Lawson Calhoun wants to shed some light on the dark side of custom home building, where his clients’ irrational fears fester. After almost 30 years of selling and building houses, he’s concluded that the most important service he can provide his customers is to make them comfortable with the process.
“I think that education about the process is a level of customer service that most builders don’t think about,” he says. “Buying a house can be a very traumatic experience for people—they don’t know what to expect or what’s expected of them.” His solution to the problem is his new “client book,” which quite simply gathers in one volume all the bits of information a builder accumulates during the course of building a custom home. Section headings include the contract, plans, specifications, allowances, and so on through to warranty and insurance. “What it does is demystify the process,” he says. “It takes away all the gobbledy-gook.”
Although more builders are writing customer orientation manuals these days, most of them wait until they have a signed contract before they hand them out. Calhoun thinks that’s already too late. He hands out a generic version of his book to prospective clients. “It becomes not just an educational tool, but a marketing one, too,” he explains. “No other builder in my area is doing this. The book brings about a credibility—everything is there in black and white—full disclosure.”
Since he started using the book a year ago, he’s noticed a marked change in his customers’ attitudes, he says. “The nature of their phone calls has gone from full panic to ‘I can’t find my tub allowance on the sheet’”
