It’s Just Around The Corner

It’s already that time of year again.  You can hear the music playing when you’re out shopping.  Neighbors are starting to decorate their homes before it gets too cold to get up on their ladder. It seems like it gets earlier and earlier every year.  The last thing anybody wants to be accused of is being called a Scrooge. Keeping that in mind, the top question we get asked every year at this time is, “What should I give my employees for a Christmas bonus?”

It is very hard for me to answer this question because the truth is…I love Christmas!  Or at least I love the idea of Christmas and the feeling you get when giving to someone else.  So it’s even harder for me to say that the days of giving Christmas bonuses are over.  You shouldn’t be giving your employees a Christmas bonus.

Don’t Lose Sleep Or Employees

Why spend countless hours trying to figure out how much to give this employee and how much to give that employee only to end up hurting someone because someone else received more than them? Or making an employee mad because they thought they should or would have received more.  Or even worse yet, losing a good employee over the whole thing?  In the end, it makes all owners feel bad about themselves and about their unappreciative employees.  Nobody ever wants to feel like that.

Try Something New This Year

Why not try something new?  Try spreading Christmas cheer throughout the whole year by putting in a bonus system that lets them earn their bonus on a monthly, quarterly, or semi-annually basis.  You can even develop some type of incentive program that you can use during the annual holiday party.  This way, everyone earns their bonus based on their own hard work during a set period of time.

By doing this, you eliminate questions like, “How much someone should someone get for a bonus when they have only been working for us for a couple of months?” Or questions like, “How much of a bonus should I pay the office versus the field, or should they be the same?”  I’d like to ask you, “How would your techs have any jobs to sell if your office staff was not there to answer the phones, dispatch the calls, order parts, or call in payroll?”

There are plenty of ideas out there.  You can choose to reward cash or gifts or even come up with travel incentives for their whole family.  You can make your own program or hire someone to put one together for you.  Either way, you can simplify the process.

1)      Start by figuring out what percentage of your profits you want to share with your employees.  There are two key words here to keep in mind.  The first is profits.  You cannot share what you do not have.  The second is share.  Don’t be a Scrooge.  Become partners with your employees and you will find you have much happier employees who really care about your business and your customers.

2)      Develop a program that suits your company.  Talk to employees and find out what would inspire them to do a better job.  Decide how often you will administer the bonus, monthly, quarterly, or annually, and what the bonus will be.  Make it transparent and easy to understand.  They will not participate if they do not understand it.

3)      Make it easy to administer.   “The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray,” and employees are always skeptical about reward and incentive programs so make sure you are able to administer the program with ease, or hire someone who can.

Give Yourself A Gift

Eliminate the holiday bonus pay system and carve your own path that best suites your employees and your needs, and lets you stop beating yourself up and start enjoying the holidays again.

Multi-tasking Friend or Foe?

It really bothers me when I hear people say that they are good multitaskers.  I hear this all the time, especially when I am interviewing perspective employees.  How could everyone be good at multitasking?  I’m not, and I consider myself to be an intelligent person. So needless to say, I was quite thrilled when I found out that new research had shown that our brains were not meant to do more than two things at a time — and certainly not with any real efficiency.  This past week, I did a little research on the productivity of multitasking and found I was not alone in my beliefs. I discovered several interesting studies that backed up what I had already suspected.

Science Contradicts Productivity of Multi-tasking

Due to advances in the technology of medical scanning, science has recently been able to study how the brain works when it comes to focusing on more than one complex set of tasks at a time.   What they had found was contrary to what was previous thought.  The human brain is not capable of juggling several different functions at once and actually becomes overworked and stressed when put in these situations, sometimes even leading to a brain freeze.  Think about it as the processor on your computer.  The more software programs you have running at one time, the more stress on the processor to perform, leaving it to work less efficiently and sometimes even freeze up on you.

The man behind the research is Prof. Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA.  Miller performed studies on volunteers who allowed their heads to be scanned while performing several different tasks and found out that while performing these functions, our brains have to actually scatter back and forth, leaving us much less efficient than if we were to just concentrate on one item at a time.  What’s even worse is what he found when we try to actually concentrate deeply on the two items in front of us. We then put our brains on overload, causing ourselves at the very least some stress. In some, this overload can result in rage, and in some children, even autism.

Employees Acting Like They’re Smoking Marijuana?

While this was already enough for me to prove my point, I also found a psychiatrist at the University of London, Glenn Wilson, who goes on to put it another way.  He says trying to perform just two simple tasks while sitting at your desk, such as texting and writing an e-mail, could take10 points off your IQ.  You might be thinking to yourself right now, “How bad could 10 points be?” Well, some of us can’t afford to lose the 10 points, so consider this, 10 points off your IQ is the equivalent to losing one night’s sleep, or as Peter Bregman of The Harvard Business Review put it, “twice the equivalent of smoking marijuana.”

So if you’re a business owner reading this post, think about the last time one of your employees made you scratch your head or scrunch your brows.  Is multitasking the culprit for their poor decision?  I don’t know, but I wouldn’t count it out.  What I would do is re-evaluate their job description and recognize that each task involved is unique, and you need to separate it from the rest.  Make sure you visually display the workflow process for these tasks and make an arrangement in the way you would prioritize them if you were doing the job yourself. Don’t assume they can read your mind or would do them the way you would do them. And lastly, be sure to provide the correct environment for them to perform each one of these jobs to their fullest efficiency.  Each job should have an environment of its own that you do not share with another.

We would all like to believe that we can do it all, but the truth is we cannot, at least not with the efficiency and effectiveness of someone who specializes in their job.

Talk About Procrastinating

Two weeks until my sister’s wedding, and I hadn’t had my bridesmaid dress altered yet.  I admit that I am a procrastinator, but this was ridiculous even for me.

To be honest, I was not looking forward to wearing the dress. Don’t get me wrong, it was a beautiful dress.  It was long, a flowing, raspberry-colored gown with a strapless bodice and a few rhinestones adorning the middle that connected two ends to a sheer piece of material that bustled around the back of the dress.  It was gorgeous on the model wearing it online.  Once I tried it on, though, I quickly realized that a strapless dress was not meant for my body type and thus the reason I was not looking forward to wearing the dress.  And now we were only two weeks away from the wedding day, and I needed a miracle worker.

I decided to ask a friend for a referral. She had lived in the area all her life and quickly recommended a woman on 12^th street in Paso Robles.  Joe and I drove over to the shop first thing in the morning only to be greeted by a sign saying they were not open until 11am.  “OK,” I said. “We’ll come back at lunch.”

At lunch time, Joe drove me to the shop again and dropped me off in front of the store while he went to find a parking space.  I quickly walked inside with my dress hanging from my arms to find a young woman at her sewing machine while an elderly woman appeared from behind a curtain and greeted me with a coarse and irritated, “Can I help you?”

I Will Take That As A “No”

I told her how I was uncomfortable with my dress being strapless and that I would like to add sleeves and have it shortened a bit and that I would need to have it done in two weeks.  She turned and looked at the young women who continued to work on her machine while shaking her head and saying “no” and then looked back at me while shaking her head back and forth.  “No, we would not be able to do that.  At very best, we could add one strap here,” pointing at neckline of the dress, “but you would have to find and purchase the material for us and then bring it back.”

“Oh,” I said, disappointed.  “I guess I could do that. You wouldn’t be able to do some type of small cap sleeve though, just one strap?” I asked.  “No,” the elderly woman said, while the young woman in the back of the room continued to shake her head back and forth.

“OK.  Would you be able to tell me where there is a fabric store or do you have any recommendations?  We are new to the area, and I am not familiar with all of the stores around here yet,” I said.  “The closest place would be to drive to San Luis Obispo.  There is a store there,” she said as she turned away and walked back behind the curtain.  I realized that she was not really going to give me any more of her time, so I had better get out of there and start looking for material if I wanted to get this dress done.

Little Did I Know My Miracle Worker Was Just Around The Corner

I walked outside to find that Joe hadn’t even found a parking space yet and was coming around the corner, so I flagged him down. I told him the story, and he couldn’t believe it.  He said that while he was driving around the block looking for a parking space, he saw another tailor shop on 13^th street and asked if I wanted to give it a try before driving all the way down to San Luis Obispo on some wild goose chase.  I was a bit hesitant.  I knew the place around the corner, Bozo’s Tailoring.  There was something about going to a place named after a clown I grew up watching on television during my childhood that disturbed me.  All I could think of was how Bozo the clown was always making fun of Cookie the clown.  Teasing him and playing tricks on him.  I gave it a few seconds and said, “OK, I guess at this point it can’t hurt to at least try,” and Joe headed around the corner and parked at their rear entrance.

I walked in this time, not so quickly, with my dress hanging off my arm.  Although the building looked new, the shop looked as if it had been there for half a century.  There were probably hundreds of items hanging on a rack near the entrance next to hundreds of spindles of thread.  On the wall, there were four black and white pictures of a few well known local celebrities from the area.  Again, an elderly woman greeted me at the front, this time though with a smile.  She asked, “How may I help you?”

I again told my fear about the dress being strapless and what I was looking for and said at the end, “Do you think you might be able to help me?” She said, “No problem, go put the dress on in the dressing room over there.”  I was a bit shocked, and it took me a moment to move.  She took me by the arm and showed me over to the dressing room, turning on the light.  “Come right back out here once you have the dress on,” she said.

After putting the dress on, I walked out to the small staging area in front of the mirrors, and she took one look and said, “Well, we can take this material from here and drape it over your shoulders like this,” as she draped the material around my shoulders and over my neck, creating what basically amounted to a  shawl.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  “We could also do something like this,” and I stopped her hand from changing anything.  I had looked at this dress 50 times in the mirror at home and hadn’t thought about creating the shawl using the material bustling in the back of the dress.  This was perfect.  Exactly the solution I had been looking for.  The dress looked beautiful. This woman was a genius!  Here was my miracle worker.

Many Lessons Learned

There are many lessons from this experience that I want to share with you in this blog post.  Most of all, I wanted to share with you the idea of tailoring your solutions to what your customers really want.

My first experience would have fixed part of the problem with my dress, taking it from a strapless dress to having one strap and not having to worry about it falling down or constantly having to pull it up while dancing the Macarena.  It would have been a solution that still would have left me very unhappy in the end after doing half the work myself chasing down the right material.  I would have found myself looking for a way to get out of standing up in my sister’s wedding, like maybe the airline lost my luggage.

The second experience left me in a pure state of bliss wondering where else I could now wear this fabulous dress.  Would it be appropriate to wear the dress to our local Legion Hall for the monthly town hall meeting?  Or maybe just to crash someone else’s wedding party?

If you are finding that customers always choose your lowest option, then you are probably not listening to what your customers are really saying to you.  If you always seem to get price complaints about your prices being too high, then you are probably not really listening to what your customers are really saying to you.   If you are always saying “can’t or won’t” to your customers, then you are probably really not listening to what your customers are saying to you.  And if you are not really listening to what your customers are saying to you, then you are not really tailoring your options to what your customers really want as a solution to their problem.

Needless to say, I hired Bozo’s Tailoring for the job and received my dress back in time a full week before the wedding, with plenty of time to find shoes.  Just kidding!

Last month, from my home in Templeton, Calif., I planned a wedding shower for my sister and future brother-in-law, who live in the Chicagoland area. As I started to make all the necessary phone calls to find a venue, caterer, flowers and so on, I quickly realized that even in a down economy, some companies just never get it when it comes to providing good service.  Had the word service become generic like Kleenex or Jell-O?

I called various  companies and explained  this was the first wedding shower I had ever planned for my one and only baby sister, that I wanted it to be very special and, well, perfect. Though I told them that I was 2,200 miles away, I was usually passed along to someone’s voicemail or told that I would get a call back.  Or my least favorite response was the suggestion to go online and download a form that I would need to fill out and fax back and then wait for an improbable response.

I was very skeptical at this point about getting reliable results, as you could probably imagine, and decided I would have to fly into Chicago and just put the entire thing together in person. I had become disgusted with the whole process until I came across Kathy, the owner of On Occasion, a caterer in Palatine, IL.  As I interviewed Kathy, I began to realize that she was a little different from all the rest.

She had started off the conversation by asking me some questions, and once she took me through her process, I began to realize that she might be more than just your usual caterer. So I thought I would test her service and ask her if she does anything like, oh, let’s say provide tablecloths?  She answered with an emphatic “yes.”  I then said, “How about plates and utensils?”  She nodded while saying, “Of course.”  I thought I’d throw her off with the next one.  I said, “Kathy, do you think you can handle the centerpieces?  I have a specific idea in mind using Vanda orchids that I saw in a Martha Stewart magazine.  Is that something you think you can handle if I forward you a picture?”

Kathy stopped writing and put her pen down and said, “Julie, I want you to think about the word caterer and then tell me what it means to you.”   Suddenly it all became so very clear.  Kathy must have seen the look on my face, and as she put her hand on my shoulder, she said,   “My sole job is to attend to your needs and wants so that you can give your one and only baby sister the very special and perfect wedding shower that you always dreamed of.”

Needless to say, all the anxiety that had started to build up in my neck and shoulders in recent  weeks had now dissipated as though I had taken  a few sips of an apple martini while sitting at the bar waiting for my table at Ruth’s Chris Steak House.  I could now take a deep, long breath and stop worrying, knowing that everything is going to be just fabulous in Kathy’s more-than-capable hands.  It didn’t matter that Kathy wasn’t the cheapest caterer out there or that her shop was small with only a few employees or that she was located two towns away. What mattered is that she took the time to understand my needs, which were to have someone take care of everything for me. Kathy would provide the service, so that I could also enjoy the party.

If you look at the word “service,” or serve, you will find that there are many definitions.  So I would like to offer one up of my own.  Serve: To gratify the wants and needs of your customers without them having to lift a finger, make unnecessary phone calls, download forms or fill out contact sheets.  The most your customer should have to do for you is provide payment.  The rest is up to you and your team of people.

Maybe we should change the title of Customer Service to Customer Caterer.

Watch this funny video on  “Confessions of A Boiler Room Junkie” by Gwendolyn Bounds of the Wall Street Journal. Then read her article on how more and more consumers are doing “mechanical makeovers” when it comes to their residential heating and cooling home improvement needs by clicking on the link below the image.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704862404575350720302248474.html?KEYWORDS=In+the+new+dream+home

Addition by Subtraction

I recently spent a rainy Saturday afternoon watching a show called “Hoarding: Buried Alive.”  I really didn’t have time to sit and watch TV but I couldn’t stop watching.  Once I was able to get a peak into what looked like your everyday average person’s home I found I needed to see more, like watching a train wreck. 

The show takes you inside not only the home of an extreme hoarder but also their mind.  They give you a peak at their compulsions to accumulate and store large quantities of what most of us would call junk, but to them are prized possessions. Although I have never been inside someone’s home as extreme as these, I have been to many contractor offices that I might nominate for the show.   It really got me to thinking about part four of our eight part series on how to do addition by subtraction and create more space to organize your contracting office.

Admitting You Have a Problem

I suspect that most of us hoard at least a little bit, collecting or holding on to items that are probably not necessary or useful.  For instance, I like to hang on to every piece of paper that comes my way for fear of possibly needing it down the line.  Many contracting companies tend to hold on to certain items they feel may come in useful in the future, taking up valuable real estate within their compound and setting a poor example for current and prospective employees.

I’ve seen all sorts of things like old computer monitors, keyboards, phone systems, cell phones, pagers,  letterhead and envelopes with old logos, expired marketing pieces, endless supplies of pens, markers, highlighters and sticky note pads and damaged parts and equipment that have been pulled out of customer’s homes with the good intention of “using it for future training purposes.”  This is just the beginning. I can not even tell you how much space is wasted by those of you in the HVAC industry storing sheet metal that you will never use.  I’ve seen contractors build garages and warehouses, purchase used trailers and rent an offsite storage facility when they’ve run out of room to store these items. Is it really worth it?

If you are not sure if this is you, you should probably seek further help. I won’t be able to help you with this one blog post.  For those of you who do realize that you have a problem letting go I have a few tips for you on how to start organizing your space so you can save time and money and reduce your stress and frustration levels.

Where Should You Start?

Start by determining which areas of your office you want to improve.  Maybe your problem is paper like mine, or a clutter problem from parts and equipment being returned to the shop.  Or maybe it’s just a lack of knowledge not knowing how to properly dispose of certain items like office equipment or getting rid of tools that no longer work. Once you’ve decided which areas you want to attack first you can start to develop a process to get organized and stay there.

Next, use a sorting system to figure out what stays and what goes.  This can be plastic bins or cardboard boxes. Or if you need something bigger maybe garbage cans or empty 55 gallon drums.  You can even lay down tarps or blankets to sort items on.   Now label each sorting area as follows: Stays, Garbage, Donate, and if you really need to, a Not Sure.  Although I learned that with the Not Sure bin you need to give yourself a time limit to make a decision.  Something like 48 hours so the items don’t end up just piling up again.

Once you have sorted through your first area and decided on the items you want to keep you need to decide where each item will go and label that space.  You might be wondering why you need to label the space.  I feel strongly that if this particular item that you are willing to give up valuable space on your shelves or in your office, and go through all the trouble of creating a system to keep from things getting cluttered again is not worth labeling, then it is probably not worth keeping.  With this said, it you have an item that you only purchase once a year or so and is taking up space on the shelf, you may want to rethink whether or not to keep that item and go a different route.

Maybe you have an old outdated dot matrix printer (I’ve seen it in many a contractor offices out there) and you keep the paper and ink cartridges stored in your warehouse  You may want to consider upgrading your printers.  Try purchasing the same models, or at least brands, so that you can keep things orderly.

Or let’s say you have a CSR who likes to use a particular style pen to write with while the techs in the field are using a custom logo company pen.  Well I say what’s good for one is good for all.  Unless there is some physical reason for needing the comfort grip 5000 with automatic refilling ink wells and a leather holster, I can’t imagine why everyone can’t use the same thing.  Next thing you know that CSR has left the company and now you need to upgrade to the 6000 model for the new CSR.

I can go on with example after example about how we purchase items that we don’t need and rarely use.  You can substitute pens with staplers, scissors, markers, highlighters, sticky notes, company tools, uniforms, phones systems, software, and so on.  If you are not willing to find a permanent space and label an item so it can be inventoried, then it is probably not worth keeping.

Develop Your System

Now that your area is neat and organized you need to develop a system for keeping it that way.  I like to walk myself through the situation.  Let’s say the problem is with UPS deliveries and boxes piling up around the front office.  You might want to start by thinking about who should really be accepting these items.  If you are getting deliveries for supplies or parts and have an inventory person or warehouse, then start by having all deliveries going to that person or place and not the front office.

Maybe you’re a small three man shop and you don’t have a person or warehouse, than think about whom and where it would be best to accept deliveries and start there.  Have that person sort through items as they come in immediately and put the itmes in their proper labeled place.  If that person has another job which takes precedence, then have them put them aside until the end of the day and take 15-30 minutes to sort and put each item away in its proper labeled space.  Make it part of their job description on their priority list.

Maybe your problem is not with boxes but with paperwork from the field piling up.  Start by taking yourself through your paperwork process.  Who should techs be turning in tickets and paperwork to and how often?  What should be included? Should it be paper clipped or stapled?  What type of check in process is there?  Do they just throw the tickets in the basket or is someone there to ask questions and give detailed information to?  After turning the paperwork in what’s the next step?  Does it go to accounting, dispatch, or customer service? What does each of these departments do with the paperwork? Is there a checks and balance system and how long before the paperwork is processed and put away?  All this and more will need to be considered for each problem area in order to keep things running smoothly and from piling up again.

Document Your Process

Once you have the system figured out for keeping your contracting office neat and organized you need to document your system and keep it transparent.  If you want to keep your systems ongoing as you lose certain employees and gain new ones you need to keep your process out in the open where everyone can see.  When I say out in the open I mean “in your face” transparent with step by step instructions and pictures.

Think like a fast food restaurant where there is a sign saying “Line Starts Here.”  They usually also have a sign saying “Order Here” and “Pay Here” as if it were that difficult to figure out.  Then there are huge blown up menus right in front of your eyes with all your choices along with another huge sign marked “Drink Fountain-Free Refills.”   It’s hard to go wrong in a fast food restaurant.

Employees need the same thing when it comes to keeping your office organized.  They have already been trained for years by other businesses to look for the signs on how to do things.  Why not run with this concept?

Going Forward

De-cluttering your office with items you rarely or never use will give you more space for things better served, like maybe a training or lunch room for employees.  Who knows?  Maybe now you can have an office of your own instead of sharing with your manager or spouse.

Not only will your office look cleaner and neater, you will be able to attract and retain better employees who share the same values as you. These values extend throughout the field to technicians trucks and in customers homes. Remember the old phrase “monkey see monkey do?”  If your employees see that you respect your office then they will want to fit in by respecting it also.

Pride yourself on placing value on a simplified environment with fewer things and you will never have to go through the process of de-cluttering your office again.

Using A Map To Get Around

One of my favorite pastimes is traveling.  It doesn’t matter where, I just like to get out of the house and explore new places.  As a little girl, my mom would pack some snacks, gather my brother and sister and hop in the car and head off while my dad sat in the navigator seat with his oversized  Rand McNally map in hand.

We took many trips over the years, exploring all corners of the country, sometimes more than once.  We’ve traveled out east along the coast visiting the Nation’s Capital, the Big Apple and Niagara Falls. We’ve been out west stopping to see the Corn Palace, Wal-Drug, Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone National Park. We drove through the Redwoods (literally through a redwood tree) and down the coast to Big Sur. We saw Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon and a re-enactment of the OK Corral in Tombstone, AZ.  I’ve been to Disneyland and Disney World many times over, all along my dad carrying his trusty map.

Keeping Us On Course

As I sat in the back seat keeping peace between siblings, I often wondered why he needed this map.  If you paid close-enough attention, the signs along the highway would guide you wherever you wanted to go throughout the country.  But he always carried the map, studying it closely from the passenger seat of the car, so in case we needed to make a detour or got off track while stopping to see Ruby Falls or some deserted ghost town, he would be able to guide us back to the main stretch of road.

Drawing An Office Map

Designing an office map is very much like taking a road trip in that it allows you to plan out all the details ahead of time while looking at it from a bird’s-eye point of view. And this is why it is part three of our eight part series in organizing your contracting office.  You can think of it as your road map and should be carrying it around with you at all times as you navigate your way through your organizational journey.

Since most of you reading this post do not have the luxury of starting from scratch, I have put together nine steps (and plenty of tips) to start you off on your new journey.  And if you happen to read this post before designing your office, then consider yourself lucky. This post will be saving you thousands of dollars and many sleepless nights.

1. Start by determining the size of your space based on your current needs and your projected growth of the company.  Since you don’t want to be redesigning your office, again anytime soon you need to be sure to account for those added employees down the line.

2. Next, measure your facility from the outside, carefully drawing it out and writing down measurements as you go.  Don’t try to draw the building and then measure.  This will only lead to you missing important bump-outs and irregularities and many eraser marks.  Don’t forget to mark any mechanical equipment, utilities or out buildings on the property along with the parking lot and spaces.

3. Now head inside and do the same.  Be sure to take into consideration any small bump- outs and closets, even if you use it only for the furnace or water heater.  Measure furniture and system panels carefully to keep from having cramped walkways. Maybe you have a bay window area or use a space below the stairs for storage.  All need to be taken in for consideration during these first steps of the planning stage.

4. Determine how you plan to use your space.  How many jobs do you have in your office, and how many employees for each job? (refer to Part Two: Creating a Business Organizational Chart).  What are the primary and secondary work areas for each of these jobs? For instance, your CSR’s primary job is answering the phones, while her secondary tasks may include sending out sales letters or filing paperwork.  Should there be separate work areas for each of these tasks or can you accomplish this at the CSR desk?

5. Plan for accessible filing systems. This would include customer files, vendor files, employee files, project files, reference files and, last of all, electronic files.  Which leads me to this following note: In this day and age of the “paperless office,” I would still recommend having a space planned out for all paper files. If you haven’t gone completely paperless, then there’s a reason for it, you’re not ready to go completely paperless.  Let’s face it, it can be scary. So instead of losing sleep over whether or not you ran Mr. Johnson’s credit card before shredding the ticket in the document shredder, take baby steps and use a file system for the time being.

6. Don’t forget to designate space for office supplies.  Personally, I like to keep these items inventoried in the warehouse, where one person is in charge of restocking these items.  This saves you money because you are only paying one person to restock inventory, which can be anything from toilet plungers to toilet paper, and are not overpurchasing, like we tend to do when it comes to office supplies. Especially when we find a really good deal at Costco on 100 multicolored Sharpie Markers.   Let’s face it, how many yellow legal note pads do we need? This allows the space many uses for office supplies to store much needed other items.

You can also save space and start the “paperless process” by not purchasing things like letterhead, business cards and company literature and only printing it out as you need it.  Also, forget about storing fax supplies.  Opt for one of those multifunction printers and have your faxes e-mailed to you through a service.

If you feel you must have a storage cabinet or supply cabinet within the office environment, even against my advice, then you should be planning on allowing enough space for pens, pencils, staplers, staples, calculators, paperclips, clipboards, highlighters, sticky notes, envelopes, letterhead, company literature, fax supplies and printing supplies, just to name a few.  Be sure to organize these items on the shelves in labeled bins with a reorder log out in plain site.

7. There never seem to be enough electrical outlets, so here are a few things you should keep in mind when considering how many electrical outlets you need.

Answering Machines, Telephone Systems, Cell Phone/Radio Chargers, Back-Up Drives, Computers, Computer Screens, Copiers, External CD Roms, Digital Camera Charger, External Hard Drives, External Modems, Electric Pencil, Sharpener, Fans, Fax Machines, Lighting, Printers, Scanners, Paper Shredders, Space Heaters, Surge Protectors Speakers for Computers, Uninterrupted Power Supply (Ups) Systems, Miscellaneous Equipment

Lack of planning will result in a miscalculation of adequate data connection cabling requirements for computers, telephones, and fax machines. Try to keep in mind the intended use of each room and also in the future so that you will not have to run cables at a later date. Also refrain from running cables down the walls, under desks or across the aisles.

8. Lighting is often overlooked when designing an office and can have a direct effect on an employee‘s productivity.  There are three different lighting effects to keep in mind:

a. Natural Light coming into a building will not only affect the employees’ productivity and mood but can also have a direct effect on the interior and exterior aesthetics of a building.  Since electricity is costly, and lighting is usually the largest consumer of electricity, natural lighting can help reduce and save energy.  The one downfall to natural lighting is that it is not always available and can fluctuate throughout the day in the amount of time it is available and the actual quantity of light coming through.

b. Ambient Light in an office setting is generally referred to as the artificial light. This may be fluorescent lighting, hanging lights, spotlights or even canned lighting.  Ambient light is great in doing computer work.

c. Direct or Task Lighting is used specifically for doing certain tasks or paperwork so the eyes do not have to strain while reading or writing.  Each work station should really contain its own direct light.

All three types of lighting have very specific purposes, and you should arrange them throughout your office in order to create a pleasant and productive environment.

9. Ergonomics has been around since the 1950s, but if you are anything like me, you probably really never gave it much thought.  Until now.  Ergonomics is the study of the relationship between people and machines and is the key component when planning your office.  This can be anything from the height or distance of your computer screen to the height or depth of your chair to the amount of breaks taken throughout the day and can contribute to pain or discomfort in your back, sore eyes or headaches, stiffness or cramps in your legs, and of course it seems we all know someone who has carpal tunnel syndrome.  These are just a few of the syndromes that poor work and the home environment cause.

The following should be considered when drawing your office map work stations for each employee.

a. Eyes need to be 24 to 36 inches away from the computer screen with the neck bent at a 15 degree angle, up or down. The top of the screen should be just below eye level.

b. Back and shoulders need to be relaxed and in a natural position, sitting firmly against the back of their chair.

c. Elbows need to be at a 90 degree angle and should comfortably rest on arm rests while close to the sides of the body. Wrists should extend from the arms at this same angle.

d. Knees should also be at a 90 degree angle with the feet on a footrest securely on the floor.

Try Before You Buy

Before you begin to tear down walls, try it out.  You can do this by simply using blue masking tape and taping it out on the floor.  If you have enough space, I recommend using your warehouse or parking lot. Use different colored tape to symbolize different items.  Maybe blue is the outer walls, windows and doors while yellow is the office furniture and equipment.  Red can be your filing system, and green can be your electrical and lighting.  Walk through the taped doorways and hallways as an employee or a technician and see if the traffic pattern works.

Be sure to investigate all code requirements through your local city and county along with ADA code requirements in order to avoid fines or lawsuits. Remember, failing to plan is planning to fail.

Carry Your Map With You At All Times

Drawing an office map is not something you do in an hour or a day or even a week necessarily.  Drawing an office map takes time and careful planning in order to create comfort, efficiency, communication, productivity and effectiveness.  You should have your map with you at all times so when a new idea sparks or a concern comes up from one of the employees, you are able to see how it will fit-in in the overall scheme of things.  Or just when you realized you have veered a little off course, the map can guide you back safely.

What Does Tentative Mean?

Once in a while there’s a subject that crosses the boundaries between sales and customer service that Joe and I fight over who actually get’s to blog about it.  Today I won.

We are busy people, as I am sure the rest of you are too.  We have been so busy around here lately that we decided we needed an extra set of hands to help with some of the daily chores and hired a woman from My Girl Friday.  Colette.  She’s awesome!

Busy, Busy, Busy

She does anything from clean the house to drop off the dry cleaning to setting up appointments for me.  Last week I asked her to do just that, schedule six appointments with local architects. I know what you are thinking, six is a lot, but if you could see where we live I fully expected half of them not to show up.

She Did One Better, or Did She?

When I came home last Friday there was a neatly typed up letter on my counter listing the names of seven architects.  As I scanned over each one I noticed the last one had a heading in bold marked “Tentatively.”  I wasn’t really sure what that meant.  I thought about if for a second and figured it must mean she will be calling me some time during the week to confirm the appointment.

We met with each architect individually throughout the week, telling them how we would like to turn our home into resort-like-living, each time getting a little more detailed and a little more lavish about how we visualized ourselves living in the home. (I’ll save those details for another blog) After talking to the sixth architect we were worn out.  We finished up and went out to run a few errands and eat lunch.

While we ate I received a phone call from the last remaining architect. She called me about two hours before we were to meet letting me know that because our appointment was tentative she needed to re-schedule.  I politely told her that since we hadn’t heard anything from her all week we we’re not expecting  to be home anyways.

She seemed a little taken aback by my response and said that a “tentative appointment is a confirmed appointment unless you hear from the person otherwise.”  Now I was a little taken aback and didn’t really know what to say. 

This got me to thinking, “what does tentatively mean to you?”

Merriam-Webster’s on line dictionary defines “tentatively” as…

1 : not fully worked out or developed <tentative plans>
2 : hesitant, uncertain <a tentative smile>

It’s pretty straight forward. 

What Should Tentatively Mean To You?

Whether you are a Customer Service Representative booking calls over the phone or a Sales Person out in the field, if the word tentative or tentatively comes up at the end of your call it most likely means you did not get the job.  If you have to rely on a tentative answer, you did not do your job to its fullest.  You missed a step and created confusion in the customers mind, or worse yet, they now mistrust you.

What should you do if the call is being left in a state of tentativeness? Start over again.  Fall on the sword and let your customer know that you must have done something wrong in explaining things. Would they allow you this one mulligan to do it over again?

You should never finish a call with an uncertain outcome.  There should always be a clear future to every call, even if it is an appointment to call back and set a more definite appointment. 

At the end of the call with the seventh architect she asked me if I would like to set up another appointment at this time.

In the end I gave her a tentative cancellation.

A Business Organizational Chart

If you are tired of parts not being ordered, customers not being called, or bills not being paid on time, or the daily “finger pointing” that goes on when you address these issues with your employees, then now is the time to create an organizational chart.   Whether you draw it out on paper or purchase an organizational software program to do it for you, creating a business organizational chart is the first step of seven in this eight- part series to organizing your service contracting office, once and for all.

Let’s Start With Some Rules

When creating your organizational chart, it is first vey important to understand that there are three sets of rules to make.

1. RULES OF RELATIONSHIP – These are the rules that define how everyone is to treat one another in the company. Everybody must follow the Rules of Relationship if you want to create respect between the customer, the employee and the owner. Here are a few common Rules of Relationship:

• No talking behind someone’s back.
• Praise in public, criticize in private.
• No cursing or swearing.
• Remember the Golden Rule.
• Always use “please” and “thank-you.”

2. RULES OF OWNERSHIP – These are the rules specifically designed for the Owner in order for him or her to lead the company and keep it on track when it veers off course. It is important to note that the Owner is not an employee, however, the Owner becomes an employee as soon as they begin to work IN the business. If an Owner is doing the work of an employee in the business, then they must follow the Rules of Employeeship. (see below)

Here are a few common Rules of Ownership:

• To select the direction of the company: Service, Construction, Remodeling, etc.
• To innovate new methods and create new systems for the Employees to work without the Owner.
• To give back to the community that supports them.

3. RULES OF EMPLOYEESHIP – ALL employees should follow these rules to maintain order and control in the company. The Rules of Employeeship are located in each Employee’s JOB DESCRIPTION CONTRACT in full detail along with a JOB PRIORITY LIST posted in each work area for transparency.

Remember, if the owner steps in to do an Employee’s job for even a lunch hour, then they are to follow the same rules that are in that Employees Job Description Contract. If the owner does not follow the specific rules laid out for each job there will most definitely be some sort of blowback by the employees.

Here are a few common Job Priorities of a Customer Service Representative:

• Have All Scripts Prepared Before Answering the Telephones.
• Answering the Telephone – Selling and Scheduling Calls.
• Making Quality Customer Follow-Up Calls.
• Rescheduling or Delaying Calls.
• Sending Out Thank You Cards to Customers.
• Scheduling Pre-Paid Service Agreements.
• Performing Opportunity Follow-Up Calls.
• Paperwork and Filing Service Tickets.

Once you have outlined the rules, you can begin to map out the organization, starting at the top with the Owner or Board of Directors.  I have included a link to one of our very first organizational charts, giving you an idea, some of our thought processes at the time.  You can see that the chart does not have too much detail, and Joe and I wore many of the hats until we could hire someone. Over the years, this chart became much larger. We began using a whiteboard to map it out, with so many more hats and many more employees.

Please note that even though there were two owners at our company, there was only one CEO: Joe.  This is because there can only be one quarterback on the field at a time, and ultimately Joe was accountable for the decisions made on the field.  If at any time I felt he was not doing his job, then we would have hired someone else.

http://www.contractorselling.com/members/Sample_Organizational_Chart.cfm

7 Steps to Organizing Your Contracting Office

Whether you already have an office, are moving into a new one or are just moving into an office for the first time after working out of your home, the thought of setting up or organizing your office can be daunting.

We usually find ourselves swearing to “get things organized around here for the last time.” Let’s face it. It can be very difficult to find something we need, like customers’ paperwork, check deposits, time sheets and the many other mounds of paper our business generates. We perform this vicious cycle only to find ourselves repeating the same process the next time we cannot find something.

What is the secret to getting your office set up for the last time? The answer is all in the way you plan to organize your environment.  In the following series, let’s discuss how to get your office set up and stay organized, once and for all.

#1 – Create A Business Organizational Chart

Let’s agree on this. When running our small contracting business, we cannot always afford to hire one person for each and every job in the company.  For instance, the person answering the phones may help in the reordering of office supplies, the dispatcher may be in charge of giving out purchase orders, and your bookkeeper may also be your HR department.  We all wear more than one hat when it comes to running our small business. How can you organize all of this?

Simple. Define your organization. Creating an organizational chart of all the many different jobs in your company will allow you to assign who is responsible and, even more important, accountable, for each job.  This will end all “finger pointing” between employees when you ask, “Where is my part for Mr. Smith’s job?”

So the secret here is to think about what job function needs completion and then design a job environment or place to fit that job. The biggest mistake you can make is to hire someone first and then just give them work to fill up their day. Design the job and the environment and find the right person to fill it.

#2 – Draw An Office Map

You have probably heard how the best athletes use visualization techniques in order to help them hit a baseball, shoot a free throw or sink a putt. How can we hope to organize our office if we don’t know what it will look like in the end? Would you design a house without a blueprint? This is the principle behind this secret. Fail to plan and you are, indeed, planning to fail.

What can a map of your office do for you?  It will help you visualize the end result you have in mind for your office space.  Not just what you see but what you hear, feel, touch and, maybe, in some cases, even taste.  After creating your organizational chart, you will know exactly how many jobs you will need to fill. The map or blueprint will simply help you see and plan where each job should take place.

For instance, if you know your dispatcher is going to fill in as service manager by checking in completed tickets from the field, then you might want to put him or her in a position away from the customer service representative

(CSR) room (which I recommend anyway), so they are not interrupted by techs coming to the shop to hand in paperwork.  This allows the dispatcher to communicate with the technician and ask questions without disturbing the CSRs or interrupting them while they are taking a call.

A blueprint is nothing more than a physical drawing of the office from a bird’s-eye view. That’s right. Get out your pencil and paper to make your first rough sketch along with dimensions of the space and what will go in it. Any cabinets or counter space along with what goes on or in those spaces must be accounted for.

#3 - Do Addition By Subtraction

You only have two choices when it comes to space. You can add more space to your facility by adding on to your original building or build shelving or overhead cabinets, or use the space you have more efficiently by reducing, simplifying and eliminating what you already have by tossing it, selling it or donating it. Adding more space only creates more places to put junk you don’t need. Obviously, the last one is my favorite option.

I love donating excess office supplies and junk to an organization that can really use it – like a school.  In some cases, I do admit that more space is justified as a company grows, although the last thing you want to do is create more expense for yourself by storing extra office supplies.  Really, how many highlighters or Post-it notes do we need?

Pride yourself on placing value on a simplified environment with fewer things on the desks or file cabinets. Aren’t we all supposed to become more paperless? Question it this way. Would I inventory and resupply the stuff I have? Can I define how much I need of this and also how I would reorder it from a vendor? If you can’t answer the question correctly, get rid of it.

#4 - Outline Your Customer Flow Process

How does your transactional system work? Can you define the transactional cycle that takes you from the time a customer calls to the very end where you deposit their money in your account and everything else in-between? Essentially ask yourself, “How does this company work?” If you can’t answer that question properly, then you may even have a bigger problem than you think. Many businesses are incomplete when designing this process and leave it up to burned out employees to figure it out each and every time a crisis in the cycle occurs.

Create a simple flow chart of how your customers move through your company from the time they call in to book an appointment to the time someone files away their paperwork.  By outlining this process, you will discover several other processes that will require outlining.

For instance, maybe send a thank-you card with a $25 off coupon to every customer who uses your services and a fruit basket to those customers who spend more than $1,500 with your company.  You will need to develop a system determining which customers are spending more than $1,500, where you will purchase the gifts, who will purchase them, who is responsible for sending them, how they will be delivered and at what point you will send them.

By outlining your customer flow process, you will clearly see each additional process that needs to be in place in order for your office to operate smoothly and without continuous hand holding.

#5 - Prioritize The Work Of Each Job

Do you ever see employees in your office who are very busy but are still not organized or accomplishing anything? Simply put, what are the end results that each employee is trying to accomplish each day? What are their priorities?

Writing a job description for every position in your company takes months – even years – in some cases and is a tough task to undertake.  So take it in steps.  Start with prioritizing each position’s top-10 duties of the day, with the most important listed as number one and the least important as No.  10.

That way, if I were the CSR in your company, I would expect to see answering the phone as my number one task, while filing away tickets would be farther down the list.  It’s not that I don’t want to see the tickets filed away. I just don’t want that to come before the booking of calls with customers, which is where you make the real money.

Start by having a meeting with your office personnel and deciding the job duties together. This way, everyone is on the same page. Make sure everyone has a copy of the list.

#6 – Bring Your Company Into The 21st Century

Do you always feel like you are the last one to hear about the latest gadget or software and that if you had only known about it, it could have saved your company thousands in lost productivity?

Technology is a great thing, when you have it to use.  If you are still using dial-up, running on Windows 98, or haven’t invested in GPS for your technicians, then you are holding your people back from some of the great technological advances made in the past ten years and will probably lose money because of it.

These “gadgets” are not going away, and they are only getting better.  Stop saying that you’ll wait until the next version comes out, after they work out all of the bugs.  Silicon Valley is an expert at stringing us along by bringing out the latest and greatest technologies only after we have just purchased their last version, and they will continue to do so.

So start building technology into your annual budget to update your software and hardware and any other time saving, time management, productivity training resources available to you. The return on this investment will be great.

#7 – No Secret Systems

In all great businesses, the key benchmark is that all systems are transparent. Are there drawers full of things that only certain employees know about? What if that employee got sick or quit? How would everyone know what to do?

If you have seen or heard any of my past videos or audios or read any of my past materials, you already know that one of the main principles I follow is to have no secret systems in our company.  This means that if it is good enough for you, it is good enough for all of us.

Any system that you develop or any procedural documentation you write should be easily accessible and available for all to see or hear at their job station.  If you write scripts for CSRs, then each CSR station should have a script book clearly labeled with each script.  If you are checking in tickets from technicians, then there should be a blowup poster on one side of your wall. This allows them to see what you expect of them and should include a blowup poster on the other side of the wall for how they should be checking in tickets. All systems and procedures should be clean, simple, instructional – and in plain sight.

Invest a little of your time each day to planning your “turnkey” office setup and you’ll soon find that you will have happier employees, which means happier customers, which means you’ll have a lot less stress and a lot more time on your hands.