Nexstar Money Masters Seminar
 

I'd like to thank everyone I met at the Nexstar Money Masters in New Orleans for the warm welcome and interest in the NSPG system. I'd also like to extend a special thanks to the folks at Stuart Services for their hospitality.

The Next Money Masters event is scheduled for January 21-22 in Boulder Colorado hosted by Tom Robichaud of Precision Plumbing & Heating.

Mike Conroy

Productivity
Practically every day we read about the importance of productivity in the business section of the newspaper.  But, we seldom sit down and think about it affects our bottom line.  In most service businesses, employees are much less "productive" than in other industries.  Travel time, breaks, truck stocking, "free estimates," etc. all take away from the productivity of your field employees.

This is a problem and an opportunity. 

The problem part is obvious.  You have to pay your employees whether they are billing out their time or not, so the large amount of non-productive time increases your costs.  Many service businesses average about 50% productive time for their field employees.  This forces your prices up and can lower your profits.

The opportunity arises from the fact that there is so much inefficiency that small changes can make significant improvements in your bottom line.  Adding just 15 minutes a day of productive billable time for each field employee can add significantly to your bottom line. Improvements in scheduling & dispatch, targeted advertising, and improved sales techniques to increase add on sales are just some of the techniques to improve your employees' productivity.

The first step that all businesses should take is to measure the productivity of your employees so you know where you stand.  (Write down how many hours they work each day, then total it up for the week - every week). This will also help you in setting your prices at a profitable level using the automatic calculations in Numbers Cruncher. Then, make some adjustments in how you do business, and continue to measure productivity to be sure you're moving in the right direction.

One of the easiest ways to improve productivity is to train your field employees to look for potential problems during a service call.  For example, take note of old washing machine hoses and suggest replacement at the more economical addon rate.  Or, even better, suggest an automatic shutoff valve installation.  You provide something the customer really needs, and add billable hours without incurring added travel time.  You both win.

Measure Monthly, Adjust Quarterly
 & Achieve Annual Profit Goals

Call us at 800-841-8542 to schedule a Numbers Cruncher Review so you can be sure that you are making the profits you need every day.       

Save hours of work and keep your NSPG Flat Rate system up and running.

Backup, Backup, Backup
This tip is one you have heard a hundred times before.  Ignore it at your own risk!

Your hard drive could stop working, without warning, any minute now.  How do I know this?

Two days ago I had a 14 month old hard drive stop working without any warning at all.  One day it worked, the next it did not.  End of story.  All the information on the drive is gone due to a malfunction in the internal drive controller.  Fortunately, this was the drive we use to backup data on this network, so all of the original data still exists on other drives.

You need to back up all of the critical information on your computers on a regular basis. Ideally it should be saved onto another device so that a complete failure of one computer will not be a catastrophe for you.  The simplest backup device in today's computers is probably the CD-RW drive.  You can copy your critical information onto a CD and store it in a secure location.

For your NSPG Flat Rate system, you can use the Backup function to automatically create a compressed data file that you can store in a safe location.  Go to the File form, click on the Backup Data button, select where to save the backup. 

You can then copy the compressed file to any place that you feel is secure.  Most compressed data files will even fit on a floppy disk.

You too could have a hard drive that is less than two months out of warranty fail on you.  What would it mean to your business if you lost all of your business data with no warning.  Would you lose your customer list? Your Numbers Cruncher data? Your Flat Rate Books? Your accounting data? 

Take some time and get it done today!

The next Nexstar Money Masters will be January 21 & 22, 2005 in Boulder Colorado.  In addition to the seminar, it will include a comprehensive tour of Precision Plumbing, Heating & Cooling.

Precision Plumbing, Heating & Cooling is a $4 million in sales Nexstar member that has enjoyed an average growth rate of 100% over the last 4 years. Precision was 100% new construction and has converted to 100% service. They have been voted "Best of Boulder" three years in a row and received the Better Business Bureau's 2003 Gold Star Award. Come and see how it's done.

Registration deadline: January 6, 2005

Advertisement

Save $700 Today

Until the end of the year, buy the NSPG Flat Rate software system and receive a FREE Palm PDA loaded with the NSPG Flat Rate for Palm software. 

The NSPG Flat Rate system with Truck & Shop inventory is designed to really help you improve your business and increase your profits.

The NSPG Flat Rate system allows you to quickly and easily have Flat Rate price books that match your company‘s needs, and now you can put it on your free Palm too.

This means that you can have the best Flat Rate price books on the market plus get a complete flat rate system in your Palm for Free.

Call 800-841-8542 to get started today.