Guaranteed Growth

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Saby Behar loves management ideas. But not every idea. In an era that lauds Management by Hanging Around, Behar prides himself on being a "strictly hands-off manager" who visits the company every Wednesday but otherwise works on negotiating real-estate-development deals from an office 10 minutes away. His interactions with employees are narrowly focused. "I don't joke with them or drink beers with them," he says. "That's like having your dad try to be one of your friends. He's not a friend. He's your dad."

Furthermore, Behar rails against the notion of sharing financial figures -- or profits -- with employees. "Profit sharing is stupid because people don't understand the correlation between profit and what they do," he says. And he holds out no hope to the three members of his management team that anything they achieve will earn them equity. "The team as it is right now is not prepared to take the company to the next step," he states. He professes no patience with entrepreneurs who attempt to portray their growing companies as enriching in ways that can't be captured in dark ink. "I don't pretend to change the world at General Stair," he says. "My purpose is to make a lot of money."

Toward that end Behar, who emigrated from Peru in 1968 to study civil engineering at New York University, where he later earned an M.B.A., pays close attention to everything around him. In January 1994 he noticed that Miami-based home builder Lennar Corp. had started promoting a type of dwelling called the House of the Future, which featured whiz-bang electronics that would enable its owners to turn on lights or activate an alarm by phone. What the $819-million company was doing, as he saw it, was what he needed to do: branding a commodity. He immediately found out which advertising agency Lennar used. Then he paid a call on an executive at the same agency. "I want you to brand a stair for us," he instructed. Can't do it, the exec replied, for less than $10,000 a month. But Behar came away with some valuable free advice: Think of something good about your stairs that goes beyond the quality of the stairs, the man advised. What are you good at? We are great at delivery, Behar had immediately answered. So, came the conclusion, brand that.

Not that General Stair needed to do anything -- right away. Behar was proud of the company's leading role in developing a market for prefabricated stairs and of its estimated market share in Southern Florida: 39% in Dade County, 26% in Broward County, and a 2% sliver of Palm Beach County. But he was also brutally honest with himself about how the company had managed to reach that point. "Someday some idiot will come and compete on price," he says. "I know, because I was that idiot." He knew that the weak competition of the past few years, combined with a home-building market whipped up by Hurricane Andrew, could not last. Starting one and a half years ago, reports Vainstein, "we needed to lower our margins to get projects." The guarantee, Behar figured, might stop that slippage.

Companies typically hoist customer guarantees for one reason: to blow away the competition. It's a marketing ploy, a customer come-on, a valuable "gimmick," as Yager once labeled it, earning him a gazillion-watt glare from the man beside him. "It is not a gimmick," corrected Behar. To be fair, guarantees may look superficial simply because they seem so common. Consider the many high-profile companies that guarantee their services: Federal Express; Lands' End; Manpower; Sears, Roebuck and Co.; Speedy Muffler King; Xerox -- not to mention Domino's Pizza Inc., certainly the best-known company ever to abandon its own guarantee.

Starting in 1984, the now-$2-billion Domino's promised to deliver its pies within 30 minutes or give customers a $3 discount. The guarantee was discontinued in December 1993 after some widely publicized accidents involving Domino's drivers. The result? "We've fallen from number one nationally," laments Glenn Mueller, president of RPM Pizza Inc., a 130-unit franchisee based in Gulfport, Miss. "Taking away the guarantee has taken away our competitive advantage with customers."

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