Toolbox-2017-Reunion-Edition

a mr. appliance® publication

reunion edition 2017

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Renion Edition 2017

03 ACHIEVING OUR FULL POTENTIAL 04 SKILLED TRADE TALENT DROUGHT? WHERE ARE THEY?

Skilled Talent Drought? Where Are They? By: Megan Boyd

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06 HEY NEIGHBOR! 08 SPEED OF TRUST

CONTRIBUTIONS:

Hey Neighbor! By: Kimberly Denman

DWYER GROUP, INC. MIKE BIDWELL, President, CEO MARY THOMPSON, Chief Operating Officer LISA ZOELLNER, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer SHELLEY BLASZAK,

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Senior Communications Manager KIMBERLY DENMAN, Senior Communications Manager MEGAN BOYD, Communications Manager JASON LEE, Communications Manager PRODUCTION MICHAEL MCCULLOUGH, Creative Manager MEGAN BOYD, Communications Manager

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Stephen Covey's The Speed of Trust By: Jason Lee

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Achieving Our Full Potential Requires theWhole Neighborhood’s Commitment By Shelley Blaszak, Sr. Communications Manager

A southern “Howdy Neighbor” bellowed from President and CEO Mike Bidwell from the General Session stage at the “Let’s Get Neighborly™” Reunion. With 33 years of Dwyer Group® tenure, he said the momentum since last year’s Reunion has never been more impressive! Launching Neighborly / Neighbourly made a long-term dream of cross-promoting the brands of Dwyer Group and capturing leads a reality. Additionally, Dwyer Group has grown to 2,700 franchisees across 18 brands with systemwide revenue of $1.5 billion! The growth strategy is working: 1. Add Brands: Window Genie® and Cumberland County Glass® in the United States and Bright & Beautiful and Countrywide Grounds Maintenance in the United Kingdom were acquired to expand our portfolio. 2. Fill In TheWhite Space: With 11 service verticals, reaching customers in every market with every service is the goal (12 including Europe). 3. Grow Same Store Sales: Across the Dwyer Group system, blended same-store sales are up 8 percent. 4. Grow Internationally: Having reached a substantial presence in Europe allows the company to have a self-sustaining geographic center for growth. “As we increase our service offerings, we become more powerful in the service industry,” he said. “If you look at what customers desire – they want to simplify their search for high-quality service providers to repair, maintain and enhance their homes and businesses.” Bidwell said for Dwyer Group to reach its full potential, every franchise owner’s support is needed: 1. Participate: We’re moving into space that doesn’t exist. A stick by itself is easy to break but when bundled together, they are nearly unbreakable. Will you take ownership to expand your network of neighborly service providers? (link to brand’s Find-a-Neighbor link) Will you advocate for your neighbor? 2. Bring in New Owners: Refer people like you to become Dwyer Group franchisees. This action can change our company’s trajectory. 3. Think Differently: As a franchise owner – be a better recruiter and leader by using the RAREToolbox. It’s more fun operating through preparation and it will absolutely contribute to your results. 4. Embrace Our Strategic Intent: (will link to one-pager with verbiage)“I am a product of small business ownership and so are all of you,”said Bidwell. Deliver on our intent to provide premium services which repair, maintain and enhance properties of homeowners and businesses. Unit growth through new franchisees, brands and countries remains a focal point for the growth strategy of Dwyer Group. Bidwell said that Chief Operating Officer Mary Kennedy Thompson and her brands’ leadership team’s sole focus is supporting existing franchise owners’ sales growth by overcoming recruiting and retention

challenges through the RAREToolbox while improving customer satisfaction. “We engaged with Listen360, recognized as the leading provider in franchising for customer surveys, to measure performance and satisfaction,” Bidwell said. “Each owner’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) and customer feedback provides great indicators for you to deliver the best customer experience.” Last month, Listen360’s Founder and President, Angela Bossie, traveled to Waco to review the performance of Dwyer Group so far. “For perspective, other highly-respected companies such as Southwest Airlines, Apple and Amazon’s NPS scores range from 62 to 69,” Bidwell said. “ Dwyer Group’s blended NPS score is 74! Angela told us that whatever we’re doing – continue doing it, it’s top of class!” Other company initiatives designed to positively impact the brands and Dwyer Group team include: • Adriann Dalton was recruited as Vice President of Customer Engagement. She is a top-notch call center expert tasked with the complex responsibility of managing and improving our systems across multiple brands, providers and point-of-sale (POS) systems. • Dwyer Group is also focused on recruiting and retaining employees. Senior Director of People Services, Courtney Kolar, joined the company late last year and led the pre-Reunion Leadership Development session. She and her team are working to better train our corporate staff to optimize performance and increase retention. • The Marketing team will soon return to the main campus inWaco. This will enable cross-functional teams to work even better together and improve company culture. “It’s been a great year, and the entire Dwyer Group team will continue pressing forward,” Bidwell said. “We’re fortunate to have so much opportunity in front of us. We’re wired to tackle challenges and build something that matters. Dwyer Group is a fantastic neighborhood and it’s great to have you as my neighbor on this journey.” DWYER GROUP ’S NEW ELEVATOR STATEMENT To help owners succinctly describe Dwyer Group , an elevator statement was designed to provide consistency and accuracy to describing our company. “ Dwyer Group is a values-guided world leader of franchise brands focused on repairing, maintaining and enhancing customers’ homes and businesses.”

This article covers the presentation given at Reunion 2017 by Dwyer Group President and CEO Mike Bidwell.

TOOLBOX® | REUNION EDITION 2017 3

SKILLED TRADE TALENT DROUGHT? WHERE ARE THEY?

By Megan Boyd, Communications Manager

W hat made the talent drought? There is an ancient Arabian proverb that says; “All sunshine makes a desert.” We must admit the sunshine of a growing economy in recent years has helped improve our businesses. But its effect has also left us with a talent drought. Today, our flourishing trades businesses are competing for the same skilled trades employees. In our franchises, this is particularly true of skilled service professionals and specialists. Add to this growing demand for workers a shrinking supply, and you have a real shortage. We are in the midst of a cultural revolution. It began two decades ago when schools started swapping our shop classes for computer labs. 20 years ago, people aged 25-44 made up more than 60 percent of skilled trades workers. Now, that same age group makes up 47 percent. This is creasing a service gap that we must address. Danielle George, a professor of radio frequency engineering at the University of Manchester put it this way, “Under 40s expect everything to ‘just work’ and have no idea what to do when things go wrong.” Richard T. Curtain, Ph.D. at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research stated, “Young people grow up without developing the skills to fix things around the house.” This is why we are in the golden age of service, because Millennials can’t fix anything, their parents don’t want to any longer, the jobs cannot be outsourced, nor can they be done by a robot. It takes skilled trades people to fill the needed jobs. As this service gap has grown there have been a new breed of companies looking to fill the gap using new technologies. Companies like Handy, Home Advisor and Amazon have technology, but they don’t have what we have – the people. To win in the Golden Age of Service and seize of this opportunity, we need to think more ambitiously, embrace the reality of the service gap, and we must mobilize. We need to address the recruiting question. Where will we find the team members to partner with us while we take advantage of this need for our expertise? How do we attract, hire, and onboard more people? In terms of talent hunting, the old way of thinking has to do with running from fishing pole to fishing pole, checking to see if we have caught any good candidates. The lines we cast into the water included online posting, print or traditional advertising, enlisting aid from recruiters or agencies and finally, the old tried and true technique of asking for referrals. They are all good efforts, but it’s difficult to scale the efforts, keep track of them all successfully, and it does not meet the millennial of today where they are looking. Last year, we launched RAREtoolbox, to help you streamline these sources into one. Through August, we processed 70,521 applications through this program. We also offered resources such as retirement planning, 20 hours of online recruiting and retention training, payroll and insurance services and more. But as we continued to study the

challenge we found we had to do more. That is why at Reunion 2017, we released RAREToolbox 2.0, focused on attracting candidates, hiring the right fits and onboarding them seamlessly. We have the new release of RAREToolbox 2.0 includes what is listed below. Employer of Choice Branding We hired the research, marketing, and branding agency who helped us launch Neighborly to listen and help us study what todays job seekers need to hear to want to come and work for one of our brands. There were three distinct themes they found. 1. Best of the Best – I want to work for your company because it is the best of the best and I can belong to that group if I work here 2. Sell the Stage – Show me what it looks like to play on this stage if I work for your company 3. Be a Passport – If I work for your company I will level up in life and improve my life Why does it matter what potential candidates perceive? Successful companies thrive because they have successful recruiting identities. The Marine Core has never failed to meet their quote for recruits. That is because they sell on the “Best of the Best” theme where they show they are “The Few, the Proud, the Marines.” McDonalds sells on a “Be a passport” theme showing they are “America’s Best First Job,” where one will learn leadership development and could potentially franchise ownership. What does this tell us in connection with the three concepts above? Employees will want to work for us if we show them how we are the “Best of the Best,” if we “Sell the Stage” of our prestigious customer service systems and finally, if we demonstrate how being a part of our brands can “Be a Passport” to a better life for themselves and their families. As we studied each of our brands we learned a lot. Each brand has a specific identity. We heard from more than 1,200 respondents, conducted 15 hours of interviews and spent 8 weeks digging deep into the brand employer of choice identities. Using Dr. Reiss’s work from the book The 16 Basic Desires That Motivate Our Actions and Define Our Personalities we were able to align motivations with brand identities to help job seekers best understand our companies with which they are seeking employment. We discovered motivations and value propositions ranging from being a passport to a better life, honor, service, leadership, and a sense of power. We will be sending you a video fully outlining and explaining you brand’s employer of choice branding from the motivation to the value proposition and through the response we must evoke from the job seeker to capture their interest. It will be important that you watch this video so you will understand the branding as well as live the promise in your recruiting and retention efforts.

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By using this new resource to attract, hire and seamlessly onboard a new teammember, individuals will generate anywhere from $75,000 - $200,000 revenue for you each year .

This article covers the presentation given at Reunion 2017 by Dwyer Group Chief Operating Officer Mary Thompson.

Attract, Hire Onboard – Employer of Choice Branding Applicant Tracking System While we were doing our employer of choice branding work we were also researching best-in-class applicant tracking systems (ATS) to provide you a simple and elegant solution in attracting and hiring talent. We did an extensive applicant tracking system (ATS) search, and narrowed it down to five best-in-class companies, and narrowed it down to one: CareerPlug. This new ATS service launched during October, and will offer the following benefits to you: • Build a talent magnet - Through CareerPlug, you can easily build attractive talent pages and automatic job postings, where you will be able to send out job postings to more than 12 different job sites. With this one feature, you’ll be able to reach more than 90 percent of job sites out there from any device – your computer, tablet or mobile phone. These talent pages will be easy to use on mobile as well, because we know that more and more applicants are using their cell phones to apply for jobs. • Hire more superstars - CareerPlug will also allow you to complete applicant tracking, assessments and even build interview guides for you. In the race to land an ideal candidate, response time is everything. You will be able to track applications from any device, and respond immediately to a fit. • Launch new hires - Fully integrated with ADP Payroll Services, this system contains paperless onboarding for new employees, including online forms and orientation. All the forms comply with local and international requirements. • Earn tax credits - Have you ever filed for work opportunity tax credits (WOTC) if you are located in the United States? If you are a U.S. employer, there are tax credits you can earn for hiring candidates who meet various requirements, based from qualifications such as financial need, where they live, or their background. However, these tax credits are very time restrictive and difficult to process due to paperwork and processes required to apply. Many employers don’t, passing up on between $1,200 and $9,600 per year because the applying can be cumbersome and time-consuming. This system will help streamline this application for you, and make it much easier for you to take advantage of these WOTC benefits. They will manage the entire WOTC process and submit your WTOC credits directly to the IRS. What’s the Cost of Using CareerPlug? There are two plans of which you can choose to take advantage. One is free, and the other is $495 paid annual which works out to $41.25 per month. We encourage you to consider this small monthly investment for

the following reasons: • On the pro plan, you can construct emails that will be auto-sent to applicants who meet certain characteristics. • Fast track questions offer a great opportunity to quickly screen candidates, and you will get a text if someone answers with key words for which you are looking. Even better, you can text them back immediately if you get an alert that you’ve received a key candidate apply. • If you analyze the annual cost of $41.25 per month, ($495) plus other recruiting costs you are already spending, (estimated $450), you get a total of $945. If this system earns you the average WOTC credit of $2,500, you end up in the black by $1,555 at the end of the year. Essentially, CareerPlug will pay for itself and more, all while ensuring you spend less time finding better-qualified candidates for your businesses. What About Our International Franchisees? The tax credits don’t apply if you are not a U.S. franchisee, however, there are still plenty of benefits. These costs for better recruiting practices sum to an estimated one third of 1 percent of your annual revenue. Think about investing that much out of your income that will add such a value component of your office. Simply adding a quality new team member has a quantitative value too. We are always thinking about the need to spend money to bring in a new customer, but not a new technician or specialist. We must think differently if we want to win in the golden age of service. Here’s what we are asking you to commit: • Spend at least 1/3 percent of your revenues in recruiting. • Devote 10 percent of your time invested in recruiting efforts which include using your ATS,CareerPlug, to actively recruit the best fits for your team as well as understand your hiring statistics to make better and faster hiring decisions. Your CareerPlug account has already been built and you can access it by registering at www.careerplug.com/dwyer-group or by using the third party link in FranConnect. Visit http://info.leadingtheserviceindustry. com/hubfs/newsletters/common/DwyerGroup_BasictoProFlyer.pdf to see the features and benefits of each plan. Through FranConnect, you can also access information regarding recorded or upcoming webinars to get more information about using this valuable resource. For us to win in the "Golden Age of Service" it will take everyone participating and recruiting in the most effective and efficient way possible. We’re not just recruiting, we are sowing the seeds of our reputation… our growth… our future. Let’s make this the best neighborhood in the world..

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Hey Neighbor!

By Kimberly Denman, Senior Communications Manager

W hat an amazing journey we have been on from the announcement of Neighborly™, through the launch and latest updates at Reunion. While the numbers Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Lisa Zoellner, presented during her main stage presentation are certainly exceeding our expectations, you may be asking, “how does this affect me and my brand?” PROMISES KEPT, PROGRESS FORWARD First, at last year’s Reunion, we said we would launch Neighborly in early 2017, and we did. The Neighborly platform websites in the US and Canada went live in early April. Second, we followed through with a full suite of Neighborly advertising materials, including vehicle decals, magnets, digital ads, direct mail programs and a new TV spot that was shared in brand meetings during this year’s Reunion. In total, Zoellner said we now have nearly a thousand pieces of creative available for you to use in your local markets. Third, we said we were going to grow our email marketing program, and we have. At this time last year, we had deployed less than 700,000 customer emails. At the time of writing this article, we are at more than 16 million! Our average customer has received about two emails per month which leaves plenty of headroom for more. Zoellner pointed out the good news that customer engagement with these emails remains strong. If you’re concerned about over-emailing, Zoellner reassured everyone at Reunion that we are 100 percent committed to following email marketing best practices. In fact, we have partnered with a company called Return Path, the leader in email marketing deliverability and compliance, to ensure our email program is best in class. And, finally, Zoellner said at last year’s Reunion that we were going to learn more about our customer. We are

making meaningful progress toward establishing a baseline understanding of our customer data. This effort has required 15 integrations across eight Point of Sale systems and 17 of our websites for more than 7 million customers. Quite an undertaking that is progressing nicely. KEY NEIGHBORLY UPDATES Several updates were presented at Reunion this year that are intended to increase the positive impact Neighborly can have on your business. New Neighborly Video - The Neighborly anthem video, which we shared at Reunion last year, received universal accolade. We needed to also create a consumer facing, short-form spot that could be used nationally and in your local market and online. We worked with Bullish, the agency that helped us create Neighborly, to do so. The spot was tested with our targets Diana (a 45+ year old) and Elizabeth (a millennial) homeowners and scored very well! In fact, among the test participants, xx percent said they were more likely to purchase from a Neighborly brand after seeing the spot. GetNeighborly.com - The websites for Neighborly , www. getneighborly.com and www.getneighbourly.ca, launched in early April and have been working hard ever since. In five months, we have created more than 2,700 pro pages, received over 100,000 site visits, consumers have created 6,500 accounts, and we’ve generated in excess of 2,500 leads. As a comparison, Neighborly is performing at nearly the level of our smaller brands that have been around for years. This is exciting news! Each new account created is another customer for us to market your brand to, who may have otherwise not known about your services.

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“In total, Zoellner saidwe nowhave nearly a thousand pieces of creative available for you to use in your local markets.”

This article covers the presentation given at Reunion 2017 by Dwyer Group Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer Lisa Zoellner.

WHAT’S NEXT? Our biggest impact will come from increasing the traffic driven to the Neighborly websites and improving conversion of those visitors into leads to fill your sales funnel. To do this, we will better leverage our existing customer touch points, such as our websites, email and more. We are also working on focused optimization efforts to improve our search engine ranking, decrease our bounce rate, and increase the conversion rate. In addition, we have partnered with franchisees to run a media test in Huntsville, Alabama. The test is still ongoing at the time this was written and we’ve already seen strong results: • Leads for all brands are up 119% over same period prior year. • Neighborly leads account for 30% of the leads generated. • 58% of jobs have been for new customers.

HOW TO CONNECT LOCALLY Find-a-Neighbor is an internal resource that enables you to search for Neighborly brands in your area and partner on Neighborly marketing efforts, community involvement engagements, public relations opportunities, and other joint endeavors. The Find-a-Neighbor single sign-on link is available on each brand’s Franconnect, SharePoint, or other franchise internal site. Simply, locate the “Find a Neighbor” single sign-on link, click it, and type in your zip code to locate fellow Neighborly brands in your area. While Neighborly has come quite far in just six months, we are really just getting started. Together with your help, we will build the Neighborly Brand and maximize the positive impact it will have on your business.

WHAT CAN YOU DO? We are doing a lot at the national level to build our Neighborly brand to benefit your business. Have you done your part? Zoellner challenged all franchisees to do three simple things:

1. Vehicle Decals: Order your Neighborly/Neighbourly vehicle decals. This is an inexpensive step that will drive awareness of Neighborly and all the services we offer. 2. Magnets/Leave-behinds: Replace your current magnets and leave-behinds with the new Neighborly materials, currently available for order. Even if only one other brand joins you on the magnet, you will decrease your cost for magnets and dramatically increase exposure to your brand. 3. Emails: Ensure you and your technicians are collecting complete and accurate customer data every single time. This includes name, address, email and cell phone number. Good data drives incremental revenue through our CRM programs.

To make these steps as easy as possible, please email neighborly@dwyergroup.com for an order form.

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Speed of Trust “You can’t talk your way out of a problem, you behaved yourself into.” - Stephen R. Covey

By Jason Lee, Communications Manager

A round 2008, a very prestigious group at an event was asked, “What’s the biggest challenge facing them right now?” The second answer the group came up with was the global financial crisis. The number one challenge the group said they faced was the loss of trust and confidence. The group went on to explain that as they lost trust, confidence in leadership declined and it exacerbated the global financial crisis. Covey explains that the best relationships are built on trust. Trust is the new currency, and the currency of franchising. Trust drives better businesses. If we have trust from our franchise owners, the franchise owners will have trust from their customers. Trust creates a win-win situation. A great example of a company that basis its business off of trust is Southwest Airlines. The company has had 44 consecutive years of profitability because they were able to gain and maintain the trust of their customers. Their airline fares are low and service is ranked high by consumers. Southwest ranked in the top-two for customer service, right along-side airline rival JetBlue. Other airlines tried to copy the approach of Southwest but were unable to copy the culture of Southwest. Covey stated there are three big ideas related to trust. 1. Trust is an economic driver, not merely a social virtue. 2. Trust is the number one competency of leadership needed today. 3. Trust is a learnable skill. Neighborly™ is trust. With Neighborly you have transparency of trust from one brand to another. 1. Trust is confidence. 2. Trust includes both character and competence. 3. Smart trust is good judgement – a third alternative from the extreme of blind trust (gullibility) and the other extreme of distrust (suspicion). It is important for leaders to have smart trust. This allows you to use good judgement but is not the same as blind trust. When a leader has distrust and suspicion it makes them less effective and impactful as a leader. If leaders have trusted people and were burned, they may now only trust very few people, or just themselves. The good thing about trust is that it has the element of reciprocity. If you trust people, they will trust you. The decision to trust should start with leaders. Leaders go first. They are all accountable. Leaders find ways to lead by extending trust to others.

“I have found that by trusting people until they prove themselves unworthy of that trust, a lot more happens” – Jim Burke, former CEO, Johnson & Johnson. Covey explains there are several ways trust can help a business. There is an economical benefit to Trust. There is a trust tax. When trust goes down, so does speed, which makes cost goes up. When trust is up, ultimately cost goes down. An example of financial gain from trust can be seen in the partnering of Frito Lay and Taco Bell. The partnership allowed for the quick creation of the Doritos loco tacos sold at Taco Bell locations. Frito lay and Taco Bell executives had to have trust in one another to make this deal happen. It quickly became a winning product for both parties. Companies like Frito Lay and Taco Bell are not alone in the trust sphere. Data shows high trust organizations have 280 percent higher total returns to shareholders. Getting good at trust enables leaders to build a competent team that moves fast, is agile, innovative and first. High trust creates synergy, collaboration and engagement that leads to retainment of employees. When looking at the one hundred best high trust companies, their turnover rate is half of the average than that of low trust companies. When trust goes down, energy and joy goes down. When a company has high trust, energy and joy goes up. The best thing about trust is that it is learnable. Self-trust, relationship trust, team trust, market trust and societal trust are all important to a company. The best way to build trust is from the inside out. There are two main types of trust. Credibility and behavior. Credibility is integrity, intent, capabilities and results. Behavior is extending trust. Are you ready to trust?

This article covers the presentation given at Reunion 2017 by best-selling author, leadership expert and keynote speaker, Stephen R. Covey.

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