thaks Dave
but there was no offence taken , I was just asking they read my posts before answering as they were getting the wrong idea
I did ask others opinions and got them LOL, which is fair enough. and I got the amswer to my problem too . so a big thanks to Kilty and this forum
this Jan and Feb I was asking about a situation that I got myself into, I had a successfull business from 91 on and then due to family pressures I took a job as a site agent for 6 yrs during wich time I seperated from my wife , I jacked the job in and went back on the tools, i didnt have time to build from mscratch and had moved to a new city so I took all work I could get at any price, it worked for a time but I wasnt being asked to price for the skilled higher paid work so when things went wrong a couple of years ago I was in no position to ride it out and was competing with the chancers and low skilled for low paid work
the advice I got from this forum was invaluable. and with no proper marketing in place Ive had a brilliant year ,mostly on word of mouth reccomendations. now comes another problem. ive got too much work coming in . so im booking in and refusing the rest. this was ok in the summer as any cancellations were quickly replaced with another job. problem has meen the run up to xmas. I could have filled this slot several times over but couldnt as it was booked, I got cancellation after cancellation and now its too late to book someone in so im not working now till after the new year
so I need a system to weed out the messers early on so I can book genuine people in to my available slots. I cant see there being an issue with genuine customers paying a deposit if it gaurantees they have that slot, and in the cases of genuine reasons to cancel I will return their deposit and rebook that slot.
ive had quite a few messers this year and have now written into my terms that I may at my discretion charge them for my time, genuine customers who simply want their job done having nothing to fear from this
this years task is to sort my marketing out so im only attracting the right kind of customer and should be able to cherrypick the best customers and so avoid these problems going forward
we are all in for a rough ride next year and only those that have planned for it and covered their rear ends will survive. I intend ti buck the trend and continue to grow my business as I firmly believe that the more tradesmen there are fighting for work the more care the customers will take in choosing one, they wont employ just anyone because they cant find someone to do their work
I like the way spanishtiler does business , he mentioned quarterly financial reviews in another post, hes on top of his business and knows at any given time where he is and what profit hes making. a good example to us all