It sounds like half the team were toxic and had to go. When people decide to put their needs above their job role and responsibilities- they are done.

However, trying to incentivise administrative staff with bonuses is hard. In most cases it doesn’t work because most people don’t like to feel pushy. It takes them out of their comfort zone. So it becomes a disincentive and you end up with poor morale.

You have to recognise that not all staff will feel their contribution directly impacts the bottom line. They will feel disconnected from it. It’s your job to show them that everything they do matters and is appreciated. A thank you is often woth more for morale than cash in my experience.

When you are hiring for your new team put someone exclusively in charge of generating more sales and increasing customer satisfaction. Give them a very clear and rewarding commission scheme and tools like Salesforce to do their job well and they will stick around for a long time. They should report to you, not the office manager.

Then leave the office manager to hire and manage the other staff and do a monthly or quarterly meeting about the goals for that quarter and the bonus available if everyone pulls their weight. Don’t pick on individuals and let the office manager deal with the day to day.

Lastly bringing in coffees, cakes or other tidbits is a great morale boost. You could for example do this on your quietest days and include the customers to encourage them to book in the morning or whatever.

Good luck.

Yup it’s not easy. We use a combination of SEO, PPC, PR and social media. Marketing is vital for any B2B.

All are huge time sucks and require cash.

We started with cold outreach though.

Tools like Apollo and LinkedIn make this easy. Being hyper focused about offering value to a small group of customers helped us gain traction without any outside investment.