Why contractors should hire builders who can sell

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Hiring a business development manager is a massive decision for most construction companies. It’s a straightforward function and the return on investment can be difficult to justify.

Also, many employers wonder: Shouldn’t my personal estimator be doing the BD anyway?

But a good business development manager can be a game changer for an organization. With the right tools, skills and tenacity, they can support a healthy pipeline and give you much more confidence in your ability to close work.

So what should you consider when hiring a BD manager? Here are some thoughts.

Why Builders Outsell Sellers on BD

I’m probably very biased in this opinion, but if I were considering hiring a business development resource within my construction business, I’d lean heavily toward hiring a construction professional who needs to learn how to sell over a salesperson who needs to learn how to build.

Buyers in this industry, whether you’re a general contractor or a sub, almost always expect to deal with someone they see as credible.

It is possible to find a salesperson with no construction experience that your prospects will trust, but it is much more difficult. Learning everything you need to know to speak with authority in construction is a difficult task.

Meanwhile, sales and business development skills are so hard to find in the construction industry that some simple tools and training can transform a builder into a salesperson who is better than most other salespeople out there.

So I’d rather you know how to build, speak credibly about the industry, and learn the sales skills you need than the other way around. This is for a few main reasons:

• Builders quickly bridge the trust gap. A superintendent-turned-BD manager who can draw a phasing plan on the whiteboard, talk about coordinating MEPs, or explain how they’ll protect operations during a live renovation establishes authority in minutes. This accelerates movement to scope, budget and schedule, where bids are won.
• Builders qualify better. Builders understand what makes projects risky: bad logistical plans, no path to negotiate, impossible phases, or “free standing” (as opposed to precon) forever. They walk away from activities that aren’t a good fit and redistribute energy to better opportunities.
• Builders keep their hands clean. Because they think like builders, they trade on early assumptions and fact-check and set up projects to earn points through purchase and execution. Your promise in the sales meeting lives up to operations.

When a first sales hire still makes sense

There are exceptions. I’ve seen companies hire a sharp salesperson and teach them how to build. It can work.

A gifted salesperson can open doors, organize a search, and maintain momentum when a team is stretched thin. It works especially well when you have a highly technical team that can be there along the way to support the sales effort.

There are situations where a classically trained salesperson shines:

• Highly programmatic work with clear playbooks (eg multisite updates) where access and cadence matter more than deep technical nuance.
• Long business activities between multiple stakeholders where orchestration, storytelling and patience are the main game.
• Top of the thin funnel where you simply don’t have enough early meetings to justify a builder’s time in BD.

Even in these cases, it still helps to pair that person with a technical lead early and create a two-in-the-box movement: the salesperson opens the doors and manages the cadence; the builder leads the technical discovery and models the scope.

Considerations for recruitment

If you’re hiring a DB manager, make the expectation of the role explicit. Recruiting needs to own the sales process and make sure the rest of the company supports them to stack a healthy pipeline and ultimately close deals. They should lead, manage and hold regular meetings with estimating, pre-construction and operations staff.

In the interview, I suggest asking the candidate specific questions. For example:

• “Tell me how you would do a tenant improvement of a three-story living environment while keeping operations running.”
• “Tell me about a time you regained margin after award. What changed? What did you do?”
• “In a first meeting with a homeowner’s representative, what are your five discovery questions?”

You can also add a practical exercise. Give them a brief excerpt of the request for proposals and 15 minutes to outline a preliminary approach and agenda for the meeting. You will see how they think, talk and sequence decisions.

Then be sure to watch for red flags, such as excessive use of sales jargon, a willingness to promise “unlimited budget” with no path to deliver, or no opinions on margin discipline.

bottom line

In construction, credibility is the shortest path to trust, and trust is the shortest path to granting defensible margins. You can teach a builder the basics of sales faster than you can teach a pure salesperson how to think like a builder.

Hire builders who can sell, equip them with a simple sales system and maintain the cadence. You will win more meetings, more credibility and more victories that you really want to achieve.