Changing The Cheap Customer (December 2006)

    And, do we need to recognize that there’ll always be the ones we just can’t convince that, by investing more on quality upfront, there’ll be savings on maintenance down the road?
  Whether we’re dealing with stingy designers or facility managers, all of them have reasons why they’re pinching pennies. Some cost-saving ideas make sense, and others are downright obtuse.
  These are the reasons why we find stone in situations that it can’t help but fail. This kind of reasoning also contributes to foolish maintenance programs that end up sucking the fiscal life out of a commercial budget.
  Regardless of the reasons, if stone is set up to fail or to cost the customer unneeded expenses, it can and will lose its desired value among the misinformed. Let’s take a look at why some customers are so cheap – and if we can do anything about educating clients so that they can spread their joy of having natural stone by good old-fashioned word-of-mouth.
  1. Most designers don’t know better about the qualities of stone, or understand what goes into a building. (Notice I said most, not all.)
  I have a friend who studied interior design, and the teacher sold her projects using collected classwork. This is student work (which hadn’t been thought through completely) sold off as professional designs. It happens.  
  So what does a first-year student know about stone? They’re working mostly with patterns and colors, not practicality. So what happens is that you can get a soft marble installed in an entrance to a busy building where even the lightest traffic will show damage.
  Not all first-year design students have their homework plagiarized for profit, but some designers might as well be sophomore students for the amount of thought they put into a project. Most are just interested in selling something that looks good rather than offer a practical one. (Or, can you say “Corvette,” although I would drive one if I could somehow convince my wife that it was practical.)
  How to solve this stone suffering setback? Education.
  Invite local designers out to stone educational seminars; if you’re not close enough to an event by a body like the Marble Institute of America (MIA), create your own. Send designers and local architects invitations to a gathering to help improve their knowledge in stone. If your shop isn’t presentable to professionals, hold it at a hotel meeting room or restaurant banquet room. Not only will your knowledge help them; you’ll be viewed locally as a leader in the stone industry, and who do you think they’ll call on when they run into trouble?
  A little charity work goes a long way to support a professional career. Why do you think all those philanthropists have their pictures in the papers handing out big checks? Here you have an opportunity to make a difference. Whiners never accomplish anything except create a negative atmosphere; winners get things done.
  Still think that it can’t be done? Take a trip to a major stone show and see how many architects and designers fly across the globe to get the education they need to remain at the top of their respective fields.
  2.  Many who buying the designs or manage large facilities that include stone aren’t planning on being in their job down the road.
  I have one franchise store that is a training location for new franchisees. Every two years (or less), the owners move on to a bigger store if they show corporate brass that they can handle a small one. You should see how cheap these guys are; they always try to pass maintenance off on the next guy. They’re only interested in doing as little as possible, because they know it’s not their long-term problem. Take a look at the governments – they know that they are only in power for a short time, so many milk it while they’re in and pass the problems off to the next person taking the office.
  This isn’t only a problem you’ll see in small businesses. Some top-level executives in a major casino were considering a process on marble that I advised against by telling them of the consequences. They looked at each other, smiled, and said that they were talking about that the other day – and reasoned that they wouldn’t be around to see the damage done, but would appear to be saving the company money in the meantime.
  The biggest problem is that there’s no ownership of the maintenance costs for the people making the decisions. They’re only interested in looking good to their employers now, and not five years down the road when they’ve pulled the cord on their golden parachute.
  The key is to educate the owner first. Not the person he trusted to make the maintenance calls, but the party who either profits or loses based on those decisions. This will ensure that your other part of the master plan will work – educating the person who’s making the decisions.
  Here’s what pulls it all together: You need to CC:, or copy, both of these individuals (or more if we’re talking about many management layers) on all correspondence. When you see CC: on a formal letter (or even an email missive), everyone involved now knows everyone else is reading the exact same information. This way, all of your bases are covered.
  This also protects you from having the lower-runged decision maker floating a “save money now – pay big later” choice, because they know that their boss is receiving the same information. If the owner/CEO gets the point of why they should take your advice, you will usually never get stonewalled by a purchasing agent or facility’s manager.
  Of course, the only way to be successful in turning around those cheapskate customers is to educate yourself first. Teachers must master the subject before they can ingrain it in a logical way to their students. How to get that knowledge and use it wisely is another article entirely – as is the subject of how to get to your prospective customer’s owner and/or CEO to educate them.
  Until then, be a winner, and keep your stick on the ice.
  Tom McNall is founder and owner of Great Northern Stone Care, a Huron Park, Ontario-based stone-cleaning and -restoration company servicing all of southern Ontario. He also serves as the director of training, technical assistance, and operational support for Stone Restoration Services, a division of Stone Shop International. Tom also offers corporate and private consultation, serves as a trainer for the MIA, and is also on the organization’s board of directors. He can be reached at tom@greatnorthernstone.com