Can missing 1 air mover really be killing your business? Maybe killing is a little dramatic, but missing 1 air mover definitely isn’t helping your restoration business.
We’re Losing How Much?
For argument’s sake, let’s just assume that your daily rate per air mover is $30. And let’s just say that your average drying days are about 4 days per job.
That means that if you’re missing 1 air mover on a job, you’re losing out on $120 in profits from each job.
To put that into perspective, take out your wallet and take out $120.
Now, shred it.
It sounds crazy to do that, but that is essentially what you are doing when you don’t calculate air movers according to the IICRC S500 standard and miss 1 air mover per job.
Is $120 Per Job Really That Big of A Deal?
Let’s talk more numbers. Let’s just say that on 20 jobs you missed 1 air mover on each job. Now, your $120 lost/air mover just went up to $2,400 in lost profits. $2,400 straight to the shredder.
OUCH.
Do you think it’s possible that you’re missing 1 air mover per job? 2 air movers per job?
Based on conversations with other restorers, we’d venture to guess that 20-30% of air movers are missed that should have been placed. This is because many restorers are not calculating how many air movers are needed according to the IICRC S500 standard.
Want an air mover calculation cheat sheet? Download it HERE!
So let’s say on a job, according to the S500 air mover calculation, 10 air movers should have been placed. Chances are that only 7-8 air movers were placed. That means 2-3 air movers were missed.
Well, if we calculate 3 air movers missed from 20 jobs ($120 air movers x 3 x 20) that’s a whopping $7,200 missed.
What if it was 100 jobs? Well, that’s $36,000 that we’re missing!
Our Estimating and Negotiating Plus class covers more profitable activities that are commonly overlooked. Learn more about the class HERE
How Do I Recoup That $36,000?!
Now another question: How much does it cost to set an air mover? It’s almost pure profit, right?
Your company may attribute some expense to it and that’s accurate, but for the sake of this discussion, let’s call this 100% profit.
So now, how much work do you have to do to recover $36,000 in lost profit?
It depends on your net profit percentage, that is what percentage is left over after all your expenses are paid.
Again we’re gonna make another assumption. Let’s say your net profit is 20%.
That means that in order to recoup $36,000 (in lost profits from missing 3 air movers on 100 jobs), you’re gonna have to do 5 times that amount of work, that means that you’re going to have to generate $180,000 in revenue to recoup the $36,000 that was lost on those missed air movers.
What if your net profit was 10%? Then that would mean you’d have to generate $360,000 in revenue to recoup the lost profit on the 3 air movers missed on each job.
Work Smarter, Not Harder
Does calculating air movers on each job take some time? Yes, certainly it does. But certainly not as much time as it’s gonna take to do another $360,000 worth of work.
So when you’re about to put air movers on a job, calculate according to the S500 air mover calculation and work smarter, not harder!
Learn how to incentivize calculating air movers within your company HERE
