Randy Thelen is not doing anything radically different from his competition, he’s just doing it better. In addition to his good reputation and the referrals it brings in, he relies on two parade of homes entries and one consumer home show booth to bring in the bulk of his new customers each year.
What he does differently is to make the best possible use of these opportunities. For instance, each of his parade homes is entirely custom, built for specific clients on their lot. He convinces them to open their houses to strangers by passing on to them manufacturers’ promotional discounts. He invites past, present, and prospective clients to the homes, offering them free tickets to the entire tour if they visit one of his houses. During the tour, he stations employees throughout the house to explain the intricacies of the design and the materials.
“Other builders just take tickets and let people stroll through,” he says. “We explain where we added extra sound insulation and why. Some customers haven’t bought a house in five years and might not be familiar with all the new products.” When he opened his own 10,000-square-foot house—complete with indoor swimming pool and basketball court—his staff did such a good job of promoting the features, Thelen’s entire client base moved up a notch. He had been building in the $175,000-to-$350,000 range; now the range is $300,000 to $800,000.
He applied a similar strategy to his home show booth. Partnering with an architect and a landscape company, he maneuvered around a two-booths-to-a-customer rule and built a four-booth, two-story extravaganza. He turned to manufacturers for co-op dollars to help defray the costs. “It gave us a higher perceived value among the consumers,” Thelen says. “It set us apart from the guy who slapped up panels in an hour.”
