And it cost me almost all of my profits… When I hired sales reps, I just made up their commissions. I didn’t know what my exact margins were. I just decided on what felt motivating for a sales rep and that’s what I paid for their sales. In retrospect, I look at that and wonder how the heck I didn’t see that as a problem?! And it cost me almost every bit of profit. Because as we grew, I made less and less money. It was backwards. And I knew it was a sore spot but I didn’t realize it was suffocating the business. Here’s my advice. Go through your services one by one. Analyze your margins. Then look at your marketing spend and your commissions. Those 2 have to add up to a simple number below CAC (Cost to Acquire Customers. (You decide what your CAC should be) Cost to service + Overhead + CAC = Expenses + Owners pay + Profits It sounds simple. But because it’s simple, don’t skip it. It’s the simplest math to keep you safe and protect your margins.

Far too often I hear sales reps get shut down on this objection. They feel like they’re intruding or being combative if the customer already has someone else doing that service. DON’T LET THAT STOP YOU! There are sooooooooooooo many why they would switch to you. You just need to feel out the conversation to find the reason. They will almost never spit it out in plain terms. Ask probing questions Agree with the positive points Take mental notes where the customer seems like they want better from their current company Then highlight those in your conversation as bonuses for using you.

I was at a conference today and I heard a metric that I haven’t heard before. I’m sure you’ve heard of measuring dollars per route or route value per day. Even breaking that down to route value per hour. But what about route value per working hour meaning the time a technician is clocked in to a revenue producing job. So you cut out all of their travel time and only do the math on the revenue that was produced when they were doing fulfillment work on sales. These are your true billable hours. I’m curious if you think your number is: $30-$50 per hour $50-$80 per hour $80-$110 per hour $110+ per hour Before you go do the math, take a wild guess. How much do you think you are producing per billable hour? Put it in the comments

Just for fun. Post your wildest story of something that happened on the job in the comments. Here’s one of mine. I killed a rat with a lady’s prosthetic leg! 🦿It was like a scene out of The Little Mermaid when the chef is chasing the crab 🦀 in the kitchen. I was setting traps and a rat ran out and I was chasing him all Over the room and I finally had him cornered but that was the only thing I could reach. So I asked the lady if I could use it and she said “whack away!” So I did! 🤣

Let’s say someone already pays for the service you provide but they pay less than you charge. Here’s how to make that sale