312 Embracing a Retail Mindset in Home Building - Dennis Webb Mar 25 2026

Greg Bray: [00:00:00] Hello everybody, and welcome to today's episode of the Builder Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse.

Greg Bray: And we're excited to have joining us today, Dennis Webb. Dennis is the VP of Operations at Fulton Homes. Welcome, Dennis. We appreciate you joining us today.

Dennis Webb: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

Greg Bray: Well, Dennis, for those who haven't had a chance to meet you yet, give us that quick introduction and background about yourself.

Dennis Webb: [00:01:00] Well, I kind of have a weird background because I spent my first 25 years of my career in the retail business. Started off as a janitor and then I became a salesman and I actually put myself through college selling suits. Later became a buyer and merchandise manager and a store president. And so, I kind of ran the gamut of the retail business.

And then I, uh, went to work for a guy named Myra Fulton, who had a retail chain in Los Angeles called Eagleson's, and he also had a home buildng business in Phoenix at the time called Fulton Homes. Fulton Homes was really financed out of Eagleson's. Well, I was with them for about five years and then he sold Eagleson's to take the money and put it back into Fulton Homes. And so, he had a non-compete agreement, and part of the non-compete agreement was he couldn't hire anyone from the company for a year, couldn't hire any employees that he had sold the company to.

So, I didn't know that at the [00:02:00] time. I kept in touch with him and his son, Doug, who is now the CEO of Fulton Homes. In a year we got together and they said, well, why don't you come over to Phoenix and, uh, help us build houses? And I said, well, I don't know anything about new houses. And they said, well, you know about marketing and sales and things like that, and we can teach for the rest of it.

So, I did, and that was 30 years ago. So, I'm still hanging out there. But I made the switch from retail to home building. Since all of us at Fulton Homes were in retail, it was a natural move to use retail principles in all of our dealings, including land buying and marketing and sales and display and design and everything. And so, we kind of are a, uh, retail store that happens to be in the home building business.

Kevin Weitzel: We're going to cover a little bit of that today, especially with your new book, From Blue Suits to Green Homes. However, before we do that, Dennis, we'd like to jump in with just a small little factoid [00:03:00] about yourself that has nothing to do with family, the home building industry, or work at all. Some interesting factoid about you.

Dennis Webb: Okay. I don't have a degree in business or economics, but I do have a degree in music. I actually play the tuba.

Greg Bray: Alright. Are you still practicing?

Dennis Webb: I still have my tuba and I play.

Kevin Weitzel: Now, if I were in your shoes, I would wait until people make a colossal mistake at work and literally follow them around the day just playing sad tuba. Do you ever do that just for the heck of it, or no?

Dennis Webb: Uh, no.

Kevin Weitzel: You're missing out, Dennis. You're missing out. That's a prime opportunity to shame somebody with tuba music.

Greg Bray: He didn't even have to think, he just said no.

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah. He didn't even think about it. It's almost like he's never even considered it.

Dennis Webb: Never considered it. No.

Greg Bray: Well, Dennis, give us really quick that overview of Fulton Homes as far as where you guys build, the types of homes you're doing, and the buyers that you're targeting.

Dennis Webb: [00:04:00] Sure. So, we're celebrating our 50th year this year. So, 50 years in business for a private home builder. So, we're a sole proprietorship. Ira Fulton, who is 93, owns a hundred percent of the company. We do kind of the move up and second move up and third move up buyer. We do a little bit of entry, but not much. Our, uh, average price point is about 650. We build just single family, and we just build in Phoenix.

Greg Bray: So, Dennis, you already kind of told us a little bit about your retail to home building journey and that Fulton Homes because of that, has a very retail focus. What does that actually mean to you when you say that we're a retail company that builds homes?

Dennis Webb: Most builders are product centric, so they take their product and they put that at the center of the universe. A retail builder, like us, takes the customer and puts the customer at the center of the [00:05:00] universe. So, it's customer centric. It's completely different philosophy on how you operate your business because you're taking a customer and you're saying, we want to have a repeat customer. We want to be nice to our customers. We're going to do everything we can to make sure that they love us. Our main concern is not stock price; it's satisfying the customer.

Greg Bray: So, when that happens, what is it that other builders that are not taking that focus, what are some of the things that they're just not doing? I think everybody would say, oh, we care about the customer, wouldn't they? At least on the surface.

Dennis Webb: So, I think the biggest thing is transparency and trust. So, for instance, we tell our buyers, or would be buyers, how much everything is in the store, so all the options, the base price, lot premiums, everything. They have that information before they make a decision to buy a house. To my knowledge, we're the only builder that [00:06:00] has that and has an electronic form for that, where buyers can kind of look at everything and see all their options and all their prices and how much stuff is, and we tell them that upfront.

So, we're very transparent with the buyer. That results in the buyers being very trusting of us. They probably figure that if we care that much about it and we're honest with them, we're probably going to do a pretty good job of building them a house. So that's really the main reason is just the trust.

And then the other thing we look at is repeat business and reputation. So, we have a terrific reputation. We're very community oriented. We give away hundreds of millions of dollars to various charities, mostly educational endeavors. Ira Fulton has given $200 million to ASU, Arizona State University, and he's the largest donor in the history of that school. He's also the largest philanthropist in Arizona. So, we have ties [00:07:00] to great community support, which really helps with your reputation.

Kevin Weitzel: And yet, not once have you guys offered to donate to the education of Kevin's golf swing. Never once have I ever heard of some golf professional being philanthropized, is that even a word, philanthropized into teaching Kevin how to swing better?

Dennis Webb: We don't have that amount of resources. We just don't. We can give 200 million to ASU. We can give 50 million to BYU, but we can't help Kevin.

Kevin Weitzel: Alright, so I do have a serious question though. So, you touched on it in the fact that, well, you've been there 30 years where I think you're approaching 30 years or somewhere right around there. You mentioned about, you know, repeat business. Do you have any stories, and this is completely off the cuff, but you have any stories of, you've got, you know, the Smiths that have purchased a home from Fulton Homes nine times over that timeframe or whatever? Do you have any of those repeat win stories that you could tell us about? [00:08:00]

Dennis Webb: There's tons of them.

Kevin Weitzel: Too many.

Dennis Webb: I see them every two weeks. We do a, what we call a browse night. We invite our customers and would be customers into our design center, and we kind of throw a party. We have nine kitchens in here, so you know when you have a party, everyone congregates in the kitchen. When we have nine of them, it's pretty cool. And so, we'll get 40, 50 people on Thursday nights, every other Thursday night in the design center. And I always ask them, why are you looking at Fulton?

Well, this will be our fourth house, or this will be our fifth house. Or, you know, I have relatives and everyone loves it. The experience that you guys have versus the other buyers, I wish I would've known about you earlier. So, we see that all the time. And then we track, actually, repeat buyers, and it's just amazing how many people. We do it on purpose. We actually market people that have moved into a Fulton home because they're going to be one of our best word of mouth advertisers as well as their actual buying down the future.

We'll also take communities that we've had [00:09:00] for, you know, a few years, and we do big communities. We might have a community, it's a thousand units. We'll have three or four products in that. And maybe five years ago, the person who bought the smallest house and now he's buying a medium house, and next year he is going to buy a larger house all within the same community. So, it's close to their job, it's close to their schools and everything like that. So, it's a tremendous advantage having that repeat customer base.

Kevin Weitzel: You use a term with me that I need to learn to keep it down the middle because I do struggle with that. You know, just as well as I do, because we've had these chats on the golf course and in general, just about the good, better, best mentality, that philosophy of selling. And I know that goes all the way back to suit days, where you show the good, the better and the best. Ideally in, at least in my world, it was about focusing on you could get the best, but why not just get the middle, which was the best two years ago. That's honestly where a lot of times the profit margin lies, et cetera. But when you're talking about homes, there really isn't going to be a good, better, best is there? Or do you guys have a way of putting that [00:10:00] into the scenario to allow to be more retail centric?

Dennis Webb: The home itself is not necessarily going to be good, better, best. They're all going to be best. But the difference in price primarily would be size and maybe location and things like that. So, a house in Chandler is going to be more expensive than a house in Buckeye and things like that. But that's a matter of just having it there. So, where you really get in on good, better, best is the options you can select. If you're starting off and you just don't want, you know, the super expensive stuff and you just can't afford it, we have that covered for you. So, we'll have a good product.

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah,

Dennis Webb: If you want something really kind of in the middle we have that as well. And if you want to go all out, we can carry brands like Wolf Subzero and things like that, where you can really deck out your house. The other thing is we allow everyone to put anything in any house. We don't limit them and things like that, that a lot of the publics do.

Greg Bray: So, Dennis, when you think about this idea [00:11:00] that you're trying to create a different experience than other builders, and that's a key differentiator for you guys and why someone should want to work with Fulton Homes, you've got, of course, your past customers and the repeat buyers that we kind of touched on briefly, and obviously they've already had that experience, so they know what they're getting into. How do you communicate that difference to the prospect who's never worked with you before? What are some of the things that you guys do out there that says, Hey, working with Fulton Homes is going to be different than working with A, B, C builder down the street?

Dennis Webb: Yeah, so we have what we refer to as key differentiators. These are things that we do that the other guys don't. We do things that they can't do. Okay? So, for instance, we're very philanthropic, but the other guys or not. We build our homes to zero energy ready standards, which not very many people do in the United States. So, we're kind of in the minority there. So, we build a high quality, energy efficient homes and we tout that. And we actually advertise quite a bit where [00:12:00] the nationals or the publics don't advertise that much.

We also have transparency, which I talked about earlier. The other thing we have is an unbelievable sales staff where everyone wants to work with us. I have the easiest job in the world hiring people because they're on a waiting list to get on because we don't have a sales manager, we don't have weekly meetings, and we give them all the tools they need to be successful. Our average salesperson's been with us 17 years, which is unheard of in this business. Everyone wants to work for Fulton Homes because they make good money. We don't bug them. We give them a lot of information. It's a quality way of doing it, and the publics can't really compete with us on those things. So, we just continue to kind of hit hard on the things that make us different, and there's just a whole bunch of things.

Greg Bray: Where does that then go internally from a like employee education and training standpoint? How do you infuse this [00:13:00] customer first idea within your team? Obviously, if they've been with you 17 years, they've heard it a couple times along the way. But that new employee who's coming on board, how do you help them catch the vision?

Dennis Webb: Well, we train them. We don't train them on how to sell houses or anything. We train them on our culture and how it works and who does what and what you can do. And it's amazing that anyone coming into the organization can make a huge difference because we encourage that, and we don't have buckets of things that they can't do and things like that. So, we kind of empower our people to be able to be very creative.

I look at the stuff that I first did 30 years ago when I got here, and I'm doing completely different stuff now. We've become the energy experts. We were even building energy efficient homes back then. But I said, you know, we should probably build an energy efficient home because it'll save people money and it's the right thing to do for the environment. And so, we started doing that and kept doing more and more and [00:14:00] more. Now we're really kind of sought after as one of the top builders in the United States as far as energy efficient homes. It's quite an enviable position to be in.

Kevin Weitzel: But, Dennis, if you have gaps between your window frames and your housing structure and your door frames and stuff here in Arizona with our dry heat, would that make for more efficient of just the airflow through the home with all those breaks in the vapor seal?

Dennis Webb: not quite. Not quite.

Kevin Weitzel: Alright. Alright.

Greg Bray: So Dennis, what got you interested in capturing some of these ideas in a book? What is it that you're trying to do with this retail focus and getting that idea out there in this industry?

Dennis Webb: You know, I talk in front of home building groups and I have for the last 20 years or so. I talk about, being different and being retail oriented and things like that. The sad part is not too many people get it, they don't quite understand the process, and I think it's because they're not really familiar with how retail operates versus how [00:15:00] builders operate. Builders operate very archaically. It's probably the most backwards industry in the world. We don't make any advancements.

We build houses like we did 200 years ago, and we have archaic distribution methods. It's the only industry I know of that we don't control our labor. And then we make houses that are the worst possible materials you could do. We have concrete that cracks and we have paint that fades and cracks. We have lumber that twists and termites love it, and drywall that cracks, stucco that fades, and concrete that moves, block walls that fall down and we're still building these houses like this. It's incredible.

The airline industry has learned how to do a much better job of using the right materials for their products, and we haven't even come close. So we've got a long, long way to go. Plus, we have a hundred people and they drive 50 miles to build this house. It takes a year. What? It's the craziest thing in the world. Can you imagine the auto [00:16:00] business doing that, or any business doing that? So, we have a very disjointed industry.

It's the only industry that doesn't control their own labor. It's crazy. So, you get a bid from a manufacturer or a trade and Well, it's too high. Well, okay. If you don't like it, we'll just take it somewhere else. That's how the business is. There's a fight between the builders and the trades. They don't always say, well, there's trade partners and things like that. There's not. You only have a chance if you have a partner that's processing things so that they get a profit out of this.

So, for instance, our flooring guys, if we sell upgraded flooring, they're going to make more money. If we sell upgraded cabinets, they're going to make more money. You don't have that with framers or drywallers or anything like that because there's no options that are selected. We do about 16% out of our base volume in options. So, we do over $86,000 of house in average upgrades. It's a very important part of our [00:17:00] business.

Greg Bray: Walk us through how that option selection and sales process goes for you guys, Dennis. What is it that is making the difference, and more importantly, how do you not overwhelm a perspective buyer with so many when you say they can have anything they want, that's like, wow. That sounds scary.

Dennis Webb: Well, it's anything controlled, so it's anything they want as long as we can control it. The first thing we do that other builders don't do is we make option selection and option buying part of the sales process. Just as we talk to our sales agents about signing people or qualifying people and things like that, we talk to them about what the house is going to look like when they're done. And particularly with women who control about 90% of the buying, that's a very important aspect for them. They want to know what house is going to look like. They want it to be right, it's going to be great and everything like that. So, we have to do that. Okay.

We put it in the sales process. When we do our browse nights, all the [00:18:00] salespeople come. We actually close houses at browse night in a different location than their sales office. So, they actually come and meet their buyers there. We love to see people that hadn't bought, because generally we sell them a week after or something like that. So, it's a real important aspect.

The other thing we do is we have an electronic design center or a digital design center. So we show our buyers how much everything is, pictures of it. We've had this for 20 years. It's a very sophisticated and advanced system where buyers can see exactly what's available, how much it costs, pictures, warranty information. We even have trade information, so there's installation instructions on how to do stuff and everything like that. So, it's probably the most advanced system in the country.

Then we make sure that we have this browse night so they're not overwhelmed. And if they want two appointments, we'll give them two appointments. Want one? We'll do one. We're going to go with whatever the buyer wants and really take care of them. They're the most important thing in [00:19:00] our business. To do it right, it takes a lot. So, whereas the public builders or the national builders, they're purchasing department is at the forefront of their design center, we think that the sales and marketing area should dictate that because they're going to be more apt to push for more profits and more sales and better customer satisfaction.

As I say in my book, that if the retail people had purchasing people instead of merchandisers and buyers, they'd all be out of business because the purchasing people don't have any idea of what the buyers are looking for, what they want or how they want to be satisfied. They care about the lowest possible cost and the highest possible rebate.

Greg Bray: So, Dennis, for a builder who's listening, going, you know what? We could do better here. What are some of the areas to kind of start with? You know, because it could be overwhelming to overhaul your entire process all at once. What would be the area to look at first if you want to become more retail [00:20:00] focused, more customer focused?

Dennis Webb: You need to really have a retail mentality. We were very fortunate that all the people here that are making decisions all came out of the retail business. So they understood that. That's a tremendous advantage. You almost have to look at it as, okay, let's study some of the great retailers and kind of see what they do and how they do it and how it works for them. Okay.

And then you look at some of the top builders and how they do things and it's completely different. The top builders really, they're in the lands dirt business and banking and stuff like that. They're not really in the customer business. They're turning it for a profit. You have two kinds of public builders out there, and then half of them don't even offer options. They don't even offer choices, you know, take or leave it. But that's not where we want to be. We're going to win the war. We might lose that battle, but we're going to win the war by being the way we are and being retail oriented versus product [00:21:00] oriented. It is mentality and it really has to start from the top.

Kevin Weitzel: Now, if only there was like a playbook, like there was some sort of book that somebody could read, you know, that was part memoir, part guiding principles, you know, something along the lines of, oh, this book here, From Blue Suits to Green Homes by Dennis Webb here. Now, I say that tongue in cheek, but it really is actually a good book and it really does have some memoir in there and there's some guiding principles that allow people to be more transformational in how they treat their operations.

What was it in your inner being that made you decide to write a good book? And honestly, I think it's a great book and that's not just because I also come from retail, you know, and I aligned with a lot of the ideas and principles that are in here, but I truly do. And I don't read, Greg knows this about me, that I'm not much of a reader. Uh, I'm a skim reader. I read this cover to cover. So, congratulations and kudos for getting this practically illiterate person to read a full book. What made you decide to write a book? Because it's a fantastic book.

Dennis Webb: It took me a long time to write it. Okay. It took me about four years to write it [00:22:00] and I wanted to do it right. I couldn't sit there and come home at night and write for hours. How I wrote it was I wrote on vacation. So, I'd be on a cruise and I'd be in the ocean and I'd have my laptop and I'd start writing, and I might work four or five hours when you're out at sea and stuff like that. So instead of going to the casino or the bar, I just went to my laptop and started writing stuff and everything like that.

So, I kind of wrote it away from things, plus I could think better when I'm not in the day-to-day things. So, mostly, I wrote it on vacations and stuff like that when I actually was completely away from work and everything like that. I wrote it because I have some good stories. I have some funny stories. You know, I also have some, uh, principles I wanted to share with people that were interested. That's how I did it. The people that have read it, just say it's great. It's a great book. It's fun, you know. Thank you for your kind comments as well.

Kevin Weitzel: Absolutely. Sincere, by the way.

Greg Bray: Well, Dennis, for those who are interested in getting it, where can they find the book?

Dennis Webb: It's [00:23:00] on Amazon. Everything's on Amazon. From Blue Suits to Green Homes: Retail Principles and Home Building, it's there.

Greg Bray: Well, Dennis, any kind of last words or thoughts of advice about that retail mindset that you'd like to leave with us today?

Dennis Webb: The customer is the most important aspect in the business and the building industry loses sight of that. Profits come before the customer, land and product come before the customer. We've really got to make the customer the main dish, the main item, and just the main thing, really. And if we do that, the customer will win we'll make more profits, and we'll do better, and I think the industry will start to improve.

Greg Bray: Well, Dennis, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and time with us today. We really appreciate it. If somebody wants to connect with you, what's the best way for them to reach out and get in touch?

Dennis Webb: I'm at dwebb@fultonhomes.com. That's my email. Cell phone number, which I'm thrilled to give out, [00:24:00] is area code 602-694-3293.

Kevin Weitzel: Just don't use that cell phone to try to beat him at golf because he's pretty good.

Dennis Webb: I use the customer centric approach on that one as well.

Kevin Weitzel: Oh, let me get enough strokes so I don't feel completely inadequate.

Dennis Webb: Yeah.

Kevin Weitzel: Is that what you do?

Dennis Webb: Yeah.

Kevin Weitzel: Oh, okay. Alright, I gotcha.

Greg Bray: Well, thanks again Dennis, and thank you everybody for listening today to the Builder Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank you.