Restoration Rewind Delta Development Group Monthly Newsletter
April 2017
A Great, Grand Opening in Mobile Delta Disaster Services of Eastern Gulf States is officially opened. Last week, on April 5, the DDG team joined the E.G.S team in Mobile, Alabama to celebrate the location’s grand opening. The facility in Mobile is fantastic, the team they are building is wonderful and they will be able to help a lot of people in their market area. We were very lucky to have pretty good weather the whole time we were visiting the south. The grand opening event was very well put together and very well attended. Zack Lane, General Manager, and the rest of his team received their certificates for graduating from the Delta franchise training. They were also welcomed to the area by the city councilman and the city chamber members with a ribbon cutting ceremony. This marks just one of three grand openings for owner, Jim Cagle. He has contracted with Delta Disaster Services to open two more locations in the southern states within the next 36 months.
We are very excited to have this group as a part of the Delta family. We can’t wait to see all of the great things they do in the Mobile area. Don’t forget to reach out to the whole crew to welcome them.
What is in Your Tank? Running a full-service restoration company is more than demanding. We can find ourselves slumping in our seats halfway through our 7 to 6 day work week. We are overworked, underrested, and we can be unhealthy. This can lead to a weakened immune system but by making a few simple lifestyle changes can greatly improve both your energy levels and your health. Your Diet is Your Body’s Source of Fuel Food is the most important aspect of regaining both health and vigor. Your diet is what determines how much energy you will have throughout the day. A few quick alterations can make a world of difference in your daytime alertness and your ability to focus on the most important tasks at hand. Drinking enough water is also essential to taking care of your immune system and is important to your daily health and keeping you up and running. Exercise Reduces Stress and Helps to Beat Fatigue Exercise is one of those lifestyle changes that takes up valuable time, making it difficult to implement for the average American. Yet exercise is valuable in amplifying one’s energy levels. It doesn’t have to be a 45-minute run every day. Instead, it can be something as simple as a 15-minute powerwalk in the morning or a series of side crunches in your office chair. These activities may not be the substitute
for a full workout routine but they will noticeably increase your energy levels and decrease your stress. For those with restrictions to their ability to exercise, a trip to the local pool might be beneficial. Swimming is a great workout with low impact. It has similar benefits to running without the strain on your skeletal structure. Never Skip Breakfast, but Do Pass on Processed Foods Waking up early can allow you to eat a full breakfast which is a key component to daytime alertness. A full breakfast might be as simple as a bowl of plain yogurt with fruit and seeds. It is well-rounded, quick, and energizing as opposed to a hastily consumed highly processed granola bar. Finally, avoid processed foods. A microwaved cup of noodles is both cheap and quick but provides almost no energy or nutrition. With the busy schedule of most American adults, we tend to shop based on speed of preparation rather than health.
Cash in the Door Based on royalties, the winner for February is‌Delta Disaster Services of Southern Colorado! Congratulations to the Southern Colorado team for another great month of getting that cash coming in. Will anyone stop these guys?
We lost a friend and teammate this past month with the passing of “King� Bob Gentry. Bob was a part of many of your training classes and was a huge advocate of Delta and what we stood for. Bob was a master at understanding the customer and restoration vendor relationship and a subject matter expert on all things related to property insurance. He will be missed by all that knew him. We know that somewhere up there, he’s cursing on his Harley.
Finance: Measure up to Success There are a lot of things we (and people much smarter than we are) recommend that you track and measure in order to help stay on track to financial success. Here are a few: 1. Number of jobs. The Denver office counts each loss type as a job. You might have emergency services only, reconstruction only or both. Each one counts as its own job. Average income should be approximately $5,000 for reconstruction and $2,500 for emergency services 2. Average job size. Total income divided by total number of jobs. The results will help you determine if your job size is falling within the averages. You will want to do this by loss type, Emergency Services and Construction. You can also do it for your company as a whole. If the number is too low, you may want to focus on the larger jobs and give up some of the smaller jobs. 3. All jobs should also be tracked to the referral source. This is critical to measuring your marketing efforts. If you never receive a job from an agent, focus your marketing efforts in another area. If you have lots of referrals from agents, maybe it’s time to focus more on an alternate channel like plumbers. Each market will be different and diversification of referral sources is always a good business practice. 4. Dollars by Referral Source. If you are receiving multiple referrals from a particular source and your income is consistently low, this may not be the best source for getting regular work. You will need to weigh the income to the marketing costs involved to maintaining this account and the costs is finding new ones. Frequently margins will be less in the beginning of a relationship, but after a period of time, those margins should be equal to the rest of your business. 5. Measure the numbers. Labor percentages on all emergency services jobs should be in the 15-20% of income range. Extenuating circumstances could be a lot of windshield time or overtime. If your labor is regularly exceeding 20%, find out why and then find ways to change it.
6. Job P&L's -- of course -- need to be checked, weighed, measured! Are you meeting your targets and benchmarks? If not, you need to know why and how or what can be done to avoid the problems again. On larger jobs, always run P&L's or job reports on the job while it’s in process. This will also help keep you on track to meet your margins. 7. Gross profit overall by department. Remember your classes; reconstruction, emergency services, overhead and marketing. You may even have more. This is very easy to track if you are using class codes consistently in QuickBooks. It is also very helpful to know where you may need to make some changes. 8. Work in Process and/or Committed Contracts. Measuring these is critical and cannot be stressed enough. Always know what you have currently working and what you have coming up. It will affect any number of aspects of your business! Labor, materials, supplies and cash flow just to name a few! It will also affect your bottom line if the proper adjustments are not made by your accountant. Your end of year adjustments need to be made by someone well versed in "Construction Company Accounting" and your business. Adjustments can be made to income, costs and/or both. But the person making the adjustments needs to know what to adjust and it needs to be consistent year to year. Changing how you make the adjustments can be a red-flag to the IRS. 9. Overall Gross Profit for the company and overall Net Profit for the company. If your work in process is not adjusted correctly, it will affect your gross and your net profit. 10. Overhead and Breakeven. These figures have to be watched and measured on a consistent basis. It is all part of knowing "where you are in order to know where you are going." Our jobs move quickly and keeping tabs on these numbers will help steer you in the direction(s) you want to go. These are your major items to measure on a regular basis. All of these can be tracked in DMS, QuickBooks or with a combination of the two. Please call Delta Development Group for additional help or questions.
Marketing Corner One of the great things about a franchise is the consistent branding and messaging. As we continue to grow as a franchise network there will be more opportunity for new ideas and messaging for each individual market. New ideas and new marketing messaging is always welcome at Delta. Where we need to be careful is not straying away from our print media guidelines and keeping our copy at a professional level. The best and required way to prevent any branding issues is to always have your marketing materials reviewed and approved by Delta Development Group. We are here to support and assist in all of your marketing efforts. You know your market the best and you know what messages will resound the best. We encourage you to draft your message and print materials and we will either approve or offer revisions. There is never a project to big or small and we promise to get a quick response back to you. For your printing, we have a branding guide for you to follow or for your graphic designer to follow as reference. This will keep all of your materials looking professional and consistent to our brand. As member of the Delta franchise we all have a responsibility to one another in keeping our image and brand standards to the highest level. It only takes one marketing piece to get in to the wrong hands and we will all feel the repercussions of it. Please take a moment to review the branding guide in FranConnect. Once you have logged in click on the library tab and then the artwork menu tab. This will open the artwork index page. Scroll down to the bottom to the page and click on the Delta Disaster Services Branding Guide. Please share this with your designer and printer as well. This will eliminate any questions on how each document should look and be designed. We love great marketing ideas and they are encouraged. Please keep sharing them and thinking of new ones. We all stand to benefit as a network from your collaboration. And never hesitate to call or email with an idea or suggestion.
And we will leave you with this…