GuildQuality

We don’t normally exhibit at conferences and trade shows, and as such, we have very little in the way of physical marketing collateral. However, we have a bunch of events in the first half of the year that required us to produce some materials. One of the first pieces arrived today: A “popup” banner. Here it is set up, and below is the actual image.

Thanks to Southwest Exteriors for letting us use a screenshot of their member profile page, and to Structures Building Company for sharing that review via one of our own member satisfaction surveys (the iPhone screen shots are from our demo account).

We designed this one for the remodeler- and replacement contractor-focused events we’re attending. We’ll likely produce a few more, with each one more tailored to homebuilders, developers, etc. As Guildmembers, you know better than anyone what resonates with our target market, so if you have any suggested edits or improvements, please share them!

2/1/2012 Update: To clarify, this contest is open to Guildmembers & non-members alike, homebuilders & remodelers, architects & developers, commercial contractors & residential contractors, etc. Unfortunately, if you are a Rhode Islander or a Québécois, or if you live outside of North America, then you are ineligible. My apologies.

The contest: GuildQuality will feature pictures and brief descriptions of our readers’ best green building projects here on our website, and readers will vote on their favorites.

How to enter: Before February 15, email marketing at guildquality dot com at least one and as many as nine pictures of your company’s best green building project, along with a 50 to 200 word description of the project.

Voting: On February 15th, we’ll post all of the candidates’ projects, their pictures, and descriptions, and call for a vote! On March 1, we’ll declare the winner. (We’re actually building our own little polling widget specifically for this vote.)

Fortune and glory for the winner: Glory will find the winner in the form of a feature here at GuildQuality.com, along with a special Green Building Reader’s Choice Award logo for use on the winner’s website or in print. As for the fortune…

…the winner of our contest will receive a copy of Green Building: Principles and Practices in Residential Construction, a comprehensive new guidebook (it weighs 3lbs!), authored by Atlanta’s own Abe Kruger and Carl Seville. We’ll give a second autographed copy to a randomly selected person who cast their vote for one of the winners.

Lingguang Song, Ph.D, of the Department of Construction Management at University of Houston offered this review of Green Building:

According to my knowledge, this book is the most comprehensive treatment on the subject of green building in residential construction. It achieves an excellent balance between principles and real-world practice. The “best practice” approach (i.e. integrating of green principles with existing design/construction practices) as well as the attention to construction issues are excellent. The book is not only valuable for college faculty and students in architecture, engineering, landscape, interior design and construction, but also as a reference for industry practitioners (owners/buyers, architects, engineers, contractors, and building department officials etc.)

So enter today! To recap:

1) Email your entry to marketing at guildquality dot com before February 15;

2) Include at least one and as many as nine pictures of the project;

3) Include a 50 to 200 word description of the work.

We just received this email from the account manager representing our accounting software. I believe he’s trying to tell us that he’s raising our prices, though his writing style doesn’t make that obvious.

A price increase should always be a tough thing to request — especially of a low maintenance client who has been with you for six years. Were I this guy, I’d try to deliver that message with a little more professionalism.

A portion of my soul dies every time I read an egregious writing error, and if I happen to catch errors of my own after I hit send, I betcha whole weeks of my future life evaporate into the ether. Still, can there be any excuse for this sort of incomprehensibility — especially given that he’s asking us for more money?!

If you ever receive anything from GuildQuality that even remotely resembles this, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let me know.

This morning, daily5Remodel shared what we’ve been up to with GuildQuality Maps. Check out Leah’s post, as well as all the other wonderful stuff that’s being discussed in her community of remodelers.

GQ Maps is a product of a whole lot of sharing — sharing between me and the rest of our team, sharing between Chris Turner (a talented web developer we engaged to help us with this project) and us, and sharing between the GuildQuality application and Google Maps (via the Google Maps API).

Sharing is important, and unfortunately, we’re facing a whole lot less of it if some in Congress and the corporations that support them get their way. I had been wondering how to share my concern over the pending SOPA/PIPA legislation, and the d5R article finally got my juices flowing.

Please note that if SOPA passes, website owners will have to think long and hard before linking to another site or allowing their visitors to share content, as every outbound link and every user comment will become a liability.

Below, I’m reposting a portion of the comment that I added at the end of Leah’s post, along with some minor tweaks and links to relevant sources:

If you’re not in the technology space, it might be hard to appreciate how powerful APIs are. With the Google Maps API (GuildQuality has one as well, btw), Google grants secure, limited access to the guts of their mapping tools, so that authorized folks can roll up their sleeves and do magical things that even Google’s most innovative engineers had never considered. Google Maps’ API enabled us to create GuildQuality Maps. Similarly, the APIs of Twitter and Facebook enable GuildQuality to integrate with those services, as well.

APIs are one of the more powerful ways that internet companies share information. But there are plenty of simpler, and more broadly used methods, as well. Two basic ones include linking from one website to another and allowing users to contribute their own content to a web page (as I am doing now, and as you’ll do if you add your own comment to this post). In a way, APIs and their cousins do for the internet what information and best practice sharing does for the remodeling profession (thank you d5R!).

It’s worth noting that all of this sharing is probably the single most important contributor to the advances made by both of our professions — internet and remodeling. Unfortunately, there are very real movements afoot to limit sharing, restrict participation, and reserve access to markets, information, and best practices to only the most established players.

When seeking to limit the flow of information and access to markets, our lawmakers always express noble intentions. However, the end results of their work always serve the interests of stagnant, established constituents who have lost the ability to innovate, and then it’s the innovators and the public who suffer. When this happens, as it has in healthcare, music, real estate development, architecture, and many other professions (including remodeling), it becomes harder and harder for innovators to push their profession forward.

I encourage all of your readers to consider how powerful sharing is, how important access is, and how dreadful our world will become if those things become crimes. Learn more about SOPA here, and please reflect on the similarities between SOPA and other pending legislation, as well as legislation long-since passed, in other industries, including remodeling.

Thanks again, Leah, for sharing. And keep up the great work.

From the SOPA Wikipedia entry:

Opponents have warned that SOPA would have a negative impact on online communities. Journalist Rebecca MacKinnon argued in an op-ed that making companies liable for users’ actions could have a chilling effect on user-generated sites such as YouTube. “The intention is not the same as China’s Great Firewall, a nationwide system of Web censorship, but the practical effect could be similar,” she says. The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) warned that websites Etsy, Flickr and Vimeo all seemed likely to shut down if the bill becomes law. Policy analysts for New America Foundation say this legislation would enable law enforcement to take down an entire domain due to something posted on a single blog, arguing, “an entire largely innocent online community could be punished for the actions of a tiny minority.”

Timber Frame Business Council, a nonprofit organization providing information and resources for the timber frame industry, featured GQ and Guildmembers Lancaster County Timber Frames in their weekly update today. Thanks for the mention TFBC!

How is your company using GuildQuality to measure success and customer satisfaction?

Over the last few weeks, many conversations with our Guildmembers have started with a question: “How will your year wrap up?”

I’ve responded by sharing some highlights: 2011′s revenue and net income are both record highs; Guildmember satisfaction is strong and, as a result, our membership churn remains very low; and we added a full 33% more members in 2011 than we did in 2010. Despite the turmoil that’s plagued our market since late 2006, we seem to be firing on all cylinders. It feels good!

People generally react to this answer with something like, “That’s wonderful to hear. There are so many tough stories out there that it’s always encouraging to encounter businesses that are doing well.” And virtually everyone adds, “To what do you attribute it?” There’s no way to give a short answer to that question, so here’s my attempt at a long one.

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Yesterday, Fox News published a short story highlighting some of the unique aspects of building a software company in the South. The article featured comments from Pardot CEO David Cummings, bigWebApps CEO Patrick Clements, and me. I thought I’d take a moment to elaborate on a subtle point from the article, and what that means for our Guildmembers.

There’s a prevailing sense among Atlanta’s tech entrepreneurs that our businesses should earn a profit by creating value for clients. I suspect that this whacky notion is, at least in part, a product of the lack of a robust venture capital community in the South. By necessity, we have been forced to reject the notion that venture capital will play a roll in the early success of our business.

Around here, there are only a few ways to get your software company off the ground, and all of them require achieving positive net income as soon as possible. For software-as-a-service businesses like ours, net income requires recurring revenue. Recurring revenue requires an excellent offering and happy customers. And those require great people who are focused on creating something special. This chain creates a virtuous cycle that benefits everyone involved.

An interesting (and often unhealthy) dynamic emerges when one attempts to finance the growth of his or her business by some means other than profit. From whence comes the cash, goes the attention. This is the Silicon Valley paradigm, and under it, any person who might facilitate or profit from an investment or acquisition becomes the de facto customer. This is good news for lawyers, bankers, and pretty much anyone who makes a living by seeing businesses bought or sold. Unfortunately, this distraction draws the business’ attention away from the actual customers: you.

When a business focuses on something other than delivering value to actual customers, there are consequences. We’ve experienced what happens in our world of real estate and construction when, instead of focusing on creating livable homes and communities, we focused on facilitating the flip. Remember what happened when all the real estate brokers, appraisers, lenders, legislators, architects, remodelers, builders, and buyers all started thinking that homes were no longer something that you lived in, but instead they became something from which you could earn a fee for facilitating a transaction?

Because that pain is very fresh in our minds, we’re going to stay focused on generating profit by creating value for you — our Guildmembers. Y’all are the good folks who keep our lights on, and we’re grateful for your business!

FastCompany describes the Power of Circles:

As business owners, we’re often living out on our own insular Tahiti. Rarely do we have the opportunity to ask questions of other folks who have walked a mile in our shoes. Small, trusted, intentional networks help temper that challenge.

I circle up with my Entrepreneurs Organization “Forum” every month. I also get together once a quarter with a handful of Atlanta SaaS entrepreneurs. Among our Guildmembers, Remodelers Advantage is extremely popular. As are the NAHB’s 20Clubs.

Are you a member of a “circle”?

Does your work shape the human habitat? Then you’ll probably have an interest in this documentary.

Thanks to Erin Rosintoski for the pointer.

We’re sponsoring the November daily5Remodel snapshots contest!

Here’s how it works:

Send a paragraph about one of your favorite remodeling clients: what they’re like, why they’re your favorites and what sort of projects you have done for them. People like pictures, so if you have pics of your happy clients (with or without you and/or your project team), be sure to include them!

Send all asap to leah@daily5REMODEL.com. In the subject line, type “Our Favorite Clients.” No purchase necessary to enter.

After candidates’ entries are posted, d5R readers will then vote for their favorite. The entry with the most votes will win a White 16G iPad 2.

We recently organized a day-long roundtable for some of Atlanta’s SaaS businesses.

There’s a vibrant startup community in Atlanta, and we’re pleased to be a part of it. But the majority of the discussion revolves around issues facing aspiring entrepreneurs, pre-revenue businesses, or businesses seeking investment. While that sort of conversation is interesting and often helpful, it’s generally not all that relevant to people who have an established SaaS businesses and are focused on accelerating growth, refining product, and improving service.

That was the motivation behind organizing our day-long roundtable. Our objective was to create a platform for established SaaS businesses to share experiences with similar, non-competing businesses. Our friends at Tourbuzz helped us put it together, and for the first Atlanta SaaS Day, we were joined by the founders and executives of three other great companies: Berke Assessment, bigWebApps, and SecureHealthPay.

We had such a productive time together that we’ve scheduled a 2nd Atlanta SaaS Day for December 15. At the end of this post, I’ll share more about that as well as how we might expand to include addition companies, but first, for those who might be interested, here’s how we put together the event, and what we covered during the day.

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I am pleased to announce the call for entries for the 2012 Guildmaster Awards. The Guildmaster Awards recognize exemplary customer service among our membership of quality-minded builders, remodelers, developers, and contractors.

The call for entries will close on January 15, 2012, and we will announce all the winners on or about May 1, 2012.

As in prior years, members who survey all of their customers (see the detailed qualifications for allowed exceptions), achieve a recommendation rate of greater than 90%, and have a high survey response rate will qualify to win an award. I urge you to read the complete details here.

The application page for the 2012 Guildmaster Awards is in the Marketing section of your account. Click here to apply.

For many years, our “Build the Guild” referral program has helped us expand our community of quality. We’re grateful for our members’ willingness to share their GuildQuality experiences with other quality-minded builders and remodelers. Their ambassadorship has been a huge contributor to our success: In the last twelve months, at least 25% of the companies who’ve joined GuildQuality have done so following a referral. I say “at least” because I’m confident that many more of our new members find us by way of a members’ referral and we simply never hear about it.

On Friday, we introduced GuildQuality Invites, to help us recognize and reward those wonderful members who are promoting GuildQuality, and also give some preferential treatment to those new members who find their way to us via an existing member’s reference. To learn more about the new invite system and the special benefits for both referring and referred members, visit the Invites section of your account.

We tweaked some things for the authenticated members who come back to our homepage:

1) In the upper right, you’ll notice a callout that makes it easier to log right in to your account;

2) In the Recent Activity column, we’ve added a button to help you see your own company’s recent public activity; and

3) We’ve changed the page’s “Call to Action” from simply encouraging a company to sign up for a free trial to encouraging the member (that’s you!) to invite your peers to test drive GuildQuality.

We’re able to recognize that you’re a member and serve up a member-focused homepage because we place a cookie on your browser when you log in to your account. So whenever you come back, we make it easy for you to “auto-authenticate” (i.e. not have to type in your username and password again) and login by simply clicking “Login”. The added bonus is we can modify our homepage to give you a more tailored experience.

As a side project, we’re messing around with maps. Here’s a heat map showing our members’ survey responses in the conterminous United States from the last five years. The larger the dot, the more survey responses in that zip code.

We engaged a contractor for this work. He did a great job showing a bright spark the moment a customer completes a survey, with the spark fading to a glowing ember. Press play and watch our surveying spread all over the country.

In all, this is about half of our survey responses. To narrow the geographic area, we excluded Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, and the Caribbean. And to keep the data set manageable, we excluded surveys conducted during free trials of our service, prospect surveys, and surveys conducted as part of market research projects.

This is a fun visualization that helps us to think about how we might introduce more maps both into your account and onto the public website. An example might include an interactive map on your public member profile page that shows where you’re working, pictures of your work, and reviews. And inside your private account, we could display a map with additional details, like satisfaction scores, comments, and project information.

Right now, we’re experimenting with how to bring an engaging member map back to the homepage, but I’m curious what our members think: How could maps be most useful to you, either inside your account or on your member profile page?

For more fun maps, check out the two that inspired this project: The Growth of Walmart & Costco and Kiva Lending.