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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 peer-to-peer panel discussions for construction executives. The opinions are the author’s own.
I often work with construction companies that are making money, but I find it too difficult.
Matt Verderamo
Authorization granted by Construction Consultants
Owners feel burned. Employees feel undervalued. Profitability comes and goes. Hard work turns to nothing.
“It makes more sense to invest in the stock market,” some owners think in their most frustrated moments.
If it’s you or your company, one question to ask yourself is: “What are we doing to win?”
You are an unusual great entrepreneur. You have a great crowd. You’re probably doing great things, even if everything isn’t going as planned right now. It is important for your personal and team morale to remember that you are already winning a lot.
So what are those things you’re doing right? Make the list now. It should take less than five minutes.
But if you don’t make the money you want or you don’t have the culture you want or you don’t have the time for your family you want, ask yourself: What makes us lose? What problems do we encounter again and again? What prevents us from getting where we want to go?
Make another list focusing on what’s going wrong. No more than five minutes.
Now, instead of ignoring them because they’re scary and sad, lean into your losses and get to work on them. Prioritize the list and work on one at a time. Nothing crazy. Time to leave them behind. It’s the only way to start earning more and more.
As an example, one of our clients is a commercial contractor with an incredible field team. They are truly artisans from top to bottom. And they routinely deliver high-quality work ahead of schedule.
Meanwhile, they can hardly ever get a job. They bid on everything but can’t get a scope review. I can’t receive a call. Not unless they are the low bid ones. And they are not a “low bid” type of company. Like I said, they are too good at what they do.
Thus, their camp wins. But his estimating team loses.
Instead of continuing to beat their heads against the wall, ignoring the problem, wondering why they can’t get a job, they identified their biggest weakness and said, “Let’s fix it. We’re too good to stay trapped”.
They began to focus on how to properly sell the value they brought to the field. Through coaching, training and practice, they are getting the highest quality opportunities they have had in their company’s history. We’re still in the process of helping them load their backlog, but they can clearly see the direction they’re headed. They are earning more and more.
Winning principles
There are some principles that great companies follow when trying to improve:
Find out how you will win. It is not enough to start a business. It’s not enough to say you’re different and better than your competition. You actually have to be different and better. And your customers have to believe it.
Explore what makes you different and better. Be very clear about this if you want to build a sustainable and valuable business.
Don’t ignore your weaknesses. If you can spot them, your customers can too. Your reputation is too important to let your pride stop you from addressing them.
Know where you want to go. Knowing your weaknesses without knowing where you want the business to be in one, three, five or 10 years makes it much more difficult to prioritize which weaknesses to address first.
Reduce speed to accelerate. Too many companies are “too busy” to slow down and come together as an executive team to do things like identify and address weaknesses or build a strategic plan. But if you don’t slow down and work on your business, you will suffer much more. Slow down, make a plan and then the speed will come naturally.
