Bjorn
Member
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2006
- Messages
- 2,450
so how many crews you got out today?
KEN SNOW HOW ANY CREWS OUT CLEANING TODAY
- Thread starter Bjorn
- Start date
Ken Snow
RIP
None T, unless we have emergency calls. I think we have 9-10 on tomorrow but I'm not sure~ I'll find out when I get in at 6:45 tomorrow. We are in winter slow down mode.
dgargan
Member
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2006
- Messages
- 706
Ken tell me how you handle the winter slow down. How much of a drop do you experience and what do you do with employees that have no work?
This part of the business just kills me even being a small business. I just keep paying my employees through the slow times and try to find things for them to do. It just kills me when we go through entended slow peroids and I run out of things for them to do. You can only sweep out a shop so many times. We try to get tools fixed, visit referral sources, put out flyers but still I end up paying out 10-15 hours per week per employee for time where there was nothing to do and I have sent them home. I still pay them because they need the job and it's not fair to them to cut their pay and I want them to stay because they are good employees.
David
This part of the business just kills me even being a small business. I just keep paying my employees through the slow times and try to find things for them to do. It just kills me when we go through entended slow peroids and I run out of things for them to do. You can only sweep out a shop so many times. We try to get tools fixed, visit referral sources, put out flyers but still I end up paying out 10-15 hours per week per employee for time where there was nothing to do and I have sent them home. I still pay them because they need the job and it's not fair to them to cut their pay and I want them to stay because they are good employees.
David
Ken Snow
RIP
Dave- we do voluntary layoffs in the winter for about 8-20 people (mostly laborers but a couple office staff as well. We maintain their health & other benefits. W also keep about 5-6 doing various equipment repairs and refurbshing as well as handlung fire/water damage overflow. We don;t pay onyone ever for standing around or doing nothing. QWe pay thm a lot when they work and when they don't or there is none they go home. Our on location volume drops between 50-65% in winter months depending on severity, and our in plant rug cleaning drops 40-60%
Steve Toburen
Supportive Member
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2006
- Messages
- 1,912
- Name
- Steve Toburen
dgargan said:
I feel your pain, Dave. We hit the same thing. Trust me, I am envious of Ken "only" having a 50-65% residential volume drop in winter. Our residential during a Colorado winter would drop to almost zero after Christmas (except for assorted vomit/ urine/ spilled red punch spotting calls from Christmas parties that had gotten out of hand!) and would not pick back up till after the spring thaw, which depending on weather would be mid April or later. Sigh!
So we sort of stumbled into water and fire damage restoration only as a way to keep our people busy. It was only later we learned the incredible profit potential found in restoration. (When I sold the business restoration accounted for 40% of our gross volume and almost 80% of our total net profit!)
Now, Dave, I am not saying you should impulsively jump into water damage (like I did!) only to keep your people busy. However, I would certainly examine W/D as a very useful way to smooth out the peaks and valleys plus add a very profitable revenue stream to your business. (Fire damage is a whole 'nother can of worms and I suggest a lot more analysis be done before a small company goes into it.)
IF someone is interested in moving into W/D they might want to go here:
http://www.strategiesforsuccess.com/section/resources
and then click on the link for a "Smoother Running Restoration Business". The download is free and I guarantee there will be no spam that comes with it.
Steve "Island Boy" Toburen (only 11 more days till I am back in sunny Santiago, DR!)
www.StrategiesForSuccess.com
PS Now if you don't want the inevitable stress of late hour emergency calls, the liability exposure and the dealing with seriously messed up people that restoration brings two other options for keeping your crews busy in winter are:
1. Start promoting a residential pre-paid "Stay Beautiful" program that offers your client two cleanings per year, one of which usually will fall in winter time. When I sold the business we had aproximately 7,000 bucks a month coming in from these customers for work we had not even done yet! This sure helped us make payroll when we had employees doing "busy work".
2. Develop a commercial contract route of regular accounts that are done monthly. This work helped us stay busy plus kept our cash flow healthy.
For lots of info on how to set up either of these options just go to the web address above and click on the appropriate link for your free download.
harryhides
Member
Dave, I don't think anyone has a longer winter than we do here in Winnipeg.
Our residential workload would drop by two thirds for months on end.
One solution was to find a better balance between Commercial and Residential so that our total revenue did not drop quite so much.
We also developed as many monopoly services as we could - carpet repair, color repair, leather and specialty furniture etc. BUT these services would, as often as we could, be put off until the winter months. Since there were no alternatives for the customers needing these services we usually could make them wait.
In-plant services like Leather and specialty fabric furniture work well especially for our customers that took a couple of weeks off in the winter.
So in those cases, we'd pick up the furniture before they left for Florida or Hawaii and have it ready to deliver upon their return home.
Our residential workload would drop by two thirds for months on end.
One solution was to find a better balance between Commercial and Residential so that our total revenue did not drop quite so much.
We also developed as many monopoly services as we could - carpet repair, color repair, leather and specialty furniture etc. BUT these services would, as often as we could, be put off until the winter months. Since there were no alternatives for the customers needing these services we usually could make them wait.
In-plant services like Leather and specialty fabric furniture work well especially for our customers that took a couple of weeks off in the winter.
So in those cases, we'd pick up the furniture before they left for Florida or Hawaii and have it ready to deliver upon their return home.
hogjowl
Idiot™
I hear you also don't take baths up there during the winter months.
harryhides
Member
What terrible childhood trauma would compel a man to continuously post useless DAP's year after year ?
Please get help, Marty.
Please get help, Marty.
Ken Snow
RIP
LOL Tony~ actually Marty's therapist advises the DAP's as an alternative to doing unmentionable things to pigs. :-)
hogjowl
Idiot™
This sexual orientation that Mikey's Board seems to have causes me to doubt the professionalism of the people who post here.
Mikey P
Administrator
leave my orientation out of this conversation ya perv.
hogjowl
Idiot™
Everything's not all about you, Buckethead.
harryhides
Member
admiralclean said:
There you go again - time to start thinking about your New Years resolutions Marty.
Here are some suggestions.
Get some new material
See a dentist
Sell the V
Lose the DAP's
Find a hobby - Chinese Checkers, lawn darts, solitaire, whittling and cooking come to mind.
hogjowl
Idiot™
You wanna buy the V?
harryhides
Member
I care for you too Marty just not quite that much.
