Putting Trust on the Line
When you commit to openly sharing expectations, mistakes, setbacks, feedback, revenue, and other numbers in your construction contracting business, you up the “trust factor” significantly. It begins with your determination to include transparency as a part of your company culture.
Further, achieving transparency is:
A healthy way of engaging employees
An essential way to delight present clients
A compelling means of attracting potential clients
Engaging Employees
Transparency within your construction business is a way to build trust with your employees. And it is a discrete way of improving workplace culture.
It begins with thinking about what your employees want to know. Here are some examples.
How productivity is measured
What learning and development will take place
Whether their work matters (how meaningful their work is in the scheme of things)
What it takes to be recognized and appreciated
How workplace culture affects them personally – a sense of safety
How the money is spent
In the end – workers want to know more about how decisions are being made by their employers.
Committing to transparency within your construction company affects your employees. Done well, it benefits them, and it helps your business. Here is how:
Pushes engagement, support, and advocacy
Improves morale
Heightens in-house knowledge sharing
Augments out-facing collaboration
Promotes accountability
Increases performance-minded attitudes
The bottom line is that engaging employees through transparency enhances your construction company’s ability to serve your clients well.
Delighting Clients
Gaining your customer’s trust – be they owner or GC – is enhanced by remaining transparent in your transactions.
The best way to avoid anxieties or suspicions is to provide information. The holy grail of construction business information is found in the three Rs.
Reasonable pricing
Realistic timelines
Reliably performed actions
(Find more information about the three Rs in our post, The 3 Rs of Construction Contracting.)
Giving your clients further information that will affect them is a deeper dive into transparency. Depending on your trade, items to consider are:
Chain of command (and contact information)
Emergency numbers (including information concerning what is and what is NOT an emergency)
Procedures concerning POs
Actions to be taken when things go wrong
Re-work policies
Preferred means of communication
Schedule concerning systemized timely updates
Further, gaining the trust of your clients includes the transparency of being able to communicate when a problem arises. For example, “I made a mistake,” or “We inadvertently did such and such, and we are doing so and so to correct the matter.”
Attracting Potential Clients
Although the concept of “word of mouth” has expanded, the idea behind it remains the same. We posted a six-part series concerning WOM, and the last of the series dealt with how clients and customers are likely to provide the most meaningful information to your future or potential clients.
The transparency you grant your present clients is likely to increase their desire and ability to tell others about what your construction company can do.
Potential clients want to know:
What it’s going to cost
How long it will take
If you can deliver
Transparency concerning all these factors (doing away with the fine print) allows you to compete well, whether offering a bid on a significant project or a brief meeting face-to-face with an owner.
The concept behind transparency with potential clients includes the ability to say things like:
Thanks for calling us; your project looks interesting but is beyond our scope.
Our schedule is full, but you might want to call Bob the Builder; here is his number.
We haven’t done that kind of work before, but we’re interested, let me do some research, and I’ll get back to you by (this date or time.)
Finally, remember that potential clients in our digital world have easy access to company information, online reviews, and other reports.
A Word of Warning
While increasing your ability to engage employees, delight clients, and attract potential clients, there are limits to how transparent you should be. The “secret sauce” should remain secret, Research and Development (R&D) should be conducted behind closed doors, and personal information divulging should be done judiciously and never without consent.
Reflection: Don’t get so caught up in “playing close to the vest” that you miss the fact that some of your cards are missing. Think about how to intelligently put transparency to use in your construction contracting business.
Ambitious Construction Contractors look to The Profit Constructors to provide advocacy in dealing with:
Clients and customers
Employees and subcontractors
Vendors and service providers
Governmental entities
Working with The Profit Constructors gives Construction Contractors the means to organize their operations in ways that help them:
Remain informed
Avoid hassles
Reduce risks
Be future-ready
Ready for action? Or want to know more? Get in touch today to schedule a complimentary discovery call. 866-629-7735
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