Interconnected construction marketing decisions: The virtues of sharing rather than selling

Would you think it rational travel to an all-day non-profit association board meeting event at your own expense, paying a couple of hundred dollars for a train ride and $300 for a night at a hotel -- without even expecting the tiniest amount of business now or in the foreseeable future?

Well, I did that this week, participating in a Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) chapter executive session.  I learned a lot, developing relationship with other industry leaders.

However, the event also garnered several thousand dollars in unexpected sales.

A couple of days before the event, I sent out an email to our Toronto-area readers, inviting them to join in the previous evening's meeting where Holly Bolton described how to make the best use of leads groups.  At least a couple of our publication's readers joined us for the event.

One couldn't make it -- but said a colleague in another division of the organization wanted to advertise.  The order for several thousand dollars in additional sales arrived on Friday, as I attended the director's meeting.

This experience reminds me that the greatest business often arises when you least expect it, but usually correlates with positive community spirit, initiative, sharing, and generosity.

In case you are wondering, there is a reason this approach works so well for a sales and marketing perspective.

If you are thoughtful, you can demonstrate your competence in a non-intrusive manner.  You can also demonstrate that you care about your community, industry and your clients' (and potential clients) real needs.  In essence, you build trust -- and with trust, you achieve persona branding success -- and that translates to comfortable business.

As a bonus, it is much easier to plan a couple of days of community service volunteering than hard-rock selling.  I mean, what is more enjoyable:  Working with other like-minded volunteers on a higher cause, or pounding the phone, trying to get someone, anyone, to return your call where you rattle off a sales pitch your victims have no interest in hearing.

The advice here is simple:  Spend much more time giving and much less selling; market your causes and support the interests of your clients' organizations, and you'll end up selling a whole lot more than by pushing where you are not wanted.

(That is why I mandate that our company's sales reps spend at least 25 per cent of their time on community service.  If they want to spend more, I won't mind.  It pays.)

Buying or selling: The decision-maker's perspective

Today I spent several hours on telephone conference call meetings.  We were discussing choices regarding the websites for our imminent U.S. market rebuilding.  Much of the time, we focused on a well-crafted and designed proposal from a service contractor who proposed to deliver the new websites, in significantly enhanced format to our current sites, at a price approaching $10,000.

I didn't have a problem with the quote, the price, or the website developer's expertise, talents and relationship with one of the company's key contractors.  But equally I knew that our entire U.S. project depends on keeping costs rock-bottom low.  By the end of the afternoon, I had confirmed that we indeed have the legal right to "clone" existing sites (developed by the same organization seeking the $10,000 contract) for a price tag in the hundreds, rather than thousands, of dollars.

In fairness, we'll go back to the contractor and ask for a re-quote based on the simple "clone" model -- no extras, no goodies, no bells and whistles.  I'll probably be willing to pay more than the rock-bottom copy-cat service price for the work, and I want to allow our contractor to maintain good relationships with the service provider.

Meanwhile, almost coincidentally, I received a strange mass market email proposal from another service provider, who purports to have a list of more than 100,000 names of contractors and others, and who also designs websites and the like.  It turns out that the contractor who works with us closely -- and recommended the $10,000 contractor -- has had some previous business dealings with the other service provider, who I know from earlier communications.  Neither has much love lost for each other.

In this conversation, the competing service provider suggested an elegant and inexpensive solution to our website building process.  We could develop a scalable system with original designs and the like and all the bells and whistles, for a base fee of $1,500 plus $300 per additional website.  The system would be relatively easy to administer.  Much less expensive, of course.

But could I accept his proposal?  I need to live and respect the other people in this story.  The individual closest to me and my business doesn't have fond feelings for the service provider (and the feelings are reciprocated.)  

Of course, I can take this person's suggestion and then prepare a RFQ, and post it publicly on an international service like elance.com.  Or I can use my existing contractor who helped produce clones of the original site for a fee of about $200.00 each.  

Decisions.  Decisions.  Clearly, as well, the choices I'm making here are not shaped entirely by the good will and initiative of the company's employees or contractors, my own experience, and alternative service providers' recommendations.  Price is a factor.  If the original $10,000 proposal had been more like $3,000, I might have said:  "Let's do it -- it is more expensive (perhaps 50 per cent more expensive) than the lowest cost alternative; and may not even be the best choice technologically . . .but we know and respect the supplier and wish for a seamless experience."

But $3,000 is not $10,000 -- and the possibility of achieving a higher quality result, at least in theory, for $2,000 or even $1,500 remains in place if we are prepared to do some research, take some risk of failure or a bad selection decision, and possibly the need to ruffle some feathers.

I share these perspectives because they show the challenge of virtually any marketing or selling initiative.  You can't just "rely on relationships" and you may in fact be setting a fair price for your services (I don't doubt that for many businesses, the $10,000 proposed fee is quite reasonable).  You may be frustrated because you can't talk directly with the decision-maker or, even more frustrated because, when you speak with the decision-maker, he considers the relationships with staff, contractors, and your reputation -- and you can't overcome this baggage.  You may be in a situation where you provide enough information to cause the potential customer to ditch the original proposal, and take your information to achieve lower costs -- with work done by third parties.  (In other words, you've acted as a totally unpaid consultant.)

I don't think I had intentions of behaving unethically or playing people off against each other this afternoon.  In fact I felt quite stressed by the conflicts and would have liked to find a simpler solution.  Nevertheless, when I am spending company money, I want to be sure we are receiving the best value -- and at the end of the day, I felt that "none of the above" applied to the people who were trying to sell me their services.  We'll get the job done, but not the way the marketing script-writers had hoped.

The balancing act

Yesterday, driving to work, and listening to a CD I purchased from another marketing guru (who said he got his ideas from elsewhere, but didn't identify their source, so I'm not going to identify the guru here), I heard an interesting idea that our own business uses effectively. Yet, as I listened to it, I also appreciated the paradox -- the contractor who uses this business model will likely be so busy he won't use it very often because it is TOO effective.

In the example, the anonymous plumbing contractor does a great job in solving an immediate and urgent crisis for a respected public speaker -- saving the client acute embarrassment. After completing the project, the plumber visits the client and asks if he wouldn't mind helping spread the word about the plumber's good work. The enthusiastic client responds "sure".

The plumber then invites the speaker to provide a list of the people he knows in the community, and a copy of a letter explaining the client's great experience with the plumber. The plumber asks the speaker for permission to send this letter -- under the speakers' own signature -- to the contact list provided by the speaker. ("We'll do all the work, in preparing the letters, stuffing and folding the envelopes," the plumber says).

And so the plumber sends out the letters as the first part of a direct marketing campaign -- a campaign with real clout because of the endorsement from the speaker/community leader.

I'm quite confident that a campaign like this would work very well. But you won't see it happen often in practice. The reason is apparent to most of us -- most great plumbers are busy enough as it is and the response they would generate from this kind of marketing would overwhelm their resources and service capacities. In some cases marketing can be too effective -- In this case, you would need a team of journeymen plumbers trained and ready to work to your high standards, and some care in planning how to handle the response from a strong endorsement.

Nevertheless, if you are in any contracting or professional service business, please consider the power and effectiveness of the satisfied client endorsement letter. And note its potential applications for virtually any construction business and the allied professions.

For example, if you are a consulting engineer with expertise in hospital work, if you have a letter from a really satisfied hospital client, who belongs to a trade association and is respected by other clients within that association (say your client is the president of the association!), and if you could get a direct letter of reference/referral and target it to association members in communities where your practice has offices or could serve effectively), I think you can see how this kind of letter would accelerate interest and build powerful referral business for you. And if you are a general contractor, imagine the clout of the organized referral letter distributed to your satisfied client's contacts within your regional business community.

Just remember, do this right, and you won't need to market very often. And note this stuff only works if you do your job really well -- always, I emphasize, the most important cornerstone for successful marketing.

BTW, I'll be happy to send you a sample copy of a referral endorsement letter we use in our own business. Just email me at buckshon@constructionnnrgroup.com.