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Growth Leader Interview: Sheri Johnson · From Stalled to Scaling

• Jim Tincher, HoC: McCownGordon ties some of its leadership bonuses to what the customers say about them. And I told Sheri I didn't love that. Then she told me exactly what the bonus is based on, and I changed my mind. I'm Jim Tincher, and this is From Stalled to Scaling: Ideas for B2B leaders on growing to the customers you already have. And I'm pumped today to be inviting to the podcast and the video series Sheri Johnson McCownGordon. McCownGordon is an employee-owned organization in the construction industry with a billion dollars in revenue. And so, Sheri, tell us a little bit more about yourself and your role. Welcome to the podcast. Sheri Johnson: Well, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to chat with you. yeah, I have been the chief marketing officer here at McCownGordon for the last several years and have been with the company for eight years. We're 100% employee-owned, headquartered in Kansas City. We have about 700 associates, and the construction industry is a little bit different than a lot of other industries in that we have a very long sales cycle. so when you look at the customer experience and the marketing aspects of that. It's a lot different than what you see even in another B2B. My team consists not only of customer experience, but all of marketing and internal communications as well. Jim Tincher, HoC: Excellent. And let's pick up on that. So yeah, many of our clients have orders every month, every few months or so on, sometimes every week. It's different when the projects last sometimes two years or longer. Tell me more about client relationships in such a long and heavily engaged journey. Sheri Johnson: Yeah, one of the things that we realized when we kicked off our customer experience program is that you do have to have a really good relationship that's gonna last, you know, four years or more, potentially longer. and depending on if you have a repeat client, it could be 10 years, 15 years. one of our company core values is relationships. So we really work with our people and focus on ensuring that they understand how important it is to build positive relationships with our clients. And we get a lot of referrals for business from architects and engineering companies that are oftentimes on the leading edge of building a new building. And so building relationships with those partners is equally important for us. Jim Tincher, HoC: Well, that's a great point. And in in construction and building industry, because we have clients like Marvin Doors and Windows suppliers as part of that. And often the customer, in quotes, is includes people who don't pay you anything, like an architect and so on. So talk a little bit more about that varying types of customer relationships you have. Sheri Johnson: Yeah, we we focus really heavily on not only building strong relationships with our clients that are building buildings, but with our architects. I mean an architect and an engineering company, we're gonna be working with them during pre-construction, which is before a shovel ever hits the dirt. That pre-construction period is where we're working really closely with the owner and the architect to make sure that what the they have spec'd for the building is going to meet the owner budget. So we have a whole team that's focused on pre-construction that literally will say, okay, you've spec'd these materials and these things and and here's how much it's going to cost. you know, is that within the owner's budget? And we'll also use that time to double check things like clash detection. You know, is the HVAC going to overlap with the plumbing randomly or whatever? There's we have a lot of high tech tools that we use to ensure that All of that stuff is worked out before we ever start building, so then the building process itself goes a lot more smooth. Jim Tincher, HoC: And so talk a little bit more how what that relationship is like, 'cause that's that's a key time when there's no visible work being done, but there's a lot of work being done. Sheri Johnson: Yeah, it's really important actually because it you don't get a final budget for the building until you've gone through a certain amount of architectural drawings for that building and the parallel in parallel with that the budget that's associated with those drawings. So early on when drawings aren't all the way done, we'll often do estimates and then we might adjust. what the building's gonna look like or adjust some materials or something and then you get a little bit further on in the drawings and you reestimate. So it's it's a reiterative process that's very collaborative with both the customer and the architect and often the like I said, the engineering firms as well. Jim Tincher, HoC: And we're gonna go a little bit deeper into that coming up here. Before we get to that, I wanna talk at a high level. Now, I know all of your customers are important and valuable. But sometimes you have customers that are you're more loyal, you're better customers, customers who come back to you more often than the others, and others who don't. What is it that distinguishes those repeat, long-term, more partner clients from the rest? Sheri Johnson: Yeah, it's a little bit interesting. It some of it depends on the market that the customer is in. For example, a K twelve school district typically is going to be more of a serial buyer because they're always building new schools, enhancing existing schools or upgrading them, versus maybe you know, a company that's building a new headquarters and they're just gonna be one and done. So part of it is that, just the nature of the business. But I would say when it comes to the lasting relationships, what we find is The customers who come back and buy from us again and again really appreciate the communication that our teams provide. Construction is honestly never a smooth 100% smooth process. There's always a challenge of some kind or another. And so they really appreciate when our teams see the challenge, come to them, talk about the challenge, maybe bring a solution to the table, and are open and transparent about that process. we get a lot of really positive feedback about the transparent and communicative process that our teams provide, which just makes it easier for our customers. Jim Tincher, HoC: And that's obviously critical to give that exposure and understand here's what's happening. And before we get to more how you create that, I want to hear a little bit more about well, first of all, I'm going to make the wild assumption, as almost everybody we talk to, that McCownGordon is looking to grow. Is that a fair assessment? Sheri Johnson: Yes. It is a hundred percent percent fair. Jim Tincher, HoC: And you know, conversation we've had in the past is you're probably not going to get there only through existing customers. That new customers are Sheri Johnson: correct. Jim Tincher, HoC: a key part of that mixture. Do you have a sense for how much your growth you plan coming from existing clients versus new clients? Sheri Johnson: And that's a really interesting question because we've launched a lot of initiatives in the last five years that are really focused on growing in new markets where we didn't formerly have business. So we opened up an office in Dallas and we started a new vertical market business unit that's really focused on the industrial and manufacturing space. So a significant portion of our growth is based on the fact that we have done We have opened those two new business units. I would say, I actually looked up some stats on this and let's see five Yeah, for example, in 2025, our industrial and manufacturing business unit was responsible for 35% of our revenue. And that wasn't there back in 2021. So but I would say in our traditional markets, we've done a we have a real focus on gaining market share in those markets. And it's through those relationships that we develop, it's through building really strong relationships with our existing customers. so that they will when they're getting ready to build their next new building if they're a serial buyer, that they'll come back to us or they will advocate to us to other people that they know are, you know, looking at a project in the future and, you know, talk about what a great experience they had with encounter. Jim Tincher, HoC: So let's talk about that, go a little bit deeper because one of my beliefs, one argument is that a number of people in marketing, customer experience say, well, we're building referrals because we're measuring the net promoter score likely to refer and likely to recommend and goes higher, therefore we're driving referrals. But part of the challenge in most B2B is it's really hard. to actually measure referrals. You know, you don't give a toaster for every referral or a fifty dollar gift card. And so Sheri Johnson: Right. Jim Tincher, HoC: it's really hard to track that. Tell me more, are you able to track referrals or is it more a sense of what's happening? Sheri Johnson: we do in a couple of different ways. I wouldn't say it's a hundred percent accurate, but we do regularly ask our customers for testimonials. Will you do a testimonial for us and talk about your experience? And surprisingly, compared to other B2B businesses I've worked in, a lot of our clients are really open to doing that. which I haven't experienced in my past life with a lot of B2B clients. So that was a pleasant pleasantly surprising to me when I came over here eight years ago. And then we we also will get asked for references. I mean the the actual interview, you know, proposal and interview process can be, I would say four to six weeks usually for to win work. And so as part of that process, we're often asked for give us you know three referrals or five referrals of people that you've built similar buildings for. And so we do have a A list of folks like that that we would use as referrals. So that kind of answers your question. Jim Tincher, HoC: So for those listeners who are out there in, for example, the SaaS world, a number of our SaaS clients have come to us as a business problem was we need more referenceable clients. That that's and that's really where customer experience plays in. Would you agree that you know you say you have a lot of referenceable clients, that's fantastic. Can you see a hard or a soft linkage between the customer experience and the referrals? Sheri Johnson: So one of the things that we started when we we initiated our new customer experience process, which is where we survey our customers based on where they are in their construction journey, is if we get positive and we have a section in our survey where, you know, is there anything you want to add? And we do get quite a number of open-ended comments. If we have some really positive feedback in that open-ended section, we will, you know, four to six weeks late. later reach out to the client and say, Hey, we saw that you had these great things to say about us. Would you be willing to allow us to use this quote in our marketing or website materials and to be a reference? or if you don't want us to use it publicly, would you be willing to allow us to use this in our future proposals? So we have a somewhat formalized process of reaching out to those people who've given us positive feedback to try and get approval to use them in a couple of different ways. For marketing and referrals. Jim Tincher, HoC: And know at least historically use that same process to also follow up with those who maybe don't give you as good a feedback as well, to talk to them and learn from them. Sheri Johnson: Yeah. Exactly. Jim Tincher, HoC: So tell me more about that. Sheri Johnson: Yeah, we our leadership team is really invested in our customer experience program from our CEO all the way down. And so whenever we all the surveys when they come in literally get emailed to our senior leaders so they can see, and it's great because when the pup the information is really positive, they'll give kudos to the team and et cetera. And then if we do get something that's a little bit concerning, those senior leaders really dig into it right away. They figure out do we need to go meet with that client? is there maybe a change to the project team we need to make, or do we just need to be more communicative about what's going on if there's some sort of a challenge going on with the project? So we really try to be quick to respond to customer concerns that come in through our survey process. And what's really nice with customer experience living and marketing versus operations is I do feel like we get more candid feedback than. you know, someone they have a close relationship with is asking them these same questions, which of course we want our ops people to have really close relationships with our clients and marketing religious at one step removed. Jim Tincher, HoC: Yeah, I w I want to go to that a little bit further a little bit later too. But one of things that I want to bring up is as as people who've been viewing these videos and podcasts know, last year I did 34 interviews to see Suite interviews. And they're all confidential, but I don't think Ramid would mind if I mentioned one thing of his, which is when I asked the thirty-four about what are your what are your initiatives to drive growth? Everybody said they want growth. When I asked them their initiatives to drive growth, Ramin was the only one of the thirty-four who said customer experience is our strategy to drive growth. So he really is a believer, isn't he? Sheri Johnson: Yeah, he really is. like I said, relationships is one of our core values. integrity and performance are the other two. And we those are not just sitting on a wall somewhere. We talk about them every all the time. He does a customer or associate video. It used to be weekly, it's a little bit less now. We always close the video with the core values. We do living our values awards. our employee ownership plays a big part of it. I mean When you're an employee on a right, if we're not successful with a client and they don't like us and they're not gonna buy from us again, that affects our stock price and our potential. So it's just a different kind of culture and attitude. And I think Ramin felt like we have really, really high associate engagement, which helps right in delivering a great customer experience, and that we want to take that same approach in engaging with our customers. Jim Tincher, HoC: Great. So something you referenced earlier, I want to go in deeper now, is that first of all, long-term relationships, the projects can last anywhere from six months to four or five years. Sheri Johnson: Mm. Jim Tincher, HoC: And additionally, that there is a fairly not insignificant amount of time spent before dirt is broken, where you're building it. And so that really requires being deliberate and thoughtful about how to start a relationship. And a few years ago you reconsidered what that looks like and built a whole new process for how you engage customers from the very beginning. and for those listening and watching, you want to get out your pen because this is really, really deliberate and thoughtful approach on how to kick off relationships. So Sheri, with all that pressure building up, tell us a little bit more about program you put together. Sheri Johnson: Yeah, we so we l really think about customer experience as starting before a client even becomes a client. So during our sales process before a pro request for proposals even drop, we're trying really intentionally to engage with that client and key stakeholders that are going to be involved with that project far in advance so that we really understand like why are they building this building, what does it mean for their business or their school district or their university or whatever that may be, what is their biggest concern? and then we really try to focus in on, okay, how can we help solve that concern for them? What is it that we can bring to the table? but but we literally train our people who are involved in selling, which is a B D team and then we have a lot of operations people who are involved with the sales cycle to really try to you know, regularly meet with a client to once you get closer to w building the building, like let us bring in your superintendent so you know who's gonna be day to day on your project. Let us make sure you know your so we're really we call it zippering, really making sure that from top to bottom we have relationships across the board. And then ensuring when we land that business, we start we do what we call a customer priorities process where we sit down with the customer and we say, hey, beyond budget, And schedule, which are two the two and safety, the three, three big things in construction that everybody is concerned about. Beyond those three things, because we know those are keenly important to you. What else is important to you on this project? Because we want to make sure our team is focused on that. So throughout pre-con and construction, we actually document that. We include those priority at least usually we try to limit that to four to five priorities, and we include those. And all of the meetings that we have with them, the regular meetings. We may not run through all of them, but we'll address eat at least one of them at every single standing meeting that we have. And we put them up in the trailer once we break ground and we have a trailer out there. So the customer sees we got your priorities up there right front and center. And then during the survey process at key points, we ask them, how are we delivering on your priorities? Jim Tincher, HoC: And I love that approach because it takes customer experience from being some theoretical, you know, how likely to recommend us to really hard about this is what's important to you. We're going to deliver against it. Sheri Johnson: Mm. Jim Tincher, HoC: What are some of the common priorities that your customers bring? Sheri Johnson: You know, it's really funny. It it does range quite a bit, but communication is a a big one. And it's really funny because typically when we are getting really positive feedback, it's because communication is going very well. And often when we're getting, you know, a customer who's a little bit disappointed with how things are going, it's because communication is not going well. So we have really focused with our teams on look Better to bring challenges to the table early, bring a solution, have a transparent conversation about it, than to think you can fix it and then maybe you don't get it fixed as thought as fast as you thought, and the client is wondering why you aren't telling them about it. It's just that open, transparent communication is really, really key. And clients refer to that in a number of different ways. Another thing that comes up sometimes is a clean job site. Like I just when I come I want it to be clean and neat and a lot of times community keeping the community informed is another key one. So whether it's on an active campus or we're building a health services building in one of our local suburbs here and It's right next to a senior center, and one of their priorities was look, I really want you to make sure that we're keeping the seniors informed of everything that's going on, that they know who your team is, that they know when things might be more disruptive. And so we've been very intentional about regularly visiting you know, with the seniors and giving them an overview of where we are on that project. Interestingly, we have a product project right here in downtown Kansas City right now, and the community is really important there. It's a huge Plaza with a parking garage under it. And we actually had someone call the other day and they were like, Hey, when I scheduled my wedding at the hotel right across the street from this garage, I thought I had heard that the construction was gonna be done and it's not. And we always do this big parade, and I really need to figure out how can I do the parade for my wedding. And so I called our Super one of our superintendents over there and he's like, Believe it or not, this is gonna be like the third wedding that we've helped plan. So yeah, give him my number. I'll help take care of getting all the permits for the street and the parade and and everything. So yeah, our team really goes above and beyond about stuff like that. Jim Tincher, HoC: And what love about that, so the the first three you gave budget, safety, timeline, are not maybe entirely black and white, but they're fairly blackish and whitish. They're hard numbers you can measure. A wedding coming through, that that's not a hard number. The seniors being informed, or even communication, you know, you don't want to track number of emails sent. That's Sheri Johnson: Right. Jim Tincher, HoC: not a good metric. So it forces you to have a different kind of conversation with your clients. Sheri Johnson: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I do think hitting on those priorities at the top of every meeting makes a big difference because and the priority might be like one one meeting we might say, okay, let's talk about how are we communicating with the seniors. And the next meeting we might say, okay, your other priority was job site cleanliness. How is that going for you? It just it it makes it easy for the team to talk about what's important to the client because it's all up there in black and white to start with. And so then If there's you know, if if our team has an issue with like, hey, you're not getting back to us quickly enough on our request for information, it's okay. We don't feel bad because guess what? Communication is one of the priorities and I'm just clearly acting on our priorities. So it just makes it go smoothly. Jim Tincher, HoC: My perspective is that that process doesn't have to be unique to construction. That is true in any B2B ongoing relationship. That taking the time to identify with your clients what's important to them as well as what's important to you. I mean, I think you get a stake in this as well. Your company, this is what's important to us, then and having those conversations regularly. That really helps to get over what you refer to as Midwest nice. We call it Minnesota nice. I have Sheri Johnson: Yeah. Jim Tincher, HoC: a prospective client in Missouri in St. Louis who calls Missouri nice, but Midwest nice, it helps overcome that, right? Sheri Johnson: It really does, yeah. Because it's not always easy and sometimes you have to have a challenging conversation and if you've laid the groundwork that we're gonna talk about things, it's a lot easier. Jim Tincher, HoC: Now, we were we're working with you as you start accelerating your program. And one of the challenges you referenced that customer experience is in marketing. One of the challenges can be, yeah, in marketing, yeah, that's nice. We're doing real business over here. and yet you were able to circumvent that by actually involving somebody from operations as part of your customer experience work. Can you talk about that? Sheri Johnson: Sure. Yeah, when after we did our work with you to develop our roadmap, we decided it was really important if we wanted to drive this down through operations, which we have to do, right? Because it's the people who are building the buildings that are delivering the experience, that we needed someone from operations to help drive that part of it. So we had a long tenured VP in our operations division that came over to my team. And was really heavily involved with helping launch the priorities to making sure that all the operations leaders really understood how urgent this was. They did some training really around the experience and that early part of the experience, the interview, the the we actually call that whole section of the of the journey customer journey left of launch. and so it made a big impact for. Some of our operations folks to see, this is important. They brought a twenty year veteran over from operations to make sure that we're making this a priority. Jim Tincher, HoC: And how did that accelerate? How how did it change operations perspective of customer experience? Sheri Johnson: Well, part of what we did is we put together a customer experience ambassador group. And so he worked really closely with that group. there were two of them from each of our business units that were working with him on a monthly basis, and they really helped make sure like every new project that's getting set up has to do the customer priorities process. You the only way you can not have to do that is if your SVP signs off and says for this client we're not gonna do it, which has never happened. so people realize that this isn't just another initiative de jour, that we were really serious about it and that you know you were gonna get called out if you weren't doing it. And s in some instances it took a little longer than others, but pretty much everybody is doing it now. Every new project that gets launched s does the process. Jim Tincher, HoC: Excellent. And I teased up front about bonuses. And so I'm on record as saying that bonusing for NPS is a horrible idea. You will see your scores go up, mostly because there's gaming, they're, you know, asking only certain people to take the survey, so on. You found a way to include a bonus, but not run into that trap. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Sheri Johnson: Sure. absolutely. So we crazily have a really high net promoter score right now. Our net promoter score is 90, and it's it's been like 86 to 92, just kind of depending on what's going on. so there's not a whole lot farther you can go than that. And and and we realize that that's based on only about 30, 33% of our surveys getting responded to. So what we really I mean, my personal opinion, the goal of our program is to uncover where the customer journey isn't going smoothly and to figure out how to fix that. So rather than bonusing on the net promoter score, we also do CSAT, the CSAT score, we decided that it was going to be based on response rate. So we have a goal of increasing our response rate to 40% by the end of this this portion of our strategic plan that ends in in December thirty first of twenty twenty eight, and to really try to get a better response rate so then perhaps we can find some ways to make the customer journey even better for cust our clients. Jim Tincher, HoC: For those listeners and viewers out there, what I want to call out mostly is that we were 26 minutes into the podcast where Sheri talked anything about survey scores. And I think that speaks highly to your program. Your program is not about a score, it's about changing the conversation, it's about engaging customers so that they see a reason to do more work with you. I suspect if you were having a 90 sum for a net promoter score. and no customer came back to you, nobody would care about your score. Sheri Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Jim Tincher, HoC: So talk a little bit more about how that influences the culture by getting more feedback. Sheri Johnson: Well, I think our operations leaders realized that 33%, 30 to 33% really isn't that great. Like obviously we're not hearing from like 70% of our clients. and we have a small client base. Like I think in 2025, the maximum number, I think the number of projects we had going at one time that were actually under construction was around like 125. Now granted we're surveying clients that are in pre-con too, but those surveys are a little l less frequent. So, and a lot of times a lot of the challenges end up happening in construction. So they realize that we need to get more feedback so that we can figure out how to better ramp our processes and our systems to make a better experience. And in addition to increasing that response rate to 40%, we've asked them to be communicative with our customers about their surveys. Like, look, during during the when we set up the priorities, we're like, look, we're gonna survey you at these certain milestones. And it's really important to us to get your feedback because we really want to understand how we can make things better for you. And so we set that expectation with customers ahead of time. Our project teams will remind them when surveys are coming through and how important they are. and then we also will select key clients that maybe we haven't heard from in a survey or they haven't responded, and we might have my customer experience specialists reach out to them and say, hey. Can I just spend 30 minutes talking to you about how it's going? And so we do get some qualitative feedback from non responders through that initiative. Jim Tincher, HoC: So wrapping up here, listeners are the growth leaders. They might be CMOs or heads of marketing, could be a chief customer experience officer. You've been able to differentiate through your customer experience and you see that result through repeat business. You see the result through different conversations. What advice would you give a viewer or listener about how to make customer experience not about a survey, but instead about changing the culture and the conversations you have with clients? Sheri Johnson: That's exactly what I was gonna say. Is it it's a culture of shift. it really is. And and for us it was easy because we already had a very customer focused culture. And so it was just a matter of telling our team, hey, look, for the most part, you guys, all of you are already doing this. We're just putting a little bit of formalization around the process and making sure that we're getting feedback through the process. So but I would say getting your operational leaders on board is key and it's a lot easier when it starts at the top. My job is so much easier because Ramin fully believes in customer experience as a differentiator and in a way to drive business growth. And so if you can, you know, get your CEO bought in and then get your operational leaders bought in, then it will naturally trickle down through the organization. We regularly share stories about our teams that are doing a good job in customer experience. We have a customer experience award that we give out to the teams twice a year at our all company meetings that have shown that they're delivering an exceptional customer experience. So that starts people see that and they hear those stories. And I think the stories are important not only to say, hey, here's you know a team that's doing a really great job, but they're also like, hey, look at this very specific example of something unique that they did. that made that customer experience better for them. And it doesn't always relate to schedule, budget, safety. It helps them really Jim Tincher, HoC: Excellent. Sheri Johnson: see, that's easy. I can do that, you know. Jim Tincher, HoC: All right. Well, Sheri, thank you so much. I want to wrap up here. So a tinture truth, we're putting these in these podcasts, is reward the conversation, not the score. As you heard from Sheri, that's what they're focused on, and it changes the approach. And an assignment for you. The next time you launch a new customer relationship, take the time to have your teams hear what's important to them and to use that as an ongoing conversation, always coming back to what's the most important to your client. And making sure you hit it. Signing off today again, thank you, Sheri. Sheri Johnson: Thank you so much. I really enjoyed our conversation. Jim Tincher, HoC: Good, me too. If somebody wants to reach out to you, is LinkedIn the best way? How should they get a hold of you? Excellent. Sheri Johnson: Yeah, LinkedIn is great. My email is in there. Jim Tincher, HoC: All right. so signing off, this is Jim Tincher with Heart of the Customer. And love your feedback. If you're finding this works well, hit me at Jim at heart of the customer.com. And if you have somebody that should be part of our conversation, a growth leader, let me know. I'd love to have the conversation. Sheri, thanks again. And to all you, we'll see you next time.