How To Never Lose A Customer Again (ft. Joey Coleman)

Logan Shinholser
Hey, everyone, this is Logan Shinholser with Contractor Growth Network. Today I have an amazing guest. It is Joey Coleman, who is a customer experience enthusiast and author of the Wall Street Journal best selling book never lose a customer again. For the past 20 years, Joey has been focused on improving business’s customer experience, including Zappos, NASA, and more. Joey will actually be a keynote speaker at our new era of contracting summit on January 24 and 25th. Enjoy this awesome episode I have with Joey Coleman. Let’s get into it. So the first question I asked Joey is, what’s the difference in customer service, in customer experience?

Joey Coleman
Well, Logan, I really appreciate this question because I think at the end of the day, many people, especially business owners, use this concept of customer service and customer experience interchangeably. They kind of use those words, thinking they mean the same thing. But the practical reality is they’re two very different things. I think of customer service as being the assistance or the advice that we provide to those people who buy or use our products or services, whereas customer experience is how our customers perceive all of their interactions with us. In short, customer service is reactive. Oh, our customer has a problem. They need some help. They reach out, hey, we’re having a problem, we help them out. Whereas customer experience is the proactive design of the feelings you want your customers to have.

Logan Shinholser
So this idea of customer experience, to me at least, it feels like it’s a newer term. While customer service has always been around, has experience always been there and we just didn’t know about it, or is this like a new thing that’s now starting to come out?

Joey Coleman
Well, I think it’s always been around. I mean, we all, anytime we’ve ever done business in our lives, regardless of whether we’re remodeling our kitchen or hiring someone to mow our lawn or going to the store and buying a box of cereal, we’ve had an I experience with that interaction with that business transaction. But I think it was really only in the kind of early two thousands that we started to more prolifically talk about customer experience. And I think the reason for that is it was the last thing to differentiate ourselves on. In the eighties, everybody talked about total quality management. This came out of production in Japan, and it was about how can we get as few defects as possible in the products and the services we’re offering?

Joey Coleman
And then once we kind of all agreed that, hey, we can get rid of the defects, we got to deliver great products, great services, then it became a question of, well, we’re going to compete on price. And so everybody started this race to the bottom on price, like the cheapest thing we can do in the walmartification of the world. Well, then once price was at the bottom and there was nowhere to go on price, people said, oh, I know, we’ll differentiate on accessibility. And this is at the dawn of the Internet, right? Coming in the early two thousands, and now it’s like we’re available 24 7365. But then everybody did that. And so we couldn’t differentiate on quality, we couldn’t differentiate on price, we couldn’t differentiate on availability. So what was left?

Joey Coleman
Well, let’s differentiate on how people feel when they do business with us. This is where customer experience became part of the lexicon and became something that more organizations started to think strategically about when designing their various customer interactions.

Logan Shinholser
So when we’re talking about designing these interactions, and it really sounds like, to sum it up, the biggest difference is reactive versus proactive. One of the things that you bring up in your book is the first hundred days in the importance of what that looks like to the customer. Why a hundred days?

Joey Coleman
Well, it’s interesting. Not only is it just kind of a fun, easy number to work with, Logan. Right? But the hundred days comes from the research. So when I was writing my book, never lose a customer again, I looked at small, medium and large companies. I looked at online and offline. I looked at domestic and international. I looked at product and service. I wanted to get a feel for the landscape globally of businesses and people that have customers. And what we found in doing the research was that a huge percentage of new customers will decide to stop doing business with you in the first 100 days of the relationship. They make this decision to hire you or to work with you. And then they quit before they reach the 100 day anniversary.

Joey Coleman
Now, we started looking at it, and we found that in the banking industry, it was 32%, 32% of people who open a new bank account will close that bank account before the one year anniversary. Cell phones, it was 22%. 22% of people that would lock into a draconian cell phone contract would break that contract in the first hundred days. Auto mechanics was 68%. Restaurants was 40% to 80%, depending on the type of quiz magazine you offered. And in every industry we looked at, we saw these double digit hemorrhaging numbers. What was scarier to me, Logan, than the huge percentage of customers that were quitting was how many business owners had no idea what their percentage was and had no idea how quickly their people were leaving.

Joey Coleman
And so it dawned on me that there was a huge opportunity to focus on this first hundred days time period to create the kind of experiences that make people stick around. And again, it wasn’t my research. It was research from hundreds of sources around the world that found if on day 101, you’re thrilled about the relationship, the typical customer will stay for five years. Counterbalance that against the double digit that are leaving in the first three months, and it becomes real easy to understand why it’s important to lay that foundation in the first 100 days.

Logan Shinholser
So I know as a business owner, one of the biggest issues, if you will, or concerns is in that first hundred days is really setting realistic expectations for what is about to happen, and especially in the contracting space where lead time is an issue. And unfortunately, we’re talking about mowing lawns. We can’t predict the weather. But that’s an aspect of all of this. So in your mind, what is the role of expectation management in the overall customer experience process?

Joey Coleman
Well, I think there’s a couple pieces to this concept, Logan. So we’ve got expectations setting, and then we’ve got expectation management. Now, I’d like to address each of them individually. Expectation setting is about everybody being clear and clearly communicating not only what the goals of the project are you, but what some of the potential pitfalls of the project are. And this is where we get into a healthy tension with our sales effort. Right. The typical salesperson, whether that’s the owner of the contracting company or somebody that you have out selling your wares, they want to do everything they can to close the deal. So they have a tendency to over promise. They have a tendency to say, oh, but this time it’ll be different. This time, you know, all the supplies and materials will show up as planned. We’ll have no supply chain issues.

Joey Coleman
And this time, all the workers will be there at 07:00 a.m. To start, as opposed to guys straggling in at 845. Oh, you don’t, I couldn’t get a ride or whatever happening. Right. We think we have this imagining that it’s going to finally be different when the reality is it isn’t. And when we don’t live up to that expectation of what we set in the sales process, it chips away at the trust and the credibility and the reliability that we are needing our customers to have. We then switch to, well, what happens, Joey, when the project starts? And now we’ve got to manage expectations because what is the customer saying? Well, you know, I know I said I wanted the kitchen to have, you know, a double range, but now that I’m looking at it. Let’s.

Joey Coleman
Let’s see if we can fit eight burners in here. And you’re like, oh, my gosh. That wasn’t part of the conversation. I’m sure this has never happened to anybody listening to the.

Logan Shinholser
I think this is a new concept.

Joey Coleman
This is a brand new concept. Forgive me for talking about something weird and strange you’ve never experienced. Right. We know that’s going to happen. We are absolutely sure that once we get into the project, the customer is going to change the scope. We also have good reason to understand how we’re going to need to change the deadlines because of getting access to materials, weather, crew, you know, all, any number of factors that might contribute to delays. The challenge. I have, though, with this concept of expectation management is in the history of humans, no one has ever want to felt. No one has ever wanted to feel managed. And so we come into it and it suddenly turns into this adversarial us versus them. Well, scope creeps out of control. I’m going to have to rein you in.

Joey Coleman
Oh, we’re going to have to re quote this. Oh, you’re asking for stuff that was never in the original conversation. And we get hostile and we get defensive and we get irritated. Compare that to what it would be like if, when were sitting in the living room having the conversation about the kitchen remodel and we said, great, so you’ve shared everything that you want. You’ve kind of built it out. Here is our proposal. But before we go over this, let’s talk about what’s probably going to happen. We’re going to sit here, we’re going to go over the details, and you’re going to say, yes, that’s exactly what we want, Joey.

Joey Coleman
And we’re going to start demo, and we’re going to start moving stuff out, and we are probably going to order stuff, and we’re going to get it in and we’re going to start putting it together. And one of you, the people in the house, whether it’s the husband, the wife, the oldest child, the youngest child, someone is going to say, but I want it to be different. Now, I’m sure that never happens in your personal lives. The either of you or your kids wants to change the plan, right? And they’ll start laughing because they know this is human. Say, we know that’s going to happen, too. So let’s talk today about how we’re going to handle that situation in the future. That’s how we manage expectations. We manage expectations by discussing expectations before we even ink the deal.

Joey Coleman
Now, before everybody freaks out because the salespeople are saying, joey, wait a minute. I don’t want to talk about the problems when I’m trying to get them to sign the deal. Well, that would be ridiculous. No, that’s going to differentiate you from the competition because there isn’t a customer that you’re going to do business with that hasn’t changed their plans before, whether that was, where are we going to dinner tonight, honey? Or, hey, where are we going to? Which camps are we going to send the kids to this summer? What are we doing? Every human has an understanding of how plans evolve and change. The problem is when we pretend that’s not human or we pretend that it’s bad or we pretend that it’s not allowed. I’ve yet to meet a contractor, and maybe there are some listening.

Joey Coleman
And if you fall into this category, please reach out to me@joeycoleman.com. Because I’d love to hear your story. I’ve yet to meet a contractor who if the client comes and says, hey, I know we talked about a four burner range. We want to move to an eight burner range. I know this is going to cost me more. I know that it’s going to delay things. Just tell me how much more and how long the delay is going to be and I’ll happily sign off on it. Your customers are willing to work with you. They just don’t want to feel like it’s an adversarial conversation. And this is something where every business leader could get better at. It’s building in, padding for humanity, building in some grace for the things we know are going to happen. They happen in our own lives.

Joey Coleman
We overestimate and under deliver. We over aggrandize what we’re going to be able to do and then struggle to make the mark. If we’re struggling with it’s only fair and acceptable that our customers are going to struggle with it, too.

Logan Shinholser
So, Joey, once you set this conversation with the client ahead of time, and I know, like, what you’re mentioning, the salespeople are going, well, hold on, we’re trying to make some money, right? We’re not just trying to, like, scare people away. How do we then follow up during the process to then really appropriately bring back up? Hey, if you remember at the beginning of all of this, remember that one conversation at the kitchen table? We talked about some of these potential changes in directions we want to go in your mind, Joey, how do we then bring this back up throughout the process when the plans seem to change.

Joey Coleman
So what I like to do is come up with a reduced, ridiculous example that no one will forget. Here’s what I mean by that. Let’s say you are pitching a kitchen remodel to a couple that has two young kids, a two year old and a five year old, and they want to redo their kitchen. And remember earlier how I said, and one of you or one of the kids will want to change the scope. Let’s make it crazy. Let’s make it that the two year old wants to change the scope. Now, everyone in this conversation, the salesperson, the parents, everybody knows that we’re not going to change the scope of a kitchen remodel for a two year old. So immediately we’re creating a hypothetical that is just weird and crazy and not going to happen.

Joey Coleman
And we say, all right, so let’s pretend that your two year old comes to the table and says, I want a drink dispenser in the wall next to the refrigerator. Not part of the refrigerator, next to the refrigerator that only dispenses blue Kool aid. And I want it to be at my height, so about a foot and a half off the ground. Now, when we’ve said that in the sales process, it’s like, oh, my gosh, that’s crazy. Nobody would ever do that. Do, do. Here we go. Then when the issue comes up, we just say, hey, this is kind of one of those blue Kool aid dispenser moments. We’re talking about something that we couldn’t have envisioned as being in the scope, going from a four burner to a six burner.

Joey Coleman
We probably could have imagined going from a six burner to an eight burner. We probably could have imagined what you’ve just asked us to do. You now want a bay window next to the refrigerator? What? I thought the bay window was going to go over the sink. No, no, we want it next to the. This is something we could not have envisioned. We needed that wall to be able to run plumbing and electricity, too, because we’ve got major appliances all along that wall. And now you want to carve that wall out and turn it into a window. This is a blue kool aid moment. And that sends a clear message to the customer, oh, wait a second. Do we really want this? And if it’s a blue Kool aid moment, we know it’s going to significantly change the cost and significantly change the time.

Joey Coleman
At the end of the day, every customer you deal with is really caring about two things. They may say they’re caring about what their kitchen is going to look like. They may say they care about being able to cook wonderful meals for their family. What they really care about is how long is this going to take and how much is it going to cost and what they are used to. And forgive me, contractors, for speaking it real. What they’re used to as contractors who come in late and over budget. Sorry, that’s the industry we’re in. I’m a recovering attorney. I understand these things because attorneys don’t have the greatest reputation in the world. Why? Because they usually take longer than they said they would to resolve the case, and it costs you more money. Same problems you all have as contractors.

Joey Coleman
So why not address that upfront? Why not say, hey, which of these is most important to you? On time or on budget? You can only pick one and then have an honest conversation. They might say, look, we have maxed out our heLoc, right? We’ve got all the money we possibly can bring to the table to be able to fund this remodel. If we have to wiggle one, we can probably wiggle on the timeframe. It’s not ideal. We don’t want to, but what I know we can’t wiggle on is the cost. Wouldn’t you as a contractor, love to know that if you can play with the timeline a little bit to help stay on budget?

Joey Coleman
Because most contractors I know, and I’ve got them in the family, if you can give me an extra two to four weeks, I can move some things around, take some materials from another project, figure stuff out, call in some other crew. We can adjust to fit a timeline and still keep on budget, but we can’t necessarily do both at the same time.

Logan Shinholser
What I loved is you used the word play with, because I think that’s when you’re talking about that Blue Kool Aid moment. The way that you’re leading into it and describing it is not this stern, anxiety inducing situation. It is a playful, hey, this is one of those blue Kool Aid moments. So I love how you’re softening it and you’re making it and you’re kind of putting it back on them of, hey, remember we talked about this crazy thing? Well, we got a crazy thing coming up. And one of the things with that, Joey, is I remember. So I, my dad was a pond and water feature contractor, and I remember what it was like being out in the field. It is summertime, it’s 95 degrees.

Logan Shinholser
And he comes back to us and he says, logan, essentially, we have one of those Blue Kool Aid moments, and as a business owner, you’re thinking, this is great. Clients can love it more. It’s going to be more profitable for the business. But as an employee, where it’s hot, you just want to get home, be done for the day. When you hear about this Blue Kool Aid moment, it can sometimes be frustrating. And since I’ve kind of experienced that now, as a business owner myself, I know at the heart of it all, I always tell clients, look, you want this to go well, but trust me, I want this to go even better than you want it to go. How do I then help my, you know, make me feel good and help my team also care about the customer experience?

Logan Shinholser
Because I know how I feel. But every time, I mean, it’s a trust thing for me to a certain extent, but how do I get everybody else on my team on board to care about the customer experience as much as I care about it?

Joey Coleman
Oh, Logan, I love this question. So my first book was called never lose a customer again. My newest book is called never lose an employee again. It just came out a few months ago, and it speaks directly to this issue. We cannot ask our employees to deliver a remarkable customer experience if they don’t have a context for what that means. Now, let’s just have another moment of real truth here, folks. In many scenarios, not all, but in many scenarios, the team members working on the crew to do a remodel, to install a water feature, whatever it may be, don’t have those type of features at their own home. This is the nature of the industry and the nature of the business. I want to be very clear. This is not a judgment on anybody in the workforce, anybody in the team.

Joey Coleman
It’s just a practical reality. Lots of times we’re asking our team members to work on projects that are at a scope beyond their personal experience. We can pretend that’s not true, or we can address it head on. And the way we address it head on is by showing our team members what a remarkable experience is. This has to do with caring for them. This has to do with acknowledging what their lives are like. So if I come to you, Logan, and I’m like, oh, we’re. We’re going from the fountain in the backyard to now we’re turning it into a waterfall in the backyard, right? This is going to be a much bigger feature than we previously had talked about, and this is going to require you to spend two more weeks in the sun than you had hoped for.

Joey Coleman
This is not what you signed on for. You’re not excited about this. You’re going to be digging holes and building mounds and adding rocks and trying to take water off the top. This is a completely different project in terms of not only scope, but complexity and duration of time that it’s going to take you to do. So what do we want to do as an employer? Let’s carve out some of that increased profitability and figure out a way to get that to our people. What do I mean by that? I don’t mean just pay them more, although we got to pay our people a good wage. We’ve got to compensate them for their time and effort. But what I mean is having a keen understanding of what makes Logan tick.

Logan Shinholser
Taking a step back for a second. If you’re enjoying the first half of this podcast with Joey and you really want to see a more in depth walkthrough with Joey, he will actually be a speaker at the new era of contracting summit, January 24 and 25th. The link to learn more about the event is in the show notes. So go ahead, click the link, and let’s go ahead and jump back into the second half.

Joey Coleman
When you were working for your dad growing up, what was the thing that you loved to do when you weren’t working? Let’s just roleplay this out a little, if you would. Logan, what did you enjoy doing if you weren’t working with dad? Digging water features in the backyard.

Logan Shinholser
So I did it during high school and college. So hanging out with friends was probably like the number one thing.

Joey Coleman
I love it. And what, at the risk of putting you on the spot, what’s a hanging out with friends look like? Are you going to the movies? Are you going to arcade? You’re sitting at somebody’s house, you know, hanging out, you know, having drinks, obviously non alcoholic drinks, because we’re high schoolers, you know, having some popcorn. Do you do what’s, what was like the pinnacle thing that you would do with your buddy?

Logan Shinholser
So very easy. You’re going to the driving range, which is next to the batting cages. So you’re out, you’re active, and you’re with a group of people that want to do the same thing.

Joey Coleman
Love it, love it. Perfect example. And here’s the thing, friends. Not only is Logan given us a perfect example, but if you really know your employees, you can find the perfect thing for all of them just by talking to him. Look how quickly Logan gave that to me. So here’s what I would say. I’d say, hey, Logan, I know this is not what you signed on for. And I know this is going to be a pain in the tail to spend two more weeks digging this now waterfall. Here’s the deal. If we can get this done in two weeks and we can get this completed as planned, I’m going to take you and 20 of your friends to the driving range and batting cages. I’m going to pay for all of it.

Joey Coleman
I’m going to get you all set up, and then, as your dad, I’m gonna leave. I’m gonna let you go. I’m gonna pay for everything. You’re all gonna be set up. You invite whoever you want, 20 of your friends, all expenses on me. Can you help me get this done in two weeks? That is a very different conversation than, hey, look at all the overtime you’re gonna make. Or, hey, you’re gonna be able to, you know, say that you put a waterfall together on your resume instead of putting together a pond. You know, the things that lots of times business owners think are gonna be the appealing thing to the employee are not at all the appealing thing to the employee. The appealing thing to the employee is not having to work hanging out with their buddies, because employees think differently than business owners.

Joey Coleman
If they didn’t, they wouldn’t work for you. This is the thing. So many business owners, they’re like, oh, I wish my employees thought more entrepreneurial. Be careful, because if they did, they’d go become entrepreneurs. They wouldn’t work for you. They’d go work for themselves. So we have to recognize this tension between what we want as owners and what our team wants as employees, as workers, as part of our crew. And the more we can recognize what drives them, what motivates them, what they’re excited to do when they’re not swinging a hammer or digging a hole, the better we’ll be able to serve them and create remarkable experiences for them. And last thing I’ll say on this, when we create a remarkable experience for them, they now have a context for what we’re asking them to do for our customers.

Joey Coleman
Remember how you felt, Logan, when you went with all of your buddies and it was all expenses paid, and you could just kick back and relax and hit some balls and have a good time and chat up some friends and chat up some of the friends they had brought and, you know, make new connections and do, do. That same feeling is the feeling we’re trying to create for this homeowner, that when this waterfall is done, they can invite their friends over and they can put their feet up and watch the waterfall and feel amazing and get a little escape from the rest of their life. We are creating a dream in their backyard. Can you help me with that different type of request?

Logan Shinholser
I love it because it’s. It’s so easy. It’s almost the cop out response of, like, I’ll just bonus everybody out, or, you know, hey, it is.

Joey Coleman
It’s the easy way to do it. I know. I’ll give them more money. Yeah, more. We have to have a base. I want to be very clear on this. Many organizations aren’t paying their people enough of a livable wage that when they do bonus someone an extra hundred bucks, it makes a big difference because that person has been in the hole already, and that extra hundred bucks helps them kind of eke a little bit further out of the hole, but not much. You got to pay everybody a living wage. You got to take care of your people. But there quickly becomes a point where giving me more money doesn’t move the dial, and it’s not based on the amount of money I have. It’s what I’m going to do with that money.

Joey Coleman
There’s some amazing research at the University of West Virginia that looked at financial incentives for employees. And what they found is when they gave an employee an extra hundred dollars, the typical american would put that extra hundred dollars towards one of two things, super short term gratification or debt. And more often than not, they put it towards debt. No one in the history of the world ever said, woohoo, I got a $100. Let’s pay down my debt. That’s gonna make me feel good. No, they did it out of obligation because they felt like they were drowning in their debt. Counterbalance that against giving your people an experience, that party with your friends.

Joey Coleman
If you had a party paid for by your work, with your 20 best friends, to go to the range, go to the batting cage, make some friends, connect with some people, have a great evening. That is going to be a memory. As opposed to a transactional exchange of, oh, here’s a couple of.

Logan Shinholser
Love it. Yeah. Because then I’m the hero of the situation. And it’s. Because it’s funny because, like, you know, I’ve read never lose an employee again, and we’re talking about who here has gone to the Ritz and things like that. And I’m like, man, I don’t know how I’m gonna say this to contractors of, like, if you want to give them a good experience, take them all to the Ritz for the weekend. But that is so simple because the cop out thing in my mind would be, everybody’s gonna get an extra thousand bucks, but the batting cages is going to be more, it’s going to be less money, and it’s going to be way better.

Joey Coleman
And, Logan, you’re spot on. It ends up being cheaper, but it ends up having a higher value. If I were to ask you to think of the 20 best gifts you ever received in your life, and you were to sit down and consciously make a list of the 20 best gifts you ever received in your life, then I were to ask you to assign a dollar value. What you would quickly find is that the majority of gifts on that list cost less than $100. It’s not that the person spent money on you. It’s that when you received the gift, you thought, oh, my gosh, they know me better than I know myself. They were listening when I was talking.

Joey Coleman
They were paying attention when I shared that I really loved going to the batting cages on the weekends instead of just giving me a Starbucks gift card. Nothing against Starbucks, but so often, I mean, I get Starbucks gift cards from people all the time. And one hand, I appreciate it, but on the other hand, I don’t drink coffee. So thanks for giving me something that I’m not going to be able to maximize the value of. Now, let me be clear. I know Starbucks sells stuff other than coffee, but because they don’t specialize in selling stuff other than coffee, I don’t spend a lot of time going to their stores. And that’s not a criticism of Starbucks. It’s what are you doing to acknowledge the human you’re interacting with? If I know your favorite sports, let me ask this, Logan, who’s your favorite sports team?

Joey Coleman
Any sport, any type thing. Do you have a favorite team?

Logan Shinholser
Unfortunately, the commanders.

Joey Coleman
The commanders. All right. I used to live in DC. I understand this challenge. The Washington commanders. So here’s the thing. If I were to give Logan $1,000 bonus for creating that waterfall compared to, I’m going to give Logan a behind the scenes visit to the commanders, which, by the way, you could buy at a charity auction for $1,000 all day long, or I’m going to bring you to a signing and a ceremony with the commander’s cheerleaders, which you could do. Or I’m going to get you a signed jersey from one of the commander’s players, which you could easily do for less than $1,000. That is going to be so much more valuable to Logan, especially if I got you the jersey and I framed it and gave it to you.

Joey Coleman
And now all you have to do is drive a nail in your wall at home next to your tv, and you can hang that. And now when your buddies come over to watch the commanders game, they’re like, oh, my God, Logan, how’d you get that? You know where I actually got that? From? My boss. You got assigned commander’s jersey from your boss. What did you have to do to get that? My job. I didn’t do anything. That spouse, I just did what I’m paid to do. But my boss is so great. My boss knew that we had to work a little extra harder. We had to be outside longer. Do, do. I wanted to acknowledge that you change the conversation. You interact with your people as humans instead of having this weird, I’m the employer, you’re the employee, really? Relationship.

Logan Shinholser
So one of the things with this client experience and customer experience that is so impactful is how people then feel like from, let’s say, in this case, residential contracting as the homeowner and what they walk away with. And all of our clients say the things that make me stand out is the quality of work. But on top of that, it’s the client experience. And then the easiest question to ask is, well, how do you know that? And a lot of times, it’s kind of like generic answers. So from a business owner’s perspective or just a company’s perspective, how do you actually know if you’re giving a good customer experience? And kind of like, how do you keep your finger on the pulse of that?

Logan Shinholser
Because especially as you grow, the intimacy that you’re sharing starts to go away because you’re no longer working with all the clients. Little by little, you add in those layers. So how do you keep the finger on the pulse here of customer experience?

Joey Coleman
Well, I think we need to do a couple of things. Number one, if your business has grown and you’re not as close to the pulse of the customer, you got to figure out ways to get closer to the pulse. I’m sorry, you just do. And I’m a business owner. I’ve been in business owner for 20 plus years. You’ve got to walk the factory floor, so to speak. You’ve got to get out on the job site, every contractor who’s listening in. If you’re not regularly on site checking things out, not only just with your team and seeing how your team’s performing, but also with the client, you’re missing a huge opportunity to have an ear on the ground, to have an ear open to what’s actually happening. Number two, you got to become a detective. You’ve got to be curious as to what really matters.

Joey Coleman
I would incentivize my team to bring me data points that show what matters to the client. Here’s what I mean by that. Everybody that works on my team knows that if they come and they bring me a little tidbit about the client, something I didn’t know, they get special bonuses, whether that’s prizes, more money, whatever it may be, they’re getting special little things. So when I’ve got a team member that says, hey, Joey, did you know that this client we’re serving loves? And when I say loves, I mean loves absolutely is crazy about Star wars. They actually have a room in their house dedicated to Star wars. They’ve got all the Legos. They’ve got movie posters. It’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen. They’re fanatical about this. Oh, now I have a piece of data I can move the dial with.

Joey Coleman
Now I can do something special. When the house is done, and I’ve done the kitchen remodel, maybe I can gift them as just part of the celebration of us being done for these little mini waffle makers that make breakfast waffles with Star wars characters, it’s a little thing. It’s going to cost me less than $100. But every time they plug those in and use those in their new kitchen, because I know they’re already a fan of Star wars, they’re going to say, holy cow, these contracts, you would not believe the contractor we worked with. Why not? Because of the kitchen. Although you got to do a good job. You got to deliver the right quality, but because of the little extras, the little meaningful moments, the way they connected. And so I would look for ways to do that.

Joey Coleman
And then the last thing I’ll say is, it goes back to what were talking about earlier. You can’t ask your people to be keeping a finger on the pulse of what’s going on with the clients if you’re not keeping a finger on the pulse of what’s going on with them. There is a difference between your employee coming into work on Monday and you saying, hey, how was your weekend? And your employee coming into work on Monday and me saying to Logan, so, saw that game. Tough loss, eh? I don’t say the team.

Joey Coleman
I don’t say what was going on, but I know that Logan knows that I know we’re talking about the commanders, we’re talking about his team, and we’re talking about the fact that it was a tough loss or that it was an amazing win or, oh, my God, I can’t believe that catch or whatever it is that says, I care about what you care about. Because when our employees feel that we care about them as humans, it makes it much easier for them to care about us as employers, and it makes it much easier for them to care about our clients as the people who we are serving.

Logan Shinholser
It’s funny you bring that. My father in law does a great job of that. Where he’s never lived in Maryland, DC area. I went to school at Virginia Tech. He’ll be like, hey, did you watch that tech game last night? And I was like, no. And then he watches it simply to bring it up and be able to, like, bond with me on. And then I kind of feel guilty that I didn’t watch the game. So then the next time that they have a game, I’m like, I, I know it’s soccer and it’s not even televised, but I want to make sure I at least know what’s going on.

Logan Shinholser
So when he brings it up, because I know he’s going to want to talk about it’s funny because it’s so small and I don’t know if my wife picks up on it, but, like, every time I pick up on it and it makes me feel, like, special, like he went out of his way to find this game to watch it. So we have something to bond over next time.

Joey Coleman
Absolutely. And here’s the thing, Logan, to deconstruct what you just shared, I don’t even know if my wife notices. She probably doesn’t, and that’s fine because she already has a relationship with her daddy. You’re the one that needs the relationship with the father in law, right? You’re the one that’s creating a new relationship. And what I love about this story with your father in law is he’s going out of his way to try to find ways to bond with you. Now, I’d be willing to bet that when he starts to do this, not only do you feel seen, you feel valued, you feel approved of, which is something I think most son in laws want to feel, most daughter in laws want to feel.

Joey Coleman
But I imagine it also triggers in you a desire to get curious about what he’s interested in and to get curious about what are ways I can bond with him that are in his world, that are not in my world. And so it expands our scope of understanding. This is what actually happens with employers and employees as well. So many employers I know they say, oh, I wish my people cared as much about the business as I do. What I’ve come to realize is what the employers need to know is your employees wish you cared about them as much as you care about the business. Now, before anybody stops listening to the podcast and goes, Joey, you don’t understand. I do care about my people. I know. I know that you care about your people.

Joey Coleman
The problem is I know that because I’m a fellow business owner. Your employees don’t know that. Your employees only know that you care about profitability. Staying on schedule, being to work on time, getting the projects done according to the scope, doing high quality work, having the next project in the pipeline. All they hear from you are the things that are business driven. If you could make more of the conversations, things about. See that tech game last night? Hey, congratulations. I see your alma maters going on to a bowl game. Hey, I see your alma maters going on to the final four. Hey, I see your alma mater pulled off the big upset against the ranked team. Whatever it is that shows I care about what you care about, that’s when the relationship changes.

Logan Shinholser
And with this, as you grow, should you know this with everybody in the company, or is it just your direct reports and then they need to have it for their direct reports, I guess. Where do you start to find that line of, man, I got to know 100 different people’s alma maters and now my whole life is just checking ESPN. Where is that line getting drawn?

Joey Coleman
Well, Logan, I think it depends on what kind of business you want to run. That’s your choice. I will tell you. If you know that about all of your people, you’re going to have a hugely successful business. If you decide, well, I’m only going to know that about my direct reports. Your direct reports are going to perform well. But if your direct reports don’t know that about the people that report to them, you’re going to have a huge disconnect, which is what most organizations on the planet have today, a huge disconnect about what management thinks is going on and what the frontline workers think is going on in the organization. So it’s a choice. And I get that it’s hard. I get that it’s going to require extra effort. But I’m sorry, entrepreneurs, what did you sign on for?

Joey Coleman
You weren’t required to take this job. You weren’t required to start this company. Here’s the challenge that a lot of contractors have. They were really good at their craft. They were really skilled cabinet makers. They were really skilled plumbers they were really skilled installers, remodelers, whatever they were really skilled at. And they got so good at it that they said, you know, maybe I should start my own thing. And the problem is, they thought that the same skills and the same talents that made them good at their craft were going to make them good at managing people and building a team and running a business. I’m sorry, friends, they’re not. It’s a completely different skill set.

Joey Coleman
Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn it, but it does mean you can’t presume that everything you knew on the crafting side is automatically transferable to the other side. Although if we get analogous, it is. What do I mean by that? Hey, if you’re a really good carpenter, you know that it is much easier to cut a piece of wood with a sharpened saw than a dull saw. What is a sharpened saw requiring knowing the craft, paying attention to the sharpness, and being willing to slow down to sharpen the saw, to be able to speed up in terms of the amount of wood you can cut. Translate that to the employee side. What does it mean?

Joey Coleman
It means slowing down to understand what makes Logan tick, so that I can give Logan what he needs, I can sharpen his saw, and then Logan can produce for me, it’s just a different package. It’s the same scenario. It’s the same ability, it’s the same talent just repurposed towards humans instead of towards tools. This stuff isn’t hard, but it is complicated. It does require us to bring a different level of intentionality, a different level of focus, a different level of energy to the conversation. But I promise you, the return on investment for caring about your people, whether that’s your employees or your customers, is significantly greater than the return on investment on you having the right power tools, you having the right trucks, you having the right supplies. Those things are important. Don’t, don’t mishear me.

Joey Coleman
But you really move the dial on your growth, on your referability, on the amount of repeat business you get when you’re caring about the humans that are involved in your projects.

Logan Shinholser
With so much overlap between the customers and your employees, I’m curious, how long after finishing never lose a customer again? Did you have the idea for never lose an employee again?

Joey Coleman
Well, here’s the interesting thing, Logan. I had been in the customer experience world for about all of five minutes before I realized that you can’t have a great customer experience if you don’t have great employees to deliver that experience. Now, what I hadn’t thought as clearly about is the second book. So the first book was all about customer experience. And about six months or so after the book came out, I got an email from a reader and all the email said was, Dear Joey, if you wrote a book called never lose an employee again, I would buy it. It signed their name. I thought, well, that’s interesting. I never really thought of just doing a whole book like that. And then I got another email exactly the same. No additional context, no backstory.

Joey Coleman
One sentence, if you wrote a book called never lose an employee again, I would buy it. And then I got another email like that. Now, Logan, I’m a little slow, okay? But after multiple emails that all they said is, if you wrote a book called never lose an employee again, I would buy it. I thought I should do some research. I should see what’s going on in terms of the employee space. And what I realized is that same 1st 100 days that applies to the customer experience applies to the employee experience in an almost shockingly similar way. 40% of new hire employees quit before the one year anniversary. 22% of them quit in the first 100 days. For hourly workers, it’s 50% that would. Those are the numbers for salaried workers.

Joey Coleman
For hourly workers, they quit in the first 100 days of getting a job. These are huge, gaping holes in the operations of most businesses on the planet. And yet most employers are saying, well, it’s so hard to find good people. Spend all my time interviewing and trying to find good people. Is it that it’s hard to find good people or it’s hard to keep good people? I would actually posit it’s harder to keep them than to find them. Why? Because once they get in the fold, you presume your work is done. Once they accept the job offer, you’re like, all right, they’re on the team. They’re going to be here for a couple years. We’ll be all set. No, no.

Joey Coleman
Friends, you have to earn the right for them to be there a few years by how you treat them in that 1st 100 days. Department of Labor Research says if you have a strong onboarding process, the majority of your employees, if on day 101, they feel like, oh, I went through a strong onboarding process. I’m bought into the culture, I’m bought into this team. The typical employee will stay for more than three years. Remember, for customers, it’s more than five years. For employees, it’s more than three years. Either way, I’ll take it. We’re talking years instead of days or weeks. That’s what we need to be focused on.

Logan Shinholser
Joey, I love it, man. And to round this podcast out, you’re going to be presenting at the new era of contracting summit. In your own words, how would you define the new era of customer experience?

Joey Coleman
So here’s the interesting thing, Loganous. We are living at an unprecedented time in human history, and it’s unprecedented on two fronts. Number one, our customers are expecting more from us than ever before. They’re expecting higher quality products, faster timelines at lower price points, delivered when they want them, all the time, due to due. That’s because they’re no longer comparing us to the other contractors. They’re comparing us to the greatest experiences they are having as customers. They’re comparing us to Amazon, where they say, I want it, and it’s on the door. Tomorrow, they’re comparing us to Netflix, where they’re saying, tonight I want this. Tomorrow night I want something different. Either way, I’m served. That’s who our competition is. So the landscape is changing dramatically on the customer side.

Joey Coleman
It’s also changed dramatically on the employee side because of COVID What Covid did is it made everybody realize that the definitions that people had for work pre Covid, were a fiction. There’s a lot of jobs that can be done remotely. Now, contractors is one of the few jobs where it’s difficult to do remotely. Or is it? We can do prefab housing. We can have stuff assembled before it shows up on site. Oh, wait a second. It’s not as different as we thought. We don’t have to build everything on site. Now, some of the things I know we need to still build on site, but we now understand that there are some things that might be able to show up on site. Ready to have eight screws and three nails applied, and suddenly, Tada. It’s done.

Joey Coleman
Now, you may have your strong opinions about prefab, and I get that, but the landscape has shifted. So the new era of experience is this. If you’re not paying attention to the experiences you’re delivering your customers and the experiences you’re delivering your employees, I can pull out a stopwatch and time how much longer you’re going to be in business. This is the landscape we’re dealing with today. This is exactly what we’re going to talk about when we get together in January for the new contractor summit.

Logan Shinholser
Joey Coleman. This is awesome, man. I appreciate you coming on here and looking forward to having you in January.

Joey Coleman
Thanks, buddy. I appreciate it. Thanks to everybody who is listening in, and I hope you’ll join us back again for a deeper conversation come January.

Logan Shinholser
So if you like that podcast, which I thought was incredible and you want to learn more about how to elevate your customer experience to the next level, come listen to Joey speak at the new era of contracting summit January 24 and 25th. Make sure you go click the link below in the description. Check it all out. This will be an incredible event. I’m going to be honest. As soon as I finished recording this podcast with Joey, I thought, man, if I could just do 1% of what he is talking about, this whole game will change for me. So click the link. We’ll see you January 24 and 25th.