In this article we will be discussing how you can reduce overhead costs in your plumbing shop. No matter what the size of your plumbing shop there is always ways to save money and reducing wasteful spending that you may never even realize you are even actually doing.

The times have changed and running your business is never going to be the same as it used to be in the old days. In the good old days business was simple, you provided a good service and charged a fair price and the customer would show loyalty for years to come and your business would continue to grow yer after year.

Now with the price of plumbing supplies , health care, rent, fuel for the fleet and so much on the rise its going to be tough to keep your plumbing business profit in the green if you don’t do some proper planning. Sure, everything may be fine now and you might be thinking there is no way you will ever loose profit, but guess again, if you are not careful and don’t keep track of wasteful spending you could loose it all without every knowing where the money went as many plumbing business owners realize but often its just to late.

There are many ways to increase your monthly ROI in your plumbing business but we are going to talk about some simple changes that you can make in 30 minutes that can save you hundreds and maybe even thousands of dollars a month depending of the size of your plumbing shop and how many people you employ.

Here Five ways that you can increase your profit in your plumbing business.

Restructure Your Communications:

Over the last ten years technology has been leaping from one new thing to another and we as consumers have been feeding the fuel to the fire with all of our waste full spending on all sorts of phones, faxes , PCS etc.

On example that you can do is to Get rid of the fax line, Most telephone companies charge an extra fee for that line and with email and text messages these days nobody wants to manual fax. In fact there are plenty of services like efax online that will let you fax right from your PC.

Hold In House Contests With Your Employees:

There is nothing more rewarding then having an employee make those repeat sales for you over and over again, But you must remember these employees have family’s too and care about your business enough that they want to see it grow so they should be rewarded if they do so.

Another reason to hold contests is that plumbing can get boring, I mean come on let’s face it, if you are a shop that does the same scope of work from day to day it can be repetitive, give your employees something to work towards besides the time they clock out. Competitions are used everywhere in the world for motivations of practically everything or any product. Make some contests for your employees and your ROI will grow and you will also have less employee turn over.

Organize Your Service Vehicles and Save Thousands on Fuel:

Let me first just say how many years I drove around in a huge 8 cylinder truck to just do back flow testing. This type of service work can be done with an employee driving a 4 cylinder vehicle such as a small truck or even a mid sized car. Many municipalities have been doing this for years, such as water authorities. They send there meter readers out wit cars rather then trucks to save fuel. So why are you sending your employees around in big trucks to do simple tasks?

Take a step back and look at what each truck does for you for the day. Ask your employee on his opinions on what he thinks he should be carrying versus what you think he should be carrying on the truck. Some of the old school owners want everything on the truck for those “just in case” times, but you should have money in the bank, just in case , not having employees drive a loaded truck leaving huge carbon footprint just because.

Get Everyone In the Office Online Or Fire Them!

Sure, the firing them part might have been extreme but you seriously need to get everyone in your office on the PC. There is no need to be spending extra oney each money on pens, pencils, rulers, notepads, stickies and all that other stuff when you can simple have each employee create digital versions of all your stuff to be saved on a central office server or hard drive so it can be accessed by all at anytime.

Not only will this save you money on office supplies but it will make your employees more efficient because they will have more access to more of the company data. The best part about digital media is that you can create permissions very easily so you can assign different levels of access for different employees.

Give The Youth More Hands On Will Ya!

In the plumbing industry sometimes you will have to wait years before a mechanic or foreman will let you do certain things because they feel you have to “earn it”. For example one time I worked for this shop that would not let me do plastic because the “senior guys” got first dips. I can understand from their point of view[older guys], but from a ROI point of view this is bordering the insane mark. Why let the young and youthful employees shine in all areas of your shop, I know that you have employees that have been there for years but give them something else to do and let these guys work. they will make you a nice ROI if you just show them and let them work.

The above is just five examples how you can save money and increase your ROI and there are of course plenty more that you might even be thinking of right now as you read this. Just always take the time to think about your business for the long term before making any serious changes.

Look for more Increasing Your Plumbing Business ROI tips, or of you like you can let is know some of yours!