Do the words Sell, Selling, Sales and Salesperson make you do your cringy face? Have you ever been walking through a car lot and saw a salesperson only to quickly walk the other way? Or my favorite, have you ever had someone ring your doorbell during family dinner time and ask if you are interested in purchasing a magazine subscription? I do respect the fact that all these salespeople are just trying to do a job and feed their families. As salespeople, we need to change that stigma and get rid of the sleazy view of “Sales”.
The “S” word is often looked at as something dirty or shifty. Thankfully, over the past 15 years I have seen a shift in that belief. Sales in today’s construction world means to build a relationship, find the common ground, figure out the solution and provide services that meet the needs of the customer. As a business owner, my job is to sell my company’s services and products. To me, this means less selling and more consulting than anything. The best “sale” is when the customer gets a result that meets or exceeds their needs.
I am not speaking for every salesperson, but from my perspective here is what I want you to know going into a project:
- I want you to see all the project costs, including our profit and overhead. I know this is not standard throughout the industry, although I want you to be able to make informed decisions for your project.
- I want your project to be successful, more than I want sales statistics to look good at the end of the year. We both need to walk away from the project satisfied that the project met the standards we developed.
- In today’s market especially, we have very little control of the product and subcontractor costs. We develop a list of needs for the project, get multiple bids and assemble the best qualified team we can, to complete a quality project. If you have watched the news at all in the past year, you will know that the days of discounts and special pricing are non-existent.
- In today’s market especially, it takes more time to assemble a total cost for a project. As a general contractor, we bid your project out to 2-5 subcontractors and/or suppliers for each construction division of work. Unfortunately, they are experiencing the same labor and material shortages that all industries are experiencing, which in turn takes more time to source the information they need to develop an accurate price.
Our company tagline is Transparency, Trust, and Teamwork. We created that tagline in that specific order, with the mindset that if we are transparent, we can gain your trust and team up to create a successful project.
I hope that next time you think of “Sales” in construction, you think of MJI as your partner and consultant with your best interest in mind.
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