I was sorting through my pile of notes this evening and came across one that was an idea for a blog post. You would have more to read if I did a better job of organizing my blog notes.

People that interact with me daily (including Guy) often hear me say “That’d make a great post!” Then we get back to the business at hand and I forget all about the idea. Does this happen to you also?

Okay, onto the post.

While lunching with my old college roommate awhile back, he mentioned he was in the process of remodeling the upstairs of his home. Knowing Mark, I figured he had run several contractors through the mill and was quite demanding of the winner’s performance.  Turns out not so mcuh.

He mentioned his remodeler was referred to him by several people. I asked him what the referrers said he replied “They said  (1) he admits to errors and mistakes and (2) answers phone calls promptly.”

“What about the guy’s quality and speed?”

“All fine, of course. But the real selling points were that he was easy to work with, humble, and responsive.”

“Has he lived up to his reputation?”

“Oh yeah. Great to work with.”

There’s a lesson for us all.

Some customers are easy to please.

Keep them in the loop and treat them with respect.

Word of mouth may take care of the rest.

We hope you had a great Memorial Day weekend.

Ron & Guy

This blog goes out to the thousands of contractors across America who are union.

They know you.

They know your team.

They know your strengths and weaknesses.

They know your team’s strengths and weaknesses.

They know whether they want to work for you.

They know whether they want to work for your competition.

They know which brother foremen work hard and perform well…and which ones don’t.

You clients don’t know. Your competitors don’t know. You might not even know.

The union workers know.

This was brought to my attention yesterday while visiting with a union fitter. I asked him about a company that competes against the one he works for. The fitter gave me an ear full about the company’s owner, its project managers, and its current top foremen.

Mind you, this man has never worked for that company but he had knowledge about the competitor’s performance capability that was stunning. The conversation reminded me of a handful of conversations I had awhile back during my time on a large construction project. These union guys are like corporate spies.

Here’s the moral of the story:

If you’re union and you want to be the best – the lowest cost, most productive, etc – you best become an employer-of-choice. You best become the company that the hard-working, well-organized, success-driven foremen and superintendents are dying to work for.

If you become know as an incompetent, uncaring, or simply greedy owner, you will struggle to build a championship team. The great foremen and superintendents will choose not to work for you no matter what you offer them.

It’s as simple as that: be employee-focused or be ready to put up with ongoing performance headaches.