September 8th, 2007 → 8:00 am @ terry
I apologize for getting this post to you a little late. I like to post to the blog in the evenings after I have been out in the field for the day. There was some pretty bad weather yesterday and I was coming home by Interstate 10 and had no way of knowing I was approaching one of those chain-reaction accidents. It was a real mess. It took me four hours to travel what is normally done in about thirty minutes. I could not get home early enough yesterday to update the blog so I am doing it now – early on Saturday morning.
First things first. You know I spend a lot of time poking around the Internet for information that will help us in our field services business. I ran across a comment made by a field rep out west and his comment mentioned his fee for loss control inspections. I know there are a lot of variables that go into establishing fees, but his stated fee was twice what our fee is. I have e-mailed him and hope to get the chance to exchange some information with him.
While continuing my search to find more information on loss control inspections, I ran across a very nice, informative article published in an online magazine called “The Cooperator”. The magazine is intended for an audience of Co-op and condo operators.
The August 2007 issue of the magazine I found focuses on insurance. You may want to read the article I found and then read the rest of the magazine. I hope you gain a lot from it as I did.
Then, I would advise you to look around at the site itself. You may find a lot to keep you busy by looking at the “Directory” and the “Archives”. If you do not see what I see in those headings, then you need to e-mail me.
On to other things. Since I got in so late, I do not have the full story yet, but I was told that my daughter was followed by two men as she was leaving one of her inspections. They pulled up behind her as she arrived at her next inspection. They got out of the car. They got too close.
My daughter has known for years that an auto can be used as transportation. Her Dad taught her an auto can also be used for offense or defense. She’s OK. They’re probably still stunned. More on this later if warranted.
Even with all the problems encountered, I had a real nice day. A long day! A day which probably put me into negative cash flow but still a nice day. Life is what you make it!
(1•35)+(22•7.50)
September 6th, 2007 → 8:42 pm @ terry
I would like your support for a new idiom I am introducing to the field services business. You know what an idiom is – it’s a term or phrase the meaning of which cannot be figured out from the words alone or from the context in which it is used. I guess Wikipedia has the best definition I have seen.
Take a few minutes to brush up on “idiom” by visiting Wikipedia’s info page – this is important!
OK. With that done; you need to learn a little about a vine called Kudzu. If you are somewhere in the southeast you can go get a glass of tea while we have this kudzu education thing.
Kudzu is a vine originally from Japan I think. It is so aggressive that it can grow one foot per day. If you are patient, you can put a marker next to a kudzu vine to give your eyes a focus point and you can actually watch the stuff grow. It’s serious stuff that will climb telephone poles, water tanks, houses – anything that gets in its way. Here is a web site with some pictures just so you can see I am not kidding about this. Since the stuff grows so fast I am toying with the idea of a second idiom, “Faster Than Kudzu”.
OK. Now here’s where I try to tie all this together. In the past we have had companies ask us to do an inspection only ten miles outside our stated and agreed to area. If you ever do that most of them will just put that zip code down as part of your “coverage area”.
Now they call a month later and ask you to do an inspection just ten miles outside that zip code. Now, watch close my friend; you are experiencing the creeping kudzu effect! This can get out of hand in a hurry so you better act quickly – if it gets out of control it can take over your whole business.
It happens once every eleven years or so – I have a bad day. Today was the day. Not much field work to do so I spent time calling for interviews for TheRepReport, calling to get business, calling my insurance agent and a few other people that I really needed to talk with. I never contacted anyone. Voice mail, no answer, the oh so overdone “All associates are helping other customers”. Not one! Oh yeah, and my favorite, “For quality control and training purposes this call may be recorded”. You want to know what that really means?
Then I made the dumb move of answering the phone. One of our long time companies called asking me to do an inspection for them that is only about two and a half hours away. The teary eyed rep almost crying, “I don’t have anybody else I can send”.
“Well sorry, I have no desire to help you. Maybe you can get one of the other reps I keep running into to go. Or, how about that real nice couple that used to work for me. I’m sure they will go. Besides, I’m too busy calling other companies to get enough work to replace what you aren’t sending.”
I thought it went well.
Maybe I’ll have some good info for you in a day or two. Oh yea, one more thing. I did get through to one company receptionist that said the boss, she called him John, was out but she would put me through to his voice mail. It didn’t work. I told her I would call back and asked for John’s last name so I would know who to ask for. “I’m sorry. I’m not allowed to give out his last name”. Whoa! This guys hiring reps nationwide and you can’t get his last name. Looked up their web site and it’s registered through an identity concealing service. Probably a great company. I’m just too suspicious.
I think this one is worth reprinting:
September 4th, 2007 → 8:33 pm @ terry
This will be short. The inquiries made to additional companies in the last couple of weeks are paying off. Most of these jobs came in Friday and Saturday. Here’s my day:
Eight occupancy inspections
Four Merchant Verifications (one eyeglass store, three auto dealers)
Two Initial Secures (property preservation)
One Insurance Loss (total fire loss)
Four drive-bys
I just wanted to make some kind of post tonight to let you know I’m still around. We have two more initial secures that we will be doing early tomorrow morning. Hopefully we will have a little down time after that – Labor Day spoiled me.