Currently at Excel Cleaning & Restoration Supplies we are hosting our 1st CMA and CMR school in 10 years. BestTrainingSchools is currently instructing their Mold Assessor and Mold Remediator class that preps the professional contractor to sit for the CMA and CMR exams through the National Organinzation of Remediators and Mold Instpectors (NORMI) and American Council for Accredited Certification (ACAC) formerly known as AIAQC. This class also contains a segment in Defective Chinese Drywall that I sat in on today and I must say that the situation is pretty serious. Defective Drywall could someday become a complete remediation project like mold but until someone decides on WHO is going to pay for it there will probably be improper work that could someday come back to haunt the contractor.



I advise anyone out there that is not up to date on the Florida Mold law that is effective July 1st, 2010 call the DPBR and get more info or call on us at Excel Cleaning & Restoration Supplies for more details. As for Chinese Drywall, their still is not a "standardized procedure" to deal with it although we hear that it is coming soon. The main problem is finding someone to accept responsibility and pay for it!





I will be blogging to keep you all up to date as we hear any news!



Thank you for your loyalty and business!!!!!

Planning to Win!!

A new customer and I recently attended the "Planning to Win" Symposium sponsored by Interlink Supply held at the Reets Drying Academy in Ga. and I just wanted to give a brief overview of what we learned. The whole conference was designed to educate the restoration business owner on how to market Adjusters, Agents, and Plumbers in ways never done before (by most). It focused on really differentiating your company from the rest of the competition by providing programs that grow their business which in turn will grow yours. Its about getting away from the "donut dropping" marketing plans most restoration companies have in place. Also taking "spiffs" out of the picture and getting referrals strictly because you are the best and they cant afford not to send you work.

I could go on and on about what we learned but I think I can sum it up with one statement and one question that you need to ask you self:

What can you offer Adjusters, Agents, and Plumbers that no other restoration company can or is willing to do?

Think outside the box!!

If you want to pick my brain about some ideas that I have that will help grow your business contact me anyway you wish. I cant tell you all the secrets though, so i recommend attending the Planning to Win Symposium yourself.

HELLO 2010!!!

Its finally here, a new year. So far so good it seems like everyone has had a good jump into the new year. Across the board everyone that i have spoke to whether it be a restoration company or carpet-tile cleaning company everyone seems to be at least steady and some booked out 3 weeks. I hope that everyone enjoyed any time off that was available and had time to think about a new plan of attack this year to make sure that it will be better than last.

We certainly learned alot last year and I'm sure you have to. I think the main thing was to really concentrate on the business and clients that you already have before dumping a bunch of money into coupon books and yellow pages etc. to get new business, remember it is cheaper and more profitable to keep the ones you got and try to get more referral work rather than market new customers.(not to say we wont take any new ones!!)

So in closing we want to say thank you for all of your support and know that we are here for all of your cleaning and restoration needs. Enjoy the new year and think of it as a new beginning and i hope that everyone is successful.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM EXCEL

Finally Christmas is here!! We want to wish all of our customers and their families a merry Christmas and say thank you for a great year! We have all been through alot this year, we have shared highs and lows unfortunately more lows but I am optimistic that 2010 will be better for all of us. So enjoy any time off you might get with your family and get ready for that after Christmas rush of business that we all look forward to.

Thank you for your business!!!
Excel Supplies Family

Holiday Season Is Here!

This year has flown by for me anyways, it is just a few days from Thanksgiving and a few weeks from Christmas, hopefully everyone stays busy and get ready for spurts right before and right after these holidays. I had a female customer in the other day that specifically wanted a Spice deodorizer and said that she really pushes it around these times and makes good money, not to mention she uses it in here house. So even if you don't charge for deodorizers I think that customers will certainly appreciate you leaving a nice holiday spice smell for their visitors to enjoy over the next few weeks. Just an idea and remember you can pick some up right on our website I recommend Spice Air by Bridgepoint. Happy Thanksgiving and I will be making one more post before Christmas.

THANK YOU!! AND SOME GOOD ADVICE

Thank all of you who attended our recent IICRC classes the Water Restoration Technician (WRT) course was a huge success and almost more than half of the class was from out of the state we really appreciate all that traveled to further your knowledge in this industry. Please feel free to give us any feedback good or bad to help make our classes better.

Now for the "GOOD ADVICE" this is good advice for anyone who has some besides yourself answering the company phone, SEND THEM TO CLASS!!!, everyone seems to forget about the "office girl" who ever is taking the calls to schedule work needs to know what they are scheduling and be able to answer general questions. I don't care if it is water damage or carpet cleaning, just put your self in the customers shoes, do you really want to talk to someone that has no idea about what you want or what their company does? I don't think so. This past class we had a company send their office manager and she was very pleased with the class and feels much more confident when taking phone calls, she is now able to re assure the customer that they are choosing the right company for the job.

I promise you that if you send whoever is in charge of the phones to a certification class, even if it is not here at Excel (i would prefer it though, hahaha) you will increase the amount of jobs you get and have less price shoppers call and hang up, it really helps when the person on the other line can explain what services are going to be performed and more importantly why!

Hope everyone is staying busy, until next time,

Justin

SNOW BIRDS ARE HERE!!!

During my journey back from Atlanta i couldn't help but notice the extremely heavy amount of traffic heading south with me and surprise surprise they were almost all out of state plates. I don't know how come every ones winter has come early and our summer wont seem to leave but for once i don't hear anybody complaining about the "snow birds" being down here. We have picked up quite a bit in the past few weeks which means our customers are picking up.

Short blog but just wanted to let everyone know what we are seeing. So good luck out there and hopefully it continues to pick up!

TES VS DESICCANT!! SEEN FIRST HAND

I was lucky enough to see first hand what the TES (thermal energy system) could do in a worse case scenario and even better compare it to a desiccant that was operating in the same situation just next door.

I had gone to Marietta Ga. to help a good customer of mine that had gotten about 20 houses with affected crawl spaces/garages. This situation was new to the both of us seeing how we don't have crawl spaces in Florida we knew it was going to be a learning experience and that it was to say the least. The fact that both of us have attended the TES drying academy and are WRT certified certainly helped us get through it. I am not going to bore you with all of the details but to make a very long story short we proved that when you see advertisements saying "Dry in 30 Hours or less"(in most cases) it is a pretty accurate statement considering we were dealing with some of the hardest conditions: rain, some areas too tight to fit equipment in, un vented or overly vented crawl spaces, home owners not home, power issues, etc etc...

I'm not going to lie when you see a big diesel fired desiccant parked at the job next door to you and you have a dual axle trailer with a TES machine mounted in it with a few small hoses ran out of it, it was a little intimidating looking back its funny to know how much more money they were spending every day between the fuel, rental, etc.. and that on particular house we actually dried 24hrs faster than they did and moved on to the next, just to prove that Hot Dry Air to What is affected is the Fastest way to dry.

We were able to direct our heated air to the materials to where they were only able to pump dry air into the crawl space and hoping that it made it through the entire 6000-8000 cubic foot of channeled (yes channeled like a maze) needless to say our TES unit really performed to par. I and my customer were very pleased with the results and it was a great experience!

IICRC COURSES COMING UP SOON!!

I don't think that i need to stress the importance of being trained and having your technicians trained, but for those that may not understand "GET TRAINED,GET EDUCATED,GET REFRESHED ON WHATS GOING ON OUT THERE!"Please visit our website for the upcoming schedule.

www.excelsupplies.com

PROOF THAT KNOCKING DOORS WORKS!

This story has nothing to with carpet cleaning or restoration but i thought i should share it with everyone. Over the weekend when i was at a family members house hanging out by the pool i had noticed that his palm trees looked amazing and asked when he trimmed them and if he did it just because people were coming over and his reply was " I was going to and then my door bell rang and there was two gentleman standing there offering to trim my trees for a discount because they were in the neighborhood" he of course accepted the offer and then sent them to his neighbors house and they did his also. It just goes to show that sometimes all you have to do is knock some doors and ask for business, you might be surprised with the results.