Job turnaround

[Robert Lambie]

hi john…
its an easy one to reply to but everyone is different…
you maybe slower than me at knocking up a design, i may have more staff, bigger cutters or faster.. thers alot of differnt aspects in which some of us will vary to others…
what i will say is this. we do 24hr when we can… if somone comes in and its just text etc and i have a guy in house that is gonna have time to fit it, ill say once he has sat and had it shown to him on screen. come back in about 2 hours and we will letter it. i normaly tell them to drop it off. as we dont want vultures hovering the guy as he fits it… just ready to pounce at the slightest error in fitting… 😆
so if its easy and we can fit it in same day somtimes,
if its average stuff then next afternoon.
at most its about 2-3 days. thats if theres a fair bit on it and we are very busy.
the thing is.. theres loads out there that will do it quick if they are to pull the carpet from their competitor. if you get the sale make sure you dont loose it at the last minute because you cant be bothered to fit it that day… or somthing silly.
we get lots of referrals due to the time we take to turn the work around.

we have an order for 300 vans… rear only covered in chevrons. reflective!.
it starts in about a weeks time. my goal is to get 100 a week done with 3 fiitters. i could easily say 6 weeks but i wont if we can do it in that time the customer is delighted and we can get onto other work. if i cant then the customer will understand completely… but will know we tried our best..
if you say to every customer it will be 3 days, then as you get busy the 3 days opens to a week and so on…. then the customers will start going elsewere somthing to think about. you dont know when your next quiet spell will be! 🙄

[Mike Brown]

Hi John,

my average vehicle turnaround would be 3 weeks…

more soon

mikethesign

[Martin Pearson]

Robert, its probably easier for you to turn a van round quickly than it is for some of us smaller companys. The reason I say this is because quite often if someone comes in for a quote then we have to do the artwork, cut and prep it and fit it in with other jobs. We dont have one guy who does the design another who cuts and preps and another to fit.
We do however get people in as quick as possible. We try to do the artwork on the day the customer comes in, get him back in to see it next day if possible and fit as soon as possible after that.

[Robert Lambie]

quote :

Robert, its probably easier for you to turn a van round quickly

totaly agree with you martin. 😉
thats what i meant before though, when i said everyone has different circumstances.
i have seen myself sit and design a van with a customer for about an hour.
nothing flash just tidy and the odd fancy bit here and there to personalise it up. the guy on the cutters starts cutting.. we all know cutting doesnt take long. prep does a bit though..
then the van decals get handed back to me to fit…
it still takes the same time though.. if you know what i mean.
1 man designing then onto cutter. one man cutting then onto fitting…
each time the guy can be the same guy…

i know what you mean though..& your right 100% if the flow of work speeds up due to more men on the job more men then more work goes out each time just as fast.

hope that makes sense.. 😆

[Martin Pearson]

John, sorry just being nosey but why do you work exclusivly on vehicles? Is it because there is more than enough vehicle work to keep you going and your not interested in anything else or some other reason?
What do you do when you are asked for other signs, do you just tell people you dont deal with that sort of thing or do you put them in touch with someone else?
What if existing customers ask you for other stuff, arent you bothered that if they go else where for something else you might loose the vehicle work as well.
Sorry for all the questions but I do everything I can both for existing customers and new customers, I couldnt afford to turn any work away.

[John & Dawn Roddick]

The main reason is that as yet, we haven’t been asked to do anything else. Most of our work comes from a local guy who repairs and sells accident damaged commercial vehicles. It suits him to be able to offer the service to his customers as it means their van is ready to work as soon as they get it. We only do the business part time as Dawn and I both have full-time jobs so most of the time we have plenty to keep us going.

I understand your point about people possibly going elsewhere if we were to turn them down for something and we would seriously reconsider if that happened on a regular basis. Also we are both still very new to the trade and would like to improve upon what we can do before tackling something else if possible.

John

[Robert Lambie]

good idea mate…
we do try our hand at every aspect of our trade other than neon. saying that we have over the last year and a half tried to get into it. so much so put a deposit on a complete plant.
anyway we did not go ahead. we could not get a good enough neon bender to employ and we, like you did not think we new enough to get into somthing so new to us.
its wise to learn as much as possible before jumping in full on…
there is so much to learn in our trade, god i know. i still learn stuff every day from the magazines and this site and ive been in the game more than 13 years now.. 😕

[John Childs]

martin…

We are almost all vehicle work too and will only make a sign when we absolutely have to, for instance, for an existing customer who we don’t want going anywhere else. Even then we will get a sub-contractor to erect it for us nine times out of ten. The reasoning is:-

We are lucky in having plenty of vehicle work and don’t need them. If business slackens off I would prefer to reduce the workforce than get involved in signs.

Quoting for signs is a pain and takes too much time on site visits, preparing visuals and working out prices.

We don’t get sign quotes accepted.

We are not geared up for it and every sign we do involves loading the kit into the van, getting on-site and finding we have forgotten something, or need a tool we didn’t bring, and returning to the workshop to collect it. Inefficient I know, but we don’t do enough of that sort of work to justify putting more effort and resources into it.

It’s cold up ladders.

Vans are a whole different matter:-

One visual and one quote and we can do a thousand vans. We have done 1600 vans in the last two years for our largest customer. Fair enough they are dead simple and not expensive but one of my fitters went to a Vauxhall dealership and fitted 53 in one long day. Another client has had us do 120 vans a year for the last twelve years, and all to the same design.

We are geared up to do it. Van in the workshop, bish bosh, take it out and bring in another.

A sign will last for years but a van is changed regularly. Even our smallest customer, a one man business, will be back in three years for another.

No advertising costs, no sales force costs, just the same customers coming back again and again.

I look at some of the posts on this board about members being undercut on price, which is usually put down to their competitors using inferior materials or shoddy methods. I wonder if this is always the case or whether sometimes it is because they are up against specialists. For instance, I would bet that we can do a van cheaper than most, whilst maintaining a fair profit margin, not because we turn out shoddy work but because we are more efficient at it. Our lack of success in sign work is probably because the reverse also applies.

[Martin Pearson]

I understand what you are saying John and your right it is cold up ladders, especially at this time of year. If we could get away with just doing vehicles or something else that would keep us in the workshop that would be great. You are obviously a much bigger company which allows you to win national contracts so the sort of work you are doing is slightly different from us. Most of the vehicles we do are one offs in fact I think my largest customer has 5 vans, so we wouldnt be able to survive on vehicle graphics alone. As for doing vans cheaper I’m not so sure, I agree that we couldnt compete with you on a contract job which involved a fleet of vehicles but if every van you did was a one off then I dont think there would be a lot of difference if any.
Most of the time when someone undercuts us it is because they are using inferior materials or they have no overheads to worry about. In fact in some cases its because they have little artwork to do as we have already done it!!!

[John Childs]

Martin,

Don’t run away with the idea that we are a large national company. We are proof that you don’t need to be a large firm in big, flash premises to acquire some good clients. Our large customers never visit us and have no idea how large or small we are, the modernity of our premises or the shortness of the skirt of the girl in reception.* Just make them think that you are a professional outfit, only promise what you know you can deliver and then make good on those promises.

Do it right and they will recommend you to their business acquaintances and away you go. That’s the way it worked for me although I’m not trying to pretend that it is easy or quick, far from it. Nevertheless by acquiring two or three good clients per year, a not unreasonable target, for the last fourteen years we have been able to build up a good base.

Efficiency is the key and we achieve what we do with not too many people in cramped premises.

I won my first national customer a year or so after I started this business. It was a 300 van fleet (100 per year) and I had no employees, was working from my garage at home and they never knew.

Nevertheless, to get back to the point, we still have a lot of local clients with the one-offs so we are not totally divorced from reality. I take your points, and have experience of competitors using lower spec materials, but I still think that all other things being equal by being focussed we can probably get a van done quicker, and therefore cheaper, than a general signmaker.

Regards – John

* In fact we have no girl in reception and the female employees I do employ all wear jeans. 🙁

[Martin Pearson]

John,
Very interesting post, its always nice to learn a little about other people where they came from and what they are doing. It helps to give me something to aim for. We always try to portray ourselves as a professional business and people have commented on our customer service and the general manner in which we conduct ourselves so we know we are doing something right. The people we do work for are delighted with the work we do and would be happy to reccommend us to other businesses so its not all doom and gloom but the biggest problem is getting new customers. I dont have a problem talking to people in general so if someone calls looking for sign work I am more than happy to go and see them and discuss any sign requirements they may have. As I have a fairly good knoledge of signs and graphics (or at least I sound like I know what I am talking about) I can put the customer at ease and reasure them that we can help them. But I am not a salesman and have a real problem going cold calling, even though I know we are providing a service which will benefit the customer I still have a problem and find it almost impossible to do.

[John Childs]

I understand entirely Martin and have suffered the same dilemma. Being better than anyone else is not good enough on its own, you need to be able to convince the client.

I can see their problem too. They want something doing and have three or four of us signmakers around to look at the job. We all sit there and tell them that we are the best and most competent and professional. How can they tell which of us is telling the truth and which are the chancers? It’s a difficult call for them and a positive report about you from someone they know and whose opinion they respect is all that it will take to reduce their risk and swing it in your favour.

Keep plugging away, do the job right, and it will all come good in the end.

Good luck (that helps as well) 🙂