The phone
A call that goes to voicemail is a call to the next company on the list.
Nobody leaves a message any more. Every ring that gets missed at lunch, after five, or while your one good person is on the other line is money that went somewhere else, and you never find out it happened.
Quotes and estimates
One person prices the work, so their calendar decides how fast money comes in.
Everything waits on the desk that knows what a job should cost. What that person knows about pricing can be written down and handed to the whole team, and the quote goes out the same day it was asked for.
The person who knows everything
Ask what happens the week they are out.
If the honest answer is that things sit and wait, the business is running on one person’s memory. Memory can be captured while they are still here, which is a far cheaper week than the one that starts with a resignation letter.
The same questions, every day
Your team keeps asking a question that already has an answer.
Count how many times a week somebody gets interrupted for something the company already decided. You are paying twice for every one of those, once for the person who stopped and once for the person who asked.
Getting somebody new up to speed
New people learn your business by interrupting your best one.
Three months of a senior person answering the same beginner questions is the real cost of a hire, and nobody puts it on the offer letter. Write the business down once and day one starts with the same answers everybody else got.