Who is Educating Who?

I’ve always said marketing is education. You need to educate your prospects and clients why to hire you and about your value. Today I want to talk about that value. If you’re educating your prospective and current clients, you should have more value than your competitors. If you’re not educating them, then that is probably one reason you’re stuck in the hamster wheel of low-bid proposals and you cannot stop.

Clients pay more for value; they want that expertise because it is a safer bet. Having an expertise means you are more likely to know what it cost and have the understanding to make it happen. Most clients do low bid because they can not tell the difference between contractors, so they think as long as they pay the least amount possible, they are not getting ripped off. You and I know that isn’t true and a moron could anything cheaper than someone else. Shoot, I could build a bridge across the Atlantic for a few million dollars – it would need repairs immediately because of the shoddy work, lack of expertise, and the fact that I retired early on some island in the Caribbean.

Don’t forget to talk about the client’s cost outside of construction. Do they need to be more hands on with a cheaper contract than with you? If yes, tell them that. One of the advantages of working with my team is that we understand the construction industry, so we do not need your marketing, business development, and executives teams to explain to use the difference between vertical building and infrastructure construction. I had a business developer friend that was forced to hire his president’s choice in marketing firms to rebrand their company. A year later when I checked in with him, he said they are still working on the logo, and he keeps pushing back on the same explaining to them that they are a road builder, that they do not construct buildings. He wasted hours explaining this to them, and they just didn’t grasp the difference.

If you come to the table prepared with knowledge pertaining to your client’s industry, such as understanding infection control because of your expertise in healthcare, then you should be paid more for it. You are the safer option, and you will save them time by not having to educate you about working in a hospital.