Customer focus is key
Keeping customers happy has been the key to Entrepreneur of the Year services award winner Mark Taylor's success
Tuesday, February 23 2010 || News || BY The Independent
You can only describe Mark Taylor as an exporter given 96 per cent of the revenue from his privately owned company comes from customers in 40 countries and the fact he’s determined to build a sizeable international business from New Zealand. FrameCAD is No 1 globally in its niche, offering design and manufacture of steel framing for rapid construction of residential and commercial buildings. It employs 60 staff and has offices in New Zealand, Australia, Dubai and the United States.
Tell us about your first entrepreneurial act
I started two businesses at the same time as the crash [sharemarket] in 1987. One was FrameCAD in its original form and the other was a business called The Telephone Shop. We were the first to compete against Telecom, bringing in telephone equipment after the deregulation of telecommunications. I sold it a few years later.
What makes someone an entrepreneur?
Vision and the spirit to give it a go in the marketplace, backed by persistence and determination. Some entrepreneurs are not the greatest academics but they have an idea and are dogged to make it work.
What has been the biggest obstacle in running your own business?
One of the greatest challenges is building a winning team of highquality people especially when the business is growing fast and the talent pool is tight.
What is your company’s unique selling proposition?
Companies that are committed to being more customer-focused make those businesses a success. And we’re very focused on that. We provide a range of expertise and skills in our organisation to support customers and try to help them with a more turnkey approach.
Who in business do you admire and why?
Steve Jobs from Apple. The company keeps bringing out more iconic and user-friendly products than its competitors.
How do you attract and retain staff?
We’re pro-active in looking around the world for new staff who will bring a global perspective. Our business has people speaking 12 different languages. We want to be an international business based in New Zealand rather than a New Zealand business going global and we recruit accordingly.
How do you sustain company growth?
By being market focused, being out in the market a lot and getting firsthand intelligence on where the market is moving and where the future opportunities lie.
Describe a mistake you learnt from in business
The biggest fault in most business is they don’t talk to and understand their customers enough. When I feel we’re not talking to the customers enough, that’s when I get nervous.
So have you not done that at times?
It goes in cycles. There’s an old adage, ‘‘if you’re not treating some like a new customer, someone else will’’, so you need to show no apathy towards existing customers even if you have had them for a long time.
Describe your best triumph?
We’ve grown the business to the biggest provider of steel frame technology globally, in terms of the number of factories setting up with our technology internationally. We’ve focused on that part of the business in the last 12 years and in the last year we’ve definitely moved to being No 1.
How did you feel then?
It doesn’t pay to get apathetic and don’t read your own press!
What are your business/personal goals?
In terms of the business there is a great opportunity to grow the size of the business to three times the size it is now. My personal goal is to build a great board and management team to lead that growth and run the business so it becomes sustainable and not based on any one person any more.
So how do you balance work life and home?
This is a fantastic place to live but you have to think timewise how to work in with the rest of the world and how to get some balance. We have a lot of flexibility that allows staff to spend time with their family during the day and work from home because we know they will be phoning other parts of the world later in the day.
Do you have any tips for budding entrepreneurs?
Really, really understand your customer, how they use the product and the value it represents to them. Many people start back to front with a product and then take it to market whereas the best product development is to understand the customer and use that customer need to develop a product – it’s what Apple does.
