Sorry Hillarys. No more favours.

[RED]

desmorse said:

Somethings going wrong for you, Red.
Just looked at my last 2 years figures, both showed my operating costs at approx. 13% of my commission.
If yours is running at 60%, you need to look very closely at what you're doing, and why. 60% is unbelievably bad.
I run a dedicated van, am a heavy user of SAM and SAM phone, and have been happily using diary booking, which I know you hate, for years.
I spend no more than a couple of quid a month on drill bits. SDS bits from Cromwell tools are £1.16+VAT and last over a month. A box of 10 3.5mm HSS bits is under a tenner. I bought a Metabo rotary hammer drill 3 years ago, it's still fine. I buy a DeWalt hammer drill, about £125, every 2-3 years. And I'm doing around £300k incl. VAT each year

I too was running at around 250k plus around 4 years ago. Then SAM and diary booking came in and one whole area was taken off me. Then the 3 for 99 has been running for over 12 months in my area and that has been the final straw. You are wrong about SAM. I am ok with that its the stuff that goes on it I am not.
If you really work out what it costs and I maen everything, it wont be as little as you say. Plus, if you are getting the orders then it becomes less of a burden to run.
Its a sad fact that some are doing well but most are not.
On my very last week before diary booking I did 28k. Strangly my FSM at the time mentioned it at a quarterly meeting to the regional manager and after that I went down hill. The next month, with diary booking, 6k and have struggled to go over 10k in any month since then and that was 3 or so years ago.
If I had been left to my own devices I would now be selling around 400k with 2 fitters.

[russell]

stonehills said:

desmorse said:

Somethings going wrong for you, Red.
Just looked at my last 2 years figures, both showed my operating costs at approx. 13% of my commission.
If yours is running at 60%, you need to look very closely at what you're doing, and why. 60% is unbelievably bad.
I run a dedicated van, am a heavy user of SAM and SAM phone, and have been happily using diary booking, which I know you hate, for years.
I spend no more than a couple of quid a month on drill bits. SDS bits from Cromwell tools are £1.16+VAT and last over a month. A box of 10 3.5mm HSS bits is under a tenner. I bought a Metabo rotary hammer drill 3 years ago, it's still fine. I buy a DeWalt hammer drill, about £125, every 2-3 years. And I'm doing around £300k incl. VAT each year

I too was running at around 250k plus around 4 years ago. Then SAM and diary booking came in and one whole area was taken off me. Then the 3 for 99 has been running for over 12 months in my area and that has been the final straw. You are wrong about SAM. I am ok with that its the stuff that goes on it I am not.
If you really work out what it costs and I maen everything, it wont be as little as you say. Plus, if you are getting the orders then it becomes less of a burden to run.
Its a sad fact that some are doing well but most are not.
On my very last week before diary booking I did 28k. Strangly my FSM at the time mentioned it at a quarterly meeting to the regional manager and after that I went down hill. The next month, with diary booking, 6k and have struggled to go over 10k in any month since then and that was 3 or so years ago.
If I had been left to my own devices I would now be selling around 400k with 2 fitters.

Red i must agree with des i turn over about £364k a year without fitters i pay my accountant £180 a year i spent £3 a week on drills my biggest outgoing is my gas guzzler of a car that does 20 to the gallon and i do 30000 miles a year !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but i get there quick and in style ;)If i were you id get a new accountant because the one you have not only overcharges you but dosnt seem to be advising you properly

[desmorse]

Red,
the only thing not included in my costs was depreciation on my van and PC, and my tax liability. My costs, including accountants fees averaged around £440/month for 2004/05 and a tad over £500 for 2005/06. Based on sales my fuel and consumable costs should be higher than yours, but I don't employ a fitter - let alone 2. Which begs the question, if your sales have been that low for that long, why do you need a fitter? If it's because you don't like fitting, that's fine. If not - make him redundant and make yourself a living.
And believe me, I control and record my costs very tightly. After all, they come straight out of my pocket!

[RED]

desmorse said:

Red,
the only thing not included in my costs was depreciation on my van and PC, and my tax liability. My costs, including accountants fees averaged around £440/month for 2004/05 and a tad over £500 for 2005/06. Based on sales my fuel and consumable costs should be higher than yours, but I don't employ a fitter - let alone 2. Which begs the question, if your sales have been that low for that long, why do you need a fitter? If it's because you don't like fitting, that's fine. If not - make him redundant and make yourself a living.
And believe me, I control and record my costs very tightly. After all, they come straight out of my pocket!

I dont have the 2 full time fitters now, . I just have one who does a few orders here there now. Nothing like he used to do for me.
BVM, by the time you add say 12k tax and depreciation costs, your monthly running costs must be somewhere in the region of 1,600 pounds, once you break it down.
The figure I gave was everything including tax.
. That will be about average if you add up everything. If the orders are coming in and a decent order at that then you do OK, but if its all 3 for 99 then you are in trouble. Mine, I am afraid are heavily 3 for 99s and thats the problem Hillarys face. New agents wont stay once thet see how much it costs them to run it as a business. Hillarys will pass a load of leads from an established advisor so they suffer and wont stay. Its just one big silly merry go round, You can only get so big and then you implode. Hillarys are finding this out.
The add for 3 for 99 has been going too long in my area now and has lost me the decent customers. They have all gone to the likes of Apollo and Charisma. I just get the dolites now with a few decent orders here and their.
If the average agent spends say 40 pounds a week on petrol then that alone is 160 pounds a month or around 2k a year before anything else is taken in to account and 40 pounds is not a lot of milage. Thats 133 sales of 3 for 99 customers just to get back your petrol costs.

[RED]

russell said:

stonehills said:

I too was running at around 250k plus around 4 years ago. Then SAM and diary booking came in and one whole area was taken off me. Then the 3 for 99 has been running for over 12 months in my area and that has been the final straw. You are wrong about SAM. I am OK with that its the stuff that goes on it I am not.
If you really work out what it costs and I mean everything, it wont be as little as you say. Plus, if you are getting the orders then it becomes less of a burden to run.
Its a sad fact that some are doing well but most are not.
On my very last week before diary booking I did 28k. Strangely my FSM at the time mentioned it at a quarterly meeting to the regional manager and after that I went down hill. The next month, with diary booking, 6k and have struggled to go over 10k in any month since then and that was 3 or so years ago.
If I had been left to my own devices I would now be selling around 400k with 2 fitters.

Red i must agree with des i turn over about £364k a year without fitters i pay my accountant £180 a year i spent £3 a week on drills my biggest outgoing is my gas guzzler of a car that does 20 to the gallon and i do 30000 miles a year !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but i get there quick and in style ;)If i were you id get a new accountant because the one you have not only overcharges you but dosnt seem to be advising you properly

I pay my accountant 400 pounds per year as when we were earning decent money it was in our interests to go as a limited company. Both myself and my wife were down as partners so their are 3 lots of accounts to do. As I said, it was set up around 5 years ago and we were earning around 1k a week. My wife did not need to go to work so it was cost effective to be a limited company and pay ourselves in dividends rather than a wage.
That has all changed in the past year or so. My wife had to go back to work within 3 months of diary booking so the tax became even more complicated. This year she comes out of the reckoning and our accountants bill will drop to around 300.
It is my accountant that worked out my monthly running costs and over the past 3 years she has seen large drop in income and a fairly hefty raise on outgoings and mentioned this to me 18 months ago. We sat down in her office one day to see where we could lower the expenditure. In her words," if this carries on it wont be worth you doing it in a year or two."
It is now a year or two later, she was right.
I am established, or was until SAM. If I can not make anything decent then what chance have new advisor's, and thats why they are not staying.
500 pounds per month are just the average running costs that most advisor's will encounter whether they sell or not.
This does not even bring into account the other start up costs that new ones will have and dont forget, they are promised up to 30k a year.Then there is all the fines and miss measure fines, still to take into account.

[dmm]

stonehills said:

Thats just the start up costs.
Dont forget the 50 pound a week petrol bill.
The 400 pound a year accountants bill.
The 10 pound a week in Drill bits.
The 200 pound a year in drills.
The wear and tear bill on the car. Probably i the thousands.
The wear and tear on the clothes. In the hundreds.

My average operating costs are around 600 pound a month when everything is taken into account. I only earn around 250 a week now if I am lucky. Dosent take much to work out how much we need to earn to make a living. It is fast becoming not worth doing.

£600 spending to earn £1000?
That's not a business - it's a hobby

[RED]

dmm said:

stonehills said:

Thats just the start up costs.
Dont forget the 50 pound a week petrol bill.
The 400 pound a year accountants bill.
The 10 pound a week in Drill bits.
The 200 pound a year in drills.
The wear and tear bill on the car. Probably i the thousands.
The wear and tear on the clothes. In the hundreds.

My average operating costs are around 600 pound a month when everything is taken into account. I only earn around 250 a week now if I am lucky. Dosent take much to work out how much we need to earn to make a living. It is fast becoming not worth doing.

£600 spending to earn £1000?
That's not a business - it's a hobby

Tell me about it!!!!!

[dolly]

Had an email on Friday from FSM asking if we all would only do sales appts in the third week of September. (End of financial year.)
Sorry NO! Behind enough thanks to you increasing availability.

[blindsfitter]

dolly said:

Had an email on Friday from FSM asking if we all would only do sales appts in the third week of September. (End of financial year.)
Sorry NO! Behind enough thanks to you increasing availability.

I can safely confirm that memo requests to FSM's insisting on "Instructing your advisors to place accent on maximising sales figures for the 3rd week of September, if necessary to the detriment of fits" and secondly memo to Quotes confirming that they offer 20% reduction on the quotes sent back to them in order to clinch sales for the period up to and including the 3rd week of September, have been sent out on Friday last.

So they have decided that we have to have a poor weeks pay coming in on the first Monday in October so that men in suits can have "Trebles all round" because of good sales figures at the end of the Financial Year.

SORRY!

Its their financial year and not mine--so why should I give a toss when they manipulate business for their own twisted ends.

Sons of unmarried parents, the lot of them.....

Would anyne on this site agree with delaying fits that have been booked already, to ensure an accountant got a drink??

Really

The sooner I am totally clear of this lot the better......

Blindsfitter

[phugly]

I will arrange my fits to suit myself, not to suit Hillarys. If I have made a promise to a customer to fit on a certain date, I will keep that appointment except in exceptional circumstances, and as it happens I do have a lot of fits arranged for the 3rd week in Sept.

[greenpesto]

The email I had stated that they are looking at conversions for September & that they are seeking ... 'Accountability' for each & every lead.

Whilst I appreciate this makes good business sense & is in line with what has been said by a number of us on here over the past year ... I can't help feeling that we know H/O are going to do this all wrong.

I can see that regardless of your past successes that they'll 'blow someone out the water' just because of one bad week rather than looking at those that have had a poor record over a longer period.

Conversions will remain poor as long as '99 for 3p Offers' stay.

[keenasmustard]

We should all arrange our fits for this week ;D
we wont get a bonus or even better thought of

just sort of sends them a message.

[blinder]

phugly said:

I will arrange my fits to suit myself, not to suit Hillarys. If I have made a promise to a customer to fit on a certain date, I will keep that appointment except in exceptional circumstances, and as it happens I do have a lot of fits arranged for the 3rd week in Sept.

How mental is that memo?

Dont earn any money for those 9 days chaps. Oh, after the 9 days work like hell to catch up.

Well Hillarys, I've worked ever so hard today to fulfill the 2 sales leads in a 12 hour period. So if I can't do any fits, am I supposed to spend 6 hours at each call to maximise the opportunities.

In fact seeing as one had already gone out by the time I got there it all becomes a bit pointless. Instead of bleating at us to help them at their year end, it might be more effective for them to provide enough leads to make the job even remotely financiall worthwhile.

[greenpesto]

We could ALL go on holiday that week!!!!!!!

As I've said before ... FU*K 'EM!!!!!!!

[dolly]

Yesterday my FSM left a message and asked me to ring back with my thoughts on the memo. I hope he still isnt waiting by the phone. Hopefully my silence has said it all.