How To Out-Behave the Competition

Sept. 17, 2010
2 min read

Want an excellent book to read? Try Dov Seidman’s “How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything... in Business (and in Life).”

This book wonderfully describes how products and services can easily be copied by competitors. The only “thing” that the competition cannot copy is human behavior — how you do what you do. As such, Seidman theorizes that the only way to consistently outperform the competition is to out-behave the competition.

This out-behaving concept is something that many market-leading builders have long known, but have not been able to articulate. Clearly, customer-centric behaviors beget higher customer satisfaction, a solid marketplace position and increased referral sales. Seidman’s theories are 100-percent transferable to our industry. Case in point: Those builders who genuinely care about their customers truly out-behave those builders who do not.

Our proprietary customer enthusiasm ratings have proven that certain behaviors by sales, selections, mortgage, field supervisors and warranty teams are indeed the greatest source of customer satisfaction — and dissatisfaction — during the home buying experience. It is absolutely vital for home builders to measure these behaviors to improve and ultimately out-behave the competition. The most unbiased and potent tool to measure behaviors is a third-party customer experience and feedback survey.

The part I enjoyed most about this book is that it doesn’t teach us what to think to be customer-centric, but how to think.

About the Author

Charlie Scott

Charlie Scott has over 30 years of homebuilding industry experience including front line roles as new home Salesperson, Builder, Quality Assurance, VP of Operations and EVP/minority owner. As an industry consultant, he’s worked with hundreds of home builders to improve their operational excellence. He also has evaluated more than 40 home builders as a National Housing Quality Award (NHQA) Examiner and was inducted into the NHQA Hall of Fame.

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