Business Building: How Subcontractors Can Wow Their Customers!

Words: George Hedley

Being a contractor is hard as there are lots of moving parts out of your control. On every job there are over 5,762 chances to make a mistake, miss a schedule, or tick off customers. Things aren’t perfect including plans, specifications, field conditions, inspectors, subcontractors, suppliers, deliveries, conflicts, and payments. Customers expect everything to go exactly as scheduled, with perfect quality, no hiccups, or extra costs. And to make things worse, very few contracting companies do anything much better than others. Here are a few ways you can WOW your customer and set your company apart:

1. Man the job! It‘s easy to get jobs you can’t handle - bid them cheap! It’s hard to manage on-time and on-budget professionally managed projects without cost overruns, callbacks, rework, or zero punch-lists. When bidding, be prepared to properly manage and man projects with enough qualified and trained workers. A larger job may take 15 workers or more to maintain the required schedule. But if you only have 20 men on your entire crew, don’t bid it and hope you’ll find enough help when you need them. As a general contractor, we want to hire subcontractors with trained crews lead by fully in-charge accountable foreman. These professionals have ongoing training, proactively communicate well, make decisions quickly without having to call the office, read the complete set of plans, understand codes, know and follow the contracts, runs safe jobs, and don’t leave the jobsites without 100% of punch-list items completed and signed off.

2. Be well financed! I’ve heard many a time, “I’ve got to get paid by Friday or I can’t make payroll.” All contracts include payment procedures for every project. By most contracts, when you invoice by the 25th, you get paid by the following 15th through the 30th of the next month. This is how the construction business works. Contractors who are undercapitalized have an ongoing cash-flow crunch which doesn’t allow them to hire enough help to get their jobs done on-time. This creates stress and causes their businesses to run inefficiently. This makes everyone upset and lose money including the general contractor, construction manager and project owner while it hurts other subcontractors on the job as well. Underfinanced contractors never get a second chance with their customers.

3. Manage the contract! Step one: READ THE CONTRACT! Most contractors never read their contracts thoroughly. Like a dog in heat, they’re so excited to get awarded a job, they’ll sign just about anything! Most contracts include clauses which clearly define the contract requirements including how to get paid, provide proper notice, proceed on changes, present a change order, keep the schedule, get approvals, communicate, attend meetings, proceed when not paid, and handle disputes. When you don’t understand what you are required to do, you will wrongly expect your customer to pay you no matter what.

4. Be Pro-Active! A proactive contractor is on top of every job they have contracts to build. They don’t wait for customers to call. They take responsibility for monitoring all their projects by visiting jobsites early and staying in touch with customers on a regular basis. When they get the call to start, they have already visited the jobsite to see if it is ready and have met with the project’s project manager or superintendent. Being proactive, they have their materials approved, ordered and scheduled for delivery. The foreman has reviewed the plans and specifications, has visited the site and is familiar with the project, created a project plan, and they are ready to man the job as required to maintain the schedule.

5. Manage the jobsite! It would be extra special if contractors and suppliers treated jobsites like their own homes. In your home you don’t leave trash everywhere or leave a project unfinished. You don’t borrow your neighbor’s tools, equipment, materials, phone, or power without asking. You don’t damage other people’s work and sneak away without telling someone you’ll fix it. You don’t create unsafe conditions and leave them exposed for your family members to encounter.

As the general contractor, why do I have to do a walk-thru and make a ‘punch-list’ for the contractors to complete? Can’t they see what’s wrong with their work? This drives me nuts! I expect contractors to be professional, including communicating with their customers daily, holding and reporting weekly safety meetings, doing daily cleanup and timely trash removal, protecting materials and finished surfaces, preparing and finishing your own punch-list, keeping your own set of plans, and doing ‘as-builts’ as you go.

6. Help me! Working relationships with contractors and suppliers is a continuous push and pull versus give and take. On a recent 12 building project we were nearing completion. Each building had been leased and the tenants were waiting to move in. It was obvious we needed the subcontractors to finish faster and get their final inspections. It was an impossible hassle to get them to perform as they had countless excuses why they couldn’t complete their work quicker. These poor attitudes and unacceptable business practices seem to be often the norm in the construction industry. Doesn’t anyone care about anything but themselves? Wowing your customers will generate lots of referrals and repeat business.

General contractors want to use subcontractors who care about their customers’ needs, the overall project goals, and are willing do whatever it takes to make it happen. I am not asking them to lose money or go beyond the call of duty - just be professional do what they are contracted to do. This includes meeting schedules, caring about customers putting safety and quality first, and being accountable to be a pro by planning ahead, being pro-active versus reactive, and making it your goal to be the best contractor in your trade in your market.

On the project I described above, we were the developer and general contractor with a $14,000,000 loan clicking along at $2,300 per day interest. Plus, there were 12 tenants trying to schedule their move-ins. When unorganized and unprofessional, undermanned and under-financed, and under-managed contractors missed their promised deadlines, over 100 people were affected plus extensive costs added up to a very large amount of lost money.

When you’ve got a choice to hire Custom Contracting vs. Pro Construction on a project, you weigh lots of variables. Consider your choices: Custom has seven workers on his team, is a pain to deal with, always late, constantly begs for money, and generally asks for lots of change orders. Pro Construction has 6 professional foreman and 30 trained field workers, is always there when you need them, well-financed, and is fair and timely on legitimate change order requests. If the two bids are only 1 or 2 percent apart, and smart general contractor would award the job to Pro Construction every time. You don’t need the hassle, life is too short, and construction is too hard to save a few bucks and deal with drama and poor performance.

To WOW customers requires you to be more pro-active and less re-active. To WOW is easier than you think as it doesn’t take a lot to set your company ahead of the pack. Try a few of these tips and you will get more work, make more money and have more fun. To help you WOW your customers, email GH@HardhatBizcoach.com to get George’s workbook: ‘Winning Ways To Win More Work!”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
George Hedley CPBC is a certified professional construction business coach, consultant, and popular speaker. He helps contractors build better businesses, grow, profit, develop management teams, improve field production, and get their companies to work. He is the best-selling author of “Get Your Construction Business To Always Make A Profit!” available on Amazon.com. Watch his educational videos on YouTube. To get his free e-newsletter, start a personalized BIZCOACH program, download online courses, or utilize his contractor templates visit: https://constructionbusinesscoaching.com or E-mail GH@HardhatBizcoach.com.

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