Kent received the following testimonial from a recently satisfied customer:

I cannot thank you enough for drying my tennant's first floor bedroom. As the builder and homeowner for this investment property I am very impressed by your service. You were quick, efficient and professional, even with me providing new challenges you got the job done. The TES System was turned on at 4:30 pm on Tuesday, and we were dry by 2:30 pm on Wednesday. WOW!!!

The way I built this home is what provided us the challenges. The wet ceiling has a layer of open cell foam, 2 layers of sheetrock with J-Channel running between the rock, all for sound proofing.

The exterior of that room also has open cell foam between the studs, filling the open cavity between the sheetrock and exterior wall for insulation.

Upon this water damage occuring, I called and consulted multiple sources: the drywall contractor, the insulation contractor, and Prestige Services. I am so glad that I decided to go with Prestige Services. It proved to be the most efficient, least disruptive and cost effective approach.

As I said before, in less than 24 hours of drying time and within 61 hours of getting wet, the open cell foam and sheetrock were dry. It was very impressive!

Thanks again,
Ellen Bradley

Honestly and Legally Take Unfair Advantage of Your Competition!

There is no comment that is asked more frequently among restorers than the one on how to hire and pay a restoration sales representative. However, we have to ask some questions like:
"What's the most profitable way to grow my business?"
"What should my restoration salesperson responsibilities be?"

What is the purpose of even having a restoration salesperson, what is it that we want them to do for us, and then we can talk about how to pay them for it.

The restoration industry has changed a lot in the past few years. We've gone from a time where most companies went out and filled candy jars to get business. Now we have social networking like Linked In, Facebook and Twitter. However the situation most companies find themselves in now is most insurance companies are program-based. The problem is, of course, if you're not in the program, you don't get the work!

It takes a certain amount of work that is available right now. I'm talking about going straight to the end user. I'm talking about commercial mitigation work.

Now in nearly every market of any real size, there are large facilities, and most of them are self-insured from $50,000 to around $100,000. What this means is that any loss that occurs will be taken care of by the facility directly. (No insurance company involved at all... they will just write you a check!)

If the loss goes higher than that, the facility will often involve a special adjuster and although the insurance company may have a preferred provider program, if you're already there doing the work, the insurance companies don't seem to mind going ahead and letting you finish.

The strategy you'll use for getting these kinds of jobs is that someone (your restoration salesperson) will approach these facility managers before-hand and ask them if they have any kind of an Emergency Response program in place. Some of them will, but most likely they won't.

You have to remember the sales philosophy that your sales representative should always keep in mind... "You can have everything you want in life, if you will just help enough people get what they want." But what do they want? They just want the best solution to their problems or potential problems.

You then explain the solutions to their potential problems by offering your services to them and offer them a non-binding contract that they can keep in a file just in case something goes wrong. You carefully explain that this doesn't obligate them in any way... rather it obligates you.

If it is any kind of large facility, for instance let's say it's a school system or a campus for a large company - they're going to be having losses all the time! Right now they are not calling you and you need to change that ASAP.

Most of these will be small, and will be taken care of by their in-house janitors (you can even offer to help train their in-house staff on how to deal with these small losses, because you won't get them anyway). Most facilities of any size have a small amount of air movers, a few dehu's and small amount of other equipment.

Not if, but when, a large loss happens, guess who in mostly likely now they are going to call? After all, your name is on a file in their disaster-management drawer! They actually have a contract with you! This is where your sales representative is involved in setting up a relationship between your company and the facilities managers in your area. However, there are some questions that still need to be answered:
How do we find someone to do this kind of work for us?
How much do you pay a sales rep to do this kind of work for us?
What do we pay for someone to go out and create relationships between our company and the facilities managers in our area?

What we need is a restoration salesperson to go out and make these calls, attend the networking events, and take these facilities managers and owners to dinner etc.

This means that the sales representative needs to be very organized. So before you hire a sales representative you might want to ask them in their interview - "How do you keep organized in your life as well as with your last employer?"

This will give you an idea if they are organized before they even start working with you. Maybe they will respond with programs like Outlook, Google Calendar, PDA, an organizer or other sources. This will give you a great idea of where you might have to start with them if you hire them. Because if they are not organized now, how will they be organized with your company? The most successful salesman in the world are very organized and structured.

Now the most profitable way to pay the restoration salesperson is in a few different ways. First, we need know the activities they should be doing to be successful. So what we can do is to set up a pay structure that pays them a base, based upon how well they do these required activities. This rewards them for doing the activities we know will lead to success.

How else do they get paid? The restoration salesperson should be tied in with the success and profitability of the company.

What you're doing, by setting this up in this manner, is you're rewarding the salesperson in two ways: First, by doing the activities that are known to lead to success, and second, for bringing actual business into the company. This is the most powerful way to reward a salesperson because it ties them directly to the real, tangible results you want to achieve. It is a very effective and powerful system.

Once a week on the same day at the same time you need have a meeting with your salesperson, and you'll go over everything. This keeps the two of you "on the same page," and keeps you in touch with what he or she is doing.

The most important factor is that they need to have a game plan, just like a coach of a football team. That coach will always have a game plan for the next opponent. So your sales representative also needs to have a game plan or a marketing plan. Maybe the first week of the month he will concentrate on insurance agents, the second week he will concentrate of plumbers, third week he will concentrate of property managers and finally the fourth week he concentrates on adjusters. But at least now he has a game plan to start from.

In conclusion, I also highly recommend that your company tracks where ALL the jobs are coming in from. Because if jobs are coming in off the yellow pages, websites, direct mailers and they are NOT coming from the sales representative, then some things need to change. So track all your leads, you will be surprised where your jobs might be coming from.

To view the complete calendar of events, visit us online at
http://www.tesdryingsystem.com/events.html

You may also contact the tes hotline at (800) 948-1754.