The more production that each crew can bill out each week, the higher your profits will be by year end. Your overhead has already been covered at this point, so every dollar of operational profit you earn goes right to your bottom line! This has a huge multiplying effect. Here are 15 ways to increase your weekly production and thus drastically increase your overall profits.
- Keep salespeople motivated to continue selling strong up through December. Use incentives to keep up the selling momentum. Having an increased backlog puts positive pressure on the crews, so they have more than enough work to chew through.
- Increase billable time by decreasing the non billable time (morning, travel, deli and gas stops, evening.)
- Increase production by decreasing (eliminate) the unnecessary go-backs needed to complete a job, by ensuring crews are properly equipped and dispatched, with trucks and tools operating smoothly.
- Ask crews to be flexible in bad weather, so you can hit your weekly production goals.
- Use overtime (OT) to get your extra backlogged work done; the incremental cost of OT will be more than offset by additional operational profit that will drop straight to your bottom line. Do the math!
- Sell more fall and winter add-on services. Remember, enhancement sales can be sold at a higher margin than your standard work anyhow, so it is a double win.
- Take lower margin install work if you can be guaranteed that doing it will not displace other high margin work.
- Walk every maintenance property and sell them pruning services to be done asap.
- Find extra work that can be performed by crews already on maintenance properties.
- Sell holiday decor to be done now. For example, how about selling front door arrangements like you see in the magazine Southern Living?
- Sell fireplaces and hardscapes to be done now (and during the milder winter.)
- Raise your 2016 hourly rate right now in 2015, and apply it to your fall work. Who says you have to wait till January to raise rates?
- Deliver your Xmas presents to clients early, in person; and they will likely give you more work to take care of.
- Go back to your commercial and institutional clients and see if they have any 2015 budget monies that have not been spent.
- Incentivize your crews to increase their Weekly Production. Make crews accountable for their weekly production goals, and motivate them to be as efficient as possible. Share the winnings when they sprint through the finish line.
Connect the dots:
Many employees may not immediately grasp how sprinting through the finish line, and ensuring a healthy net profit, will benefit them and their family. Take the time to explain it to them by connecting the dots on how it benefits the company and how it benefits them directly. Using an incentive plan helps see directly how it benefits them.
Breakthrough Idea:
Speeding up sales (produced and billed) in the fourth quarter and sprinting through the finish line will greatly impact and increase your net profits.
