Stone People: Selling Service and Selection

“We’ve done lawyers’ offices and reception areas in large office buildings,” he says. “We’ve also done work in hospitals and at universities and schools. We’ve even done police stations. We’ve managed to pick up a lot of business in those areas.”

The move has also expanded Dessco’s service area, since a significant number of those commercial jobs have been in the greater Toronto area some 50 miles to the northeast.

Click photo to enlarge“We spend a lot of time in Toronto on commercial jobs, but our market goes all the way around to Niagara to the east and we even do a few jobs in London (Ont.),” he says.

“THE BEST STAFF”

Marketing the business also relies on a mix of the old and the new. Particularly with the commercial end of the business, a lot of sales are handled by an outside sales rep. Dessco also relies on such traditional venues as brochures and Yellow Pages, and also utilizes a website.

“Once we have everything moved in here and have something to show, we’re considering doing some local radio advertising to get local clients,” says O’Brien. “We did radio a few years ago and it did work, but we didn’t have the stone then.”

Stone is the larger part of his market, O’Brien says, but he doesn’t mind. For one thing, many clients come for one material and end up buying a mix.

“They love the service,” he says. “They like that we can provide all of their countertop needs for them and we’re just one company. They can get pricing and service from one number on their speed dial.”

However, Dessco’s service goes well beyond that. O’Brien says his business is really a service company, one that provides a quality product.

“There are a lot of companies like ours in southern Ontario,” he says. “What separates us basically is the quality of our workmanship and our customer service before, during and after the job.”

While stone fabrication at the shop is done using the bridge saw and hand tools, O’Brien explains that his 10-person shop crew is capable of fabricating any of the materials the company in the shop, and then installing them.

“Everybody does everything and we like them to be able to do just about everything,” O’Brien says. “We can send two or three installation crews out at one time if we need to, or we can have one out at a time and everyone else in the shop. It all depends on what our current needs are.”

That’s particularly important given Dessco’s commitment to timely service and prompt follow-up. It begins when the client picks out a material, either at a kitchen shop, through a designer or in the company’s own showroom.

Once the material is selected, the template is created in one or two business days, with installation scheduled from five to 10 business days after that.

O’Brien believes his shop people are artisans, but he says it goes beyond that.

“We currently have the best staff I’ve ever had,” he says. “We’ve gone through people over the years that were not willing to do quality work. They wanted to do a slipshod job, but they learned they were working for the wrong company. I would have to say our greatest success right now is the people we employ.”

He adds that he appreciates their willingness to work overtime if a job has to be out right away, and to contact clients who have called about a question or concern.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there aren’t sometimes problems, but O’Brien and Dessco are committed to addressing them right away and always striving to do better. For a company that began adding products to be of better service, it’s an approach that’s paying off.

“The bottom line is, we’re customer- and service-oriented,” O’Brien concludes. “We take care of our customers and we do it by doing the job they ask us to do and by having it in when we say we’re going to have it in. That’s really big for our business.”

And, he adds, despite the challenges he’s certainly not thinking about making yet another change in careers.

“With a crew like I have, I sleep well at night,” he says.

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