Quality Doesn't Matter Does it?

[Mbella]

That was the title of an article in the November issue of Interlocking Concrete Pavement magazine.

In the article the author asked, “Do you waste your time trying to gain customers with promises of quality work?” He then goes on to say, “Quality is expected and required by the contract and industry standards.” Later, he opines, offering quality is the “minimum” a contractor can do. In order to do more than the minimum, he offers suggestions for various contractors. For the hardscape contractor, he suggests, “provide free maintenance for 12 months.”

I couldn’t disagree more. Quality may be expected, but quality is a relative term. Many homeowners don’t know what quality looks like. If a contractor takes the time to educate a potential client on what quality looks like, with regard to a hardscape installation, it is more likely to be appreciated and result in a sale.

By educating the potential client, I am referring to informing him, or her of things like the importance of recognizing soil types and potential problems with unsuitable soil, proper depths and materials for base prep, etc. In other words, explain each component of the pavement, it’s function within the pavement and which material is to be used in the installation of each component.

Explain why you will use certain materials instead of others. For example: Explain why you use coarse concrete sand instead of screenings. Perhaps, your competition is proposing screenings as a bedding layer. The potential client didn’t know of the advantages of sand over screenings, but now that you have informed him, or her, a shadow of doubt has been cast upon the other contractor.

As far as providing free maintenance for 12 months: Ok, so we are going to sell a consumer on the little to no maintenance advantage of pavers and at the same time, convince them that they are receiving added value because we are offering a “free” 12 month maintenance program?

I’ll stick to selling quality.

[kris]

I couldn’t disagree more. Quality may be expected, but quality is a relative term.

I have not read the article but I do think the word "quality" has become so over used that it really does not mean anything to anyone anymore. .. I also agree that it should go without saying.

Yes I agree you should educate the consumer on what a quality job is but you need to sell your company more than just saying we do quality work and the points you make are all great ... explain why certain materials are used and the procedure you will use to get the end result.
As far as free maintenance ...we have an after sales service that takes over when the final walk through is done ... they go back and check the yard 1-2 wks. later and so on ..adjust irrigation ....just a basic check of the yard ...obviously this is mainly the softscape. We feel this service, if done well (and we don't do it well enough yet)will be another key to increasing referral sales.

Ill have to read the article and get back to you for more input.

[mckeeland]

i went and read the article that you mentioned. his suggestion of a 12 month maintenance package is retarded, we offer a 4 year guarantee, thinking of making it 5, what the heck am i supposed to do to maintenance the patio for twelve months? i can offer to clean and seal the patio in 6 months or so.

however i do get his overall point though. quality is important to customers, however affordability is many times the deciding factor. we stress very hard the difference in how we install and how others do it, but sometimes all of that gets lost on some people. they don't really care about the difference in the particle size of concrete sand and mason sand. they should but most don't.

we need to constantly set are selves apart from our competitors, and quality is good ,but it cant be our only weapon. i know its hard for me because i am the worst salesman there is. thank goodness i do good work, because i couldn't sell it if it didn't sell it self. so i have to use simple facts that make sense to the customer to use us. things are getting more competitive where we are now, and i have to start being more competitive.