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Research in our industry is scarce and should be taken seriously — especially when it reveals how super-successful remodelers use certain business practices to achieve dramatic results.
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Increasing field efficiency means improved margins, but some tactics are better than others. Purchasing inferior materials is shortsighted because you will have to spend warranty dollars down the line. Using less expensive subcontractors may also increase future warranty costs, but worse is the...
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After having tried many incentive programs over the years, Bob Fleming, president of Classic Remodeling & Construction, Charleston, S.C., says his company's new program “is the first one that is designed to address problem areas and distribute the bonus money fairly.”
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Many years ago, an industry insider told me that no remodeling company would ever grow to more than a million dollars in volume. So much for predictions.
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Open book management, or OBM, is a management style that gives employees access to all the company's financial numbers. When coupled with profit-based bonuses, it's supposed to make everyone more invested in the company's success.
A new client bet me that he could increase his gross profit margin from 24% to 28% in six months. Laughing, I told him that it couldn't be done — in 15 years of working with remodeling companies around the country, I'd never seen anyone capable of increasing their field efficiencies to that degree...
Remember Pareto's Principle? Also called the 80/20 rule, it says that 20% of the input provides 80% of the value. Stated another way, 20% of your activities account for 80% of the results. Last month we applied the rule to job costs control. Now let's use the 80/20 rule to help develop an annual...
Jim Benoit uses an estimating discipline from his commercial contracting experience to enhance his company's residential remodeling estimates. Instead of including project supervision in overhead, he includes it as a line item in all the estimates produced by Benoit & Czarnecki Design/Construction...
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Beginning Jan. 1, 2006, the standard mileage rates used to calculate the deductible costs of operating an automobile (including vans, pickups, or panel trucks) for business purposes will be 44.5 cents per mile for business miles driven.