For over a dozen years,
NSPG has been providing the tools that allow contractors to
increase profits and minimize business hassles. With our
simple-to-use-tools, you can make being a business owner
what you always wanted to it be -
successful, profitable and rewarding.
Would You Buy Your Business?
BusinessesForSale.com has many listings of Plumbing,
Heating, and Electrical businesses for sale. The
top listing for the last few months illustrates a number
of common problems with how a business owner works
against himself.
 Plumbing
Services Business For Sale
Asking price: $89,900
Sales revenue: $65,000
Net profit: $40,000
Furniture/Fixtures value: $45,000
Business description
This plumbing company was established eight years
ago and now the owner is moving out of state. This
creates a great opportunity for a plumber who wants
to start their own business. As a home based
business, it will afford you the ability to have a
flexible schedule, low overhead and tremendous tax
advantages. The business could be grown larger if a
new owner wanted to advertise and take on other
jobs.
This business may be a great opportunity for the right
owner once all the details of the business are known.
Just looking at this small amount of information which
shows a profit percentage over 60%, how could this
business not be a good deal?
With net profit of $40,000
on sales of $65,000, either the owner does not take a
salary, or he has no overhead. Since even a
business run out of the trunk of a car has overhead, it
appears that this business counts anything not a direct
cost as profit. Most business people who have Crunched
their Numbers know that salary and profit should always
be separated.
Having no separation of
salary and profit means that building a larger business
is almost impossible. If you work on the business,
you need to pay yourself a set salary that is built into
your selling price. This way, as your business
grows or you want to sell the business, you have a
reliable basis for paying yourself and your employees.
Once you have your overhead
and salaries built into your selling price, you need to
build in a reasonable profit too. Some small
companies question the need for building a profit into
the selling price since they already have a salary in
their price. All businesses need to make a profit
or it's just a job with no reward for the inherent risk
of running a business.
 Real profit is needed to
provide a cushion in the slow times. It is needed
to provide the
resources
for purchasing new equipment and vehicles. Real
profit is the reward for taking on the risks and
headaches of running your own business. Real
profit is what someone who wants to buy a business is
looking for. The value that real profit adds to
the price you get for your business at the end of your
career can be the cushion that adds to the money you
have saved over the years for retirement. You do
pay yourself enough to save for retirement, right?
Take a couple of minutes
and visit
BusinessesForSale.com and see if you can spot
a
business you'd like to buy. Then think about why
you'd buy that one. Chances are you'll choose a
business that looks like it has it's numbers in order.
The right balance between selling price and business
costs will be evident to you in the description and
numbers shown.
Then take a couple of
minutes to think how your business would look if you
laid it out this way. Would you buy your own
company?
If you need a hand setting your
business numbers, email
Mike Conroy.
He can help you combine your current numbers with your
target company size, so you can set measurable
benchmarks and build your own right-sized profitable company.
Measure Monthly, Adjust Quarterly
& Achieve Annual Profit Goals
On-Line
Resources
 Washington
State University has a couple of simple on-line
calculators that allow you to compare operating costs
for heating and cooling systems at
http://www.energyexperts.org/fuelcalc/default.asp.
The
calculations seem to based strictly on rated
efficiencies and ignore real world variables, but could
provide some impetus to get indecisive customers to make
an upgrade.
 HVACTV.com
is an interesting site that has a large number of
industry related videos and articles. They offer
video product reviews, technical and business how to,
and trade show coverage (point to the blue bar on the
left side of the page). The tour of NSPG Flat
Rate users Gem Plumbing & Heating Company shows how a
well run company can prosper and grow.
HVACTV.com
is advertising supported, but the ads are unobtrusive.
Oslo's sewage heats its homes
|
Over
the last few months a number of new links to accounting
software packages have been added to National Standard
Price Guide flat rate software. These user
requested links
include Total Service, Vision Infosoft Epic,
ComputerEase, EMS, and Compusource.
An
export link for Peachtree is being built now and should
be available within a few weeks.
