DBS Group’s intentional focus on creating, maintaining customer-focused relationships is key to growth

Cheryl Hentz

Contributor

May 26, 2025

ONALASKA – Less than a year and a half after a ribbon-cutting ceremony at its new Onalaska headquarters at 200 French Road, DBS Group has already found the need to expand, adding another 3,605 square feet to its existing 6,300-square-foot facility.

DBS Group President/CEO Chris Walters said the expansion will allow the company to grow by approximately another 20 employees and provide additional office space, collaborative work areas and additional amenities to support the firm’s expanding design-build construction operations.

“We are fortunate to have an extraordinary team with a relentless commitment to customers and quality,” Walters said at the groundbreaking earlier this month. “We’ve continued to attract and retain exceptional talent, serve outstanding customers and take on exciting projects throughout the region. The Onalaska office expansion is the next step in supporting our team and delivering value to those we serve.”

All part of the plan

Walters said that DBS Group has had a plan for controlled growth, and the Onalaska building was a part of that. 

“But to be honest, we experienced growth over the last couple of years a little bit quicker than anticipated, and we filled it in faster than we thought,” he said. 

Over the past two to two and a half years, Walters said the firm has hired nearly 25 new employees.

“Not all of those are in the Onalaska office – some are in our Rochester office; some of them are in the field – but it was to the extent that we ran out of space in Onalaska and needed to expand,” he said. “This expansion should give us some room for future planned, continued controlled growth over the next several years.”

Walters said DBS Group currently has about 25 people in its Onalaska office, about 10 in its Rochester office and approximately 20 people out in the field – giving them 55 team members in total.

“But we’re anticipating continued hiring and continued growth over the next several years,” he said. “So, besides adding onto our Onalaska office, we have a piece of land under contract in Rochester, and we’ll likely build (on that) in 2027. That will facilitate continued growth in that office, as well.”

‘Controlled growth is key’

Though many companies are at a growth standstill because of a stagnant economy, Walters said it isn’t affecting DBS Group. 

He said this is due, in large part, to the firm’s decision to focus on controlled growth.

“As a company, what we’ve agreed to is that we want to have controlled growth as long as we can find really good people to bring into the company,” he said. “I would say that’s one of the things we’ve done the best in the last four or five years – is bring in really good people here. We’ve been working really hard to bring the right team members into the company – people who are really good at what they do and who are laser-focused on taking care of our customers.”

Success in controlled growth, Walters said, hinges on finding the right candidate for the job.

“(Finding) somebody that is technically qualified – that’s a small piece for us because we can always train and teach people in whatever technical capacity they’re serving the company,” he said. “But we want people who have a good work ethic, who are motivated and are (all-around) good people. We started as just a small, family run business, and even though we’re growing, we plan for it to continue to feel like that small, family run business.” 

Walters said DBS’s intentional focus on creating and maintaining customer-focused relationships is key to its controlled growth. 

“As we talk to potential team members, we ask them questions around all those customer service-related things, so we have a good understanding of how they’re going to interact with the customer – and even with the project owner, from a customer service standpoint,” he said. “There’s also customer service from an internal standpoint, which is also very important for us because we do design and construction.” 

Deciding upon the best candidates for the team, Walters said, requires time during the interview process – noting it’s not unusual for them to have multiple applicant interviews so applicants know everything about the company and vice versa. 

He said DBS uses a search firm that identifies potential team members, but also has an in-house HR referral program – which provides financial incentives for those employees who refer potential new hires.  

“We’ve grown by 30 employees since starting the company 10 years ago, and about two-thirds of those hired have come from that internal HR referral program,” he said. “It’s worked really well for us, and we’ll continue to push that as we continue to grow.”

Taking the leap

Walters said DBS Group LLC started on Aug. 5, 2015, when he and several other colleagues decided to venture out on their own after their former employer – TCI, a 40-year-old design-build firm headquartered in La Crosse – shut down.

“When that happened, myself and several other longtime team members who had worked together at TCI decided to start DBS Group,” he said. “We were really fortunate in that there were some long-term customers at TCI who saw the value in the team members that we brought into DBS Group, and they were willing to give us a chance.”

Even though DBS was a new company, Walters said it had seasoned team members, which customers recognized.

“We were fortunate they gave us a shot right out of the gate when we started the company, and we kind of took off from there,” he said.

During the first several years, Walters said, there wasn’t a strong desire to grow DBS.

For the first full year, he said the firm generated about $20 million in revenue – which continued for the first five to six years.

“Everybody was pretty content with that,” he said, “but what happened was, we were not only experiencing repeat business from existing customers, but they were also referring us to people. So, there was a bit of an organic growth that took place about five years ago.”

Walters said leadership realized if they wanted to stay at that level of sales, “we were eventually going to have to start saying ‘no’ to somebody, which I was not an advocate of.”

“You can say ‘no’ to somebody once, but you may not get the opportunity to say ‘no’ again, because they may not ask you,” he said. “So, five years ago is when we became more open to the idea of growing the company in a controlled basis.”

Diversification = long-term success

During those first several years, Walters said DBS’s work mainly focused on grocery, retail and general commercial construction such as daycares, banks, car dealerships and office buildings. 

“We’re really good at all of those project types,” he said. “But I expressed some concern that we needed to proactively diversify the markets we were in, so that if there were some kind of economic downturn, we had other markets that we could lean on to weather the storm and continue to grow.”

In conjunction with the decision to grow in a controlled capacity, Walters said they also made a concerted effort to become more involved in the senior living and multi-family markets.

To aid that venture, he said, DBS opened its Rochester office in July 2021.

Walters said with the new office, they hired Jeff Anneke, who focused specifically on growing DBS in those markets. 

Anneke, Walters said, now serves as DBS Group’s regional vice president.

“We’ve grown market share, sales, revenue, project types and markets that we’ve always been involved in, but we’ve also added some new project types that we’ve become pretty good at, too,” he said. “That’s collectively what is helping us continue to grow in a controlled manner.”

Walters said DBS is on track for this year’s annual sales to reach a little more than $100 million.

“The intent is to continue to have controlled growth over the next several years and keep it going from there,” he said. 

Walters said though the DBS team doesn’t have expertise in everything, “one of the things we’ve really been focused on is being diversified and being able to do well in a half dozen different markets and project types.”

“Every market has its ups and downs, depending on what’s happening with the current economic and political climate,” he said. “So, we don’t want to be pigeon-holed in any one specific market, because that can be risky for a company like us.”

Walter said the firm’s success is also based on having “really good customers” who want to work with them, “really good team members” who can do the work and the referrals that existing and repeat customers bring to the firm.

“From the customer’s perspective, I think they like our project delivery,” he said. “We’re not your normal construction company in that we have an in-house design team.”

As a design-build construction manager and general contractor in various commercial construction markets, Walters said DBS Group manages building projects from conception to completion.

Community involvement, 10-year anniversary

A proud member of the West Central Wisconsin region, Walters said DBS does what it can to support its communities through donations, sponsorships and partnerships.

One of the company’s favorite collaborations, he said, involved the creation of the Community Building Fund – which was initiated during the COVID-19 pandemic in partnership with the La Crosse Area Chamber of Commerce, the county and several contractors and larger subcontractors.

Together, Walters said the partners started and grew a $275,000 grant fund that small businesses could tap into to help them weather the storm during the COVID era. 

“Being involved in the community is one thing that’s very important to us,” he said. “We’re pretty fortunate to live in the areas where we live and work, so we like to give back. So, we have a couple of community initiatives that we’re working on as well.”

As the company’s 10th anniversary approaches, Walters said the team plans to do a couple of things to highlight the milestone, including an internal celebration set for Aug. 5.

He said there will also be a community celebration in Onalaska and another one in Rochester.

Details on those, Walters said, will be released in the coming weeks.

“We’ve got to get the Onalaska expansion done, so we’re excited for that, and then we’ll get the land purchased for a future Rochester office,” he said. “We’re looking at all of those things to kind of cap off our 10th anniversary.”