Housing Giants - June 10, 2008 - (Page 22)

TrAck fOr SUcceSS Top raTings TranslaTe To cash in The annual Team conTesT. Steve Wall devotes himself and his company to improving processes and removing steps from processes to make the company more efficient. To help with that, he involves the entire corporate management group in the Annual Team Contest. How it works: Every person is assigned to one of seven teams. The teams, says Erin Klop, Wall Homes chief of staff, report to a neighborhood or area manager, and every member is required to devote 12 hours per quarter to that team. On a monthly basis, the teams get rated based on closings and customer satisfaction ratings. Customer satisfaction is tracked with surveys managed by the company at two points: at closing and 60 days after move-in. The final perk: The top three teams receive cash prizes. able to execute that.” As much as it focuses on customization, make no mistake, Wall Homes is a production builder. Wall believes the best way to build a home is in the production environment. “We’ve got neighborhoods where we’re delivering homes from start to finish in 60 days,” he says. “Ultimately, in our business, how quickly you can turn your assets and how quickly you can deliver a home is key.” Wall prices the standard models at a reasonable margin and a significant number of buyers purchase the standard. In the Dallas/Fort Worth market, that’s about 22 percent of all buyers, but in the San Antonio andAustin markets it’s nearly 60 percent. The difference falls in the ability to move a wall, change the plan, deliver the customization that buyer wants. “The meat of our market is the between $200,000 and $400,000. What we’re finding is people have higher expectations for what they’re going to get. We’re changing buyer expectations in general by what we’re doing.” How does it work? On the simple end, it’s doing something for a little boy named “Champ.” Champ’s parents wanted to make some simple design changes, but in the process of reworking the blueprints, the designers printed “Champ’s Room” instead of “Bedroom No. 3” on the blueprints. Suddenly, the homeowners’ expectations of service changed. On the other end of the scale, a recent buyer wanted to change a rear-load model to a front-model. In the course of the design work, the designers had to change one whole side of the floor plan, swapping the garage for the firstfloor master suite. Upstairs, the family needed to add a prayer room facing north. 22 HOUSING GIANTS.6.10.08 www.HOUSINGGIANTS.cOm http://www.housinggiants.com

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