what will you add or take away to make 2009 a better year?

Going to try Cable TV advertising for at least 3 months. Need to get to the existing home market and I see no better way. It’s going to cost $6k for 3 months, so it looks like a good risk considering it only takes one good job to pay break even.

We’ll have a customer qualification script ready so we don’t waste to much time.

Anyone tried Cable TV advertising?

291 views and only one response?? cmon ppl!

With the market in it’s current condition we are planning on taking advantage of 2 main opportunities.

1)  Clearer job descriptions and defined career paths to identify candidates from the growing population of available and growing pool of talent.
2)  Use the office time to put better business practices into place to streamline operations.

On the advertising comment above I offer the following opinion:

For advertising to work, you need to make a consistent long term commitment.  Budget the expense and add it to your overhead.  Otherwise, you will find that advertising doesn’t pay off.  It is a classic small business mistake.  Spend $xxx on some form of advertising to “try it” and find that it didn’t generate work.  But if you talk to businesses that advertise regularly, you’ll find that their advertising does work (because they’ve stuck with the program).  Now, it can be a tight rope walk because for small businesses we are often playing the cash flow game and it may be difficult to justify a large advertising expense when the cash just isn’t there.  But, if you have a business model that is going to work and grow, you’ll find that the long term investment in advertising only helps solidify your place in the market if the positioning statement matches what you actually sell/install.

Looking forward to 2009!

Morgan

Direction:
by writing down your direction and having a sound business plan will allow you to make positive changes within your firm. We feel that there is ALWAYS room for improvement. We look at every client and company function and see room for improvment.

New Business:
We have not advertised for years. We do not do any more local home shows and homearamas. We are busy with new work everyday and we service our clients everyday. We have never had any shortage of work since 911. We have pushed and focused our efforts to a perfect client experience. Referrals is what has done it for us, also delivering more than we have promised. We have had a continuous profit growth since the day the company opened in 1998. We are motivated by happy clients and profits

Only do work that you are comfortable with and the profits. Do not be tempted to drop your profits to get a job and do busy work

Has anyone had any luck working hand and hand with interior designers?  I figure they are doing most of the foot work for just a 5-10 percent of the top depending on the scale of the job and if you do right by them your sure to get a return call. “one hand washes the other”

mavenav - 15 January 2009 08:30 AM

Has anyone had any luck working hand and hand with interior designers?  I figure they are doing most of the foot work for just a 5-10 percent of the top depending on the scale of the job and if you do right by them your sure to get a return call. “one hand washes the other”

It has been 50-50 with us.We work with some and they love it as we help them and give them a % but the other 50% of designers we aproach are scared of us.They think we will get in the way and the client will spend (designer) money on the electronic part.

i guess even 50% is worth it.

We are doing two things to sustain and increase our business for 2009.  First we are going back to all our customers, even if we have not heard from them over the last year.  We have over 150 past and present clients and keep contact on a regular basis with almost 50 of those clients. We offer them a number of services, including your standard cleaning, calibration and maintenance.  We are also expanding our service offering to incorporate monthly recurring revenue streams, such as backup of music, video and client PC’s; monitoring of our clients systems to reduce service calls, IT upgrades including printers, wireless access points and network gear and selling upgrades where possible. Second, we have looked to reduce costs where we can and increase processes and efficiencies.  We have adopted Autotask to manage our projects and new service initiatives for greater accountability.

Best of luck to everyone this year.