To attract and retain their high-end clients, HartmanBaldwin uses several strategies:
- Design/build structure. Above all, the company practices and promotes the true design/build model, where the designers and builders are all employed by the same company. “Everybody has a hand in the design,” says Hartman, whose pet peeve is architects who design buildings without costing them out, leaving the hapless homeowners to suffer shock when the first bids come in. At HartmanBaldwin, he says, the designers learn to be “molded by the materials.” And with everyone in on the design, there is no finger-pointing between designer and builder. Rather, Hartman says, there’s a lot of hand-raising, as in, “Hey, I’ve got an idea.” For high-end clients educated enough to know that conflicts in remodeling can be avoided, design/build is attractive.
- Client satisfaction analysis. For HartmanBaldwin, client satisfaction is not just a plank in the company’s mission statement but a measurable goal the firm pursues vigorously. A couple of years ago, the company set up a series of focus groups with past clients to find out how it could improve its services. Hartman says the results of those events, run by an outside facilitator, were eye-opening.
These days, each client gets a survey form with each billing that asks how the company is doing in four areas: quality of work, communication, attention to needs, and scheduling. A fifth question is open-ended about the whole process. While HartmanBaldwin scores an average of 4.8 points out of a possible 5, it’s the scheduling that irks clients most. Perhaps influenced by the maniacal schedules seen on TV shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, clients in today’s world want things to happen much faster. In response, HartmanBaldwin is re-engineering its internal processes to oblige its customers’ sense of urgency. For instance, whereas a feasibility study once took four months to complete, internal changes have now slimmed that time frame down to less than three months.
- Peer-group investment. For more than a decade, Devon Hartman has belonged to one or more peer-review groups that meet to compare and discuss each member company’s systems and progress. He participated for several productive years in one of Les Cunningham’s Business Networks groups as well as in one of Victoria Downing and Linda Case’s Remodelers Advantage Roundtables peer groups. Both of these groups are composed of remodeling and building companies. Hartman also joined peer-review group TEC International, a global networking organization for chief executives to meet and exchange ideas with other, non-competing CEOs. He’s garnered so many good ideas, in fact, that he’s taking a year or so off from peer-group involvement to put new systems into place. He says: “Now, my job is to execute, execute, execute.”
- Community education events. HartmanBaldwin spends $60,000 per year on marketing, but the company’s strategy is a departure from the typical newspaper, radio, and television ads. Instead, it seeks to educate the community about the remodeling process, not just about the company itself. Toward that goal, Hartman hosts two or three remodeling workshops a month, which typically draw 4 to 14 local homeowners. In them, he helps attendees understand whether they should remodel their home, what the scope of that remodel should be, and various ways to bring it about.
Another educational tool is the company’s 26-page “Home Remodeler’s Survival Guide,” 4,000 copies of which the firm has handed out so far. HartmanBaldwin also hosts home tours of its remodeled masterpieces to raise money for such charitable causes as Claremont Heritage, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving Claremont’s history. In this year’s home tour, 600 attendees paid $17 each to visit some of HartmanBaldwin’s projects. Perhaps this could be considered a benchmark for upscale remodeling firms — when potential clients pay to see your work. If so, HartmanBaldwin has hit the mark.
Freelancer Kathy Price-Robinson writes about remodeling and green building from the central coast of California. She is the author of an award-winning remodeling series, “Pardon Our Dust,” for the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times.