Staying Organized and Profitable in times of Growth!
If you’re like the majority of pool companies, this year
meant an upswing in business, and possibly even more business than you wanted
or could handle. Business was up, but
were your profits, too? Without profitability, an increase in business just
takes more of your company’s time and resources.
Tracking your profitability throughout the year is key to
running a successful business. It’s not something to put off until the end of
the year, when it’s too late to make important changes. Fortunately, there are
ways you can monitor and impact your profitability, leaving no doubt that all
your hard work was worth it at year’s end.
Many company owners have a natural gut feeling about their
profitability – you may not know your exact numbers, but you can generally
sense if the company is running well or needs some adjustments. But that gut
feeling should be backed up by real numbers, and the good news is that this
type of tracking is not difficult. We can group expenses and income into a
variety of categories to gain a simple understanding of profitability or
performance that leads to profitability. This provides concrete insights with
minimal effort, especially during your busy times, ensuring your company is
trending in the right direction.
Our seminar, Discover the Formula to Get Organized and
Increase Efficiency, takes a deep dive into these various categories,
providing a better understanding of how to measure, monitor and adjust,
drastically improving your company’s overall profitability.
Our experience in working with hundreds of pool companies
that use Pool Office Manager Software provides us with insights that can help
you improve your own profitability. For example, many companies are aware of
their largest profitability roadblocks, yet they ignore them, building tasks
and processes around them instead of solving the root problem. Not only does
the problem remain, but working around it leads to inefficiencies that impact
profitability.
We recommend the simple “5-Why” method of understanding the
core problem, addressing the root cause and solving it. This approach simply
means you drill down through the problem, with each answer forming the next
question until you can identify the root cause.
Let’s try a simple example: You know that your profitability
is taking a major hit because your crews chronically start their days late. Why?
Because they have to wait for the route list from the manager. Why? Your
manager can’t create the schedule in advance, and has to wait until morning,
because he has to wait on the status of parts and availability. Why? Your
company lacks an inventory system, so someone has to physically check part
availability before the manager can finalize the schedule.
In this scenario, it only took three “Why” questions to see
that the issue with crews getting out on time is actually an inventory tracking
issue. This exercise typically takes 3-5 “Why” to find the core problem. Solving
core issues and not surfaces issues, will likely solve multiple problems with
one solution. Just like trying to clean
a pool efficiently, we provide the tools that help your business operate more
efficiently, leading to more sustainable profitability with the least amount of
time and effort.
Many pool companies nationwide are challenged by the same
issues, and our seminar focuses on business improvement in a physical sense,
but also how technology can improve your operations and your bottom line. With
so many tools, apps and programs available, it’s easy to reduce the time needed
for office-related tasks. Yet, it’s
important to be selective about what technology you use, because the wrong tool
can make any job less efficient quickly. This is why we often see many pool
companies sticking with manual inefficient processes.
We’ve done the work for you
- we’ve found, used and verified
a handful of tools and programs that can instantly save you time and money, and
they’ve done so for many who’ve attended our seminar in years past. Some of
these tools are totally free!
Using the right tools and technology can save significant
operational hours, and the marginal cost is a no-brainer. This seminar will walk through the tools we
use and recommend to pool companies, along with other tools for tasks such as:
- ·
Messaging and communication
- Customer intake signup forms
- Emailed or texted service reports
Often times companies don’t realize how easy it is to adopt
a new app or software to increase their efficiency and ultimately profits. Our
seminar will show you how and showcase the various software’s that work well
together.
We wrap up the seminar with pricing and invoicing
strategies, an audience favorite. We
discuss the pros and cons of simple, flat-rate pricing, service + chemical
pricing, autopay, pre-pay, recurring pay and nearly all the other ways that
pool companies’ invoice and collect revenue.
This segment focuses on the cost of each strategy with examples from
companies who’ve tried various solutions.
For example, if your pricing structure includes service cost
plus parts/chemicals costs, accurate tracking of any parts and chemicals used
is critical. But we’ve found, and many owners admit, that these costs are not
accurately recorded, which hurts profitability long term, and sometimes
significantly. Does it make sense to go to a flat rate pricing system? Does it
make sense to devote time and resources into tracking and record keeping? How much money are we leaving on the table by
“donating” parts that were supposed to be invoiced?
There is no right or wrong answer to anything we’ve
mentioned in this article but this seminar will get you thinking. We’ll share
behind the scenes information of what other pool companies do, from pricing to
operations to invoicing and more. This
information, along with tools, resources and real-world examples, will
instantly make an impact on your business, improve your profitability and help
it grow along with the rest of the industry that’s booming
Signup for Discover the Formula to Get Organized and
Increase Efficiency in Orlando this year on Saturday, February 20. Find it in registration in the Sat AM W305AB block.