Do it now…Put your money…

Do it now… Running and growing

We inherently know that doing anything worthwhile is worth doing sooner versus later. When it comes to opening that new account it’s particularly true. And that isn’t just some vacuous idea. It’s a hard fact rooted in pretty simple math.

If an account spending $833 per month is opened this month, it will generate $10,000 in new sales during 2026. Open it in December and it’s $833. Open it in July and the number is $5,000. Simple math is well, pretty simple.

Of course we aren’t very likely to open the lions share, or even most of the new business we’ve targeted before the end of June. And chances are we’ll crack the last one sometime around Thanksgiving. But the more we can front load our successes, the bigger the impact on our 2026 profits and earnings.

The takeaway is pretty basic: When it comes to growth, doing it today is more important than tomorrow.

That’s true whether it’s add-on sales to our existing accounts, closing our biggest prospect or even enacting that price adjustment you hope to pass along to some of your less profitable accounts.

Maybe those Nike folks had it right.

Put your money…where your mouth is

The headline above is a bit like the situation in which we find ourselves when we propose lessening the manpower a foodservice operator needs to keep the back (or front) of the house both visible clean and sanitary. Like most complex matters the question is where to begin.

Fortunately there’s a proven method to do just that. It begins with creating a list of every item and surface that will be cleaned. Then we establish the frequency of that item’s cleaning. The next step is to estimate the minutes each of those tasks will require. Now all the daily tasks (and more frequent ones) go into one pile, the weekly jobs in another and the monthly (or less frequent) ones in yet another.

Now the weekly ones are assigned a specific day, the monthly ones a specific day in a scheduled week i.e. “day two of week three”. With all the tasks time budgeted, assigned and scheduled we add them up (in minutes) for each day to be certain they are reasonably balanced. Then add up each week and see if those minutes are again a match to the targeted manning level. If there’s a mismatch adjust as necessary to fit the available staffing.

Next up: The beauty of solid sanitation plan.