Tom Mazza’s Tips to Survive in 2009 Newsletter

 

Dear Friends,
I will not spend 1 sentence on gloom and doom, you are living it. It’s time to plan for 2009 and to look at real solutions. It’s simple: sell more service and/or reduce expenses.

 

My team and I are here to help you. We help our clients MAKE more money and we are here to help YOU. Whether it is facilitating a valuable “success group” meeting, providing an affordable overnight call center, training your reservations agents to sell more trips, or focusing your salesman on success, we are helping clients every day. A 1-day “Tom Mazza Checkup” may be the most important day for your company’s future of the coming year.

 

Wishing you all a Happy New Year!
Tom Mazza
tommazza@aol.com
215-973-8201

Survival Tips for YOUR business

 

1. Meet one on one with every member of your team and assure them that better days are ahead! YOUR employee’s mood is a direct reflection of YOUR mood. Be optimistic and positive. Uncertainty produces the most pain and anxiety. Let them know that you are working on solutions. No matter what your situation is, nothing is accomplished if your message is one of hopelessness. Tell your staff exactly what you need to survive and ask them to work with you to make it happen.

2. Develop an alternate source for financing in 2009: Brenner Financial is a company that I have had a long term relationship with. Mike Brenner, Dan Dyson, Kevin Haag are 3 of the best people I have met in my 19 years in this industry. They are aggressive lenders, don’t play games with phantom charges, and give you an honest answer even when you may not want one. There rates are going to be higher than your bank but it may be in your best interest NOT to be overextended with “on the books” financing. Call me and I will go to bat for you with Brenner.

 

3. If you do not ABSOLUTELY need the vehicle, get rid of it! Sit down and take a hard look at your vehicle utilization. If your vehicle is not producing at least double its monthly fixed expenses, get rid of the vehicle. Sell your vehicles privately to get your maximum dollars. Take professional, digital photos and put them on E-Bay. Contact your farm out companies and see if any of them need an extra vehicle. Put all of the vehicles you can spare on as many of the inexpensive websites you can find. If you as the owner do not have time to do “the E-Bay thing”, find a member of your staff to “own” the project and give them a small piece of the action as a thank you.

4. Get more personally involved in the day to day operation of your business: Answer the phone more. Drive top clients occasionally. Visit your best accounts. Go to the airport and greet your arriving clients. Listen to them.

 

5. Re-position your staff with a revised work schedule: Create work schedules that make sense for your company. Staff according to need. You may find that an unpaid off day is something your staff would be comfortable with. A four day workweek is also something to consider.

 

6. Loyalty is wonderful but business is a competition: Your obligation is to your entire company. Hire the best person possible for every position and look at your staff as being in competition at all times. Seniority is sacred if you are a federal employee or have your union card but in the current economy you need to put your best people in the driver’s seat.

 

7. Raise your insurance deductibles. Call your insurance agent and see if it makes sense to raise your deductible for physical damage to $2k or more. No limousine operator in the country is turning in $1,800 insurance claims. Go to your body and repair shop and negotiate a better “out of pocket” rate.

 

8. Your insurance quote for your next renewal is not in stone: Every quote you receive is a soft number. I work with 2 excellent independent agents that can get my client a better rate at least 75 percent of the time.

9. There are savings to be had on every line item on your balance sheet: My Company has a preferred relationship with a small group of vendors who sell to our industry. Credit card processing costs, vehicle financing, insurance, Nextel radios, is all items that TMC has helped our clients save significant money on. Take a hard look at every single line item and hunt for savings every day.

10. Cross train the “keepers” in your company now! If you have a great reservations person, cross train her to dispatch. We are not in a complicated business. Clean car, on time, chauffeur knows where they are going, accurate invoice, that’s about it. Your people are smart, train them to be able to do everything.

11. Create a 2009 budget: It is not too late. Lay out your expenses for 2009 and project your numbers based on 2008. Then figure out a way, the best you can, to make a plan for 2009. Remember, you can reduce the revenue stream and still make money if you get a grip on expenses.

12. Look to new vertical markets: You have vehicles and an expertise on getting people picked up on time. Fixed shuttles, non-ambulatory medical transportation, airline crew transport, school transportation, lost luggage, messenger service and on and on. Find another niche and explore new opportunities.

13. Sell, sell. Sell: Get out of your comfort zone and meet new people and sell that service that you believe in so passionately.

 

TMC provides affordable overnight Call Center

In October of 2008, TMC launched an overnight call center. Much more than an “answering service”, TMC is offering a highly trained live operator who logs into your system and performs the same functions as your in house overnight person would perform.

Currently staffed by TMC associate Yvonne LaMar, the service has been well received. Mike Zappone, president of All Transportation Network in Newburgh, NY says the service has been a winner for his company. “The phone is answered and the call is handled exactly the same way as it is during the day. You cannot tell your clients that you’re a first rate company when you have an answering service or your client knows they are waking someone up in the middle of the night.”

 

Priced at $200 per week for 5 days of coverage, the call center has produced real savings for Embassy Limousine in Tampa. “Our company has grown to the point we needed to be staffed 24 hours” said Embassy co-owner Marcos Lopez. “With Yvonne on board we get top of the line coverage at less than half of what an overnight person would cost. That’s if you could even find a person for that shift.”

 

TMC’s overnight Call Center is planning to expand to 7 day coverage in 2009. For more information, e-mail callcenteryl@gmail.com or call 215-904-8357.

 

Tom Mazza 2009 Meeting Dates
February 23-25: Limousine Leadership Group in Palm Beach, FL
April 14-16: Limousine Benchmarking Group in Kansas City
April 22-24: Limousine Achievers Group in Atlanta
May 13-14: Train the Chauffeur Trainer in Newark, NJ

 

Meet Tom Mazza on January 26-27 in Room 805 at the LCT Show in Las Vegas

Please join me at the LCT Show in Vegas at the Venetian Hotel on the 26th and 27th from 9 am to 4 pm in Room 805 near the educational seminar rooms. Rather than an awkward meeting at Starbucks or in the hall way, a group of TMC client companies has rented a spacious 1200 square foot room for meetings. If you would like to spend an hour in Vegas planning with me for 2009, call or e-mail today for a reservation.

 

Meet me and some great operators in Vegas including Mike Zappone of All Transportation Network, Johan DeLeeuw of Olympus Limousine in Atlanta, Ron Stein from Exclusive Sedan in Los Angeles, Bruce Heinrich from LEADER in Kansas City, Jerry Robbins from Weldon Coach in Boston and Scott Oh from A-1 in Chicago to name a few. Space is available at a nominal charge, call Mike Zappone at 845-565-2306 to reserve.

 

Join a Tom Mazza Success Group in 2009

Tom Mazza has 3 active “success” groups with operators of all sizes. The “Benchmarking” group features 13 companies doing between $1 and $2.5 million in annual sales. The “Achievers” group which features 12 companies doing between $3 million and $7 million in annual sales and the “Leadership” group which features 10 companies doing between $2 and $10 million plus in sales. All 3 groups require members to be from different cities in the US and Canada. Costs are $1500 per company per year and a percentage of the meeting expenses.

 

The groups meet 3 times per year for 2 and a half days and share best practices and benchmark financial information. All 3 active groups will consider new members and a 4th group of “Up and coming” operators is forming in 2009.

 

Contact Tom for more information.

Tom Mazza’s 16 ways to help your salesperson succeed in 2009!

 

It has never been more important than it is right now to attract new customers. Nine out of ten people hired to “sell” in our industry will fail. And that number may be conservative as many Operators are reluctant to pull the trigger on poor performing sales people.

 

Here is a game plan to buck the odds and give your sales person a chance to succeed:

 

1. Hire a person of quality and pay them a decent base salary. Talented salespeople will not come to you for commission only. If you can only pay a small base, be patient and invest the time in building a great sales person.

2. Make the salesperson an expert on your reservation software program. It is the nerve center of your company and all business starts here.

3. Set realistic expectations! If you are in business 10 years and your gross revenues are $2 million annually, expecting your salesperson to sell a million a year is not going to happen. Figure 90 days of nothing until the items laid out here begin to pay off.

4. Get your sales person a desk and a phone and establish office hours. Out of sight, out of touch is a recipe for failure. Until your salesperson has developed a strong book of business they need to keep regular office hours and they need to be part of your company.

5. Make them an expert on operations. The “sale” has become more technical and the potential client wants answers not shiny brochures.

6. Train them to “sell without borders” from day 1: Repeat after me, “We are a national company based in Any town, USA that provides chauffeured ground transportation wherever you need it.”

7. Install ACT software or Salesforce.com on your computer and commit to using it. It gives your salesperson structure and a tool for you to measure progress.

8. Give your sales person some active accounts. Take a half dozen medium accounts with potential and make your new salesperson the contact person. Commission them for these accounts as a way of getting the ball rolling.

9. Give your sales person a good reason to visit your top accounts. It could be having them demo your on line reservations program or telling them about your worldwide network or even having them deliver a “report card” on your service. The more contact with clients the more likely you will get referrals from them.

10. Work your lost customer list. Run a list of 2007 sales versus 2008 and identify the missing accounts. Give your salesperson the list and work it together.

11. Look at their office and sell phone records monthly. It’s a numbers game! If they are not constantly on the phone prospecting, they should be. If we close 5 percent of prospects, it stands to reason the person with 250 calls for new business will sell 5 times more than the person who hit only 50 new prospects in the month.

12. Have your sales person speak frequently to reservations, dispatch, and chauffeur team. There are leads everywhere. Your salesperson can develop referral sources internally.

 

13. Determine the most important organizations for referrals and commit to attending every one of their meetings in 2009. If it’s your Convention and Visitors bureau, get their 30 minutes early to every meeting, help with set up and clean up, and send out “thank you’s” constantly. Do not paper the room with business cards rather become a valuable part of the organization.

 

14. Make sure web inquiries are answered within 6 minutes all day, every day. Web shoppers are notoriously impatient. Get your team to work together and be ready to respond instantly to leads.

15. Make sure 90 percent of your sales person’s time is spent on selling and prospecting. Taking reservations, driving, dealing with marketing items, they all take time away from what you hired them for namely SELLING.

16. Hire Tom Mazza to assist with a “Sales Success Plan”: Whether by phone or periodic visit, if it’s a good hire, I will help them be successful. I will also say what needs to be said on getting 1-14 done!

 

Take a Vacation on South Beach at Tom Mazza’s Condo!
You cannot work 365 days a year. Take an inexpensive vacation to South Beach, Miami!

 

The most beautiful view in the world is from the deck of Tom Mazza’s condominium that faces the Atlantic Ocean at 401 Ocean Drive on Miami Beach. (check out the link) It’s a simple 425 square foot studio with hardwood floors, stainless steel appliances, spa bathroom, and 2 comfortable sleeper sofas’.

 

Located in the heart of South Beach, you can walk to the finest restaurants, nightclubs and most beautiful beaches in Miami. There is no check in or check out times and you will not pay a 15 percent hotel tax.

 

These dates are currently available:
January 14-31
February 1-7
February 15-21
March 1-8
March 22-29
March 29-April 5

 

Call Tom at 215-973-8201 or e-mail tommazza@aol.com for more info