What a year! I can say without doubt that we have never been as busy as we are now – with the exception of work after hurricanes. If the first fifteen days of the year are any indication of what’s to come, it’s going to be a doozy.
I have been told by several sources that many field reps have quit doing business because of some recent changes at some companies. Changes that increased the time and effort required to get the job done. I think the sources are pretty accurate because we continue to take calls from past clients and new companies we’ve never heard of. There’s a lot going on. Maybe we’re just gluttons for punishment but when others are quitting, we see opportunities.
All the field work is on top of the responsibilities I feel towards the mentoring program, webexam.us and therepreport.com. As usual – stretched a little thin. Of course some things are starting to suffer a bit: I have not had the time to work on the sites as much as I would like and I have not had the time to do a lot of mentoring. Some of this is due to webexam.us. It has suddenly taken off and I’ve had plenty to do there. Twenty-four students went online to test last week and a little fine-tuning was in order – especially the certificates module.
I’ve never been one to make new year’s resolutions but some of our new priorities look and sound like resolutions I’ve known others to make. We’re doing a lot of house cleaning, sorting and throwing out; but it’s not the kind you are probably thinking it is. We’re cleaning out the bad companies, sorting throught the rest and throwing out the low payers and the headaches. I guess we’ve been reading too much about looking at your business with new eyes. There was an article about that in January’s AUDIEMUR Magazine.
This blog post would not be the typical Terry Platt stuff if I did not complain a little so here goes. One of our companies has an outstanding invoice unpaid – almost $2000. Our contact has not returned the last three calls. Hmmm! What would you think? I wanted to call the attorney; Vickie wanted to give them another opportunity to follow up. She pulled out the contact list supplied by the company and called all seventeen contacts on the page. Seventeen answering machines. I called the attorney.
I was flabbergasted when she actually got a call from a lady that had no idea what this was all about. We had to tell her that all of her help must have gone home for the day – she was the only one out of seventeen people that called back! She said she would check into it for us. The attorney said to give them to the end of the week.
I don’t know if I’ve finally really po’ed someone or what but I have an appointment tomorrow morning with a HUD rep at a property here in town. Looks like somebody really messed up. One of our companies asked me to check out the property. Things do not look well.
Today was really stretched. Started the day with a commercial inspection of a condominium and ended by visiting a hurricane damaged property to submit bids for tarping and roofing.
OK. So you see, I haven’t forgotten you. Just been busy. Goes to show you I actually do have some priorities.