Who Are You?

by Tom Finan, Publisher, CNR

Inscribed over the door of the ancient Greek temple at Delphi was the aphorism "Know yourself."

I'm thinking of having decals made with that message - maybe in Greek so it won't be so obvious - and handing them out folks in our industry to post over the doors of their businesses.

In mid-January I sat in by conference call on the regular meeting of the Associated General Contractors of America marketing committee, on which I serve. The discussion ranged from how to present a contractor's sustainability practices to emerging markets such as wind power.

A bigger question that arose out of those discussions is, "Why?" Why are we discussing LEED, BIM, or IPD with buyers of construction services? Is it because they truly understand the benefits they can derive from such approaches or is it because in the biggest buyers' market in half a century they want to pile everything they can into their shopping cart?

In our meeting Hoyt Lowder, senior vice president of FMI Corporation, the construction management and investment banking consultant, suggested that asking good questions and helping customers to understand what they really want is can lead to being able to our industry eventually charge for those services, as happened with such approaches as program management in the past.

I had lunch a couple days before the AGC meeting with the chief purchasing agent for an educational institution. As an experienced buyer of construction, he told me that he truly appreciates the value of relationships and knowledge in the designers and contractors he works with. "But my president is reading the same journals as everyone else in his profession and the front page is telling him that he's in a buyers' market for construction. So right now we have to bid everything and negotiate harder. When this current situation turns around, the relationships will prevail."

At the January meeting of the Midwest Council, American Subcontractors Association George Biderman, account executive for McGraw Hill and a former marketing director for area GCs, told the audience that we have been spoiled by the length of 18-year cycle that bottomed out with a thud in 2009. During that cycle there was so much work that companies didn't need to figure out what they were really good at. As someone in the AGC marketing meeting pointed out dryly, there's plenty of time for introspection now. And on some level's that's a good thing.

Last year at this time I taught a webinar for that American Subcontractors Association titled "Getting the Right Customers." David Mendes, ASA's education director teased me that our attendance would have been higher if the webinar had been called "Getting Customers."

In that webinar I outlined what I called "Finan's Rules". Rule number one was, "There is no good business with bad people." Rule number two was, "Strong marketing cannot help bad business practices. " You get the idea. In that seminar I also cited one of our local industry's more quotable pundits, Dick Stockenberg of Gallop Johnson Neuman. Dick told me, "When times are tough, contractors tend to stray outside their comfort zone. The best contractors are sticking to markets that they're good in."

That's not to say that firms in our industry should not get into new areas or add new tools to their toolboxes. The important thing to understand how those new markets and services align with who our business is. Think of the relationship with buyers of construction as a marriage. In every marriage there is always a need for accommodation and change. But if one person is trying to change what he or she is to fit a definition imposed by their partner, that relationship is doomed from the get-go.

As a part of a family that has worked for three generations in the construction industry I have found that the companies that are most successful in this business are those who understand what they are... and what they are not.

My Dad liked to remind me of Polonius' advice to his son Laertes in Shakespeare's Hamlet:

"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

Who are you?

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