When Marcia Phillips decided that her mortgage company wasn’t going to offer loans to customers who couldn’t afford them, many of her competitors scoffed.
But as the industry collapsed, Guardian Mortgage Co. Inc. has remained standing asa result of that decision. Sonow, instead of focusing onsurvival as many other companies are doing, Phillips and her61 employees are able to focuson their customer service.
“We were looking like wewere just sticking to our old-fashioned ways and gotlaughed at a bit,” says thecompany’s president and CEO.“It was a challenge to stay thecourse, but it paid off for usbecause we’re not in any trouble now.”
Smart Business spoke withCross about how to knowwhen to change and when tostick with what you’re doing.
Q. How do you know when tochange your business model?
One of the greatest businesschallenges over changingtimes is to know when tokeep doing things the way wehave and when to makechanges. I probably knowmore about how not to leadchange.
The most recent examplewas not following in the footsteps of everybody else in thebusiness. Some of those companies let the sales functionssteer the company rather thandoing what we try to do —maintain a hands-on of whatreally works and what’s thebusiness practice for the company and for our customers.
Q. How do you make sureyou don’t let the sales sidesteer the company?
By making sure that everybody keeps in mind what ourgoal is, and our goal is to takegood care of the customers.Therefore, you can’t let the salesfunction drive it to that extent.
Obviously, if there are goodideas, you go ahead and adoptthem. If you remember whatyour goal is — to serve thecustomers, to end up with agood product, a good loan,you keep that in mind.
Q. How do youdetermine if an idea issomething you shouldadopt or not?
Keep to common sense.
Keep it simple. Is this anidea that can be understood — is it a good product, an option, is it goodfor customers, is it useful? If it’s useful, then it’san idea worth considering and changing.
We look for our approach and our growth to be something that’s going to last. We don’t just go after it forgrowth sake. For example, in the late ’70s, we sawthat our home state ofMichigan had a mature marketand that homeownershipgrowth was going gangbustersin other places like Texas, sowe expanded to Texas andthen, over the next five or sixyears, moved most of ouroperations to the Dallas area.
A lot of our competitorschased growth all over thecountry. We didn’t do that. Westuck with the product in theareas that we were familiarwith and also in small enoughareas that we could continueto have a personal relationshipwith our customers.
