There are two ways to
attract and retain customers, says George Davis: You can manipulate
them, or you can inspire them.
Davis, founder, owner and
president of ProBuilt Homes
Inc., says that if you are in the
business of building customer
relationships, manipulation is
fool’s gold. You might get customers in the door with slick
marketing tricks, discounts
and the like, but you won’t
develop the long-standing relationships that form the foundation of many businesses.
“You can discount and advertise and run promotions, but
my feeling is that manipulation
never builds loyalty, and it’s
what so many business leaders focus on,” Davis says.
“They think you can manipulate customer loyalty, and I
would argue that you can’t. I
would argue that the only way
you can build customer loyalty
is through inspiration.”
To Davis, inspiring customers means not just selling
them a service or a product
but getting them involved in
the process of how you do
business. He says you don’t
just want your customers’
business, you want their ideas,
as well.
“I think the biggest thing customers value in a business
relationship is a one-word
answer: listening,” he says. “A
lot of times as business owners, we think we know everything, and we get blinders on,
but what we really need to do
is step back and listen.”
Listening is something that
takes diligence and discipline.
Davis says that you have to
make up your mind that you
are going to value customer input, and then seek out that
input through multiple
avenues.
“I’m not the greatest listener,
so I have to continually
remind myself to listen,” he
says. “Here, we do it through
surveys and feedback. We
might have a customer who
has a Realtor, and the Realtor
or buyer’s agent probably
knows them a lot better than
we do. So a lot of times, after
we get finished building a
home, I’ll sit down with their
Realtor, and we’ll get more
honest feedback than we
would have otherwise.”
Davis views his investment
of time and effort in building
customer relationships as a
point of differentiation for his business. At a time when
many business relationships
have become purely transactional, he views his method of
inspiring customers as a way
his business — or any smaller,
growing business — can stand
apart from bigger companies.
“We built a home for an
executive, and because we
worked with him, he loved
the experience,” he says.
“Six months later, he waved
me down in the subdivision
and said, ‘I have an idea for
you. There are 500 condominiums here, and every
time I go to one of the social
events, everyone is talking
about how they don’t like the
condos and want to go back
to single-family houses.’”
That interaction spawned a
marketing campaign aimed
at drawing condo owners
toward purchasing houses.
“We sent out a four-color
postcard, and sure enough,
we sold two houses off that
campaign in 30 days,” he
says. “We had inspired that
customer to give us an idea
we could use.”
Building customer loyalty is
how small businesses become
big businesses, Davis says.
The business world is full of
examples to follow.
“You look at companies like
Harley-Davidson,” he says.
“People love their Harleys.
They’ll get tattoos of them.
The same thing with Apple. If
you’re a Mac user, you’ll go to
the ends of the Earth to sell
your friends on Mac.
“That’s how you inspire
people. I know we’re doing
things right when people do
what that guy did, going out
of his way to tell me an idea
he had.”
HOW TO REACH: ProBuilt Homes Inc., (440) 255-6535 or www.probuilt-homes.com
Building a customer-centered work force
Building a company that seeks
and values customer input starts
with you, but you can’t do it all
yourself, especially if your company is growing rapidly.
George Davis says you need to
find people who can help spread
a customer-focused mindset
throughout your company,
something that is less of an
exact science and more of an art.
“You can’t coach (a person to
value customers), you just find
people who feel that way,” says
the founder, owner and president
of ProBuilt Homes Inc. “I look
for people who truly love and
care about what they do. But you
can’t coach that. You have to hire
for that.”
Recruiting methods vary from
business to business, but
regardless of the talent pool from
which you are drawing, Davis
says you can’t underestimate the
power of networking and building a presence within your industry. After you get to know managers and employees in other
companies, you’ll begin to see
the types of employees you’ll
need to advance your own culture and values.
“One guy I’ve had who has
worked for me for three years,
previously, he’d worked for
another builder for 16 years,”
Davis says. “I don’t want to say I
tried to steal him away, but in
that case, I told him that I wanted him to work for me, and if
things changed where he
worked, to let me know. Things
did change, and I was the first
one he called.”
Over time, if you put enough
effort into networking and
human resources, Davis says
you’ll develop your own
approach to finding the right
people.
“You just get a feeling when
you meet with people,” he says.
“You learn by meeting different
kinds of people, and then you go
out and try to find the right types
of people to work for you.”