Benchmarks

  • Statistics on the 2004 Class of Big50

    Every year, our search for the Big50 uncovers some of the best-performing remodeling companies in the country. Nearly half of this year's Big50 Companies show revenues of between $1 million and $2 million.

     
  • Questionnaire about various areas of business

    This questionnaire is designed to collect information from the past two years about many of the areas most important to Benchmark readers. It will take more than a few minutes of digging into your records to complete this form, but the payoff will be the ability to see from the results we publish...

     
  • Measure the market to create enough leads and predict local market changes

    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...

     
  • Referrals based on project management

    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.

     
  • Defining and analyzing backlog

    Being booked a year out is a good thing -- or is it?

     
  • Slippage and Risk Ratio recalculations

    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...

     
  • Establishing benchmarks: Measuring performance

    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.

     
  • Owner's compensation at greatest risk when business grows or shrinks

    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...

     
  • A Marketing Formula For Growth

    How do you determine what to spend on marketing when you need to boost sales efforts for growth?Joaquin Erazo Jr., marketing vice president at Case Design/Remodeling, Bethesda, Md., uses a formula that relies on history as an indicator of future performance. "The goal is to make sure you are not...

     
  • Setting benchmark goals for lead carpenter production

    Many remodelers are curious about the benchmark for how much dollar volume a lead carpenter can produce in one year. Trying to complete $1 million by doing 20 small projects is next to impossible.