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OPINION
It’s time to win more work
Prioritize building relationships with clients and potential clients to build trust, credibility, and alignment for better outcomes.
I talk to growing contractors every day. One of the most common complaints I hear from them is: “We drop everything to bid these GCs/owners and then they never call us back! What jerks.”
In my time as a vice president of pre-construction and sales, I used to think the same. Until I realized it’s not the GC/owner’s fault I dropped everything I was doing to bid their work! It was my fault. I was expecting my dedication to somehow turn into calls back and project awards, but that doesn’t make sense. Our competitors were doing the same thing as me. I was a commodity. I finally realized I had to do a better job qualifying prospects. You see, if you don’t really know a prospect, and they don’t really know you, then you shouldn’t ever expect a call back. Because before you can build a project together, you need to:
It’s really that simple. And you can’t do any of that simply by bidding a job. You can, however, do it by having a good “relationship meeting.” I can pretty much guarantee that if you make a habit of holding relationship meetings before engaging with new clients – or even reengaging with existing clients – then, the results will speak for themselves: more sales, better win percentage, fewer “ghosted” bids. Here are the four tenets of the relationship meeting: 1. Business alignment (market, size, geography). First things first: Do our businesses truly align? Some questions you should be asking the prospect are: What markets do you work in? (Multi-family, institutional, higher education, etc.)
Matt Verderamo, MS
Build trust
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Prove credibility
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Make sure you align with each other
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THE ZWEIG LETTER FEBRUARY 12, 2024, ISSUE 1524
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