INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Social Media: It Makes Sense for Contractors.........1

Business Uncertainty: Four Tips.................................2

Jamie Laney Brings Energy to Ohio Rental Center...........2

Managing the Plant Turnaround Squeeze...........3

CONTACT USGuzzler/Vactor 1-800-627-3171

Tony Fuller Director of Sales tfuller@vactor.com

Tracy Krebsbach Service Manager tkrebsbach@vactor.com

Mark Pshak Inside Sales Manager mpshak@vactor.com

John Stafford FS Solutions jstafford@guzzler.com

Jetstream 1-800-231-8192

Joe Varca Global Sales Manager jvarca@waterblast.com

DECEMBER 2011

THE » » »

Social Media: It Makes Sense for Contractors

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Linked-In are social media Websites that let users talk and share information with one another. If they are not part of your marketing campaign,

maybe they should be.

Why? We asked two consultants who spe-cialize in social media for industrial compa-nies, Garry Barnes of Philadelphia-based Blue Horseradish and Kerry O’Malley, president of Marketects in Houston.

Barnes believes most people will eventually use social media to find information and in-teract with companies through social media. “If businesses are not in-volved, their audience is not going to find them,” he said.

While O’Malley expects search engines to remain important, she sees more businesses using social media to keep in touch with customers, demonstrate successes, provide information, and generate sales leads. “People who get into it now will have a much better understanding of how to use it,” she said.

Barnes and O’Malley both offered tips for contrac-tors who want to add social media to their market-ing mix.

Anyone can do it. Social media is inexpensive and easy to do. Most social media sites let you post all sorts of information, from short comments, blogs, and photographs to videos, brochures, and even pre-sentations. You can jump right in and get going.

Pick the right sites. “Linked-In is the prima-ry business networking platform,” Barnes said. He recommends having Linked-In pages for your company and managers. Facebook is huge and important. You can cre-ate a company channel on YouTube to show vid-eos of your equipment, specialized tools, and work. Twitter can be use-ful for customer service, but it has not captured a mainstream business au-dience, Barnes said.

Content is king. Cus-tomers go online to look for information. You can supply it in many forms. You can write a short blog about a problem and add photos showing how you solved it. Or provide links to articles

or videos you found useful. You can use photos or videos to show off new equipment, employees who receive new certificates, and before-and-after job sites (if your customer allows it). Social media makes it easy to do this every day or two.

~ continued on page 4

Social media is inexpensive

and easy to do. Most social media sites

let you post all sorts of information,

from short comments, blogs, and

photographs to videos, brochures, and

even presentations. You can jump

right in and get going.

www.fssolutionsgroup.com | www.guzzler.com | www.waterblast.com | www.vactor.com2

Googling “business” and “uncertainty” gets more than 170 million hits. No wonder. One day things are looking up, the next we look closer to a second

recession.

“We have entered the Bermuda Triangle of eco-nomic indicators, where our economic com-pass has gone haywire,” said Jeff Stibel, CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp.

With so much uncertainty, how do contractors prepare for the future? Here are some tips:

Control costs. If you cannot control revenues, then manage costs. Rank your biggest expenses, break them down, and ques-tion everything. Bring in your accoun-tant and top managers and supervisors to get more points of view. Look at ev-erything, from overtime and insurance to inventory and maintenance. Some-times, the answers are counterintuitive. If repair costs are high, maybe it is time for new equipment. If inventory is too low, you might be paying higher ex-press shipping costs.

Philip Bradbury, an accountant and business consultant, suggests switching to quar-terly or monthly budgets, tracking cash flow daily, and inventory, receivables, and margins weekly. That way, you identify issues before they become problems.

Bradbury recommends asking suppliers how you can make yourself less expensive to serve, or get more value for your money. You can turn this around, and suggest how your custom-ers can make it less expensive for you to serve them. Then split the savings.

Have a plan. Uncertainty always creates alter-natives, said David Hillson, Director of Risk Doctor & Partners. He suggests reviewing your strategy. See how you stack up against your competitors (try asking your customers). When you pick a path forward, identify early warn-ing signs that show you are going off track, and contingency plans to get back on plan.

Most businesses plan for growth. You should plan for downturns too. How you would re-spond if revenue shrank 5, 10 or 20 percent? What expenses would you cut first? Which em-

ployees are critical? If you needed cash, where would you get it? Could you reorganize your business to make it more efficient? Answering tough questions now can help you make smart choices when everyone else is panicking later.

Lift up your people. Every successful company has people who always come through, whatever the problem. You want to keep them happy. Uncertain times are also good times to recruit new talent.

Cross-train your best employees so they can do more jobs. That way, you never have to decide

between retaining the mediocre worker with the right skills or the better worker.

When things are tough, keep everyone in the loop, Bradbury said. Share your concerns about the economy and layoffs, but follow up with your plans and what everyone needs to do to pull through.

Play smart. Stay close to suppliers and custom-ers. Give special attention to businesses that are strong enough to weather a downturn. Estab-lish a line of credit with your bank now, before you need it, because that door may not open

when you do.

Many companies cut back on customer service when pressed. Don’t, Stibel said. It is more expensive to get new customers than to keep old ones, and improved ser-vice will get you noticed. He also advises companies to keep marketing, and make use of low-cost social media like Linked-In and Facebook.

There are many ways to manage in an uncertain econ-omy. But you

can never go wrong by focusing on costs, your people, your plan, and how you play the game.

Business Uncertainty: Four Tips

If you cannot control revenues, then manage costs. Rank your biggest

expenses, break them down, and question everything. Bring in your accountant and

top managers and supervisors to get more points of view. Look at everything,

from overtime and insurance to inventory and maintenance.

Some people know how to move forward, no matter what. Jamie Laney, FS Solutions’ new Toledo Rental Center operations supervisor, is one of them.

Laney grew up in Monroe, Mich., just 20 minutes north of where he now works. In high school, he played baseball and basketball and also worked in a distri-bution center through his school’s coop program. He attended junior college, but with his first child on the way, he needed to find work.

A friend helped him get a job in a Meijer’s grocery warehouse, picking orders and running a forklift. Af-ter one year, he was training others. After his second year there, he was supervising a loading dock that moved more than 350,000 cases weekly.

At Meijer’s, Laney pioneered a system that let the company load two stores’ worth of orders on a single truck. “We saved millions of dollars the first year,” he said. He also helped open the warehouse’s 300,000 square foot produce section, and implemented a way to send frozen and refrigerated goods to stores on a single truck held at temperatures just above freezing.

After 12 years at Meijer’s, he moved to Exel. Exel is one of the nation’s largest logistics firms, and man-aged inventory for Home Depot. He turned the door-mat shift, where all new hires start, into the facility’s top performing team. “I cross-trained people, and put them in positions where they were most productive. I set goals every day, and walked around encouraging them,” Laney said.

Laney also helped Exel open a modern, rapid deploy-ment warehouse in Allentown, Penn. Then he left for Peapod, a home grocery delivery service, where he opened warehouses in Springfield, Va., and Philadel-phia.

Laney had proven himself the go-to guy in several companies. Yet he was homesick for his family. Join-ing FS Solutions enabled him move back to Monroe.

He sees the rental business as a challenge. Instead of motivating logistics teams, he is out helping custom-ers. “I’m still learning,” he said. “But I want to soak up as much knowledge as I can, so I can get you the answer to your question.”

For Laney, it is a new way of moving forward.

Jamie Laney Brings Energy to Ohio Rental Center

Plant turnarounds are getting shorter and shorter. Just ask Henry Johnson, general manager at Smith Industrial Services in Mobile, Ala.

With six locations in the Southeast, Smith does a lot of business with pulp and paper plants. “Years back, turnarounds ran 10 to 14 days. Then it was 10 days. Now it’s down to five to seven days,” he said.

Plants only make money when they are running, so managers can maximize margins by compressing turnarounds. That means contractors must juggle people and equipment to do the job quickly and safely.

Contractors can take several steps to manage turnarounds safely and effectively.

Prepare. Keep your crews trained and their paperwork in order. Most plants expect certificates for OSHA 40-hour training and drug testing. Some also want confined space and toxic materials too.

Workers should have adequate personal protective equipment. Supervisors should enter a plant with contacts for questions and emergencies.

Have the right equipment. Faster cleaning requires more equipment. Smith often cleans multistage evaporators up to 40 feet long with 2,000 tubes. “We used to run four waterblasters, now we’re using six to eight,” Johnson said. That gets tight. Johnson tries to free up room by starting three waterblasters on a single stage, then shifting one unit to another stage as the work progresses.

Well-maintained equipment and spare parts are a must. Keith Shepherd, vice president of Prim Industrial Contractors, Bolingbroke, Ga., keeps his equipment well maintained and clean so it is always ready. He also brings spare parts. “There are not too many things on a blaster that we can’t fix in 15 or 20 minutes if I’ve got the parts,” he said.

For larger jobs, Smith rolls out a 48-foot moving van that is converted into a shutdown trailer. “It provides field support with supplies, nozzles, and all the other things we need,” Johnson said.

People. Contractors scramble to get the right people on the job, especially in emergencies. “We’ll pull people off different jobs just to get them started until we can get a full crew on,” Shepherd said.

If Prim is overbooked, Shepherd calls other contractors to fill the gaps. “We have several companies we depend on, and they depend on us. We’ll all drive all night to get a crew there. We won’t leave our customers stranded,” he said.

Shift changes get special attention at Smith, which runs 12-hour shifts. “It’s like NASCAR when 70 to 90 workers change shifts,” Johnson said. “We shut everything down, check fluid levels, filters, foot controls and other equipment. Supervisors check workpieces and see where they stand. Then we start up and

start cleaning,” Johnson said.

Smith works crews two weeks straight if necessary. To keep its trained workers, it pays well and offers medical and dental insurance.

Play on a team. During turnarounds, con-tractors work around electricians, boilermak-ers, pipefitters, welders, other tradesmen, and sometimes other cleaning contractors as well. This requires balancing priorities.

“We’re working for two different types of people,” Shepherd said. The first are the other contractors. They cannot start working until Prim finishes. Shepherd treats them like customers, and tries to make them happy. The second are plant management, and he will not authorize additional work unless they sign off on the cost.

Good planning reduces friction. Johnson, for example, always checks schedules for welders. Why? “Water and electricity don’t mix,” he said. “So if we’re on the fourth floor, that water is going to run down. If you look at the plan, you’ll know where the problems will be.”

When disputes arise, Shepherd and Johnson never argue. “I just go to whoever is paying the bills and ask who has the most critical path. It doesn’t matter to me. Just tell us

what we need to do,” Shepherd said.

Expect the unexpected. “We’ll go to the trouble of making a schedule, and then as soon as they open things up, we’ll find things we didn’t expect,” Johnson said. His solution? “We communicate three or four times per day so they know where we are and we know what they need,” he said.

Sometimes, contractors make mistakes. “It’s always better to tell the plant manager when it happens,” Shepherd said. “It also builds trust. They understand that we’re not robots. There are going to be mistakes. If you admit you caused a problem, it’s a whole lot easier to solve than trying to cover it up.”

Turnarounds are getting more complex, but contractors have stepped up. Johnson summed it up: “You have to be prepared, make sure you have the right people and proper equipment, get to the site, and then be prepared for a change.”

3Managing the Plant Turnaround Squeeze

4

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Social Media: It Makes Sense for Contractors – continued

Upgrade your Website. Consider updating your Website to make it social media-friendly. This will make it easier to post information and interact with social media sites. This is important for two reasons.

First, people go on the Internet because they are looking for value. “This is information only your company can provide. Social me-dia hooks them, but your Website should give them the real meat and potatoes,” O’Malley said.

Second, linking your Website to so-cial media can boost your rankings on Google. Google ranks Websites based on where information first appears, the number of links go-ing to the site, and whether you use the search term in a headline or de-scription of a photo or video.

To boost your ranking, put information on your Website first, label it with common search

terms (like “industrial cleaning” or “water blast-ing”), and provide links from your social media site back to your Website.

Get noticed. Linked-In, Facebook, and Twitter are about connecting with people that might use your services. You can follow whomever

you want on Twitter. You invite people to be your contact on Linked-In and friend on Facebook.

Start by inviting your business contacts who have social media accounts. Then check their con-tacts and friends to see if you want to reach out to some of them. Fi-nally, search each social media site for potential customers and con-tact them.

Be an expert. Share what you know. It makes you look good, and good advice will enhance your reputation. Linked-In makes this easy because it allows users to join or form special interest groups. Join and invite customers and prospects to join you.

Social media is not a panacea, but it does provide another way to keep in touch with customers and prospects.