entire cost of the program -so everything else is gravy!

Cold Calling/Commercial Sales

Wow-

I suck! I hate this stuff. Thought I had gained some momentum yesterday but lost it today!

We are having a terrible run here this week, actually it started out good, but the second half of the week has been rough to say the least. Our weekend workload is light at best. We are 40% off of last August and it hurts!

Our phones are not ringing and its totally frustrating and distracting to me. It has caused me to focus on our sales calls numbers all day and I havent been able to get focused on anything.

The only positive things I have done all day is:

1. Re-initiated a relationship with a vendor that we havent used for a few years - had begun using an out of state vendor but with fuel costs being so high it eroded our savings.
2. Finally spoke to the administrator of the trade association that I want to join to find that they have a capped membership for my desired membership and that they are full this year and they will only open it up if one of their current members in that class does not re-join in 2009! Not the best news...

Have a good weekend!

Cold Calling/Commercial Sales Follow up

I'm making progress!

1. I had a good "networking" meeting with someone this morning.
2. I spoke to a commercial client that had a great experience
3. I spoke to a great commercial referral source for whom we did some work (indirectly) for last month.
4. I found a way to contact an industry association that I really want to join that I hadn't had any luck with previously.

Lots to do on this front but baby steps is all I am trying to make here!

Cold Calls/Sales Calls

I've got to get something going to further our penetration in the commercial space. Its the only thing that really keeps us going in the off season, which is rapidly approaching.

Thing is: I hate cold calling people, even warm calling. I cant stand it when people do it to me, so I dont want to be "that guy" doing it to them. I never know how to approach it in a non-threatening, friendly way but still ask for some business. I feel like if I ask for work then I am being too aggressive, but if I dont then I fail to close.

I need to do more networking in the space where my commercial work lies, but its tough to break in. It takes time and consistent effort and that is difficult to muster when you dont really enjoy it. I also have not found the right venue to work yet and since I dislike the concept so much I hesitate to do anything if it doesnt seem like the "perfect scenario". I know, I know, there is never a "perfect scenario".

Now the bottom line is, there are always excuses. If we lived by the excuses we would never get anything done, would we?

I need to make a committment here: I will contact at least 2 of my commercial contacts/leads by the end of the day tomorrow (Friday August 15) and report back my success or failure.

I am actually performing a networking task this morning, but I did not initiate it so I cannot count it towards my goal.

I'll let you know how it goes - VE

Business Ups and Downs and money tip

Wow, what a crazy business this is!

I wish I could tell you exactly what I do, but it would become too transparent for many people. Anyway, we thought we were having a good week, Monday was strong, our best day in a few weeks, Tuesday looks solid too, the phone is ringing and we have work, then the bottom falls out (again) seems to be the story of 2008. Every time we get some traction we grind to a halt.

My business is 80% residential and 20% commercial. We need to increase our commercial business to do well in this economy. We just dont have the systems in place or the expertise in making it happen right now. I am working on it feverishly, although I could always do more of course.

I need to get more disciplined with trying to drive commercial business!!!

In leaner times like this, its important to have cash saved for emergencies. I have a line of credit that I havent used before but I keep it open for operational cash flow if need be (costs $100/year to keep it open) and I save extra profit that I dont need personally in an ING Business Savings Account (current APY 3.15% as of 8.13.2008) if you are interested in opening one of these use this link to get a $25 bonus and I will get a $10 bonus.

ING for Business Savings Account referral link.

Have a great day!

Back from Vacation

Hey- I took a little family vacation last week. Spent some time with the family having fun. It was great to get away from it all! Yesterday was a clean up day, cleaning up mail, email, voicemail, minor operational issues, a 2 hour managers meeting - so no time for a post.

I've got a couple of updates for you.

• New manager seems to be getting on well so far, pretty much a flawless week although he did have plenty of oversight from our current senior manager and only had to run the show one day while I was gone - but did well nonetheless!
• Biz is basically flat, we had a little bit rougher of a month in July than I was expecting/hoping for - profit was down because certain expenses are loaded into the summer months because that is usually when cash flow is best, however this year, cashflow has been somewhat flat of course, so it is pinching profitability even further.
• August has historically been better than July but the jury is definitely still out on that one. Our first week is flat over July's numbers so we will have to wait and see.
• The world of high finance seems to think things are moving in the right direction, market had a good week last week and oil prices are falling, back to reality that is! In that department there was a great article from Ben Stein about the oil market.

I'll try to post later with some more updates but thats all for this morning.

New manager in position!

This is exciting, we have a new manager in place. My usual philosophy is to promote from within and we have done that again, it doesnt always work but I do feel like the people that work here and have proved themselves to the management team deserve first crack at any new higher level positions that open up.

It boils down to a couple of key things:

• We know them;
• We like them (or else they would not be here);
• We know what they are good at;
• We know what they are not so good at;
• We know how to communicate and work with them.

The toughest part though is taking someone off of the team and placing them in a management role. In this case I think it will go smoothly because this person has been looked up to by the team for some time and has had other leadership roles from time to time within our organization. I look forward to the challenge of helping the new manager fill this role. Its going to be interesting!

2008 Re-Cap: The Perfect Storm

Wow, what a year! Gas prices are up, real estate transactions are down - its almost a perfect storm...

Budgeted for little to negative growth this year, boy was I wrong! Well the year started out pretty good. Q1 was profitable and we had decent numbers, experienced some small growth over the previous year (even when factoring in the aquired business). This lead me to believe my projections were going to be close.

Q2 was when reality set in though! We have been off by as much as 30% in a month over the same month previous year. Its been a tough pill to swallow. Bonuses to staff were cut. Our daily bonus program (commission) has taken a beating hence so have the paychecks of the field staff.

What the Hell are we going to do now?

Well, first get out the P and L. Fuel is up 33% over last year, not a huge cost for us but its still shaving something off the bottom line, which has to be protected now! So where can we save some $$ now? Well, Labor is our number one cost, this is managed pretty carefully and we do well here, plus the staff are already seeing less $ in their paychecks and we dont want to rock the boat too hard going into summer, they might start leaving and if things pick up we will need them to capture some profit quickly. so we go to the next line item (franchise royalties, well those are fixed on Gross Revenue) so short of defrauding the franchisor, we cant change these! Next... Our third largest cost is somewhere we can shave, so lets get our staff religious about saving as much as we can here.

Long story short, it has worked and worked well. We have pretty much counteracted the increase in fuel prices here.