Restoration Rewind

Delta Development Group Monthly Newsletter

July 2014

Off to the Races

Delta Disaster Services of Western Colorado is officially open, and the work is pouring in. The morning of their grand opening Tyler Milyard, General Manager, was on site

with Michael Mastous to review a new loss, a car through the home that came in the very evening before. Since then they have been going gangbusters. Just a few days later the operation was informed that they had earned a spot with the Nationwide vendor program. After the dismissal of a very popular competitor the folks in RED where happy to step in and show them the Delta advantage.

The group has had little time to breathe and is currently working a huge residential fire. Tyler is in regular conversation with Mike about techniques, strategies, questions and best practices. He definitely sees the importance in getting started off on the right foot and making the best impression in their market and with their growing network of referral sources. We are very excited to see what happens over the next 90 days and beyond. The crystal balls says nothing but great things!

The Greens are Red HOT!

Now that Colorado is completely covered by Delta Disaster Services’ response teams, we took over the 2014 RMPCA Golf Tournament. All of the locations had their marketers out in full force, it was great to have such a strong presence. The tournament went by smoothly and the weather was beautiful! We were very honored to be a hole sponsor at the tournament for another year.

Crawford Contractor Connection Annual Convention – New Orleans

Louisiana

The Big Easy played host to this years’ CCC Convention, hosting over 3,000 contractors for this years’ function. Michael Mastous, represented Delta Disaster Services at the convention where the theme was “Rise Up” and most discussions centered around bettering yourself and your organization as a whole. One of the most intriguing came from keynote speaker, who talked about the 7 traits that a good business leader has:

Number one: You must have a sense of purpose, what gets you out of bed in the morning?

Number two: Have market intelligence. See changes when they happen. Understand those changes.

Number three: Establish effective growth and planning systems.

Do you have written systems in place?

• Are they communicated? • Do you review and communicate them? • Are they updated?

Number four: Are all your companies’ processes customer driven?

• What are they? • How can we deliver better customer

service?

Number five: Harness the power of technology.

• What tools are used? • Do we train everybody on that

technology? • Do we have technology sitting on the shelf that is not being utilized? • At the same time do not let systems be barriers.

Number six: Do you have the best and brightest in every position? Does your company have the best possible person at every position?

Number seven: Do you know what your future is going to be? Where do employees fit into the future of the company?

Delta Disaster Services was of course at the front of minds at the convention. We are making waves throughout the industry with our quality of work, expansion in the industry and our high customer services standards.

Fire….Fire…Fire!!

Three of our offices are currently dealing with large fire losses. Mac Urie, Delta Disaster Services of Southern Utah, is dealing with a complex fire situation just north of Cedar

City. Delta Disaster Services of Western Colorado is of course off to a fast start and are currently working a large residential fire loss. Finally Delta Disaster Services of Southeastern PA has also taken on their first large fire loss. The day this loss came into their office, owner Erik Bones was on the phone with Mike Mastous informing him of the situation they were facing. After that phone call, Mike had plans to be on a red-eye flight to Pennsylvania to get his eyes on the situation and help the group. After being on site and being able to talk through the loss with Mike in a conference call, Erik and his excellent team felt they had the situation under control. It is exciting to see

that the work steadily running through all of our offices. And Tyler and Erik have flame stoppers for their wheels on the way to them for having their very first fire losses.

Killin’ it!

We talk a lot about the different jobs that are being done across the Delta Disaster Services network, but we don’t always highlight the work that had to be done to get the phones ringing. Our offices rely very heavily on their business development representatives who are out every single day cold calling, arranging meetings, holding continuing education classes with insurance agents and adjusters all to get those jobs in the doors. It is these referrals that are the backbone of every location. This month we have to give a special highlight to Cammy Seaman, business development representative at Delta Disaster Services of Northern Colorado. During the week of June 23-27, Cammy brought in 15 referrals! 10 of those were from State Farm agents!

New Referrals:

Name

Referred by Number of referrals

State Farm ********** 10

Arapahoe Farms ********** 1

Allstate ********** 1

State Farm ********** 1

Sierra Vista ********** 1

State Farm ********** 1

None of our offices would be where they are without the hard work on the ground, pounding the pavement. It is not an easy position, and we are very proud of Cammy and all of the other representatives who make it happen every day. GREAT JOB & THANK YOU!

Money Talk

Delta Development Group is currently working on some items to enhance QuickBooks and help make your “work life” just a little easier; improve your billing rate with Xactimate; give you an electronic time sheet option; and improve your merchant services rates for credit cards!

First: A National Contract with Xactimate. The advantage of this contract will be a better monthly rate going forward. Once we reach 51 licenses in their system, that rate will drop even more. Xactimate has agreed to give all Delta franchises that have paid annually and semi-annually a refund and then we would be on a monthly contract moving forward. Right now we are in the contract review stage and hope to have this available within the next 30-60 days maximum. Once everything is finalized, it will be requirement that all franchises are billing through Delta Development Group. This is the only way we have been able to get the discount. Upon completion of this program we will hold a conference call with all offices to discuss the process for the future.

Second: A National Contract with Uni-Data. Uni-Data is a “cloud backup and storage” for your QuickBooks. This will give you the ability to have your QuickBooks backed up and will be far more secure than having it on one local computer. This will also give you the ability to log in from home or the office. Finally, it will also save significant storage space on your local network. We are currently working with them to make sure all of the integration with DMS will work. Please feel free to check them out on the web: www.unidatait.com.

Third: A National Contract with T-Sheets. T-Sheets is an electronic time sheet that can be completed from a smart phone,

a tablet, or a computer. It also has GPS tracking and will offer the ability to know where employees are during the day. T-Sheets does integrate with Quick Books and their rates are very affordable. The Denver office will be implementing T-sheets within the next 60 days. We found that this better meets the needs of field employees and will help decrease the errors that come with paper time sheets. Information on their rates and services and can be found on their website www.tsheets.com

Finally: We are working to get better credit card processing fees through Intuit Franchise Network. These rates are very competitive compared to anything we have found. They will also provide a “scanner” to swipe cards in the field and all payments would go directly into your QuickBooks. More details on this will be available soon.

Finally we will leave you with this…

“One of the marks or successful people is they are action

oriented. One of the marks of average people is they are talk

oriented.” –Brian Tracy