Quite frankly providing quotes to customers is a pain in the arse – unfortunately it is a necessary evil. Most customers have no concept of the amount of time it takes to schedule an appointment to meet them, drive to their place of residence, talk through their requirements, sit down after work and prepare a […]
It seems a lack of professionalism is global
I came across this article from the Sydney Morning Herald. It seems that a lack of professionalism is endemic across the Western World and as far away as Australia. It reminds me of the last two experiences I have had with a tradesman – and I’m in the game, or at last I was. The […]
5 tips to deal with angry field service customers
I’m working in the office of a property maintenance company at the moment, mapping their processes, looking for efficiencies and installing Flobot. It’s a good office, lots of fun and hard work and they are a good company providing a great service to their corporate clients. I think we are going to make them even […]
A useful work flow chart
As we had a spare ten minutes we thought we would knock up a very quick work flow chart for Flobot. But this work flow would work equally well as a cheat sheet for any service business. Might be useful. Download it as a pdf here: Flobot Work Flow in Eight Steps v2
Tips for writing a good business quotation
Actually, I’m not talking about those kinds of quotations, although that is a good one. What I am going to share are a few tips that I’ve built up over the years for writing business proposals. Specifically, these tips are for writing proposals for companies providing trade services to consumers or small businesses, for example […]
Retaliatory chargebacks – what are they?
Chargebacks are a problem for all sorts of businesses and they affect the on-line merchant the most. But I won’t cover that here because we are interested in companies that provide services in the field or in-house and who use card processing to get fast payments. So, let’s start with – what is a chargeback? […]
Our first series of Video help guides for Flobot
I’ve spent the last day creating some help guides for Flobot to get started and bar the Birmingham accent I think they’re OK. Still got a few to do though, you can find them here on the Flobot YouTube Channel
Man up! Why you must take card payments to increase cash-flow in your service business
Earlier on in the year a friend of a friend came to me to ask me for advice about setting up a building and refurbishment company. I spent several hours in the pub trying to talk him out of it but he was adamant and so I passed on a few pearls. The advice got […]
A few ways to market your trade business – the basics
We’ve been in the property maintenance business for several years and although it might be said that we were never very good at the actual property maintenance, one thing we were good at was marketing. So I thought I might write a short article on the best ways to market your trade business. As our […]
It’s not easy but you have to keep trying.
We have an innovative approach to spending as little money as possible at Fresh Milk Software – we are always thinking of ways to cut costs. So, we run all of our telephones through Ring Central and connect to it via a wonky Huawei router we had shipped from Hong Kong with a 4G SIM. […]