GuildQuality

Last night, I returned from visiting with the developers and builders at two Virginia communities. Virginia is beautiful, and Bundoran Farm (pictured below) and the Homestead Preserve seem to be two of the most beautiful spots in the Commonwealth.

Yesterday afternoon, I spoke to the builders, architects, and development team at the Homestead Preserve. I spoke a good bit about the relationship between customer satisfaction, marketing, and profit. But the overarching theme of my talk was, as always, the importance of creating a culture of quality in your building or development organization. We are creating homes for people, and it is our obligation to do the absolute best job we possibly can.

Exceptional customer service brings us a stronger reputation and greater profits, and while that should be reason enough to create a culture of quality, we can’t lose site of the profound and lasting impact we have on our customers and our community — our work creates homes for our people.

GuildQuality originally assisted Bundoran Farm in evaluating candidates for their preferred builder program. Now that Bundoran Farm and the Homestead Preserve are underway, we’re now helping them evaluate custom homebuilders that are interested in becoming a part of their team. They seek to work with the best builders in their community, and GuildQuality helps them to identify who among the candidates most consistently delivers an exceptional customer experience.

GuildQuality got its start doing this type of work in Charleston, SC at I’On, and I am always eager for opportunities to return to my roots. We now work in this capacity with about a dozen community developers around the country (most recently with Mount Washington Resort in the great state of New Hampshire).

The significant majority of GuildQuality’s surveying is on behalf of building companies who rely on us to manage and improve their businesses. Though helping developers to recruit the right builders is a smaller portion of our overall surveying, it is critically important to our mission to elevate the stature of our profession to a level commensurate with its importance.

Special thanks to Joe Barnes and Casey Williams of Celebration Associates for their hospitality (Joe wrote a little about my visit here). They have a great group of builders working on both projects, and I am excited to follow their progress as they realize their vision for the communities. I encourage you to check out their Bundoran Farm blog. They have some great stuff going on up there.