"It probably shaves 20 to 30 minutes off every appointment." A conversation with Monk’s Home Improvements

Monk’s Home Improvements is the leading home-improvement company in northern New Jersey. Owned and operated by two brothers, Ty and Trevor Monk, the business has impressive showroom facilities in the cities of Morristown and Fanwood. Customers benefit from a wide range of services, including kitchen and bath remodeling, painting, carpentry, and installation of flooring, windows and doors. I recently spoke with Trevor to learn why and how his company uses magicplan for various projects.

Will you please tell me a little bit more about your role at the company?

Okay. So, my brother started the company about 15 years ago. I joined him on year two. And currently I oversee all the field operations and the field sales. The people that report to me deal with magicplan every day. They're using it multiple times a day. It's a big part of our selling process.

How long have you been using magicplan?

We've been using magicplan for maybe eight years. I have probably used it a few thousand times. I mean, I know magicplan pretty well.

Do you use magicplan day to day yourself?

Yes, I do. I also train all the new salespeople coming in. And part of that training is teaching them to use magicplan, which is a tool that we use to communicate with our designers. So, we're using magicplan in multiple ways: to measure decks and to get layouts for kitchens, bathrooms, basement refinishing, attics and additions. And we send those drawings into someone at one of our showrooms. That person then puts each drawing into a software system called 2020 Design Live. So, our designers are then able to design those spaces for our customers.

How many employees do you have?

With all of our laborers and other employees, we have over 300 people.

Okay, that's a lot of people to manage. And tell me, how did you actually end up using magicplan?

Well, prior to using magicplan, we actually drew everything with graph paper and a pencil. And then, as a company, we eventually went paperless. We put all of our sales tools on the iPad, and we had an app made for us. So, we can now sell off the iPad. In fact, we all have the iPad Pro.

And when we started our showrooms about nine years ago, we needed a way to import our drawings for our designers. That's how we found magicplan. I believe it was the 2020 Design Live company that told us about magicplan and how that lets them import drawings into their system.

Will you please describe how you go about working with a new customer?

Sure. So a customer will call our call center because they either need some remodeling done or need something else done to their house. The call center will find out the correct salesperson, or estimator, to send, based on the address of the house. Then our estimator goes out and meets that customer in person and creates an estimate. The project could be anything: working on a bathroom or kitchen, painting doors, installing windows, building a deck, you name it.

At that point, the estimator needs to make a decision on whether or not the customer needs to get into our showroom. If not – if the job is something simple like painting or replacing trim – the estimator can just price it in front of the customer.

If the customer needs to come into the showroom, though, the estimator uses magicplan and another software app called Evernote to gather information. Then we get all of that information into the showroom and we wait for the customer to come in for an appointment with a designer. Once the design is completed, the customer will receive a labor quote.

So, the estimator is the person who is creating floor plans?

Yes

Okay, and how many estimators do you have?

We have 13.

And what process do you use to prepare a quote?

We do it through Salesforce. We have an app inside Salesforce that was made for us, and that we use to do all of our quoting.

How much time do you think your estimators are saving by using magicplan?

That's a great question. I would say it probably shaves 20 to 30 minutes off every appointment. That’s because when we did a drawing on paper, we would have to deliver the paper to our office. Now we just have to press a button and it gets sent in electronically.

And how long is each appointment in general?

It's usually an hour and a half. Or it can be a three-hour appointment for a large project, like a renovation.

Besides saving time, what other advantages have you seen with magicplan?

You know, when we used a pencil and paper to create each drawing, notations were not always legible. Not everybody has the best handwriting, right? Or maybe the person making a drawing was messy, or they ripped the paper or they lost the paper. So, you kind of eliminate a lot of human error by using magicplan on the iPad.

Do your estimators sometimes show their magicplan drawings to customers?

Yes, when an estimator is at a customer’s home, they will show the customer a 3D rendering of the space that they just made with magicplan.

 Okay, I have one final question to ask: If you had to describe magicplan in just one word, what would it be?

In one word? Awesome.

Thank you so much, Trevor at Monk’s Home Improvements in New Jersey!

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