Originally Published as: Talking the Talk
20 years ago in Frame Building News
This Flashback article was originally published 20 years ago, in the November 2005 edition of Frame Building News. It was written by then-editor Scott Tappa. It encourages builders to ditch the jargon, meet customers at their level of understanding, and keep communication clear and consistent to build trust and avoid headaches down the road. If you have additional advice about effective communication that you’d like to share with readers, send it to [email protected].
The post-frame building industry has its own charming nomenclature, one that should be familiar to anyone reading Frame Building News.
Southern Yellow Pine 6×6 posts pressure-treated with CCA to 0.60 pcf retention. Siliconized modified polyester coil coatings with 30-year film integrity warranty. G-90, 29-gauge corrugated steel panels with 36-inch coverage and 3/4-inch ribs 9 inches on center.
Easy enough for you to understand, right? But to an average post-frame building customer, such terminology may as well be spoken in Russian — they just don’t understand what it all means.
Customers need not know the Post-Frame Building Design Manual like the back of their hand, but they should have a basic understanding of what will be going into their buildings. Making sure this happens is not just good customer service, but also a first line of defense against problem customers.
“There’s an old saying that an attorney told me years ago: ‘Educate before litigate,’” says Mike Lemke, a Valparaiso, Ind., builder.
Sizing them up
“We try to give as much information as possible to educate the customer, so they can make their own interpretation of it, then wait for questions,” says Lemke. “We break it down in the simplest, easiest-to-understand way possible, and if they still have that deer-in-headlights look, we break it down even simpler.”
Sizing up the customer, and the level of detail with which they may be comfortable, is the first step toward ensuring effective communication. “We try to determine first what personality type we’re talking to, and how analytical they are,” says John Warriner of Illini FS. “From there we determine what kind of language we use. If we’ve got a guy who loves detail, you can probably get down to specific terms; if not, you try to talk in more general terms. In some cases, they’re just concerned with what the finished project is going to look like, not whether we’re using a 2×4 or 2×6.”
Dealing with customers who know the language already can make the sales process much easier for a builder — or much harder. Some customers know just enough about post-frame building to be dangerous, says Tom Bradley of Parco Building Systems in Newfane, N.Y.
“That’s the scary guy,” Bradley says with a laugh. “It’s not that they know enough, it’s that they think they know enough. We do it for a living.”
McLennan Construction of Holden, Mo., also runs into such customers. “That’s OK, I don’t mind being questioned — the more they know, the less problem I have selling them a good building,” says John McLennan. “Unless they’re being a smart aleck! A lot of our competitors are from Arkansas or Oklahoma, and they don’t have the foggiest idea about wood, they know how to build one building, and it costs less. So, the more customers know, the quicker they understand why ours is better.”
A certain degree of accommodation also works. Lemke says his Design Construction of NWI will not override a customer with strong opinions on what they want. “You always have to make the customer happy,” he says. “If they are very strong in one direction, you give them what they want or you don’t get the job. They’re making their own mind up. All we’re doing is giving people what they want.”
While a builder has to retain the role of expert on any given project, a little humility comes in handy. DeKalb, Ill., builder Jim Zenz has dealt with customers who work in the steel industry and know the ins and outs of local companies’ light-gauge panel offerings, and deferred to their expertise. “They’ll tell me, ‘Morton’s running this,’” he says. “They know more than I do. They know a lot of the fine details on the process of preparing a sheet of steel. I guess my thing is I don’t act like I know more about it than they do. You’ve got to give them their respect.”
Keeping it simple
Yet few post-frame building customers are steel industry experts. From all accounts, the detail people are in the minority. “It seems that more often than not we don’t have people getting real technical about that, maybe even less so than it used to be,” says Zenz. “Some of that is because of the nature of our business — 80 percent of our work is referrals, and most people are familiar with our product. They know what we use for framing materials.”
“If you’ve got a person who’s not very detail-oriented, normally they’re more interested in how the finished product is going to look, how it will fit into the location,” says Warriner. “Some of the things like paint warranties and that kind of stuff become a little more particular to them, and we’ll talk about differences between products, but you may not have to convey as much technical information.”
Sometimes even the most end result-oriented customer would like to know a little more about the materials going into their new building. After all, post-frame jargon does not always make perfect sense. “One thing a lot of people don’t understand is the fact that 26-gauge is thicker than 29-gauge,” says Zenz. “So a lot of times instead of talking in gauges, we’ll talk in terms of actual thickness, they can understand that a little better. A lot of people are interested in snow load, what is a 30-pound snow load, how much snow is that? We usually tell them that’s what most commercial loads in our area are, and they’re content knowing that.”
The National Frame Builders Association has brochures and other marketing materials that can help illustrate tricky concepts to customers. Trade magazines can help, says Lemke, who often copies articles from such publications and passes them along to customers.
No matter what level of detail you get into with a customer, the end result needs to be driven home: wood treated to 0.60 retention is X percent more effective than wood treated to 0.40 retention, screws have X percent more resistance to pullout than nails, etc. “No matter what the product line, it’s the old feature and benefit thing,” says Warriner. “You can give customers all the features in the world, but they have to understand the benefits. There’s always that chance that the customer thinks he understands what it all means, and he might not.”
Spelling things out
Such confusion can potentially leave a bad taste in customers’ mouths at the conclusion of a seemingly routine project. The builders surveyed for this story say this type of miscommunication does not happen often, and with good reason: they have procedures in place to ensure customers know what they’re getting every step of the way.
For Parco Building Systems, that means signing sheet upon sheet upon sheet, creating a paper trail that leaves no questions about materials or responsibilities.
“Our contract goes over every portion of framing, to steel, to fasteners, to closures, to site and underground obstacle considerations,” says Bradley. “We do 300, 400 buildings a year, and at that pace, you have to have it in writing.”
Even then, surprises inevitably arise during the construction process. Constant communication and immediate attention help ensure everyone is happy at the end of the project. “We’ve learned over the years to deal with things as they’re happening,” says Lemke. “We do as many walk-throughs as possible during the process. If a customer says, ‘That’s not what I wanted,’ we back up, go to the plans.”
Unfortunately, every builder has run into a customer who uses “That’s not what I wanted” as a bargaining chip to reduce or avoid their final payments. “Ninety percent of the time when you have a guy like that, you’re in constant negotiation,” says Bradley, who is currently dealing with five such customers. “You have to determine if he is honestly feeling this, or does he not want to pay me? Over time you develop an eye for who the guy is who’s trying to put the screws to you versus the guy who honestly thinks he’s been shorted.”
Taking it mobile
Modern technologies available to post-frame builders have both enhanced and diminished the quality of communication with customers. Cell phones, e-mail, and the Internet have all made communicating easier, but more does not always mean better.
Take cell phones. Everyone has one nowadays, and they have virtually eliminated any barriers for reaching a builder at a jobsite. They also have made time spent in the truck more productive. “I spend quite a bit of time on my cell phone when I’m on the road,” says Zenz. “I have a list of all our past and current customers waiting to do work with us, and it gives me an opportunity to touch base with them. I’ve found having a cell phone really helpful as far as customer relations. I’d be lost without it.”
Conversely, builders can’t control when their phone might start ringing. “They always seem to catch you when you’ve got a tool apron on, swinging from a truss,” says Lemke. “You’re not going to remember what they say. So we tell them to write their questions down, fax it to the office, and we’ll answer it in a timely fashion. It eliminates errors.”
The Internet is an effective tool for educating customers on their own time, says John Hayworth. The Valley Falls, Kan., builder often steers clients to manufacturers’ Web sites before they reach a final decision. “I like the fact they can get on the Internet and look up products, they can gain knowledge by studying themselves,” he says. “Some people want to know a lot, so they can go to a manufacturer’s Web site, and tell me what they think.”
Warriner says Ilini FS is using e-mail more and more, especially for internal communication. “We’re spread out over a pretty good mileage, our salespeople and operations people don’t necessarily cross paths every day,” he says. “We’re trying to use e-mail more, use digital cameras more to convey information. If we’re working on a building and have an issue, or if we’re trying to price something, we try to use digital imagery. We’re getting better at it, but probably not where we need to be.”
But for quality communication, nothing can beat face to face. “I tracked for a while how many jobs we got over the phone and how many we got where we went and talked to the customer, and it’s an amazing difference,” says McLennan. “I prefer to meet people face to face, spend time with them. Part of it is the explanation, part of it is gaining trust.”
