How do you improve the profit margin of a small computer repair business?

Question

I work for a small computer business on a small island. business really seems to fluctuate! Sometimes we're doing well, then at other times things are TERRIBLE! What are some ways to improve our computer business, maintain a steady income and increase the profit margins?

Answer 1

First, you need to identify what is going on during the periods of time when "things are terrible." Does that mean:
Not enough business? Then you need to offer specials or do other things to increase the foot traffic. Maybe you need to have someone sell in new accounts that are going to generate a more steady stream of income.

Can't make money even if you are busy? Are there delinquent accounts you can collect? Are you charging enough to cover costs plus a profit? Are you spending too much time and money on accounts that don't help to increase your business?

Too many mistakes/rework? Are the techs trained well enough so that there's not a lot of return/makeovers? Are instructions not clear so that people are making mistakes?

Have you considered inside theft of money or supplies? Not a pretty thought, but must be considered.

Is there new competition in the area? Then you need to identify how you are different/better, and be able to communicate that your customers and the businesses/people who you want to be customers. Make it easy to do business with you!

For any of these, decide what needs to be fixed, set some measures (increase the number of calls, etc.) with a baseline, and then review those measures periodically.

Answer 2

1. Make sure all the businesses on your island know about your company and that you are local. They may be contracting with a mainland company and the fact that you are right there on the island would a big advantage over a company that is not.

2. Hopefully you have a website. If so, use aweber.com to create a list of your clients and visitors to your site. Then e-mail them every so often with tips and tricks of the trade or news about viruses or something. This will keep you fresh in their minds.

3. Provide cheap classes once a month for excel or power point or whatever. This gets you face to face with your customer base.

4. Use google adwords with "computer repair" and the name of you island put together as a keyword so if anyone is looking for you they'll find you.

5. Yellow pages of course.

Answer 3

Try to sort out any expenses that are avoidable and limit the overhead expenses to a certain extent, meaning be a little more conservative when it comes to expenditures. Since you are in the computer business have you tried to deviate your services to some other computer related products such as cyber's cafe or photo copying machine service or selling of r computer supplies such computer ink, computer paper, computer parts etc.

Answer 4

Get a bunch of Mexicans, illegal ones no doubt, to work for you. That will cut out the need to pay the workers a decent wage, provide benefits and have no retirement or pension plan. This way the owners / stockholders / CEOs get richer and richer