Leadership Training

Today we’re talking with Brooks Longfellow, the Vice President of Operations for KB Home’s Phoenix Division. Mr. Longfellow oversees the day to day operations of the construction and customer service departments for KB Home, a Fortune 500 home building company based in Los Angeles.

Before Longfellow joined KB Home in August of 2005, he spent 8 years with another national homebuilder where he moved up the ranks of the company from purchasing manager to vice president of construction operations. Mr. Longfellow was recognized with a performance award for customer satisfaction in 2004.

• What was it about the KB Home work environment or philosophy that made you decide to join the company?

From a personal perspective, I just found that it was a great fit in terms of both the people I met, but more importantly in regards to a common dedication to customer satisfaction. Our number one priority is to deliver a quality product to each one of our homeowners and make sure that they are 100% satisfied. That’s something that I believe heavily in, and since KB Home feels the same way, I found that very appealing when I was looking to make a career change.

• Can you tell us about your current role with KB Home, and what some of your most important day to day responsibilities are?

Right now I have approximately 80 people on my team that are out in the community either working on the construction of a home with our trade partners on a daily basis, or dealing with our customers to make sure they understand where we’re at with their homes and that we’re building their product the way they contracted us to do so.

My management team and I are working with those individuals on the ground level on a day to day basis to ensure that we’re getting great results from a customer satisfaction perspective. This means we’re delivering our product on-time, and that our trade partners are performing to the quality level that we expect them to in order to deliver that product successfully.

• Obviously, the current housing slump in the southwest market has affected your industry. How are you coping with this challenge in your present role, and what are some of the challenges you encountered because of it?

Pricing is always something that get scrutinized in a tough market, so if you want to have a competitive advantage, you have to have something to offer the customer via choice or a quality product that can make a difference. Furthermore, we pride ourselves on adding great results from third party validators like J.D. Powers (they do an independent market survey of every builder in Phoenix), as well as providing our buyers with a survey 30 days after they close to get their opinion.

Again, it comes back to a customer satisfaction perspective, and through these surveys we know that we do an outstanding job. It helps differentiate us from the rest of the market. I emphasize to my entire team that, at the end of the day, when the customer comes to pick up their keys, you should be proud of the quality product that you’re delivering them.

• Our readers are very interested in learning about the training and development programs of Fortune 500 companies. Can you talk about some of those initiatives currently being undertaken by KB Home?

Here are some of the programs that we’ve provided for our employees:

“Spring Training 101” – This was a round robin training program were we had everyone within the division (from all departments; sales, marketing, construction, customer service, etc.) take part. We broke everyone down into smaller groups, and each group rotated through all the different department heads. There, they were given an interactive presentation describing the specifics about what each department does, along with how they interacted with other departments.

This way, your eliminating those conversations at work that begin with, “I don’t know what those people over there do”, or “they’re holding me up by not giving me information I need and I don’t know why.” Instead, people are now saying, “Wow – I never realized they had to go through steps A – E in order to give me F.” We had great response from the program, and in addition, we’ve picked up a great deal along the way from a process improvement perspective, since we opened everybody’s eyes from a teamwork standpoint.

“Communication Training Course” – This ties in yet again with our customer satisfaction effort. What we’re doing here is setting up key points when we want to communicate with the customer and make sure we are setting expectations on both fronts, whether it’s with the buyer or with us. This way, everyone is on the same page, and in agreement that we’re going down the right path together.

We worked on those things from a process perspective in a communication class so our employees can refine those skills (verbal and non-verbal) so they’re better prepared to communicate and meet with individuals. This way, they’re building better relationships, and that ensures we’re providing better customer service as well.

“KB University” – Our construction, sales, customer service and studio teams all have a specific, disciplined training course that they complete online through KB University. There’s a different topic covered each month for each of those disciplines; it may be a process to review, an instructional film to review or a manual to read and understand. Once they complete it, they must then complete an online certification.

In addition, we offer more traditional training programs at the department level. Regarding our executives, we go through a higher level version of our “Spring Training” program with them. We want to make sure that the upper level managers of each discipline are armed with all the tools necessary to understand their business. We also want them to be the business owner for everything that falls under their umbrella, meaning that they are accountable for their department and can help us make the right decisions on a daily basis.

• How important is presentation and communication skills training for your employees?

I think it’s critical for all of our employees. Obviously, our sales team is trained rigorously to ensure that they are representing the company from the right perspective to our potential buyers. But I think it’s also essential for everyone in all of our departments to have those skills as well.

During our subdivision reviews, the operating committee goes out to each community on a monthly basis, and asks the team to present to us their current state of affairs. So we challenge them to address their business (what’s going well, what’s not going well, what needs to change) in a pretty formal environment. So we utilize that as a training vehicle to help them improve their presentation and communication skills.

• I read online about your involvement with the KB Home/Child Crisis Center Charity Golf Tournament. How much money were you able to raise, and how important is community service work to KB Home?

That’s a very exciting charity that we are fortunate to do every year. We raised about $23,000 last year for the Child Crisis Center. It’s the 13th year in a row that we’ve held this tournament, and we’ve been able to support a number of different charities throughout the years.

We are committed to helping out as many charities as we can on an annual basis. It creates a great level of satisfaction when we’re able to assist by donating money, time, supplies, whatever it takes. We take a look at the ones that have the greatest need and do our best to support them. It’s something that we take very seriously.

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For additional information about KB Home, please visit their website at www.kbhome.com.

KB Home, Brooks Longfellow, Vice President, Operations