IDEA: Count all hours your machines are turned off/not used/no sales $. Pay well the sales reps who can sell this ‘unused capacity’.

Monitor every day how many hours of production were lost because a machine was not running.  Do this for all machinery and equipment for your business. Do it daily if necessary because it reminds you of the lost sales that these machines could handle if you had a more competent sales force.  Watch this report of unused production capacity (hours of all machines not running) on a regular basis. It reflects your sales department’s failure to sell out your production capacity even though there are ongoing costs for those machines (property taxes due, minimal utilities to maintain connection, upkeep and maintenance or the taking up space potentially for other product manufacturing, etc.).    Try coming up with a bonus program to get machines working.  Allow the sales representatives to bid lower prices in order to help pay for fixed overhead costs that do not go away when sales are lacking. Pay your people to go fill up the machines and to keep employees working.