Drive change beyond your office
If getting employee buy-in is the first domino, then your next task is to keep that momentum rolling outside of your office. Equip employees to get customers on board, as well.
“Most of it is spending time with people one on one, spending time showing them how to do it,” Fimiano says. “I would take on the customer that had the most resistance and show them how to do it.”
Fimiano had plenty of opportunities, because the change faced significant resistance in the marketplace. Many hospital builders, specifically, shied away from the idea of design-build. So Fimiano went straight to the CEO of one of the largest builders and asked for only 30 seconds of his time.
It’s important to keep your message simple and succinct with your customers. Instead of diluting your presentation with pages of background and reasoning, jump straight to how the change affects them.
Fimiano laid down two floor plans — one design-build and one plan-and-spec — and let the difference speak for itself. Instead of just telling, he showed the customer how the change would improve the quality and lower the price of a project. That short-and-sweet approach has already manifested into several projects with that builder.
“If you can just show them the difference, there’s lots of data that will demonstrate that what we’re doing is superior to the old way,” says Fimiano, who equipped employees with statistics to support the case with customers.
“The point we’re making is (the change) is much better for the customer, ultimately,” he says. “The final product is going to be less expensive, it’s going to be faster and it’s going to be better quality. So we keep track of all those metrics so that our people, when they talk to a customer, can say, ‘We’re not just doing it because it’s good for us. It’s good for you, and here’s why,’ and we back that up with a lot of statistics.”
If you just handed employees stacks of statistics and set them free, you’d be giving them bullets but no gun. You must also train them how to use the data. For Fimiano, this included role-playing and prepping for the worst-case scenario.
“Typically, you know what a customer’s going to say: ‘I’ve always done it this way. Why would I want to change?’” he says. “Ask yourself, ‘What are the worst questions that they could ever ask me?’ and be ready for them. And then usually the other ones are easier.”
Fimiano asked employees to list the queries that would freeze them. When you talk through the best answers for those, you build their confidence. If employees are prepared for curve balls, their responses to basic questions will become second nature.