Greg Wilkes (00:02):
So today’s podcast stems from a recent coaching course that I was actually on. I was just over in Hawaii on an intensive training program. And the whole point of that program was to make my coaching experience better for my clients. And there was a subject that we discussed there that I thought was actually really transferrable over into the construction industry and that was onboarding clients. So what we were learning at this event was the importance of onboarding clients the right way. If you get clients signed up to your program and then they have a terrible experience in the first 30 days while you’re trying to onboard them or you overwhelm them or different things like that, then it’s highly likely they’ll either not enjoy the program altogether ’cause you’ve started off on a bad foot or they’re gonna leave your program because they haven’t enjoyed the onboarding experience.
(00:51):
So I thought to myself, well how does this actually relate to construction? And interestingly enough, there is, uh, a big crossover actually, and we do have to also think about how we onboard clients. And a lot of the time this isn’t really focused on at all in the construction industry. So what is client onboarding? Well, what we’re talking about here is we’re talking about the period between when a client initially signs up for you. So they’ve signed a contract and they’re willing to go ahead with the project and then the period of when you actually start on site. So there’s a gap in between those two areas. And this is the perfect time to actually give the client an onboarding experience where you set out the expectations of how you want themselves to act during the process and what the relationship’s gonna be like. You are gonna give them your criteria of how you are gonna act and you might give them timelines and some other things that are going on so they’ve got a full picture of of what’s going on.
(01:52):
So the reason we’re focusing on onboarding is because I see it all the time where clients potentially stop the process after the sale has ended. So what they seem to think is that once we’ve won the sale and we’ve secured a deposit and it’s in the bank, I don’t have to worry about the client experience so much now ’cause we’ve, we’ve nailed the process. We’ve, we’ve got them in the bag and that’s the end goal for many construction companies. But really that’s just the beginning of the process. Winning the sale isn’t the end at all. And it’s really important that, especially if you’ve got a sales team, that we make that transition from the sale to the start of the project as smooth as possible to keep the client happy all the way through. And if we can enhance the client’s experience after the sale, then oftentimes they can be raving about us. Before we’ve even started the project, I’ll just give you an example for how my company used to do it. One thing we did is when we signed a client up, we would immediately go and send them a hamper just to say thank you. So it’d be a welcome hamper, maybe some champagne or chocolates or cheese or whatever it was. And that welcome hamper went over with a a gift card. And we would just say, we’re so excited to work with you. Thanks for signing up with us. We are really looking forward to delivering your project. We can’t wait for you to get to know some of the team over the coming months. Just a, a simple hamper like that. And it went over as soon as we’d signed someone up. So we had no obligation to do that in the onboarding process. That wasn’t the only thing we did, but that was one of the things. But you wouldn’t believe how many times we would then get recommended from clients just because we’d done something like that. So all of a sudden we’d get a phone call in and they’d say, oh, you’ve just been recommended. You are about to start a project for my friend over the road.
(03:40):
And they, they said that we have to talk to you as, uh, our builders because you’ve given ’em such a great experience already. And we think we haven’t even done anything for ’em yet. All we’ve done is sign them up and sent them a a hamper worth 50 pounds. So it’s amazing what the little things can do to keep your customers happy. So we wanna talk about that, how we can really enhance that experience. And it’s more than just giving hampers. There’s, there’s a lot more involved. Now, one of the dangers of not giving a client a very nice experience, and let’s imagine the experiences a client’s just signed up with a big project for you. They’ve potentially put their life savings into it and they’ve signed on the dotted line and you’ve got that deposit payment into the bank. You send them a receipt saying, yeah, payment received, and then that is it.
(04:28):
You go completely quiet. And let’s imagine their project doesn’t start for another eight weeks or 12 weeks. And that could be likely sometimes ’cause they might need planning permission or they might need to, you know, to get permits approved or whatever it’s gonna be. Now if you went completely cold in that period of time, what do you think’s going on in the client’s mind? They’ve never had work done like this before, have they? And think about what they’re hearing in the media. Always hearing about cowboy builders running off of their money, unscrupulous firms, you know, spending the deposit and then going bust. They’re gonna have all these things and these worries going on in their head. And then on top of that, we’ve then got all the worry that’s coming in from the media. So they’re looking at interest rates rising. They’re worried about are they gonna get the value back on their property?
(05:17):
’cause their property prices are potentially plunging. They’re seeing material prices go up, uh, they hear about their friend over the road who had a contract done and the the builder put in extra costs at the end ’cause he wasn’t making enough money. So all these things are potentially going on after a client has signed with you and they’re now rethinking their decision. Was it the right thing for me to do this or not? I know I’ve just give given this company a 10 grand deposit, but actually do I really want to go ahead with this project now? And sometimes, and this can happen, quite often a client regrets the decision they’ve made and they may want to pull it back in and they may say, listen Greg, I’ve actually decided I don’t wanna go ahead with this project now. Can I have my deposit back because we are in some financial difficulties or my mortgage has been pulled or whatever it’s, they say, and they may try and get out of the contracts that you’ve initially signed.
(06:21):
Now, most contracts, I know, you know, people listening to this, listening from the UK and maybe the US and other parts of the world, not saying it for everyone, but generally there’s a 14 day cooling off period on many contracts and you may have to give that deposit back in full. Other times you may not give the full deposit back, but you won’t necessarily be able to keep it all and you may have to give some of that deposit back. But the, the more important thing, it’s not about the deposit, is it, it’s about potentially you’ve lost a huge contract, you know, you could have had a 500 K or million contract and that’s gone. It doesn’t matter what deposit you’ve potentially got, all that profit is gone if a client decides it’s not right for them at this time. But a good onboarding process, if they’ve got a great experience and they feel like the project’s already begun right after they’ve signed the contract, it makes it much harder for them not only to get out of contract, but it just feels like the project’s going and it gives them less opportunity to start rethinking their decision.
(07:22):
So that’s why it’s absolutely crucial that we’ve got a really good experience for them after they’ve signed. Now we’ve, we’ve already discussed thinking about what’s going on in the client’s head and we wanna reassure them over some of these things that are in our control. So some things that are in our control, we obviously we can’t control interest rates and we can’t control property prices and whatever else. But there are other worries that we’ll be going through our client’s mind that we can control and put them in ease with. And they’re gonna be worried about potentially delays on the project. They’re gonna be worried about you going over budget and it costing them more. They might be worried about the quality of workmanship, all those things. These are genuine worries from a client and you may have dealt with some of this in the actual initial sale, but now you may just have to reassure them again when you are onboarding them.
(08:13):
So there could be little things you can do just to, to put them at ease. Maybe if they’re worried about delays, you could send them your project timeline and your Gantt chart. Make sure that’s nice and detailed for them so they can see, yeah, this is all mapped out. I know when it’s starting, I know it’s when it’s gonna finish. If they’re, uh, potentially worried about the budget increasing, maybe you could put their mind at ease by ordering some materials in advance and locking in some prices. If they’ve got some big ticket items like kitchens or bathrooms or other big ticket items that you’ve gotta put advanced orders on, can you secure them during that period so that the client can be assured that the the price isn’t gonna go up as the project goes on. So these are the sort of things that you can do.
(08:57):
Maybe if they’re worried about the quality, you can show them your quality control documents. Have you got documents in place that when you sign off a particular item of work, for example, when you’re signing off the roof, you might have a quality control checklist and you could show the client that and say, just to reassure you, we’ve got this in place and these are the sort of things that we are gonna be monitoring during your build. So like I say, you may have covered some of that off in the sales process, but if you haven’t, this is a chance for the customer just to get you to know you a little bit more, a little bit more about of your process. And it just puts their mind at ease that they’ve picked the right person, they’ve made the right choice. And what we want to do as a construction company is just really try and empathize with that client.
(09:41):
We, we know in our heads that some of these emotions and some of these things they’re worried about might be completely irrational and not relevant at all and we know how we do things in the background, but just remember your client doesn’t, oftentimes they’ve had no experience in this whatsoever. They’ve never had a big project done, so this is completely new to them. So we just wanna really empathize with them and understand their concerns and address those as needed. So how do you design a effective onboarding process? Well, we really wanna think about what steps it takes in order to get to the actual start of the project. So there may be a few things that we just wanna list out initially of how long it’s gonna take from when we sign a contract to actually starting on site. And you are gonna have an internal process that you go through that you really want to list down.
(10:34):
So some of that process might start with, right, we’ve gotta get our permits in place before we start work. We’ve gotta get the site set up, we’ve got to order materials, we’ve got to have a pre-start meeting with the client. We’ve gotta discuss communication channels, we’ve gotta get them set up on software that we’re gonna communicate over and and track. So there, there’s gonna be a load of things that you do in the background and sometimes you might do this without your client even knowing, but it’d be really good if you listed out those steps and just advise the client of what those steps are. So even if you’re not necessarily including them in those steps, you could just send them a quick email and just say, right week one, just want to let you know what’s happening. We are going to be applying for this permit and that permit and we’ll let you know once that’s approved.
(11:19):
Week two we’re doing this, week three we’re doing that. And if we can give them a little bit of a, a program or an outline of how the onboarding process works, that can really put their mind at ease and they just know exactly what to expect going forward. You’re just keeping them in the loop throughout. One thing we found was really useful was having a pre-start meeting with a client to run through all of this. So we would, we would get on site, we would sit there with the client and actually at this meeting we would have the sales person at the meeting and we’d also have the project manager at the meeting we thought was, it was quite important to have both of them there together just in case something was said at the, on the sales call that the project manager didn’t understand and, and hasn’t interpreted.
(12:02):
So we would make sure there was a clear and easy transition between the sales side and the project management side. And during this pre-start meeting, again, we’d be running through things like, how long are things gonna take, what’s the timeline going to look like? Um, what materials or what things does the client need to source? They may have to make decisions about, as we said before, what type of kitchen they’re gonna have or bathroom or whatever else. So you wanna try and nail all that early on before the build even starts to get them making decisions because it’s gonna make the build a lot easier and it keeps the ball rolling While you are waiting to start on site. You might wanna set the communication channels. How are you gonna communicate? Is it gonna be via email? Is it gonna be by something like Slack?
(12:45):
Is it gonna be by WhatsApp? I highly encourage it not to be by WhatsApp for your project manager’s sake, because you know, there’s nothing worse than that phone going off all night to to deal with clients unless you’ve got like a separate, separate phone that you’re gonna be able to deal with that. So think about all those things. Talk about the roles and responsibility of, of every member. The client has also got responsibilities. The architect may have responsibilities. So talk about those roles, get it nice and clear because your client isn’t gonna understand who’s got to do what. They may be expecting you to do everything, but some of the responsibility might be down to someone else. So it’s really important to, in that pre-start meeting, to get them to understand who’s doing what on the project, if possible. Can you use a project management app to keep your clients feeling in the loop?
(13:31):
There’s some great apps out there like build a trend. We’ve got a personal app that we use that we’ve developed called Cost tracker. Can your clients be involved in that? Can they see what stages you’re at? And on a lot of these apps, if they’re good ones, you can actually show your clients certain things but not other things. So you want to establish with the client how the, how the commun communication channels are gonna be and what project management tools you’re gonna use. Get them set up on all of that and make sure they understand it all so that they’re ready to go. Another thing we can do during this pre-start meeting is really manage the client expectations. Because sometimes, and you’ve probably experienced it, clients can have completely unrealistic expectations about what’s gonna happen. So you’ve probably seen it all the time where you tell a client, right, this is a 12-week project, it’s worth a hundred k and then all of a sudden the client adds another a hundred K worth of extras, but they still expect the project done to be done in 12 weeks.
(14:27):
And you think, you know, what you talking about is that’s not realistic, but how much easier it is to have that conversation before you even start. So set those expectations and be realistic with a client about how it goes. So we can say to the client, look, we’ve got this project scope and schedule, this is what it’s gonna look like if we stick to that. But if you change your mind on anything we need to know in advance, and that may impact the schedule, it may increase the time, it may change the way our project schedule looks, it’s obviously gonna increase the cost. And then let them know how you are gonna send costs over variation orders and change orders. How do you send them, how should they be approved? Should they be signed? How they shouldn’t just be verbally giving orders to people on site.
(15:13):
You’ll have a communication channel of how you want extras and variations communicated back to you as a company. So all these expectations need to be managed. Um, the client may have in mind the way they want to do it, but it needs to fit in with the way you do it as a business. So if you outline exactly how you want that process to look, it makes things a lot easier. One thing we used to do was ensure that a client understood the boundaries of when they could contact their project managers or site foreman. So we would say to a client that the site manager or foreman is working from eight till 5:00 PM that’s the time that you can get hold of that person and at 5:00 PM they go home and they’re with their family. So they’re not gonna be responding to texts or emails at seven, eight o’clock at night.
(16:01):
However, if there’s an emergency, this is the number you call, or if there is an emergency, you do this and give your process of what they need to do in that situation. So set those boundaries, it’s really important. Set those boundaries at the pre-start meeting. Otherwise you will get clients texting you at 10 o’clock at night expecting a reply. You may also have a complaints procedure or an escalation when things are not going too well. So we can tell the client that, look, if you’re unhappy with something, the first thing you need to do, rather than them contacting the MD straight away or the c e o, you could say, this is what we do. You first make your concern known to the project manager or the the site foreman, he will then escalate it to the project manager. The project manager. If if he can’t deal with it, it can then be escalated to the MD or C E O.
(16:53):
So we wanna have a clear process in place for complaints and how we deal with things when the client isn’t happy. And again, it’s important to outline that to the client. Otherwise every single problem they may try and bypass your management team and come and talk to you directly as the C E O and clearly you don’t want that happening. One other thing I’m a big believer in is also communicating bad news to clients as soon as you need to. And sometimes we can really hold back delivering bad news to clients because we think, oh, you know, I’d rather just try and deal with this myself or I’ll see if there’s another way around it or they may not find out. So we’ll sweep that under the rug and not tell ’em about that. But communicating bad news is so important because it establishes trust straight away.
(17:40):
If we can be straight with a client and say, look, I’m sorry but this has happened. But also rather than just delivering bad news, we also deliver them what solution we are looking to implement. So yeah, we’re really sorry this permit didn’t get applied for. We’ve got a two week delay, whatever it is. But what we’re gonna do with this two week delay, we are gonna apply these extra resources and we’re gonna get that two weeks back halfway through the build, whatever it’s, we’re gonna say, it’s just an example. So don’t be afraid to deliver bad news to a client. And on the onboarding process, you may tell them that, you may let them know that, look, if we’re running behind or something happens, we are gonna be straight up with you and be completely honest all the way through. And we expect that honesty back in return.
(18:22):
Clients respond to that, they like that and it builds trust and integrity. So there’s some of the points that you might wanna think about with your onboarding a lot there that we could potentially cover. But the principle that you want to really get in your mind is that if you are gonna onboard a client, what we want to do is make sure that that process in between signing a contract to actually deliver an on site, something is going on. And that onboarding process might be regular emails that go out. They might be actual pre-start meetings that you have with a client. You might be telling the client how you set up their sites and giving them progress that way. But whatever you do, you need to design your own onboarding process that works for you and the business and you need to then communicate that back to the client, give the client the best experience they can possibly have before you even start works on site. And it’s gonna gain you more referrals, it’s gonna give you a great reputation and it’s really gonna enhance the customer experience. So I hope that helps a little bit. If you’d like some more tips on how we can help you grow your business and put some systems and processes in place so you can have a great experience for you as the business owner and the client, then reach out to us in our developed mastermind. We’d love to show you what we do.
