RC: What if they help themselves to a free job at your expense?
DW: It doesn’t really happen. Leads come to me in two ways. Sixty percent are referrals. And a family member or a friend of a client is not going to do that to you. The other leads are coming from SEO [search engine optimization]. This is someone seriously looking to have his or her windows replaced. They’ve contacted me after sifting through 10 different companies online. They’re fairly far along in the process and they’re not about to stiff anybody.
RC: Do you close on first call?
DW: I don’t believe in one-stop closes. It’s too uncomfortable to enter into contracts without digesting information, without discussing it with your spouse, making sure the funds are there. I could, under duress, close at 60% and have a million cancellations. But I don’t want to. I want this to be an easy, comfortable project for people.
RC: You are also available as a consultant to other window companies. Have you gotten a lot of responses to that? What do people want you to do?
DW: That’s fairly recent. I get a lot of calls. People are sick and tired of banging their heads against the wall, doing it the old-fashioned way. Because it’s not fun. I had a guy who worked for me 15 years ago call me up recently wanting to know if I could set him up in a Zen Windows franchise in California. He’s still running leads at night. Me, I can’t wait to get up in the morning, throw on a suit, and see my clients. I don’t go out there with that anxiety of “I’ve gotta close, I’ve gotta close.”
RC: What do you do to keep customers in the loop once they have signed a contract?
DW: I have a 25-point process. The client will hear from me in some form 25 times by the time the job is completed. That could be an e-mail with a list of the last 20 jobs we’ve done in the area, recent testimonials … They’re very soft touches. We don’t want to lose contact.
RC: You have a section on your website about not pressuring clients into having all buying parties present. Why?
DW: Eighty-seven percent of household buying decisions are made by women. So how insulting is it when a woman is trying to set up a window estimate and the person on the other end of the line says: “Your husband has to be there or we won’t meet with you?” It’s nuts. They want the husband there so they can close the deal that night. I trust my wife to speak for both of us. No one understands this.
RC: You say on your website that you started Zen Windows after “a revelation.”
DW: I was buying clothes. And I thought: It’s simple. If you order a suit, you say, “I want this type of suit, in this fabric, this color, this look.” Two weeks later it’s ready. If it’s the wrong color and fit, if it’s ugly, you don’t buy it. Same thing with window replacement. I give clients a custom-made product based on their specifications. Within a few hours of meeting with them, I e-mail them a detailed description of what they ordered, everything they talked about.
RC: How can you afford to give clients that level of attention?
DW: I have relatively little overhead, whereas companies with all this overhead and advertising budgets, that gets built into the window price. I have an office in downtown Columbus, which is also a condo, so I’m not paying rent. I answer the phone myself or use an answering service. Anyone can call or e-mail me because I have a Blackberry. My supplier, Thermal Industries, has a warehouse in the area and they ship the order to that warehouse. I don’t warehouse materials, I order them separately for each job. I go to the client’s and make sure the job is being done properly. The one thing I spend money on is IT guys. I want to be sure I’m coming up on the first page of search engine organic results. With the advent of technology and outsourcing, you don’t need all the things you needed 30 or 40 years ago.
RC: When, on your website, you say: “Relax. Window quotes in 5 minutes.” What does that mean? A ballpark?
DW: It’s an exact price. A lot of people are petrified. They know they need new windows, but they won’t get them because they don’t want to deal with the pressure. What I’m telling people is: Everything is going to be cool. This doesn’t need to be an arduous, painful thing.
RC: What do you close at?
DW: If [prospects are] truly in buying mode, nine out of 10 will go with my company. Not because I’m a super-duper sales guy but because of my business model. They get three or four estimates, and one company plays pricing games and another one high-pressures them and I come in and do the opposite. And my price point is different.
RC: Do you think the attitude of the buying public toward traditional marketing and selling is changing or has changed during the last five years?
DW: The Internet puts everything at your disposal. Before, you had to rely on what people told you. So if a company goes in and says: this is what it is and we’re the best, well, until the Internet, people had no idea. Now they can Google anything.
The other thing is that expectations for contractors are much higher due to the economy. Before the recession, most home improvement projects were financed. Buying windows might cost $120 a month for seven years. Not a big blow to the wallet. Now financing has dried up and that $7,000 comes right out of their bank account. That’s made things easier for me.
RC: Why do you think more companies aren’t moving in the direction of a low-pressure, high-service business model?
DW: People don’t like change, especially people who have been doing things the same way for years. They’re afraid of it. But change is the only constant.