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By Sal Alfano. The data you collect throughout the year for each job holds a wealth of information about what aspects of your business are running smoothly and what parts are costing you money. In a perfect world, you would evaluate critical numbers weekly or at least monthly, but an end-of-year...
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The REMODELING benchmark for marketing expenditures is 3% of annual revenue (August 1998), but the fact is most residential remodeling companies don't do any deliberate marketing at all. To complete the vicious cycle, the ambushed remodeler executes a half-baked emergency marketing scheme, which...
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Back in January 2000, REMODELING set the benchmark for customer referrals at 95%. Even follow-up surveys that ask homeowners to rank performance too often ask the wrong question or draw the wrong conclusions from the answers.
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Being booked a year out is a good thing -- or is it?
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One factor affecting the numbers reported in the May issue was incomplete results. Since press time for the May issue, we've received additional data that change the slippage picture somewhat.The good news is that the median for all companies is -2.9%, meaning about half the companies performed...
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The more often you measure performance, the easier it will be to make needed corrections before problems grow out of control.Compare historical with current lead counts to forecast sales for the next quarter.
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Although this year's class of Big50 remodelers displays great variety in size, business structure, target market, project focus, and geographic location, the averages tell a fairly consistent story. By this measure, small- and large-volume companies in this year's Big50 class performed about the...
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A recent Benchmark column prompted an e-mail response from Bob Hanbury, CGR, of House of Hanbury Builders in Newington, Ct. Hanbury points out that the relationship between risk and owner's compensation isn't static and is affected by any change in a company's normal course of business. More...
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Call me old fashioned, but I still think it's possible to make money doing the kinds of small jobs that got a lot of us started in this business.A good portion of this work is under $1,000, but for Cowgill, anything that doesn't include design is classified as a small job.
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By relating owner compensation to total revenue, the Risk Quotient (see Benchmark, January 2003) helps a remodeling company owner balance risk with reward. Making a bad situation worse, a single major change order can easily add 20%, 30%, or more to the original cost.