There are all kinds of vampires that suck the blood out of a business.  These can be bad employees, bad customers, and bad expenses.  So, let’s talk about each of these.

Bad Employees

Normally, a new employee is put on probation for a period of 90 days, and this period is called at-will employment by both the employer and employee.  That is often enough time for you to determine if they are going to help or hurt your company.  Pay attention, and figure them out!  You want the best employees you can get to be part of your business, so don’t hang onto less than that.  During the probationary period, you don’t have to do anything beyond letting them know that they aren’t a good fit for your company to let them go.  However, it’s always best if you document any of their actions that make you feel that way. Regardless of how long they have been there, and probationary or not, they can cause you a lot of grief if you don’t have your ducks in a row when you let them go!  We’ll talk about your employment strategy in another post!

Bad Customers

I worked for a distribution company, and we had one customer that claimed something was missing on every order we shipped to them. We knew it wasn’t true, But what do you do? But, we kept serving them anyway.  So, we lost margin all the time to that company.  What else could we have done?  Well, there were basically three answers. We could have documented it well, then quit serving them. Or, we could have raised their prices across the board.  Our manager did neither. He chose to ignore the problem and keep putting up with it.  It’s a hard decision to make, and I don’t condemn him for making his choice.  If you’re still making reasonable margin on them, then that may be the best answer.

Bad Expenses

It doesn’t take long to end up with a bunch of at least, quesionable expenses. Various subscriptions, unnecessary outside services, bad purchasing procedures, and more, can suck the blood out of your company.  Be careful not to over-do your subscriptions for unnecessary things like magazines and services that you can perform yourself, or that you can assign to your employees.  Watch your purchasing and inventory control to make sure you are getting good prices.  At one company, I went in and saved $12,000.00 in the first six months in purchasing.  How did I do it?  I kept better track of inventory levels and lead times, and eliminated the need for express shipping on the goods I purchased!  That also saved a ton of manufacturing downtime due to lack of parts, which made the production team very happy!