Business Articles - Trade Tips - From David Lupberger

Homeowners can be difficult. They can be demanding, and even unreasonable on some projects. Unfortunately, a bad home improvement experience can bring out the worst in someone we are working with. Due to a missed deadline, or miscommunication, we may be the cause of some of this demanding or unreasonable behavior. There is a way to manage this.

When a project first begins, the homeowners we work with trust us, or they would not have hired us. We need to build on this trust for any project to be successful. Let me state the obvious. Homeowners desperately want to trust us. They hope and trust that we are going to do what we said we were going to do. In this article, I want to review the 4 elements of trust that you need to understand for any home improvement project to run smoothly. If you understand these 4 elements of trust and practice them honestly, you will eliminate 90% of the issues that arise.

• Consistency
• Honesty
• Promise keeping
• Reassurance

Consistency

The homeowners you work with crave consistency. Their worst nightmare is a pack of unorganized workers dragging in at all hours on Monday morning. You've got to make consistency important to your workers and trade contractors. You've got to let them know that consistency is the cornerstone of how you handle each project.

At initial meetings, be specific about your job procedures. Do you have a remodeling schedule? Show them how their job will unfold on that schedule. But go beyond that. If you tell them that work does not begin until 8 a.m., stick to that. If you agree that the construction area will be cleaned up every day, see that it's done, or do it yourself to make sure. This consistency works both ways. You also want to be specific about their obligations and what you expect. Don't fluctuate here. Hold them to their promises as tightly as you can. They will respect you more in the end for this kind of consistency.

Honesty

This advice is easy to give, but being honest rarely has much of a short-time down side and usually has a long-term up side. When a problem arises, face it quickly and squarely. Most of your customers will always respect an honest admission of guilt.

• Acknowledge your mistakes. If you have a custom kitchen order and you discover that you left a cabinet out, say, "I made a mistake." If you have bungled a kitchen order, the sooner you let the homeowner know, the better, because the missing cabinet may affect the time of completion. Some contractors believe that they can work around this because they don't want to look bad. The idea here is to forget about looking bad. Let's look honest. Your integrity is worth more than trying to appear that you are always right, and it's this kind of integrity that maintains the trust your homeowners are looking for.
• Tell homeowners what is going to happen each week. For example, if dust is going to be a problem during the demolition or the drywall sanding stage, give them the bad news up front. A lot of what we are doing is managing their expectations. This can start in your first meeting. Let them know how difficult a specific project might be. By doing this, you can guide them through the experience by managing their expectations.

Promise Keeping

This aspect of trust building, keeping promises, is easy to accomplish when you start out in little ways. Be on time for the first appointment, no matter what. Call to let the homeowners know you'll be on time. This timeliness represents promise number one. Make little promises that you know you can keep from there on. "Yes, I think I can have that estimate back to you in 10 days." "Yes, I can have that sample to you by Thursday." Keep these initial promises, and you will really build trust that will reap benefits as the project unfolds.

Reassurance

In my experience you can't tell a homeowner often enough that the job is going to come out all right. It's music to their ears; it's what they want to hear. Say it over and over. "It's gonna be okay. I'm here to take care of you." Literally in the same fashion, the homeowner desperately wants to believe that all through this building process you are not going to quit on them, that you're going to work with them and to help them. That you're going to manage the job from the beginning all the way through to the end. Just as with children, they want to know that you're going to be there for them. They need to hear that you are not going to quit. You're not going to leave them hanging.