Using Technology to Help the Client Relationship
Technology can help your company become more efficient and improve your client’s experience; however, do not rely solely on technology to manage your projects.
Neil Parsons Reveals Some Powerful Ideas for Building Systems
Neil Parsons with Design Build Planners of New Jersey is one savvy remodeler with an neil-parsonsawesome business model which is screaming to be franchised (it’s in the works!).
Does A Virtual Showroom Increase Business?
By making online meetings, shared files, and pinboard accounts readily available, you will be able to provide faster service for them, and save time for yourself.
Remodeler’s Exchange: Leveraging Online Reviews
An interview article with Jason Parsons …when a client gives us a positive review we will reach out to them personally and thank them for the review and let them know how much it means to the business and us.
Video Close Up: VideoScribe
A daily5Remodel article featuring marketing videos from the Design Build Planners and information from Neil Parsons.
Tips to Create a Virtual Showroom
An article by Jason Parsons In the remodeling industry, lowering costs, increasing efficiency, and improving client satisfaction usually top the list of company goals. By incorporating a “virtual showroom” for the design and development process, we have been able to address all of these goals with our clients. The use of 3D design, web meetings, social media platforms, and online stores make this all possible.
Tips for Installing a TV Over a Fireplace
Remodeling Magazine article featuring Design Build Planners photography. First photo is a computer image for a planned family room remodel. The second image is from a completed master bathroom renovation.
Professional Remodeler’s Forty Under 40 Class
of 2012
Jason Parsons, Remodeling project designer, Design Build Planners,
Toms River, N.J.
Honesty: Still the Best Policy
“Our 12-step system allows us to educate the client with respect to what they need, discuss the items they want, and create a detailed, customized price on our initial visit. This way, we can determine if the client is looking to invest in a complete project, or pay for a problem waiting to happen. We want our approach to be refreshing, rewarding, and different. ”
Remodeling Runs in the Family
By the time I was 12, I knew how to frame, hang drywall, trim, install roofing and siding, and work an aluminum break (as well as keep a clean truck).
Solutions: Selling Your Difference
It can be maddening to lose a project to a competitor on what appears to be the sole basis of price — especially when your know your company will do a much better job. To discuss solutions to this increasingly common scenario, we asked remodeler, sales trainer and entrepreneur Neil Parsons to weigh in.
Doing More With Less: the On-Demand Remodeling Business
We outsource our design/build projects to Design Build Planners (DBP), which provides remote project design and development services. This include developing 3D CAD drawings and obtaining project development agreements from homeowners.
Under Contract: Sales and Marketing Tracker
Most remodelers grossly underestimate the time and money they spend on marketing, believes Neil Parsons. As a result, they habitually waste time and money on efforts that deliver poor results, and they invest too little time and money on efforts that can could deliver excellent results.
Forecast looking a little brighter
“During the post-presidential election, people tend to settle in and spend money, and spend wisely—and we all know home remodeling is a wise way to spend money,” says Jason Parsons, remodeler project designer, Design Build Planners, Toms River, N.J. “Also, the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, is going to create a major need for remodeling and custom new construction in our home market in New Jersey for the next several years.”
Positioning your business for 2013
Top opportunities: Added potential client base through expanded territory. We expect to gain revenue through product referrals and e-commerce being added to our site.
25 remodelers who get social media
Why it works: While the company cannot point to direct revenue, it has increased brand awareness, helped with networking and driven traffic to the company’s website.
The Design/Build Remodeling Model
The Design/Build business model for remodeling contractors is becoming a successful alternative to the traditional “design-bid-build” approach. Jim and Greg speak with Neil Parsons, the owner of Design Build Profit, a consulting firm that assists contractors with this approach.
Dating Game
The software’s line-item pricing is drawn from vendor and trade partner price lists. All that’s necessary to calculate project cost is linear- or square-footage information.
The program propagates everything needed, right down to light switches, circuits, hardwood flooring, windows, etc. “The formulas are based on the history of jobs produced and what the common choices are,” Parsons says.
Projects Made Simple
Neil Parsons, a former remodeler and the owner of consulting company Design Build Profit, in Toms River, N.J., was not the first remodeler to give clients a detailed estimate. But, he says, his estimating system is unique because it divides a project into 47 cost categories “common and recognizable to a homeowner.”
Face to Face Connections
Create Ambassadors: “Make it part of company culture,” says former remodeler and now consultant Neil Parsons, owner of Design Build Profit. Share your company’s mission and goals. Parsons suggests running an open-book company and regularly holding team-building exercises and periodic “state-of-the union” meetings.
Booster Club
The objectives were to discover the company’s perceived strengths and weaknesses, understand how clients make major buying decisions, and explore referral strategies, says Neil Parsons, vice president of sales and marketing.
Tuffin’ It Out: Watching the time impresses clients
Parsons understands why scheduling and timing is the main client concern. A remodel is typically considered a major inconvenience and requires a major change in one’s lifestyle.
Show & Tell: Business How-To: Exhibiting at a home show
Neil Parsons agrees that staffing is the most important element for home show success and recommends using employees who are energetic and outgoing (salespeople if possible) adding that you should “picture your favorite waitress or bartender” in terms of your booth staff. That’s the type of person homeowners would want to talk to.
Business How-To: Paperless Client Meetings
“We are deeply entrenched in the e-world with video presentations, computer pricing, digital photos, email, and many Web-based meetings,” says Neil Parsons, owner of consulting firm Design Build Profit.
2002 and 2009 Remodeler of the Year
The purpose of the Remodeler of the Year category is to encourage the true professionals to raise their hand and volunteer to be examples. Just as a winning project should inspire those who see it, the Remodelers of the Year should inspire others to follow their lead.