The Optimum "Sales" Call
Today we are looking at the Optimum Construction Sales Call. How to close new business, Optimum-style. For some companies, this would be a venture inside the SPAM factory, a place you’d rather not visit, because ignorance is bliss. In fact, the push to close business in our industry is so strong that occasionally contractors and builders will knowingly bid below cost to get business, fully aware they cannot properly complete the work at that price or in the time allotted. Sales can be slimy. But Sales can also be a litmus test of a company’s value.
When money is on the table, what do we really believe?
And so we’ve set to putting our playbook into words. What follows is 3 tenets of our sales strategy. Without further ado here’s How to Make an Optimum Sale:
Drop the Formality
Historically, it has paid to be buttoned-up. An air of professionalism would imply a quality of person and therefore of his work. “The suit maketh the man”, or so they say. That’s all fine and good, but where we here at Optimum draw the line is when formality implies superiority. In the commercial construction world, this can look like insider speak. CAD models, elevations, and technical language used not to help, but to impress. It is a way of doing business that depends on posturing. We call it “Big Boying”.
Big Boying is chiefly concerned with who is in control. It cares more about position than progress. It favors leverage over cohesion. It’s end road is a stand-off between client and contractor, and it’s just generally a pain in the ass. You won’t find any Big Boying at Optimum. The first tenet of our sales playbook is to drop the formality and Just Be Regular. We are regular with people. Our clients are our equals and we treat them like it. It’s possible to be dead-serious about our work, without being too serious about ourselves.
“Oh I feel super constricted by the dry posturing of formality.” We asked Mike how he copes when getting Big Boy’d on a job site. “I’m more of the Will Smith type in Men In Black. Kicking my boots up on the desk, cutting the tension and having a laugh at my own expense. That doesn’t mean we aren’t serious about the work, but to be overly professional would just be acting for me, and I’d rather just laugh at myself and be fully me than pretend to be something I’m not.” That’s what dropping the formality is about.
Now this outlook makes for a great workplace environment. But it doesn’t hold water if our actual construction work doesn’t stand up on it’s own. Which means it’s about time to get on to the next step in the Optimum Sales Process.
2. Let the work speak.
We believe in our work. Straight lines and square corners reflect our company’s integrity. Dura-Beauty is our short-hand for good work that lasts for generations. We also view past work as our version of a Sales Department. Kendrick says, “Our credibility comes from good working relationships with past clients. I just don’t write stiff, salesy emails. I get enough of those myself!” Repeat business speaks to quality work and quality relationships. Referrals speak way louder than blog posts.
Our work with Jared Gordon and L.L. Bean is a good example. We were hired to fit-up the commercial locker room at L.L. Bean five years ago, and we’ve found more than a handful of subsequent projects to work together on from boot molding machines to a distribution center renovation. That sort of earned trust is the primary sales engine of Optimum.
3. Hard Truth’s First
Do the Pre-Work. Align expectations, weed out bad jobs, be clear about what each party to the project values. That’s where we need to begin.
Construction projects regularly go over budget and over time. It’s commonplace in our industry, whether commercial construction or residential. It’s expected. But to us, this is failure. It’s a problem we intend to fix.
“On a job site you have all these people: PMs, Subs, Superintendents, so many different moving parts within a proposed schedule without fluff, so to execute in that time, there is a lot of coordination and planning that goes into it. And before all those parts start to move, it requires truth-first communication with the client.”
Doing the pre-work isn’t sexy. It takes time. But by dragging everyone into the process from the beginning, we are able to align our expectations. “We use very clear, plain talk.” Kendrick goes on, “We tell them exactly how the construction job will run, ‘it will go A, B, C D and during B, you will need to do this, and in D, we will need you to review that. Occasionally during this process, we discover that we aren’t the best fit for a client and that’ll be the end of the job. Sale lost. But that’s just fine with us. There’s a saying that goes,
“Every No is a Yes and every Yes is a No.”
By saying “No” to an ill-fit job, we can say “Hell Yes” to another that does. A big part of our success is finding clients who care about the stuff we do. Yeah, it takes time. And yes it costs us some jobs, but we’ve found that it’s worth it.