3 Ways to help manage your SEASONAL business.

1. Make “hay” why the sun is shining. No seriously, make as much “hay” as you can, whenever you can.  Mind the 10 day weather forecast. But don’t worship it. A daily glance at the weather forecast is a must, however looking at it every 20 minutes is a little much. I have been there, trying to get work done even though the weather forecast is dismal. Just hoping that it will pass and the rain will stop just in time. For get it, save the time and just schedule the work for days that are definitively going to be sunny. Then schedule your entire team, use all your vehicles, and knock out the work like a mean Mike Tyson upper cut.

2. The fall push. Come November every one is tired. It has been a long summer and everyone is just kinda ready for the holidays and ready for a break. This is the time to fire up your hiring process. I fired up my hiring process at the end of September. Just like clock work as soon as the weather started to shift so did everyone’s attitude. And unfortunately for me the attitude shift was for the worst. It always is for the worst. You will find the best way to deal with these changing attitudes is to create as much leverage as you can. I love my technicians and my team, however everyone is replaceable. Now and then some of them need to be reminded of this. It typically is the technicians who don’t have much work experience and just need to learn this life lesson the hard way.

3. Protect your cash flow. This time of year it is easy to get the feeling that you have a lot of money on hand. This is the time of year when all your hard production work from the summer has paid off. The checks should be coming in quite regularly this time of year. On top of that you are still busy and you know that those checks will keep coming in a few weeks. The worst thing you can do is spend all of it. If you are having profitable year investing some of your profits can be a good thing. It will help you come tax time. However, I urge you to hold onto a large amount of your cash reserves. Remember the cash will not start coming in again until April or May of next year. Update your cash flow projection spreadsheet so that you can clearly see how much cash you will need to get you past your slow season.

What techniques do you use to help manage your SEASONAL business? Looking for more tools to help you with your SEASONAL business? Grab a copy of your FREE report: “How to Increase Profits in your SEASONAL business in 3 FREE steps.” at www.servicecoach.biz.