Businesses cannot succeed in the long run by staying stagnant. If a company isn’t moving forward it will eventually fall behind its competitors. This can translate to growing your team, expanding your company vision, or simply increasing your profit goals. The steps to growing your preconstruction business are:
- Build a great team
- Spread the good word
- Exceed your customers’ expectations
- Embrace technology
- Choose the right clients
Build a Great Team and Invest in Them
It’s impossible to grow your business without great people to do it with you. No matter the size of the company you will need multiple departments. This means you need to find your employees’ strengths. Where best do they fit in? How do they help the company grow? If your preconstruction team only has Senior Estimators, it’s probably time to hire some Junior Estimators. Let the juniors learn from the seniors and vice versa. Chances are they have different strengths which can benefit your team.
If you are struggling with attracting new talent, read our How to Attract and Hire the Best Talent e-book.
Someone fresh out of college might be really savvy with technology but might need some help when submitting a bid. If you are lucky, you already have some of these hard-working, goal-oriented, and culture-driven people on your team. Use what you know about them to attract similar talent. Assess what personality traits make for a good employee on your team by seeing what is already working for you.
Once you find the right people, you want to keep them, right? An average of 40% of employees in the U.S. leave their jobs within the first year because of poor training. You spend the time to find the right people, you have to put even more effort to help them grow once they are on your team.
Want to read more about investing in your team? View the Importance of Training.
Get the Word Out
No one will know how great your team is unless you tell them or experience it for themselves. Your customers are your best salespeople…whether they know it or not. They have firsthand experience working with you and know how your team operates on projects. Your clients know if you make empty promises or actually deliver on-time, quality work. Also, let’s not forget how small the construction industry is. Everyone knows everyone, so most likely owners will talk to other owners about how their projects are going. Give them something positive to talk about!
Give Great Customer Service
When something goes wrong, don’t ignore the problem. Whether it be with technology or actual construction on the job site, you want to be prompt in addressing the issue. Let the client know you understand their frustration and will do your best to provide a solution ASAP. If your team made the mistake, accept the blame. No one wants to play the blame game—they’d rather have the project done correctly. Accountability is huge in any company and comes into play when overcoming issues or helping clients in general. Be available and be receptive to their feedback to elevate your team’s customer service.
Embrace Technology
Technology isn’t going anywhere, in fact, it’s only growing. The AEC industry is slow to change but it is changing. Don’t be so unwilling to change that your team doesn’t win a project because your estimate is pieced together, and you can’t remember where the numbers come from. This is true for internal training and team collaboration technology too. Investing in employees and getting new ones up to speed will be much easier if you have onboarding lessons they can listen to at their own pace, videos for how to excel in their career, and a learning path to explain company history. This is all made more accessible with technology. Embrace the efficiency technology can bring your team and find what to tackle first.
Choose the Right Clients
Not many companies can turn away business, but they can have parameters around their preferred clients. Create an ideal client profile of characteristics that would be a good fit for your company. It could be an industry you specialize in, a size of a company, or a region. Beyond those, consider culture. Who shares your company’s vision for innovation? Who in your industry is passionate about the same things you are? You don’t want just a client name; you want a partner. Someone that will join you in living out your company’s values.
To grow your business, it is pivotal to choose the right people, choose the right clients, be a rockstar when problems arise, and don’t let your team get left in the dust because you are scared of change.
