Make these your 2009 resolutions!

Make these your 2009 resolutions!

Gary & Cynthia Kinmans’ Top 15 Ways We Become More Valuable to Clients

We know that building value in the eyes of our clients and potential clients is a key challenge to landscape design/build contractors. It’s not easy and it takes time, but through our own experience (35+ years in the field), we’ve discovered that these 15 things really do matter. We wanted to share them with you. Do you have any of your own values and ethics you’d like to share? Just call 614-764-8733, or email us and tell us what guides you: Cynthia@kinmaninstitute.com

1. Build your company on your own internal business Ethics and Values.

Develop your “Process” on these same values. This is the key to differentiating yourself from ANY competition!

2. Share your ‘Process” and your values with your clients.

3. Your values and standards will build relationships, which foster oneness among others who are bound to you through a common promise, vision, or purpose.

4. Customers willingly yield to the authority of those who are charged with upholding values and standards. Business leaders with values and standards shape and abide the rules and boundaries established by legitimate authorities because they are for the betterment of both parties involved.

5. People who live by values and standards respond favorably to corrections from leaders of values and standards.

6. People who live by values and standards are lifelong wisdom seekers and wisdom advancers. They have both a teachable and a teaching spirit.

7. People who live by values and standards understand that they ‘will reap what they sow.’ Therefore, they care for their position and diligently seek to add value to every event that they are involved in. Consumers respond positively to these philosophies.

8. Eventually, everyone confronts the power of truth: The bitterness of low quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.

The truth is if you reduce the price ... the end result will be reduced.

9. The truth is ... if you are not compensated for your research time, design time, or consulting time . . . the end result will be compromised!

10. The truth is ... if you as the leader or upholder of standards and methods choose to devalue, ignore or fail to demand the ‘standard,’ you alone are held responsible for the reduced value in the end result.

11. It is our responsibility to impose values and standards — not the clients’!

12. It is our right to demand excellence and live by it.

13. It is necessary to accurately count the costs for committing to your standards and values, and then applying those costs appropriately to the job.

14. Always be forthright and truthful with the customer ... Never try to shield the customer from the costs of doing a job right, or hide expenses in the installation’s costs somewhere. You are missing an opportunity to explain the true value of doing it right.

15. Chronic poor values and standards will only attract customers with chronic poor values and standards!