Are you getting paid for all the work that you do?
Providing the service to your clients is the most expensive thing that you will pay for. The cost of the staff to do the work, the costs of the software and all the services that you consume will be take a lot of the money that you earn. You need to get paid for the work that you do.
Are you getting paid for all the work that you do?
Not getting paid for this work will drastically reduce your profits.
Are you doing work that you are simply not getting paid for? Work that continually gets added to by your customers that you do and don’t invoice? Or when you do invoice them you struggle to get paid? The customer either objects and thinks it should be done for free or that you staff don’t realise it is work that you need to charge more for?
Not only do you not get paid for the work that you have done but you also have for your staff to do the work, so the net result is that you are actually out of pocket. And a project that should have been profitable is now going to cause you a loss.
As a business owner this is a problem we all face. Not getting paid for the work that we do.
How does not getting paid for work impact your business?
As we have previously discussed this is lost revenue. What could you have done with this lost revenue?
This really depends on your circumstances but this is money coming out of your pocket as the business owner. Money that you could have paid yourself in wages or dividends if you have been paid.
It is money that could have been used to take on another member of staff, pay for software to make your process easier to pay for some marketing work to try to bring new customers in to your business.
Not getting paid for work not only affects your profit now but also in the future. It stops you being more efficient, growing your business and bet able to have more free time and money yourself. Because if you can’t afford to take on more staff to do the work as a business owner it is usually you who will have to pull up the slack and do the work.
Not getting paid for this work puts more pressure on you as the business owner and restricts how you can grow your business.
How does not getting paid impact your customers?
When you give work away for free you reduce your company’s prestige in the eyes of your customers. Its normal to think that you don’t get anything that is worthwhile for free, if you could you would charge for it?
When they see you giving work away for free, they will devalue you the work that do. They will begin to expect work to be done for free in future because they don’t see the value in what you do and the value that you are adding to their business.
All relationships are built on respect, if the customers respect and value the work that you do, they will pay for it and they will be happy to pay for the work that you do.
When you don’t charge for the work that you do, you reduce the quality of the work that you do for your customers. You have to earn the money to pay your bills somehow so you end up rushing to do work on time or not having the resources to do it properly.
The quality of your work will reduce.
How does not getting paid impact you the business owner?
Not getting paid will affect the business owner the most. You have your bills and your staff to pay first. Whatever is left is what you can pay yourself, taking away from the profits will impact the money that you can pay yourself. It affects the amount of work that you need to do to make up this money.
When you lose the prestige of your company you reduce the attractiveness to new customers. You can’t afford more staff, you can’t afford to make your processes more efficient you can’t do the work in the timescales that your customers are asking of you. You can’t deliver the services that they pay you for or not in the quality that they expect.
Not getting paid for the work that you do means that you will work more and have less money as the business owner.
Not getting paid for the work that you do will only end one of two ways. You as the business owner work and don’t get the time off you need and you aren’t able to pay yourself for the work that you do. Or your business stagnates and doesn’t grow. It stays stuck in the same place while you watch other agencies grow and get bigger..
How can you get paid for the work that you do?
You need help. You need help to make sure that your staff are aware of the deliverables of every project that you are doing. You need to have a culture in your business that you charge for your work and that you give great service when you do get paid.
You need to change the culture in your business to one where you are paid fairly for the work that you do. That you give great service to your customers because you have the resources to do that now.
You as the business owner are getting the support of a virtual finance team to make all these changes to your business and that they are constantly monitoring the changes that you are making and the impact that this is happening to your business, your profits and the money that you are able to pay yourself each month.
The thing is you don’t know what money you aren’t charging until you start to monitor it. But if your projects are taking longer than you expect or clients are starting to dispute the charges on your invoices they are more than likely getting used to have a free ride.
The worst thing is that this is something that you have trained them to do by your actions of giving away work for free. For the sake of you and your business this needs to change. You need the support of a virtual finance team that can give you the support you need to make this change.