Selling $1M+ Construction Deals: A Step-By-Step System
Get useful feedback, negotiate work, and build your business. Just do these 2 things really well:
If you’re bidding work, never getting feedback, and only winning when you’re low, 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 crank out bids—but can’t figure out why they’re still not negotiating work!
In my experience, clients won’t negotiate with you unless you’ve done 2 things:
Built credibility that you can do the work
Made a real relationship with them
Today, I’d like to share with you how to do both of those things so that your estimating engine can run more smoothly, burn less heat, and achieve a much greater efficiency (in the form of a higher win rate).
Any Subcontractor or GC can do it with their clients, and you can start today.
So, let’s talk about how.
Building Credibility
If I love hanging out with you but think you’re a terrible contractor, I’m never going to award you a project.
So, as much as everyone says, “relationships are everything”, they’re missing a critical component:
Relationships are everything when they are based on trust that you can get the work done.
Therefore, whether you’re pursuing a potential new client or expanding your account within an existing one, you need to make sure they feel 100% confident you can perform the types of projects you are bidding with them.
The best way I’ve ever seen Contractors do this is to create an extensive presentation showing their full portfolio of projects and the team members who were a part of building them.
Then, when they meet with their prospective clients, they do not go through the entire presentation but rather ask a ton of questions:
“Describe a contractor you trust to build your work and why?”
“What do you expect from a Subcontractor building this type of project?”
“Can you tell me about the last successful partnership you had with a contractor?”
Based on the prospect’s answers, the Contractor goes into the presentation with a laser focus, only showing the projects or resumes that directly respond to the prospects’ answers.
They show similar completed projects
They talk about successful partnerships
They show off their unique skills and capabilities
By the end of the meeting, the prospect knows:
You ask great questions
You listen and care about their needs
You have delivered repeatedly on other projects
It gives them an insane amount of trust that you will be reliable and builds the credibility you need.
Some other ideas for building credibility include:
Posting projects on social media
Having a super awesome website
Sharing case studies of similar completed projects
Drone footage of completed projects and/or your facility
Bringing experienced Supers/Foremen into your sales meetings
Having your owner send an introductory message about the company’s history
Making Relationships
If I believe you are the best Masonry Contractor in the state from a skills perspective, but I hate dealing with you and your people—because you’re mean and nasty and dishonest and treat me like the enemy—then I’m never going to negotiate work with you.
To be less dramatic: If I know you’re credible, but I really don’t know if I’d like to be around you for 18 months until the project is over, I’m less likely to pick up the phone and make sure you get a certain project!
This is why it’s so important to build real, awesome relationships if you want to negotiate work.
This part is really easy:
Set up a relationship-discovery meeting with the prospect
Ask questions, talk about what it would be like to work together, feel each other out
Show up again 2 months later with lunch for the office
Show up again 2 months later with bagels and coffee
Call their people when you don’t need anything
Remember their family members’ names, dog’s names, etc.
Repeat steps 3 through 6 forever
Work your way into being a real friend
In 6 months, you can go from not knowing each other to working on a budding friendship.
Along the way, if you’re building credibility like I described above, eventually, a specific project that fits your niche will come up.
When it does, the prospect will have you top of mind, feel confident you can do the work, and feel excited to negotiate it with you and have the chance to work together.
It’s not complicated, but dang does it work.
Spark Notes:
The best part about building credibility and making relationships is that your competition probably isn’t doing it! They’re just bidding work like crazy and getting pissed when they don’t get it—just like you used to do.
But not any more.
Now, you’re out their building credibility and making relationships, and you are setting yourself apart from anyone even remotely close to you.
Don’t forget:
People do work with people they like.
But they need to make sure you can actually do the work, too.
So, if you make both happen, you’ll be negotiating work in no time.
Go start tomorrow. No excuses.
And if you need help guaranteeing your success, we’d be happy to coach you through it.
