For Contractors, things are definitely picking up in 2014. McGraw-Hill Construction forecasts that total construction starts could rise by 9% next year to $555 billion, led by a solid housing market and improved opportunities in commercial building. Non-building sectors, especially electrical utilities, could be drag on starts in the coming years.
“It’s another step along the road to recovery, but on the painful to frustrating side at times,” says Robert Murray, vice president of economic affairs at McGraw Hill Construction.
Although many companies went out of business during the recession, the ones who survived were established in reputation and mature in process. Since the market has been picking up, contractors will get loose and individualized with their selling processes, falling into the same cyclical patterns during some dips in the market, taking it all for granted.
Here are 5 selling problems that you as a contractor will need to address.
1) Not having a defined market and staying true to who you are as a company:
Your company should have a consistent and steady approach to what you do well. “We’ve found in all our research studies that the signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change; the signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.” Jim Collins & Morten T. Hanson Great By Choice.
2) Disorganization:
According to Market Decisions Contractor Report, 81% of contractors want to improve their in-home sales process. 83% of contractors prefer advice from another successful contractor. Best practices should be shared, and what large and even small contractors ought to be focusing on is establishing a process and holding that team accountable to it. Everything functions and flows through some sort of process, and laying it out is constructing a standard that the leadership and the team can rely on. You can learn more about process here.
3) Allowing leads to projects to fall through the cracks:
Although these statistics are staggering, they are absolutely true and speak for themselves. What percentage is your company working toward?
48% of sales people never follow up with a prospect
25% of sales people make a second contact and stop
12% of sales people only make three contacts and stop
Only 10% of sales people make more than three contacts
2% of sales are made on the first contact
3% of sales are made on the second contact
5%of sales are made on the third contact
10% of sales are made on the fourth contact
80% of sales are made on the 5th to 12th contact!
4) Not keeping score:
The great Vince Lombardi once said, “if you’re not keeping score, you’re only practicing.”
What gets measured gets done. Tracking all of your activity is a discipline that must be standard and not rejected. Every active, warm and hot bid needs to be tracked in the pipeline. Closing ratios for each member of the selling process must be measured. For example, if you need to secure 500K each month, but your closing ratio is 20%, you need to bid $2,500,000 each month to hit your quota. How many leads are required in order to put out that many dollars on the street in qualified bids? These numbers need to be defined and tracked. To learn more about what you should track, click here.
5) Avoiding software to automate the sales process for fear of change:
Unfortunately, construction is an industry labeled for using archaic methods because they don’t see themselves as “techy”. The problem with that is, those who aren’t afraid of a little innovation will be passing up the others because technology has the power to automate and streamline your business for rapid growth. Imagine if your labor workers still swung a hammer instead of a nail gun? Now think about this when looking the most important areas in your business? Are you still using pen and paper, or an excel spreadsheet to track sales behaviors? Words like “cloud” and “iPad” tend to scare contractors who have been doing the same thing for 30 years. But now is the time for a change, or it’ll be too late.
Do something about this today by clicking here.