PROFITS: Market Insight | By Laurie Banyay
Market Insight
Client management
Remodelers discuss common problems encountered with clients,
and how to best prevent them from happening in the future
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R
emodelers' relationships with clients can
require as much hard
work as the remodeling project itself.
Remodelers know the ins and
outs of construction and what
can and can't be done, and are
tasked with successfully balancing that knowledge with clients'
sometimes unrealistic expectations. Although the news media
often covers stories about home-
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owners who are unhappy with
their contractors, the other side
of the equation is the contractor
who encounters difficult homeowners — a story that rarely
gets told.
PROTECT YOURSELF
Jim Bacon, general sales manager with Elmira, N.Y.-based
Slavin Construction, notes
"unforeseens" are among their
most common issue. "For exam-
ForResidentialPros.com
ple, if we're doing a roof that's in
bad shape, an unforeseen could
be rotted wood," he explains. In
the past, customers have tried to
blame Slavin Construction for
those unforeseens. Bacon says
the customer often thinks the
unexpected problem and the
extra work to remedy it are part
of the normal scope of work.
To combat this scenario,
Bacon created paperwork the
customer must review and
sign, certifying that when an
unforeseen pops up, there is no
way Slavin Construction could
have had prior knowledge of it.
"When we pull a wall or roof
apart, sometimes we see leaking that has been going on for
years," Bacon explains.
The paperwork, which was
drafted with the help of an
attorney, is separate from the
main contract. "It essentially
says we reviewed the contract