Time Retrievers Pty Ltd

www.servicemanagmentsoftware.com.au

Getting the best out of your team

admin — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:46:52 +0000

Employing and managing team members is generally the most challenging part of running a business. Too often I hear the old sayings, “you can’t get good people” and “if you want something done, you have to do it yourself”. If you find yourself making these statements or similar, take the time to start building your skills in “people”. If you look at the most successful people out there, they have great people skills that get people to buy from them or willingly do what they require them to do.

Search out training programs that will help develop your people skills and in the meantime, put these 7 points into action.

1. Clear understanding on their role, Everyone likes to know exactly what they are supposed to do. Each position in the business should have a job description that clearly states what activities they are expected to carry out. This also enables you to clarify each role in your business to ensure you only employ the number of people that are needed to make your business successful. It also enables you to understand what each person should be doing.

2. Clear targets that need to be achieved, Each position will have activities that can be measured, i.e. How many times the phones ring before answering, all invoices processed by day end, target revenue to make each month, number of customer follow-ups to be made each week. There is an endless number of ways to measure employee effectiveness. By establishing some key targets for each role, you will be able to provide your employees with clarity on what they are meant to achieve to be considered fully productive.

3. Regular team meetings, Open team meetings are where you will be able to drive your business forward. Providing and open forum where there are no repercussions for honest appraisal of the business, its team, including the owner, will provide you with enormous amounts of ideas and motivation on how to run the business more effectively and how to resolve issues. If you take action on what you learn from your team members, they will know that what they say is heard, and then will be willing to get more involved. Not everything can be actioned, but smart, sensible and practical ideas are what you are looking for.

4. Training, Training builds knowledge, Skill and motivation and is the only way your team will become more productive. Everyone says they have no time for training, but there is a great old saying out there, “I’d rather have a team of trained people of which some may leave, rather than a team of untrained people who perform poorly and never leave”.

5. Flexibility, Your way is not the only way, sometimes it is the worst way to do things, listen, learn and allow your team to build a better way. You just need to ensure that it still gets the expected result in, or better than the timeframes expected.

Provide a bit of give and take with your team, if you find that it’s all take, i.e. want some time off early, but won’t stay late, reduce the amount of give and take that your provide. I always found I could start with some giving, but when there was no give back. I stopped.

6. Support decision making, The worst thing you can do in your business is to have your team members come to you for decisions to be made. As long as this is happening, you will never have enough time to do anything but put out fires. You need to train them on how to make a decision and let them make decisions. This can’t be done overnight, you will need to let them see you going through the process of making decisions so they can learn how you do it. Teach them and then let them go. You will also need to set levels for decision making and then work through these levels as they become better at it.

The best thing you can ask them to do is when they are in a situation where they have to make a decision is to, work through the process, make a decision and action it. Then when they next see you, they can tell you what the situation was, what they decided, and what the result was. If it was a good result, pat them on the back. If it was a bad result, review the decision making process so they will learn how to get a better result next time.

Don’t be afraid to let them make mistakes. Everyone will grow from them.

7. Recognition, Do you spend your time telling your team how poorly they perform and never let them know when there performance is good?

Spend more time looking for the good things your team does and let them know, and when you have to let them know about poor performance, you will get a better result. How would you feel if one of your team members walked up to you and said, I think you do a great job at running this business. I think you would feel good inside, even you like to have someone let you know they believe you are doing a good job.

These are simple points for getting the best out of your team, practice them and you will have a much better team working for you. Remember, the 2 key roles of a business owner who has a team working for them are;

1. Strategic direction of the business

2. Managing the team

Have a great week,

Peter

Sales Management, What happened to it?

admin — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:58:03 +0000

In recent years, I have noticed a growing lack of ability of small business owners to manage their sales people properly. Whether this is because they have never been trained in sales themselves or have not worked in a sales team and never seen a good sales manager in action, they burn a lot of money turning over unproductive sales people.

If you are going to hire sales people, you need to learn how to manage them properly.

From years of working with sales managers, teams and representatives, I have seen that the best results achieved, came from business owners and sales managers who apply these 8 items;

1. Learn how to recruit good sales people, Recruiting and managing staff is the most important task of a business owner. Learning how to recruit, manage and work with people will be the best thing you can do for your business.

2. Set clear Targets, it is important for both you and your sales representatives that there is a clear understanding on the targeted revenue the sales person is expected to achieve on a monthly and yearly basis. Sales roles have the sole purpose of generating the businesses revenue, for the business to be successful you need to be clear on how much revenue needs to be generated.

3. Set clear Territories, ensure your sales people have clarity on the product or geographic territory that they are expected to work in.

4. Hold weekly Sales Meetings, You need to meet with your sales team on a weekly basis. The purpose of this meeting is to monitor results, activities and the next weeks plan. The meeting is also used to for motivation, training and working with issues. Depending on the size of your team, this meeting should go for no longer than 1 hour. In 35 years of working with and around sales teams, the best time frame I have seen for a weekly meeting is 8.00am on Monday mornings.

5. Don’t give sales people non sales duties, your sales team are there to sell your company’s products or services, and that is it. Do not give them other duties. Giving sales reps other duties, i.e. delivering product to customers, gives them the opportunity to have excuses for not achieving their targets. It makes it a lot more difficult to counsel a sales rep over poor results when you give them the opportunity to say “but I have to spend so much time delivering to customers”. The reason I use deliveries as an example is because businesses have sales reps deliver goods, believing it is a good reason to visit and talk to their customer. They should be visiting them on a regular pattern already.

6. Regular Training, the best sales reps are always improving their skills and knowledge in their product and sales skills. As the business owner, you need to encourage them to always be developing their sales skills. You also need to let them know that it is just as much their responsibility for their training as it is the companies.

7. Don’t pay a high retainer, good sales people can sell and they have the confidence in their sales ability. The higher the retainer a person is looking for, the lower their sales skills and achievements are likely to be. Pay a low retainer, and higher commission, encourage them to make a higher income by selling more. They are sales people aren’t they?

8. Don’t micro manage your sales people, looking over their shoulder every minute of the day will destroy your sales reps. Provide them with clear targets, good training, support and guidance and let them go. If they need you to hold their hand all of the time, they need to be moved on.

Managing your sales people is not hard if you follow these steps; take the time to learn how to recruit and manage a good sales team and your business will boom.

Have a great week,

Peter

Will 2012 Be Your Year?

admin — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 02:38:22 +0000

The answer is in your hands, January is a great month to review what you have achieved over the past 12 months, and then create the seed for what you will achieve in 2012.

We come back to work after the Christmas, New Year break full of hope and expectation for what will happen in the new year, and then just start doing what we have always done on a day to day basis, in other words, we just photocopy one day after another which leads into weeks, months and a year much the same as the last.

You can break this cycle, simply by taking the time to set some goals and create a simple plan of action to achieve those goals. (I know you have just said to yourself that you don’t have the time, but this is exactly the reason you don’t have the time. “Success people don’t have the time and then plan; they have time because they plan”)

Planning is not a difficult process all you need to do is?

1. Review what you achieved and learned over the past year.

It is important to be aware of what you have actually achieved in the past, not just what you haven’t achieved.
Use the financial information to set your plan for 2012. Revenue, number of sales, average dollar sale etc.

2. Create a list of personal & business goals that you want to achieve in 2012.

You need balance in your life, personal goals and activities are more important than business goals. Too many people focus on work only, work hard all their life, planning on what they will do when they retire and then unfortunately pass on shortly after they retire. It is important to live now and also plan for later.

3. Select the 5 most important goals on your list. Ask yourself the question, “Which of these 5 goals, If achieved will create my most successful year ever?”

It is difficult to focus on a lot of goals at one time; most people end up with a list of 20 to 30 goals, so we need to set ourselves a plan of focus on the 5 Key goals.
One of the key focus goals needs to be a specific revenue goal. If you look at your list, most items will depend on you making the money you plan to. So if you focus on activities that will generate the income and are successful, most of your other goals will be achieved. Remember to break your goal down to monthly figures.
The other 4 key goals will be a mixture of business and personal. Keep in mind, your health goal will need to be one of these 4.

4. Select the time frames for achieving these goals.

When setting your goals, you need to be clear on what you want to achieve and you need to be clear on when you want to achieve them by. This makes it easier to create your action plan.

5. For each goal create a list of actions you will need to take to complete the goals.

Review each goal and ask yourself the question, what do I need to do to achieve this goal? You will create a list of mini goals and activities that will need to be carried out and achieved over the year.
Set time frames for carrying out the activities and achieving the mini goals and then list them in the timed sequence. This could be monthly or quarterly timeframes.

6. Create your quarterly plan for the first quarter of the year.

Select the goals, mini goals and activities that are due to be carried out or achieved over the next 3 months and plan which week you will carry out the activity or achieve the goal in.
This quarterly plan is now your focus point.

7. Focus on your plan on a weekly and daily basis.

Prior to the beginning of each week, you plan your activities for the week, using the Prior to starting each day, you plan your day. Remember the Jim Rohn’s Quotation “Never start your day until it is finished” be clear on what you will do and achieve before your start actioning your day.ACTION the activities daily.
This is the step that everyone leaves out and wonders why they don’t achieve their goals. You have to DO it to make it work.

For more information of planning success in 2012, click here “Your 5 Key Goals to Success” where you can obtain a copy of the book and planning templates.

The Time Retrievers 2012 Planning workshops will be held on the 28th & 30th January 2012 in Mulgrave Victoria. For more information, contact us on info@timeretrievers.com.au

Have a great year,

Peter

Having That Difficult Conversation with a Team Member

admin — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:28:02 +0000

Whether you’re a business owner or manage a team, working with people has its up’s and downs. There will be times when you need to address a difficult issue with a team member; it could be performance related, behavioural issues or even body hygiene issues. They have to be dealt with.

Two key things to remember in these situations are, 1. Act quickly, prepare for the conversation and hold it as soon as possible. 2. Focus on the issue, do not attack the person.

The What, Why, How formula is the best way to work through having this difficult discussion. During the conversation you need to be an excellent listener and show empathy as this will enable you to get to the real problem.

1. What

In a clear and concise manner, you need to describe what the performance, behaviour or other issues are.

(Over the past 3 months you have had at least one sick day each week, mostly on a Monday).

2. Why

You need to describe why the issue is a problem.

(This creates a problem for the team as other members have to cover the front counter,

which in turn means they are unable to complete their jobs on time.)

3. How

Explain how this issue effects the business and the people involved.

(This in turn slows down our production; it means non sales staff have to serve our customers, both resulting in poor customer service and reduced sales.)

4. Let them know that the situation has to change. They need to be aware that the problem cannot continue and that there has to be a change.

5. Ask for the employee’s help in finding a solution to the problem. You now need to involve them is resolving the issue.

6. Work together to look for different ways on how to resolve the issue. There will be more than one way to rectify the problem, together you will come up with a variety of solutions.

7. Identify the most appropriate solution. Review each idea and determine which will work the best.

8. Ask what you can do to help implementing the solution. You need to be involved in the solution, it may be extra training required, a change in start and finish times etc.

9. Set an agreed time frame to follow up. There has to be a time frame set for the issue to be resolved and you need to follow up at the agreed time frame to ensure it is resolved. You must always Inspect what you Expect.

There may be an occasion when this process does not rectify the issue, or the employee may not be prepared to accept there is an issue. At this point you will then need to escalate it to a more formal process which may lead to termination if the issue cannot be resolved.

Termination should be furthest from your mind in this process. Your team members were selected because in the interview process, they were deemed to be the best person for the role. Working through this process in a dedicated manner, focused on resolving the issue is the only way to act.

Have a great week,

Peter

10 Efficiency Boosting Tips for your Service Department

admin — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 06:44:54 +0000

Now is the time to break free from the constraints of the current economy.

Many challenges exist, but so do opportunities for the shrewd and the bold. For the service industry, the key to renewal is greater productivity. Service providers must boost customer satisfaction, while keeping costs to a bare minimum. Here are some tips to make your company more productive, competitive and profitable and better equipped for growth:

1. Don’t let billing slip

Generate invoices automatically and make sure every chargeable job is invoiced. It’s easy to overlook an invoice, especially if the job is small. However, this is still lost revenue that you should be collecting. A manual invoice process is more prone to errors leading to slower invoice payment or even missed invoices. This can be the difference between being in the red and being in the black in a recession. When your invoices are generated automatically, your billing stays ahead of the game.

2. Know the value and cost of each contract

In these challenging times, you can’t afford to lose money on an unprofitable service contract. Does each of your contracts actually cover the cost of providing service? Analyse the profitability of each individual contract to determine where the profits and losses are, so you can respond accordingly.

3. Boost worker productivity

Even small time savings from improved dispatcher and technician productivity adds up to big dollar savings & increased efficiency. When service call takers have up-to-date customer, contract and service information at their fingertips this decreases call-taking times & costs, and improves the efficiency of technician scheduling.

4. Work smarter to accomplish more with the same resources

Share information between departments. With a good system you can enter information once and integrate that information between the sales department, service department, parts department and contract administrators. This significantly reduces or eliminates repetitive functions and increases your productivity.

5. Automate your parts inventory

Service technicians need ready access to the right parts to be effective. But an overstocked warehouse can be money down the drain. A balance between parts supply and demand is key-a balance easily achieved through automation software geared to service company needs. A good automated system will reduce inventory loss and lower inventory carrying costs, adding up to increased profits.

6. Boost efficiency through mobile communications

A business that fails to communicate with its field staff and clients in real-time is at a serious competitive disadvantage. Nowadays, a variety of wireless, Internet and e-mail-based solutions allow for fast, accurate exchange of information. Fewer misunderstandings. More time for your staff to get things done. Watch your company’s productivity increase when you use remote solutions to free up valuable human resources.

7. Don’t let high fuel costs eat up your profits

With the high cost of fuel these days you are burning money by driving your paperwork back and forth to the customer site. Save money and speed up your billing cycle by having your technicians complete the work order in the field (even capture the customer’s signature) and enter it immediately into your system which can then begin generating invoices right away.

8. Plan your preventative maintenance wisely

Set-up your PM schedules according to the contract terms, then generate the jobs automatically when required. Plus, with a good service management solution the dispatcher knows what preventative maintenance is due when taking a service call, so it can be scheduled at the same time increasing efficiency and customer satisfaction. Revenue opportunity: Don’t forget the non-contracted customers. Set-up all PM’s in the system and call non-contract customers when a PM is due to generate added business.

9. Know your team

Does everyone on your team work as effectively as they could? Weak performers increase cost and reduce your customers’ satisfaction. Service software will give you the information you need about the productivity of each technician, including: average times to complete service calls, average response times, parts used, call-backs, and revenue generated per technician. Such information helps you determine the strengths and weakness of your staff so you can respond accordingly.

10. Pay attention to existing customers

A customer in the hand is worth two in the bush. It’s always easier to keep a customer you already have than find a new one. Service software will help you to anticipate your customers’ needs, improve responsiveness and reduce call-backs, thus maintaining a solid customer base.

Automation is much easier than many companies realise and the productivity gains are huge:

27% improvement in worker productivity

19% increase in customer satisfaction & retention

17% increase in overall profitability

13% increase in service revenues

*Source: Aberdeen Group

All of these efficiency boosting tips above can be easily achieved through automation software geared to service company needs. Maximizing your service department with Miracle Service™ will make it more efficient and profitable and can deliver a quick ROI.

Information provided by Nexent Innovations. For more information on Miracle Service, visit www.miracleservice.net.au

Have a great week,

Peter

What is the True Cost Per Hour to Run Your Business?

admin — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 06:18:57 +0000

Over years of running service departments and coaching service businesses, I have seen businesses struggle to get over the breakeven point, let alone make a profit. When we investigate their business, we find that the hourly charge out rate is way below what it should be, and on a number of occasions, I have seen businesses that charge an hourly rate that is well below their true hourly cost of running the business. In simple terms, it cost more to run their business than what they invoice. Going broke.

Why, because a lot of business owners calculate their hourly rate by adding the hourly rate of their technicians, adding car cost, mobile phone and a few other items to find out their cost and then add what they believe is their profit margin. A recent example is a client who had calculated their hourly cost to be $45.00 added $20.00 for profit, so was charging $65.00 per hour. When I calculated his true hourly cost, it was $75.59 per hour. They were losing $10.59 per hour and couldn’t understand why they were going broke.

So how did I calculate their true hourly cost?

The first thing you have to understand, is that you need to determine how many revenue generating hours you have to generate your revenue from each year. To do this, you have to first understand that your revenue is generated by your field or workshop staff only. Admin, management, tech specialists etc. are not revenue generators. You need to calculate the hours that your technical staff work each year, how many hours are lost over the year due to training, holidays, sick etc. (you still pay for them) you will then need to calculate 85% of the time they actually work. Once we achieve this point, we now have the actual Revenue Generating Hours. You then divide your total expenses (excluding cost of goods) by the number of revenue generating hours to determine what your true cost per hour is to run your business.

Once you have calculated the true cost of running your business per hour, you can then add your profit margin to the hourly rate.

The Calculation:

If each of your service technicians work a 37.5 hour week, 7.5 hr day, the calculation is;

37.5 hours X 52 weeks = 1950 hrs paid for per year

Hours paid for but not available for billing

Holidays, 4 weeks X 37.5hrs = 150 hrs

Sick leave, 9 days X 7.5 hrs = 67.5 hrs

Training, 20 days X 7.5 hrs = 150 hrs

Public Holidays, 10 days X 7.5 hrs = 75 hrs

Total Hrs 442.5 hrs not available to generate income

Hours worked 1507.5 hrs work time

Productivity at 85% of time worked 1281.4 hrs Available to generate revenue.

From this calculation, you can see that although you pay for 1950 hours per technician per year, you only have 1281.4 of those hours in which you can generate revenue from. That’s 67.7% of what you pay for.

Now that we have the amount of hours available to generate the income, we need to divide this into the total expenses of the business excluding cost of goods.

Calculate your true hourly cost:

A business with 3 technicians will have a total of 3 X 1281.4 = 3844.2 Revenue generating hrs.

If the businesses total expenses are $294,427.00 we divide the expenses by the hours.

$294,427.00 / 3844.2 hours = $76.59 cost per hour to run the business.

At this point you now know that the True Cost of running your business is $76.59 per hour.

Calculate your hourly charge out rate:

The hourly charge out rate will be the cost per hour multiplied by the target profit percentage.

$76.59 per hour X 25% = $95.74 per hour charge rate.

What you charge out per hour is up to you, the key here, is that you clearly understand how much it truly cost you per revenue generating hour to run your business.

If you work a 40 hr week, change the hours to 40 and 8 hours per day.

If you have rostered days off (RDO’s) you will need to add them to the not revenue generating hours.

I have allowed for 20 days training. This is because the best team is a trained team and you need to ensure that your staff are constantly training. I found that 20 days per year is around the optimum balance of training versus productivity that will ensure you have a highly productive team.

Peter Johnson has over 35 years’ experience as a technician, state and national service manager, business owner and business coach. To find out more about managing your true hourly cost of running your business contact Peter at www.timeretrievers.com.au .

To find out more about Miracle Service, service management software visit www.miracleservice.net.au or www.timeretrievers.com.au

How do I get my time back?

admin — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 05:44:44 +0000

For most business owners, the issue of not having enough time is created because they believe they have to do everything. This in turn, means they are always running around in circles chasing their tail from day to day.

If you find that you are flat out doing THINGS and never seem to have enough time to do everything, you need sit down and take some time to do the following;

List all of the activities you do.
Prioritise them starting with 1 being the most important task you do through to the highest number being the least important task you do.
Pick the highest numbered item. (the least important task)
Identify whether it should be eliminated or done by a team member or outsourced. (contractor, virtual assistant, bookkeeper etc)
Document how the activity is done. (creating a procedure)
Select who will be doing the activity from now on.
Train them on how to carry out the activity using the Tell, Show, Do method of training.
1. Tell them what to do.
2. Show them how to do it.
3. Get them to do it until they are proficient at the activity.
Once this process is completed, you will need to determine how you will be advised on the completion and outcome of the activity on a regular basis. (Inspect what you Expect)
Now someone else is doing this activity and not you.

At the completion of this process, you pick the next highest number on the list and do the same process. Over time you will be able to eliminate all but the most important tasks that you need to carry out

I know, I can hear the argument now, “I don’t have time to do it” but quite simply; this is a simple process that will work if you are prepared to put in a little effort to make it happen. Over time, you will get your time back.

If you are prepared to have a go at it, you WILL get the result.

Have a great day,

Peter Johnson

Make your small business more effective

admin — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 00:34:48 +0000

Over the years, I have seen small business owners develop, multiple spreadsheets systems, databases and manual processes designed to keep data about their clients and the operational sides of their businesses. These systems take hours of time to keep up-to-date and they are always behind in updating them.

I ask the question why? When there are packages available that they can use to run their business on a day to day basis that will provide them with all of the information they need to run and grow their business.

QuickBooks or MYOB for your bookkeeping and accounting needs and they have plenty of support available.
ACT or Gold Mine CRM (Customer Relationship Management) packages for managing your sales and customer contact programs.
Point of sale systems for retail outlets to assist them in managing their sales.
Service Management systems such as Miracle Service for businesses that send technicians into the field to service equipment and bill out on a time and materials basis.
Studio Management Systems for photographers, graphic designers and website developers.
Job Bag systems for printing companies, that track the customers job through the printing process.

These are just a few off the shelf systems that are available for small business owners to manage the day to day operations of their business and at the same time collect valuable information that is critical to the decision making process for growing and developing their business.

Remember, when you are looking for a system to run your type of business, always look at what information you can get out of the system, the reports need to provide you with the information you need to make decisions in your business. Then look at how it operates and how easy it is to use.

Most small business owners will cite cost as one of the main reasons they do not invest in these systems. From my experience, the problem is, they waste valuable hours of time trying to update and maintain the manual systems and then don’t have any time left to properly evaluate the information and make quality decisions for their business. Which in the long run cost significantly more?

If you want more time and greater profitability, search for an operational system that suits your business, use it to run the day to day operations of your business and reap the rewards.

Peter

www.miracleservice.net.u