Featuring Jayson Shortt, Owner, Desert King Windows
Desert King Windows is a family-owned, A+ BBB-accredited windows and doors contractor running roughly 1,000 jobs and $15 million in annual revenue across Phoenix and Las Vegas.¹ By any standard, this was already a healthy operation with a strong reputation — Phoenix at 4.7★ across 377 Google reviews, Las Vegas at 4.7★ across 181.
But owner Jayson Shortt and his team had three challenges that mature contractors tend to share:
Jayson’s team had genuinely good intentions. As Jayson later put it on the one-month onboarding call:
“I thought our team had a system down — but you guys are kicking our ***** when asking for reviews. We have gotten multiple reviews pretty much every day, it seems.”
— Jayson Shortt, Owner, Desert King Windows
Good intentions don’t scale. Systems do.
Desert King also wasn’t looking to add operational complexity.
Like most contractors at this stage, Jayson didn’t have time to learn another platform or task another team member with a new workflow.
“I just don’t have the bandwidth to take anything on at the moment.”
What they needed was a system that would run reliably in the background — across both markets, hundreds of jobs a quarter, peak season and slow season alike.
By partnering with gFour Marketing, Desert King implemented a Premium program with three mechanisms running quietly behind their existing operation.
Every completed Desert King customer receives a tangible appreciation gift after installation — our delicious cookies.
It’s a real touchpoint, not a discount code or generic thank-you email. That gift drives reciprocity at scale. Across 10 months, Desert King customers have sent 237 personal email replies back to the brand — many of them sparking direct repeat-purchase or referral conversations.
gFour’s nurture sequences keep Desert King in front of every past customer for months and years after the install — not just for 90 days.
The numbers reflect that customers are reading these emails. Three customer-reply examples from a single month illustrate the point:
Instead of relying on the install crew or office team to remember the ask, gFour runs a coordinated review-ask and referral-incentive cadence — including a virtual gift card program that any past customer can pass to a friend.
That structure is exactly what closed the review-velocity gap that worried Jayson at the start.
After 10 months on the gFour program, Desert King’s outcomes look like this:
No more going cold after the install — customers are coming back for more jobs.
That review velocity is what closes the visibility gap against bigger competitors.
After only 10 months in the program, Desert King is seeing a 9x ROI that is projected to continue to compound the longer they spend in the program.
Every month, the program is now:
All done for the Desert King team.
The clearest illustration of what relationship marketing looks like over time is one specific Desert King customer:
This customer was activated into the program on August 27, 2025. Came back for a second job in November 2025. Came back for a third job in March 2026.
Three jobs from one past customer in roughly eight months — exactly the pattern gFour’s nurture system is designed to produce.
A few transferable lessons from the Desert King story:
Healthy isn’t the same as systematic.
Desert King already had a strong rating in every market they served. What they didn’t have was a system generating reviews, referrals, and repeats at the cadence their competitors were generating them. The same is true of most established contractors at this size.
The first 90 days are just the start.
Desert King’s ROI started at 7x in the first four months.
The overall ROI at 10 months was 9x.
Asking for reviews and referrals is not the same as having a system to ask.
Jayson’s team genuinely thought they had this covered. Looking at the 290-review increase, they didn’t — not because they were lazy, but because the install crew, sales team, and office team have so many other things to do.
Done-for-you, executed by the gFour team, is what closed the gap.
Past customers and referrals are higher-quality leads than cold ones.
gFour flagged repeat-customer appointments that were closing at materially higher rates than cold leads. For a contractor running a $15K average ticket, every percentage point of close-rate lift compounds quickly.
In theory, Desert King could have built and staffed all of this internally. In practice, two operational realities make that hard for any contractor at this scale:
Done-for-you execution means gFour helps take one thing off their plate — and we can coordinate with your existing marketing efforts.
Desert King Windows didn’t reinvent its operation, change its product, or add a new ad channel. The team kept doing what they’ve always done well — installing high-quality energy-efficient windows for homeowners.
What changed was the infrastructure behind the customer relationship.
A done-for-you system, running quietly in the background, turning every completed job into the start of a longer relationship that produces another job, a referral, or a fresh 5-star review.
For contractors who want to tap into their past-customer database, that’s the pattern relationship marketing is built to produce.
If you’re running a home improvement business with an average ticket in five figures and a past-customer list with hundreds or thousands of names on it, the math probably works. Book a strategy call, and we’ll walk through your current review velocity, repeat-business rate, and what a relationship marketing system could produce in your specific markets.
Schedule an appointment or consultation with us today to get started.
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