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Matt Verderamo is a consultant with Well Built Construction Consulting, a Baltimore-based firm that provides strategic consulting, facilitation services and panel discussions for construction executives. The opinions are the author’s own.
If you’re bidding on jobs, never getting feedback, and only winning when you’re the highest bidder, then you’re working way harder than you need to.
Most construction companies have strong estimating engines, a technically talented team that knows the details and can bid, but they can’t figure out why they’re still not getting a seat at the negotiating table.
In my experience, clients won’t negotiate with you unless you’ve done two things:
- Built credibility that shows you can actually do the job.
- He established a real relationship with them.
I’d like to share with you how to do both of these things so that your estimation engine can run more smoothly, burn less heat, and achieve greater efficiency in the form of higher win percentages.
Build credibility
If I love hanging out with you, but I think you’re a terrible contractor, I’ll never award you a project.
So as much as everyone says, “relationships are everything,” this well-worn mantra is missing a critical component: relationships are everything when they’re built on trust that you can get the job done.
So whether you’re looking for a new potential client or expanding your account within an existing one, you need to make sure the client feels 100% confident that you can handle the types of projects that do with them
Matt Verderamo
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The best contractors do this by creating an extensive presentation that showcases their complete portfolio of projects and the team members who were part of their construction.
Then, when they meet with their prospects, they don’t go through the whole presentation, they ask a bunch of questions:
- Describe a contractor you trust to build your work and why.
- What do you expect from a subcontractor who builds these types of projects?
- Can you tell me about the last successful partnership you had with a contractor?
Based on the prospect’s responses, the contractor can enter the pitch with a laser focus, showing only projects or resumes that directly respond to the prospect’s responses, such as:
- Showing similar completed projects.
- Speaking of successful partnerships.
- Demonstrating your unique skills and abilities.
If nothing else, by the end of the meeting, the prospect knows you ask great questions, listen and care about their needs, and have repeatedly delivered on other projects.
This in turn helps build trust that you will be reliable and establishes the credibility you need.
Some other ideas for building credibility include:
- Publication of projects on social networks.
- Have a professional website.
- Share case studies of similar projects carried out.
- Provide drone footage of completed projects and their facilities.
- Bring experienced superintendents and foremen to your sales meetings.
- Have your owner send an introductory message about the company’s history.
Build relationships
Therefore, trust and credibility are crucial. But being nice can be even more important. If I think you are the best masonry contractor in the state from a skills perspective, but I hate dealing with you and your people because you are mean, nasty, dishonest and treat me like the enemy, never I will do. negotiate work with you.
To be less dramatic: If I know you’re credible, but I don’t really know if I want to be around you for 18 months until the project is finished, I’m less likely to pick up the phone and make sure you get a certain project done.
That’s why it’s so important to build real, authentic, and mutually respectful relationships if you want to negotiate the job.
The good news is that this part is easy and can be fun:
- Host a relationship discovery meeting with the prospect.
- Ask questions, talk about what it would be like to work together, feel each other out.
- Check back two months later with lunch for the office.
- Show up again two months later with bagels and coffee.
- Call their people when you need nothing.
- Remember things like their relatives’ names, the dog’s name, where they got married.
- Repeat steps 3 through 6 forever.
- Work to become a true friend.
In six months, you can go from not knowing each other to working on a budding friendship. Along the way, if you’re building credibility as I described above, eventually a specific project that fits your niche will materialize.
When you do, the prospect will have you on top, feel confident that you can do the job, and be excited to negotiate with you and have the opportunity to work together.
It’s not complicated, but it works.
