Let's do business…

In a recent article post on Construction Marketing Ideas’ blog, the author discussed the need to have good communications with prospects and clients. When asking clients what they value most, many responded with quality, keeping promises, and complete, accurate communications.

This is a given for many of us who have been in business for a few years, especially if you’re in marketing or business development. One thing the author adds, is that “when you are making your presentation, your audience knows you have the technical capability to do the job — they want to assess whether they would enjoy working with you.”

This is HUGE. Are you well liked? I remember attending a presentation for a business referral group I belonged to simply entitled “Are You Fun to Refer To?”. If you are a pain to deal with or just boring, people do not enjoy doing business with you and your company. Think about who you deal with each week, do you like your vendors? I thought so. If you have a vendor you do not like usually it is because your boss requires you to use them or that vendor offers something no one else can.

In a recent conversation with a client that primarily does public road construction, we talked about customer service. The next question was why do they care about customer service in public work since it comes down to lowest bidder. They said that their committment to customer service on the public, lowest bidder side of business builds their reputation in the private sector. They mentioned a New Orleans contractor that only does public work and everyone in the area hates working with his company because every job has numerous work change orders and at least one lawsuit. He gets the job because he is generally the lowest bidder and they are actually working on changing the procedure so lowest bid is not the only criteria.

Besides their reputation, our client also mentioned that excellent customer service just makes life easier. They do not have to field phone calls from screaming people or spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers just to get their money. Our client proudly stands by their name and enjoys having a good reputation for good, honest hard work in the market.