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In 1971, having just gotten out of the army and back in the states, I found myself looking for a job for a while when I chanced to find a small ad for an assistant editor. "Have to have had some writing experience, be able to take photos," the ad said.
I thought, "Well, that should do until I can find the right career. Temporary job. A placeholder."
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Mike SanGiovanni
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O.K., I rarely make a long story short, but here it is: 42 years later, I am still here. But now, it's time to go.
For the first three decades or so, I grew up learning the publishing business working almost exclusively on our sister publication, Spray, a packaging magazine. By the way, I can tell you anything you ever want to know about aerosol cans.
In 2002, when Fueloil & Oil Heat's editor, Paul Geiger, decided to retire, I thought it would be interesting to switch hats and edit a magazine in an entirely different field. A chance to learn something new. Besides, I had been hearing about the goings on in the heating oil business for a very long time, and though Paul's desk and mine were only a short distance away from each other, truth be told, I really didn't know much about oil heat. Crash course was coming up. And some big shoes to fill.
Our Publisher, Don Farrell, told me when I moved over that I would find the people in this industry warm, friendly and helpful. He was understating, because not only did everyone make me feel welcome immediately, but help and advice , which I sorely needed at the time, were freely and enthusiastically given.
It's been a wonderful trip. As we transformed from Fueloil & Oil Heat to Oilheating Journal to Indoor Comfort Marketing, we did our best to reflect the industry and its challenges and triumphs. ICM is now in its 92nd year, and I am proud to have been part of its heritage.
In all, I have loved the writing, the photography, the graphics-doing whatever it takes to produce something I hope will last. Editing a magazine is kind of like directing a film-there is a lot of you that gets in there.
This is my last issue for ICM, and while will be nice not to have a deadline (or three) each month (and yes, I will have a lot to occupy my time after this), I still catch myself thinking ahead to the next issue, about the next meeting, what'd make a good cover, a better layout, an interesting story.
That inclination may fade in time, but my best memories of the people and places: never!
To this this entire industry, and especially to the wonderful staff at Industry Publications, my sincerest thanks.
Keep in touch, but for now... Bye!
Mike SanGiovanni
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"It's never too early (or too late)"
By Robert Levins
Managing Partner, Angus Performance Advisors
As we are right smack in the middle of the busiest part of the season (and the year), the last thing many owners and mangers want to do is to start to look at reports. "We are delivering as many gallons as we can,
and charging as much as we can. What else is there to do?" Sound familiar?
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Generations-old adages frankly have lost their luster in these times of data, reporting requirements, and slipping profitability. A company can no longer be managed on gut feelings and the idea that "everyone seems to be very busy". You might have been able to get away with that 20, 15, or even 10 years ago, but just like every other industry (though this one in particular is a little late getting to the party), timely, accurate and purposed information is king, metrics are available, and, as the saying goes, "You can't manage what you can't measure".
So, what should you be measuring? Good question (glad you asked). Before getting to that, we would be remiss by not mentioning that the flip side of no reporting is too much reporting, and that can be bad as well; "paralysis by analysis" can impact dealers just as easily. Before you jump in with both feet, we wanted to present a few basic things that can help you to discover what's going on within your organization, and hopefully put you on the path to correcting things that simply are not going well.
Per Gallon Margins, Service Department Performance and Driver & Delivery Efficiency are the major factors (we call them "Metrics") that drive your profitability for the year. Each has the opportunity to make or break
your business, and each must be respected, tracked and managed.
Profit Margins:
Margins need to be segmented. The notion that it all falls into the same bucket and "it is what it is" lacks any sense of the realities of today, and MIGHT only work if your customer base were perfectly and predictably the same every year - which it is not. The profit today is in the details.
Tracking margins per product (if you sell more than one), by trade class (commercial, residential) and by Price Program (capped, fixed, rack-plus) will give you not only an understanding of exactly what is going on, but more importantly, the ability to know where action needs to and can be taken if a category is not achieving its intended goals.
You need to always be looking out for anomalies and be sure to address them quickly. If volumes are off - due to factors such as weather, conservation, bad budgeting, etc. - and you need to tweak your margins in order to achieve your month-end goals, it is imperative to be able to hone in on the underperforming category, while at the same time attempt to exploit other sources of revenue, such as service.
Service Department:
As the winter winds blow, and with it the need to be fully staffed for emergency service work, it's not too early to start planning for preventative maintenance in order to fill your technician's days. Think about those contract customers that have been wreaking havoc on your service department so far this season....those with the highest numbers of service calls since September - do you know how to get that information? You should be scheduling your technicians and arming them with information to match YOUR needs, fixing problem accounts in the off-season on YOUR schedule, to help avoid overtime during the heating season.
Do you have contract customers who call you a bit too often? Is the problem their equipment, the technician, or are they just lonely? Is there an opportunity to sell/upgrade their equipment? Do you know which of your customers are the "excessive callers"? Have you ever considered "firing" a customer or at least adjusting their next contract offer in order to share some of the risk? Most consumer industries do this - ours often seems to be more concerned with customer-counts than with "the right" (i.e. "profitable") customers.
Like most of the industry, you likely have a segment of customers who do not contribute significant per gallon profit margins (something you should address). Similarly, you should start to look at customer performance segments within the Service Department - installations, contract calls, non-contract calls - and manage the department for profitability (or at the very least aspire to breakeven).
Driver and Delivery Performance:
As I have said many times in describing the Anatomy of a Delivery "The only time you are making money is when the nozzle is in the tank, pumping at 65 gallons per minute, all else is expense."
Whether it is gallons per stop, miles per stop, or stops per hour and ultimately gallons per hour, you need to manage and optimize your delivery department's gallons production throughout the year. Do you know what your metrics are and why they serve as your key performance indicators? Once you have your real numbers, you will know how your staff is performing. The driver who delivers the most gallons may or may not be the most efficient; he (or she) may just be the guy the dispatcher can count on to make those tough deliveries. The driver making the most stops, how many gallons is he delivering at each? The driver who made the fewest stops, was she sent on the most rural route you have? Real metrics gives real insight and, with timely insight, informed decisions and corrective action can be taken.
All of these metrics really should be reviewed DAILY and Month-to-Date as activity occurs, not AFTER the fact (midway through the following month). At the height of the season, any one anomaly can be very significant and perhaps season-altering. The shoulder months are typically less productive due to decreased volume, while at the same time, with fixed expenses further contributing to profit erosion, not allowing for any recovery.
For successful companies, the next heating season starts immediately after this heating season ends - NOT next October when the thermometer starts to drop at night and the phones start ringing again. Planning and execution, backed by a playbook that includes constant and consistent review of the RIGHT numbers will go a long way towards improving the predictability and profitability of your business, and our industry, something we all desire.
A Solution
For the numerous reasons stated above and hundreds not covered in this article, Angus Performance Advisors has spent the better part of the past decade innovating the method and timing by which dealers can access the key metrics needed to run a profitable business. We started with a sophisticated process, TAG Reporting, which was custom built to each client's specific needs and various systems, which remains in use by some of the largest downstream petroleum companies in the US. More recently, with our partnership with Angus Energy, we have come to realize that there are thousands of dealers, of ALL sizes, that absolutely need this information, information that does not have to be reserved only for those with substantial resources. You need timely access to it, daily, not in the middle of the next month when it's too late to make necessary corrections; access must be simple, whether you are in the office, on the road or even in your delivery truck; and it must be affordable. And that brings us to our latest innovation: BRITE. BRITE is the first of its kind, cloud-based executive dashboard tool that keeps you informed about what's really happening in your business; margins, deliveries, sales and service, all in one place, all up to date, all securely online!.
To learn more, to setup a free demo, to turn your business around, contact us at (267) 281-6998, or visit us online at BRITEinfo.com. BRITE works with your existing back-office system and set-up is easy, not requiring days/hours/weeks of your time, as you might expect. It will not interrupt your operations, more importantly will enhance your business, your deliveries, your service calls - you should not wait until "after the season", after your activity has already peaked. Call now and Manage with Certainty when you need it the most.
About the Author
Robert (Bob) Levins is Managing Director of Angus Performance Advisors, formerly known as TAG, a business intelligence solutions company acquired by Angus Energy in the fall of 2010. Prior to founding TAG, Mr. Levins had been providing enterprise-level software solutions to the petroleum industry; when he saw that the industry needed better and more advanced management and performance reporting, he created his own company in 2000 in order to fulfill that need. Mr. Levins' professional journey began in the petroleum industry in 1972, while in college, and in the nearly forty years since he has worked for companies such as Petroleum Data Corporation of Princeton, STS Systems out of Montreal, and Structured Management Systems in Richmond, VA. Over the course of four decades Mr. Levins has become a recognized subject matter expert with regard to key business processes and industry best practices across all segments of the downstream market; hard-earned knowledge that is particularly useful in today's environment of consolidation, diversification and technological change. Mr. Levins holds a B.S. in Aeronautical Science from Embry-Riddle University.
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A great way to envision young service techs
 | | Air Conditioning Birmingham AL | Heating Birmingham AL (205) 591-5555 |
Aire Serv Heating & Air Conditioning from Birmingham AL has released this video showing the aspirations of a school boy to become a HVAC contractor. Unfortunately, his teacher discourages him but see the video to see why. Aire Serv reminds us all that the a career as a HVAC technician is one of great importance and deserves respect.al gas industry.
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Getting more from each maintenance agreement
How we sold a $1,000 filter on a service agreement fulfillment
Tom ( the technician) said he never brought it up in the past because he ASSUMED the client would not be
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Roger Daviston
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interested. How many of these opportunities are in your business? I tell you these opportunities are everywhere.
Yesterday, I was riding with Tom, a service technician in New Jersey, and our first call was a regular client in need of service agreement maintenance. I questioned Tom about the client; he knew the account history and felt familiar with the client. She was recently divorced and her ex-husband had previously taken care of the maintenance, so this was almost more of a landlord-tenant situation. The system has been replaced two years ago and we were to work fast.
Not so fast. This is our problem. We did the maintenance on the new system and everything was working fine, which one would normally expect, but we were actually missing an opportunity because Tom assumed the ex- husband would be uninterested and say "no."
Do not assume that the customer will say "no." One must always ask for what he or she wants and let the client decide for him or herself. We have all seen this a million times and you probably have several thousand of these opportunities in your service business. You know how we cut a slit in the return next to the blower and slide a low velocity standard one-inch filter in the return? How many times have you seen a clogged filter pulled into the blower? We all know that this is a sloppy way to engineer design the filtration, but it's real cheap and real fast to so...
I instructed Tom to explain this to the client over the phone how I had taught him in class.
How to ask for what you want:
1. Express what you see or hear, in your own words. Be honest.
2. Express how you feel about what you see or hear. Be honest and direct.
3. Ask for what you want.
4. Give the benefits or consequences.
BINGO! An extra grand before 10:00 a.m.
From the Daviston Group, Tips, Tools and Techniques � Roger N Daviston 2012
1100 Madison Ave 10C New York NY 10028
205-837-3643
Rogerdaviston.com
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Congress Threatens Jobs with Inaction on Biodiesel Incentive
Congress Threatens Jobs with Inaction on Biodiesel Incentive
Industry Tax Incentive Slated to Expire Dec. 31
This was shared with us by our friends at The National Biodiesel Board
WASHINGTON - Congress is jeopardizing continued growth and job creation in the U.S. biodiesel industry by allowing a key tax incentive to lapse at year's end, U.S. biodiesel representatives said in a letter to Congressional leaders.
The $1-per-gallon biodiesel tax incentive is slated to expire on Dec. 31, even as lucrative tax breaks for the petroleum industry will continue. The biodiesel incentive also expired in 2010 and 2012.
"This marks the third time in five years that this incentive will have expired," Anne Steckel, vice president of federal affairs at the National Biodiesel Board (NBB), wrote in the letter. "The uncertainty this creates is a major reason why we are still so dependent on petroleum. It is incredibly disruptive, not just to biodiesel plants across the country but also to our bipartisan goals of creating jobs in new domestic energy industries and boosting our energy security by diversifying our fuel supplies."
"Biodiesel producers, many of them small companies, are reluctant to add new jobs when there is a strong likelihood that the incentive will disappear," the letter continues. "Many are forced to cut back production when the incentive expires, causing job losses and even plant closures."
Steckel added that NBB is pleased to see the ongoing discussion around tax reform but urged the lawmakers to not hold up tax extenders while those long-term negotiations continue.
Biodiesel - made from a diverse mix of resources such as recycled cooking oil, soybean oil and animal fats - is the first EPA-designated Advanced Biofuel to reach commercial-scale production nationwide. It has exceeded 1 billion gallons of annual production in each of the past three years, and this year is on track to reach a record of 1.7 billion gallons.
In addition to the pending expiration of the tax incentive, the industry also is fighting against a weak Renewable Fuel Standard proposal from the EPA, which recently proposed limiting biodiesel volumes under the RFS to 1.28 billion gallons for the next two years.
"Either one of these setbacks is bad enough, but taken together, we're looking at significant contraction in this industry in which plants will close and thousands of people could lose their jobs," Steckel said.
Biodiesel is the first and only commercial-scale fuel produced across the U.S. to meet the EPA's definition as an Advanced Biofuel - meaning the EPA has determined that it reduces greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50 percent when compared with petroleum diesel. Produced in nearly every state in the country, the industry has exceeded RFS requirements in every year of the program, producing more than 1 billion gallons annually since 2011. It is on pace to produce at least 1.7 billion gallons in 2013, supporting more than 62,000 jobs nationwide.
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AHR Expo, New York, NY, Jan 21-23
AHR Expo 2014 will be held in New York City from January 21-23, 2014. In addition to an exhibit hall featuring over 1,900 industry-leading manufacturers, suppliers, and innovative new resources, the show boasts over 100 educational seminars, workshops and new product presentations, many of them free to all visitors. Nearly 40,000 HVAC, Plumbing & Mechanical Contractors, Engineers, Design/Build Professionals, Distributors, OEMs, Industrial Plant Operators, Facility Managers and other HVACR Professionals from over 130 countries are anticipated to attend the show. See, learn and get inspired by the latest in HVACR technology.
Learn More and register for the show online at ahrexpo.com
OESP call for Presentations for Spring Road Show
If you would like a chance to present an educational session at either event, please review this "Call for Presentations". We will be offering a mix of classes geared towards Professional Development and  Technical. This is also a great time to promote a new technology to decision makers. The Education committee did meet in November to start preparing our complete program and our next meeting is later this month. We would like sessions that are delivered in varying increments of time - from one hour up to 6 hours in length. Some sessions might be repeated. In most cases, attendees will earn NATE and NORA CEU's.
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On December 17th, the National Association of Oil and Energy Service Professionals lost an important member of the association, Steve Rinaldo, Westchester Chapter. Steve Rinaldo held almost every office within his chapter. He never missed board meetings and if anything was needed he was there to help.
Steve was employed by Automatic Heating Supply, Yonkers, NY since the age of 16. Steve was very involved with their scholarship committee and served as the liaison between his chapter and their adopted trade schools. Steve will be remembered fondly by anyone who knew him.
Steve leaves behind his wife, Janna, son Steven Jr and daughter, Stephanie.
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New VP Sales & Customer Service for General Filters
General Filters, Inc. announced the promotion of Tony Burks to Vice President of Sales and Customer  Service, effective immediately. Tony joined General Filters, Inc. September of 2012, following a five-year term in sales management at GE and two years managing Product Development and Marketing at Latham Corporation.
Wilo USA Names Ruppert as Managing Director
Tim Ruppert has been appointed as Managing Director of Wilo USA, a provider of  pumps and pump solutions for water management, building services and groundwater, effective Jan. 1, 2014. Ruppert, who had previously served as Midwest Regional Manager for Wilo, most recently was the National Business Development Manager in municipal sales for Sulzer Pumps ABS USA.
John Beckett Celebrates 50th Anniversary
John Beckett, chairman, recently celebrated his 50th anniversary with the RW Beckett Corporation, the company his father founded in 1937. 
Beckett joined the company on December 7, 1963, just a few weeks after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. His hope and intention was that he would have many years to understudy his father and learn the world of manufacturing oil burners. That didn't occur, as his father, Reg Beckett, died just a year after they began working together, and the younger Beckett assumed the role of president at the tender age of 26. He was tasked with keeping the company stable and forward-looking for its twelve employees, the wellbeing of his mother and the rest of the family.
Over the ensuing 50 years, John Beckett has helped guide the business to worldwide leadership in the manufacture and sales of components for residential and commercial heating. The company today, with its affiliates, has sales exceeding $100 million, with more than 600 employees.
Says Beckett of this landmark anniversary: "I only wish many could experience what I have-five decades in a wonderful, supportive industry; a remarkable, talented and creative workforce; a tremendous family, with several of our children and their spouses continuing in leadership of Beckett companies; and a real sense of expectancy about the future."
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ICOR International now offers a long-term solution for servicing systems designed for use with R-12, R-500, and R-134a. HOT SHOT 2™ is a non-toxic, non-flammable, non-ozone depleting HFC that will operate within the
R-12 application range. It is compatible with all standard oils and does not require any major system modifications. It has been extensively field tested in a variety of applications.
Fujitsu's Mobile App is a Troubleshooting Tool
Fujitsu's Mobile Technician App is a handy, troubleshooting tool for their air conditioning and heat pump systems. The app helps contractors troubleshoot error codes, thermistors and pressure sensors. It also
 includes a built-in flashlight.
The Mobile Technician App requires iOS 6.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, it's optimized for the iPhone 5. An Android version is expected to be released in early 2014.
Available as a troubleshooting system performance aid 24/7/365 and requiring no phone call or waiting on hold, the Fujitsu Mobile Technician App provides most of the same information their technical support specialists provide. Installers and service techs can get information about all current residential and light commercial models.
Visible Defects Heat Exchanger Inspection System
The Visible Defects Heat Exchanger Inspection System, from Nu-Calgon, is a complete kit for identifying and locating cracks in the combustion cells of gas furnaces. The system provides  everything needed to assist a technician in quickly identifying, locating and proving cracks, openings or excessive corrosion. The fluorescent penetrant and UV light highlight potentially dangerous cracks that are invisible to the naked eye. Visible Defects is a simple, time-effective way to help technicians ensure aged, potentially dangerous appliances do not remain in service.
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Photo gallery
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Mike SanGiovanni
Editor, ICM
973.331.9545 x107
editor@indoorcomfortmarketing.com
To advertise in this newsletter
or any ICM product contact:
Doug Bacile
National Sales Manager
973.331.9545 x109
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