SolarGlass

I think today’s joint Alpen SolarGlass Boulder Green Build Guild presentation was well received. The audience was smaller than I expected but it was good to begin speaking on a topic that we all need to learn more about. It was also fun to be paired with the leadership of Alpen Energy Group.

The most important take-away from my perspective is that choosing the right window and door package for your home or project requires balancing a surprisingly high number of variables. While it is not always the case that SolarGlass will offer the right solution for a given project, we will be a consistent, high-quality source of data and knowledge to facilitate your decision making.

The presentation will be available on the BGBG web site shortly and here once I get permission to upload files to my own site!!

On the eve of a very important presentation to a Boulder Green Build Guild (BGBG) brown bag audience, I am happy that I am co-presenting with Alpen Energy Group. While it is true that Alpen and SolarGlass could be viewed as competitors and will at times compete for business, on a larger and more important scale, we are local companies, good at what we do, and uniquely position to be supplier/partners in navigating the implications of the new city and county of Boulder building codes.

I have met and am impressed with Brad Begin and Robert Clarke of Alpen. I look forward to sharing the BGBG brown bag with them. Moreover, I look forward to representing the collective knowledge and expertise of the SolarGlass team.

I will post the presentation content here and share my perspective of the conversation.

Stay tuned!

Today, we lost an important job because the customer found our price too high. I hated the loss but penned a response to the customer to “speak my mind.”

I stated that I thought about this on the drive home and while walking the dog. I asked myself should I have taken our margin below my identified floor to win this opportunity. Certainly I recognize the long-term potential of working with the customer on his development initiatives.

While I was below my predetermined floor gross margin on the bid, I did have enough in the job to support the key principals for which I stand and that make the kind of difference in the building material supplies arena that underpin why I bought SolarGlass. I am betting the farm (literally) that service excellence is a long-term profit enhancer.

At SolarGlass, we have full-time service professional in each location. Our standard is to offer two years of labor warranty where our vendors and industry standards dictates just one year. We do post installation walk-through inspections to catch product or installation issues long before they cause a problem. Similarly, we do screen installations and final operating adjustments just as the project is turned over to the home owner, and without charge. This establishes SolarGlass as the first person called should anything crop up in the future, exactly where we want to be.

Beyond these policies, we look for opportunities to put service first. When our prospect identified a problem with a window and a door in his own home, we could have chosen to point him to the product manufacturer for resolution, consistent with the parameters of the warranties. Instead, it was an opportunity to walk the SolarGlass “walk”. We want to be at the center of the resolution and not the company that is unwilling to get engaged. When an architect had a problem caused by the predecessor company, we stepped up even though we would have been 100% right to state that the problem was not our responsibility. Just today, I waived a $300 charge to a customer because we did not provided the service level of which we could proud.

What I was trying to say is that when you buy SolarGlass, you buy our service model. You will find windows of acceptable quality priced lower that what we offer. They will be fine in many projects and a person would be justifiably proud of the end result. However, I don’t know of any company that prioritizes the service lifecycle the way we do. We are proud of our service model and understand that sometimes we loose business opportunities we absolutely covet in the pursuit of what we stand for.

What do you think? Are we on the right track or does this not matter?

I thought I would share the contents of an email I received from my son who is back east attending a small liberal arts college.

Dear Dad,
Your blog reads like a Manifesto for the Eternally Corporate. It is a lot fun to read though and I hope your customers are able to gain insight into your dedication to service and growth. Having your musings be accessible to anybody gives your corporate practice a unique sense of transparency as it makes it seem less like a “company” (as is understood as an independent, faceless, and emotionless entity) and more like a labor of love shared by a group of committed individuals. I’m proud to see the dedication and commitment you demonstrate and look forward to reading the next post.”

By the way, I think my childhood exposure to your consistent use of business speak (like the voice you use in your blog) is the reason why everybody thinks I’m always so serious.

My son is right about the “voice” with which I speak. When I was consulting, I described this phenomenon as the “authenticity of voice”. I believe that whenever you speak from the heart, the truth of that is obvious, and it is the truth that employees, customers, and business partners must connect with in order to maximize trust and the value of the relationships.

Now as to the matter of whether my son needs extensive counseling after being subject to decades of my authenticity…

In preparation for a review of our financial statements, as well as struggling to complete the transition from spreadsheet-based accounting to QuickBooks, I am spending nearly all my time chained to my desk. I fear that every second spent in this manner takes me away from engaging with customers and employees. Even when I add the inevitable nights and weekend as a way to protect my time, I still feel the loss of time to do what I have to do for that which I must do.

Gwenael

The average tenure of SolarGlass team member is 12 years. If I factor out the team additions since I purchased the company, the number rises to 15 years. Given that a year into my ownership and we have had just one resignation, I am proud and thankful of the fact that tenure continues to grow. What does this level of longevity mean?

It means an unprecedented level of product, building code, and architectural knowledge.

It means a level of efficiency hone through years of working together

It means rich levels of personal interactions between long time customers and the SolarGlass team

More than all of this, it means I have inherited a special obligation to honor the team who make SolarGlass all that it is. I could attempt to “write” my way to what I mean, but perhaps one example among many will bring this to life. We have bookkeeper who, along with our purchasing czar, lead the charge to convert us to QuickBooks from a spreadsheet-based accounting system. They did this in the middle of our busy season without a whiff of complaint. In fact, our bookkeeper wanted to borrow my laptop so she could work at home on the conversion, this in addition to the additional hours she is putting in during the day.

I worry that I will fail to honor this level of commitment to the work of SolarGlass. I do take comfort in the fact that the team dynamics and the bonds between people are far larger than me and thus an obligation that is not mine alone.

Over the last 30 years, I have read many business books and magazines. Few have been as meaningful as Jim Collins’ work Good to Great. In particular, his chapters on Level 5 leadership (subject of a post to come) and the Hedgehog Concept have become guiding principles.

My top of mind take on our Hedgehog Concept:

World Class: Fitting windows and doors that meet the owners / architect / builder objectives, optimizes the tradeoff between performance, aesthetics, and price, and saves time and money buy getting the details right the first time.

Economic Model: Profit per order

Passion: Improving how a home or a commercial building “feels” to live in or experience

It’s a start, but not crisp enough nor does it do a great job of conveying our passion

Thoughts?

I care deeply about service, but how do you deal with failure? If, despite best efforts, a customer does not feel you met their needs or requirements, then what?

Maybe the customer is being reasonable, maybe they are not. It does not matter. What matters is the effort, the principal and purpose behind the effort, and whether your actions match your rhetoric.

From my perspective, the litmus test is the drive home. Do I feel sick that we missed our goal of customer delight? Am I unable to find something we should have done but did not? Am I still willing to “look the customer in the eye” and tell them we have done everything that is consistent with our passionate commitment to the service agenda?

The questions are simple to write – even simplistic and self righteous. The answers are messy and there are no absolutes. I can’t prove that service excellence drives me and my stewardship of this company. However, I am undeterred. I believe service is our obligation. We earn or money only if we respect this truth.

Our success has been built on:

• Longevity of the team
• Expertise of the sales team
• Rigorous business process
• Leadership
• Profit sharing that aligned the entire organization to the successful fulfillment of a customers order

As a result, SG has earn a great deal of loyalty from custom builders who know that they will have a trusted expert guide their product selection and that they can rely on the entire SG team to get it right.

The resulting relationships between custom builders and “their” SG sales person is a strong foundation that must be protected. At the same time, remodels, renovations, and, most importantly, replacements will drive growth. This means more homeowner involvement in the selection process, and a more direct homeowner connection to the satisfaction equation. Warranty service will evolve from SG’s support of the customer builder in achieving customer satisfaction to SG having a direct, ongoing relationship with homeowners.

SolarGlass is very well positioned to raise the service standard. The DNA of SG can be expressed as “Expertise backed by Service.” Going forward, we need to flip the relationship to be “Service backed by Expertise.”

We need to let our markets know that the Quality of Customer Experience is SG’s defining difference. If we start to leverage the expertise of the team to push the service and quality of experience envelope at every turn, we can extend our current leadership position.

A problem or service issue is an opportunity to create a customer who advocates for SG. The alternative is either an outcome that leaves the customer neutral – not bad, but a waste of an opportunity – or far worse, the customer who tells anyone and everyone of their rotten experience.

The shift then is from being fiercely proud of what we know and the quality of our relationships to getting real joy in finding ways to go above and beyond expectations. In addition to honoring our existing relationships, we need to focus more on the experience and the end customer – the homeowner.