Want to Keep your Good Employees?

Once again basic business questions are really simple at times, of course you want to keep the good ones. If that is true what have you done to tell them that? Here are some of the things you can do that are simple and often over looked;

• Feed them
• Talk to them
• Work with them
• Ask for their help in the business
  
  

The Hardest Thing You will ever do in Your Business

Well now, that's a catchy title.. but that doesn't make it any easier for you. I guess I could have taken a poll here but then you might want me to write about something that I don't know anything about.

For some, the first thing that comes to mind is balancing the check book and that would be close to today's topic. However, we are going to talk about knowing your break even. Since this is done so seldom we need to talk about what "break even" is.

We will define this term as how much money the business needs to make to pay the bills... all the bills. Owners' salary, supply bills, building rent or note, lights, phone bill, advertising, direct labor, the whole thing. You need to know just how much staying in business costs you. Since I am such an advocate of using "Billable Hours" to manage your business, this is how it should be expressed.

Consistancy is key to any Service Business Growing Larger

Have you ever had the experience of having 2 of your customers compare their bill?  You had Bob go to one customer and the next day, Tom went to the customer's house across the street the same job?  Then Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Jones got together the next day and compared their bills only to find they payed different amounts of the same service from your company?

Now that's an explanation you don't want to have to ever make the customer on the phone.  When businesses are small, it's fairly easy for the service manager or the owner to do all pricing.  You when companies becomes larger, it starts to exceed the ability of the owner to supervise every bit of the work. 

Just what do we really sell?

Too often the reply is "Well that's a dumb question, we have a warehouse with 5000 parts at and we sell them all.  What do you mean what do we really sell?" 

When I first ask this question to business owners they always look at me a little funny, because it seems like an obvious question.  I must admit I've gotten many different answers, But this is still a central question that every business must focus it's efforts on to make the business operate smoothly.

Let me explain.