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3 Ways To Turn Your Construction Clients Into Customers For Life
Constructing Brands Podcast
Episode #32
What You Will Learn:
- 3 ways to create a customer for life
- Avoid looking at results and look at the systems
- Right to left thinking instead of left to right thinking
- Avoiding chaos in the construction business
In the latest episode of the Constructing Brands podcast, we speak with Todd Dawalt, host of The Construction Leading Edge. Todd’s years of experience consulting for construction companies has awarded him vital insights and knowledge on how the most successful businesses should operate, what to focus on, and what mistakes to avoid. This information combined with strategic customer service can help you develop customers for life.
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Transcript
Intro (00:03):
Building materials manufacturers run a complex business, but we are here to help you plan for the future. Whether you are launching a new product, rebuilding a brand, trying to get thoughtful communication strategies in place or everything in between. Here on Constructing Brands, we will be talking with leading experts in construction, architecture, engineering, marketing, and manufacturing to help make your building materials company stronger and more profitable. With 15 plus years of experience, helping building materials, companies succeed and grow, your host, Eric Lanel.
Eric (00:45):
Good morning and welcome to Constructing Brands. Today, I’m so happy to have on Todd Dawalt. Todd is an executive business coach. He has a podcast which is well listened to, called The Construction Leading Edge Podcast. His background is immense. He was a senior development manager at Versus Partners. He was general manager at Leak Eliminators. He was senior project manager team lead at Jones Lang LaSalle, manager business development, Mississippi Textile Corporation. Todd has been working with contractors for years and years and takes all that knowledge and really has pulled it together as an executive business coach. And Todd is going to give us some insight today on what we might need to think about and how we might want to think about marketing and presenting who we are with the end end user in mind. So with that said, Todd, welcome to Constructing Brands.
Todd (02:07):
I appreciate the opportunity.
Eric (02:07):
Todd, I love your clean positioning. You help construction business owners maximize their revenue and eliminate chaos. How awesome. I mean, it’s just, it’s clean it’s to the point. If you don’t understand what you do, then you probably aren’t a business owner and you probably are out of business quite frankly. So kudos to having a very clean position and knowing what you do.
Todd (02:42):
I appreciate that. It took a while to get to that point, but yeah, and actually I’ve even, I fine tuned that a little bit more now it’s maximize profits and eliminate chaos. So I’m still honing in. And if we talked a couple of years from now, it might be dialed in further, who knows.
Eric (03:01):
And it’s interesting because you choose words and I’m in the word business of understanding and helping hone in on words, so I appreciate that. The word chaos was one that I wanted to start with. Let’s talk about chaos in the construction business and what that means to you and why that’s a word that you decided to use in the strong position that you’ve taken.
Todd (03:28):
Yeah, my background is I’ve been in the construction industry since about ’95. So commercial got out of school, went to work with a commercial general contractor doing ground up construction on large projects. Had the idea that, hey, I could start my own business, fell in love with this old house and fell in love with the idea of being a custom home builder. So started building and I thought, you know what, hey, I can build hospitals and complex commercial projects, building sticks, putting sticks and bricks together for our house. It’s got to be a piece of cake. And I’ve also spent time as an owner’s rep and I’ve run a commercial, a specialty contracting business. And there’s just chaos everywhere. And the nature of construction projects, it’s chaos because you have all of these unruly characters, customers, suppliers, subcontractors, consultants, architects, with their funny hats and their weird little dogs that they walk around on job sites with. And it’s just chaos. It is, I’ve been on projects where it was a constant in some cases, increasing level of chaos. And I remember handing over a project to somebody when I changed positions and I was giving him the download on this project. It was an office remodel for Proctor and Gamble. And I was used to the level of chaos and after the hour download, he looked at me and he was like, is it like this every day? Because there was this constant stream of changes coming from all directions. It’s like, how do you, is it always like this? And I was like, yeah, yeah, pretty much. And so it’s just, it’s chaos and it’s, it turns out it’s a lot like military operations. I’ve never been in the military. I’m fascinated by military leadership and love to read, hear stories. And I’ve interviewed some folks from the military and it’s a hostile, just a hostile situation, always changing environment. And it is, it’s just chaos.
Eric (05:58):
It sounds similar to working in a kitchen, you know, chefs in kitchen. I went to the French Culinary Institute, and the first thing you learn is mise en place in French, organized, you know, everything has a spot and it sounds like kind of eliminate chaos might be the mise en place that I learned day one at the French Culinary. Is that kind of, is that how it steps in in your approach?
Todd (06:28):
That’s my approach. My approach is let’s go eradicate the moles. Let’s kill the moles. Let’s make it an unfriendly uninhabitable environment for moles. Most people just play whack-a-mole and they try to get better at whacking moles.
Eric (06:52):
Moles being?
Todd (06:54):
The chaos. The, so a couple of examples, people who play whack-a-mole would be okay, we need to hire somebody right now. And they get really good at finding warm bodies to show up, or we’re behind schedule. The ox is in the ditch. We have to pull this thing out. We have to be the hero. They figured out how to do that. Change order comes through and they didn’t handle it properly. And they got to go fight about it and have this really contentious discussion about it. So they, they get good at whacking that mole have to make payroll, how are we going to make payroll? Things are tight. Cashflow is bad. So they get out their mole whacking hammer, and they whack that mole and they’re constantly playing defense and they just, they try to get better and faster and increase their reaction time and their dexterity with their mole whacking hammer and there’s some really good hole whackers out there. They are ninja level mole whackers, but man, that’s, I did that for a long time. And I realized, what if we killed the moles, let’s prevent this stuff. And that’s when things get a lot more enjoyable.
Eric (08:13):
I think this would be a good lead into, I have listened to a few of your podcasts, which by the way, I think are great. And my audience, if you have an opportunity, it’s called The Construction Leading Edge Podcast with Todd Dawalt. And it’s fabulous. I think you give pearls of wisdom. And I really enjoyed listening to the podcast, by the way.
Todd (08:39):
I appreciate that.
Eric (08:39):
Your approach, I find just spot on and I’ll take us a step back. My background, CBS television, that’s kind of where I cut my teeth. And there was a guy who took me under his wing and he was, the president happened to be the president. I happen to be the young guy who showed up early every day. And, you know, we got along. What he taught me was about, deconstructive thinking, let’s start at the end. And then let’s build that process, build that house, build it, knowing where you want to end up. And it’s a way of thinking and it’s a way of processing. And it screamed to me as I was reading and understanding some of what you’re teaching and how you’re helping these construction owners. It seems like it’s the same lessons I had learned from the president of CBS television. Can you share with us a little bit about that and how maybe that plays into the whack-a-mole game you’re playing?
Todd (09:38):
It really does. Yeah. And I call it I have a term that I call this thinking and it, I don’t hear myself say smart things a lot. Every once in awhile, I’ll say something and I’ll think, wow, that was that’s pretty good. And in between, there is lots of other stuff that maybe is not so profound, but I realized that most business owners operates in what I call a left to right thinking, which is we’re going to get started. We’re going to focus on what’s right in front of us. We’re going to do as little as possible as late as possible. We’re going to wait until the last minute to get our bids in. We’re going to wait until the last minute to get a project kicked off. We’re going to scramble. We’re going to be the hero when we pull it off. And there’s some neurotic type satisfaction that comes from being the hero, which I’m not enough of a psychologist to talk about that, but it starts from left to right. Work from left to right. And then get to the end, do the best you can with what you have hope for the best. And then the only time you think about the result that you want is when you get to the end, and then you’re comparing like, wow, I wonder, I think I did this. Or I think we should’ve done this, or I should’ve made this much money and you compare it to reality. And most of the time that comparison is not good. So what occurred to me much later in my career than I would have liked. And I’ve shared this with people and they’re like, wow, that’s genius. And I say, listen, if I was a genius, I would have thought of this back in 1997, when I started my own business or in 2002 or three, when I started my own business, right to left thinking, let’s go up to the right side of the page. Where do we want to be? What does winning look like? When do we want to be there? We do this with projects. This is sort of inherent with construction projects, commercial projects, especially critical path scheduling, CPM scheduling. We know what the destination looks like. And then we kind of work backwards from there. But so few people do this with their business or with their lives, quite frankly. And here’s what I found is that I actually read a book recently called Work The System, and his last name is Carpenter. I can’t think of his first name right now, but he spends an entire book talking about systems based thinking, work the system. And what he said that was really profound to me is that every result that you are currently experiencing in your life or your business is a result of a system or a process, a one, two, three, four process that has led up to it. So your weight, your bench press, how happy your spouse, the amount of money you have in your bank, how happy you are, the relationships you have, your cashflow, everything in your life didn’t just randomly happen, but it is very systematic that the universe is systematic. And it is, think about the word I think about is consequence. So everything I’m currently dealing with my house, my family, my bank account, my weight, my energy level, whatever, it’s all a consequence of some decisions that I’ve made upstream. And most people spend all their time trying to deal with the consequence, maybe looking for shortcuts, but the real magic is go upstream. And then as you said, deconstruct, let’s find a process that will get us the result we want, and then focus on the process and the result will take care of itself. A good sports analogy is Nick Saban coached, he may still be the coach at Alabama. That’s moderate amount of success. You might say there at Alabama won a few national championships. And he had his philosophy was I think he called it the system, the system or the process, one of the two. And he told us people like, listen, don’t worry about the score. Don’t look at the scoreboard. You just, when you’re in the weight room, you do every rep, every set you can, you follow that process. When you’re running drills, you give it 100%. You do everything you can to the best of your ability for that 15 seconds that the play is going in the games, you just do your job and you follow the system and the scoreboard will take care of itself. But so many people want to look at the scoreboard. I call it result-ophilia we were in love with results, and we spend all of our time looking at results and we should spend 95% of our time looking at the systems. Then we’re going to get the results we want.
Eric (14:49):
Interestingly enough, probably almost every first meeting with a client that I have starts with, you know, we want a television commercial, or we want a video, or we want to do social marketing, or we want the result right, the shiny object that they want. And typically I start with, okay, who’s your target? What’s your objective? Let’s kind of take steps back because there are a lot of tools in that shed that we could pull out and they can be used a lot of different ways. If I’m the expert in this area, I need the criteria to build a plan, a system, a process, and then you’re going to get more than you ever imagined, because we’re going to be able to construct it in a way that provides a lot of different assets maybe, or whatever, you know, for the results you’re looking for, as opposed to shiny object. Let’s focus on that because you miss all the other opportunities. And there’s a holistic thing that happens when you work the system.
Todd (16:07):
Yeah. That’s a good point. Everything is connected, even though we’re a couple of guys and we’re able to compartmentalize things, there are no silos in life. So if things are going bad, went poorly in one area, it’s going to affect everything else in it. There’s this domino effect. But it really is. You’re so right about shiny object syndrome. And I saw this over and over and over. People would come to me as a project manager or the COO of a company. And they would come to me with some project. They would say, we want you to remodel this space. I’ll give you a prime example. This was a large scale example. I was working with a developer who was going to build a new office building for Valvoline. They split off from Ashland Oil about five years ago, and they needed a new office building. So they came to us as the developer and said, we need an office building. We need about 140,000 square feet. And they just wanted to get a lease signed and get started that they just wanted to get to start. And so we played along with them because somebody was driving that train, but the reality was, well, here’s what happened. They pushed to a certain point we got on board lease was signed. We actually spent, I don’t know, close to a hundred grand on design fees, got 80% complete with the design. Then they said, oh man, you know, now that we’re looking at our program, our needs, we need 160,000 square feet. So can you like make the building bigger? And we were about to put it out for bid and what they should have done was focused on the need. I call it operating on first principles. So don’t tell me what don’t prescribe a project that you think will work let’s, and this is good advice for anybody who’s providing a service, whether they’re a building material, supplier contractor, consultant, coach, whatever, let’s talk about the problems. Let’s talk about your needs. What are you trying to accomplish? I know you you’re coming to me with this solution, but that solution is based on some assumptions. It’s based on speculation, bad information, wild guesses in some cases. So tell me what you need. Tell me what you want to accomplish. And let’s go from there. That’s a huge mistake that so many people make is they just run with, oh, you want 140,000 square foot office building. But, and that’s the fun, sexy stuff. Yeah. Let’s sign a lease. Yeah, let’s sign a contract. Let’s rock and roll. The ugly part is let’s talk about your meeting space needs and let’s do a program. And what size cubicles are, you’re going to have, like, who wants to talk about that crap, but that’s really where, that’s where the problems live. And that’s what makes projects successful or not successful.
Eric (19:14):
You had brought something up in our audience and kind of my whole reason for this podcast has been over 15, 20 years. I’ve worked with manufacturers, building material manufacturers, different manufacturers, quite frankly. And why I’ve been attracted to them is because A, I love the idea of making stuff. You know, like really it’s like it’s America. I mean, it’s like, and quite frankly, you have to be incredibly intelligent. You have to be very stealth. You have to be able to maneuver because in this day and age, the margins really aren’t crazy. It’s not like the IT world, you know, where your margins are crazy good. The margins are always a little bit tight. You trying to be competitive. So I guess the Robin Hood in me always loves the thought of, you know, what can I do? How can we help these manufacturers through smart marketing through? And so the reason for this podcast is really to gain insight. When we’re going to ask you, Todd is being that you really are or consultant, you understand the construction business so well, and I’ve read things, you’ve done it. As you pointed out, gosh, 15 years of construction in one way or another under your belt, what is it that building material manufacturers can do to help the construction industry?
Todd (20:45):
So a couple of things that I think would be interesting for manufacturers, building suppliers, outside sales reps, people who are trying to sell and serve to contractors would be there. I did a study, found some studies, did some studies and looked at my own experience on the projects that I’ve worked on. And the number one productivity killer on job sites is the lack of material. Just period. The thing that kills productivity on job sites is the lack of material. And it’s not the lack of all material. It can be one little thing. So you can have, if there are 17 things involved with that day’s activities, if you’re missing one, you could have, I ran a sewer rehab company for several years, very detailed work. One specific crew had probably $2 million worth of equipment standing there, but you know what, if they didn’t have a $5 bottle of lubricant, everything was shut down. They couldn’t do it. They couldn’t, there was no alternative. So it’s incredibly important that contractors have 100% of their material onsite, correct because the material might be 95% correct. But that could mean 0% productivity for that day, for that week, for the next two weeks, etc. So one of the things that I learned over the past couple of years of talking with and consulting with hundreds of construction business owners, I got to the point where if somebody brought me into their office and said, we’re losing money on our projects, we’re just, we don’t know what’s going on. Can you come in and do a deep dive with us? I got to the point where I wouldn’t even, I didn’t even have to ask. I would go sit down with the owner and the team in the room and get their project managers. And I would say, talk to me about your handoff process. Let’s talk about the handoff. And if you think about a relay race, maybe you’ve watched it in the Olympics or NCAA when people are running with the baton, things typically go pretty smoothly. But I would say most races are lost at the handoff where it goes from one person to the other. They spend a lot of time nailing the handoff. And if you think about a construction project, it is just, it is full of handoffs. So when I say hand off, I’m talking about a client comes in and they’ve got this problem in their head, and they’re trying to handoff the information to a contractor or a designer. And then the designer works on it for a while. And then they have to hand it off to the estimator. The estimator works on it and they have to hand stuff off to back to the designer. And then they have to let’s see finally land a contract after months and months, then it has to be handed off to the field to build. And then that information has to be packaged up and handed off to the people on the ground, the boots on the ground or the trade partners. And so many problems happen at the handoff point. And one of the big handoffs is from contractor to supplier. And here’s how a typical actually was talking to one of my clients yesterday. He’s a project manager for an electrical contractor. And he said, we started working on this project. We mobilized out there, we’ve waited for months to get the light fixture package out there. And the guys were out there and opened things up and it was wrong. The light fixtures were wrong. And he said, I checked the submittals. I did everything. And then whenever there’s a problem I have to call, I have to email my outside rep sales rep for the supply house. The supply house has to contact the wholesaler. The wholesaler has to contact the manufacturer. The manufacturer has to contact somebody and there’s one person. There’s a lady typing stuff in somewhere. And she typed in the wrong number, but there’s this cereal chain of communication that has to happen. And one of the, here’s what I would advise. So there’s a book called Team of Teams, two books. I would recommend people who are interested in leadership and communication read one is Team of Teams, which is, which was written by two former officers over special operations who were in charge of the war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. And the other one is Extreme Ownership, which is written by two Navy seals in the same war. And they talked about how they had to change the old ways of command and control of running stuff up the flag pole, running problems up the flag pole, and then orders back down the flag pole didn’t work. So there’s this misconception in the construction industry that says that the flow of information has to match the flow of contracts and purchasing and risk. So I buy from you, you buy from him. He buys from her. So people think, well, I have to contact people the same way. That’s dumb. So one of the things, if you want to streamline your process and help your contractors, that’ll make life better for them streamline the handoff, connect to your clients, eliminate the bottlenecks and information, connect your clients with the people that have the information they need. Let them go directly to the person sitting in the warehouse, who’s typing in the order, let them go directly to somebody else. Everybody has to agree. Hey, if there are scope, schedule, budget, change type issues, they have to be handled a certain way, but the flow of information should be uninterrupted. Does that make sense?
Eric (26:52):
Yeah. A recap of that is look at your process and look kind of deconstruct maybe way to streamline that process specifically for where it might bottleneck on a job. Right? So build a process from the manufacturer to the actual job site, the chaos that could happen in the field to eliminate it.
Todd (27:14):
Exactly. So there’s, I’m no electrical engineer, but there’s serial wiring where you go from point to point to point to point to point. So to get from point A to point F you have to go through B, C, D and E but then there’s parallel communication where A goes to B, C, D, E, and F all at the same time. So if you look at your process and if you have serial communication where it goes to one email box, and then it has to go to another one, that’s ridiculous, right? We’re not passing letters around here, set it up in parallel so that your client is connected directly to the person they need. Email is great. Another option would be get your, talk to your client and say, hey, at what point would it make sense for us to have a kickoff meeting or a handoff meeting? So we can just have a Zoom call. Let’s walk through the submittal package. Let’s make sure we’ve got everything. Contractors don’t know everything about the products. So that’s a great time. Instead of sending email after email play email ping pong, let’s just have a 15 minute phone call and say, all right. So I understand you’re looking for this widget and it looks like you’ve selected this light fixture. For example, this LED high bay light fixture. And it says you want the timer to do this. Nobody ever does that. Are you sure about that? Everybody orders the timer with the set of 15 minutes and the contract will be like, oh, I didn’t think about that. Thank you. I’m glad I didn’t order 800 light fixtures that had to be adjusted. So set up handoff meetings offer to do it, even if they don’t ask. And that’s going to make you look like the genius, number one. Number two, ask your contractor, hey, what sort of system do you use? Are you using co-construct or Procor or red team? Do you have some sort of integrated project management system that we can get plugged into so we can get schedule updates instead of the system dropping off before it gets to the suppliers, let’s extend that system of communication all the way out to the suppliers so that you connect those, make that connection. So when the person sitting in the warehouse gets an update on this project that the delivery date has been pushed off by two weeks. So, oh, we don’t need to deliver those light fixtures and have them sitting around. So set up this communication system, where one of the terms in the book Team of Teams is shared consciousness, shared consciousness, which means that everybody has access to all the information that they need. And a good way, a good check to see if you have shared consciousness is if somebody has to get information from somebody else, you’re lacking shared consciousness. So, hey, what’s the schedule update on this? If that information lives in somebody’s head, or it has to come through somebody else, there’s an opportunity for streamlining communication.
Eric (30:41):
So if you’re looking to build a customer for life and you are responsible for running a company, that’s creating products that is being utilized in the construction field. One, might want to think of developing a process that really speaks to your customer and help them at their point of pain, whether it be developing and the process is going to be unique to how you work and it needs to be built and developed. But one is thinking about that direct process, not relying on your distributors, not relying on the second, third, and maybe fourth handoff that might happen to that end user. What’s another thing that you could, that you might want to share that would help.
Todd (31:33):
There are a few things you can do that are tremendously valuable to contractors that probably don’t cost you anything. So for example, this is pretty elementary, but it’s really impactful to the folks in the field. Find out how, if you’re delivering materials to a job site, find out how you, how they want it to come off the truck or off the stack. So for example, if someone delivers a lumber package for a house, the roof trusses are typically on top and then the plywood, and then the untreated lumber, and then the treated materials on the bottom. Well, you know what you need first, the treated material to build your wall plates. So if the, if you can ask that question of your clients, how do you want this to be delivered? Let’s get it. Let’s if you have a multiple phase delivery of structural steel or dry wall or specialty materials, find out when they want it, how they want it to be delivered and stage it and sequence it properly. It doesn’t cost anymore to do that. But it saves think about how much time it takes to double or triple handle lumber on a project. And that people don’t, the contractors don’t really think about that, but I’m telling you if you’re asking those questions, hey, how do you want this delivered? Where do you want it? What’s coming off first. Hey, I already know that you need your pressure treated material first. So we’re going to put that on top. We’re going to bring the trusses later, maybe a week or so later, you’re going to have a customer for life because you’re dialed into them and doing what’s best for them. Maybe not even if it’s not the simplest thing for you.
Eric (33:25):
That’s probably the yard that conversation is happening with the lumber yard or the point of the distributor. But, to that point, if, you’re gosh, we worked with the manufacturer of who created a plastic sheets and different types of chemical compounds that were used in different settings that all went through distribution. And what we did as the manufacturers, we created a different way to pack it and label it for the distributor. So maybe, if you are a manufacturer who’s, who’s delivering directly to a site and what you’re saying on point, if you’re not in it, you’re going through different points of distribution, whether it be a yard or maybe it’s even a pivot there of how are you packing it? How are you identifying the product? Like what is a way that you can give it to your distributor in a way that they’ll be able to satisfy the end customer? Right.
Todd (34:34):
Exactly. Yeah. Think about, start with the end in mind. This is going to come off a truck. It’s going to be moved around a job site. It’s going to have to be picked with a crane. Think about how can you handle it, package it, ship it, label it at the factory so that your end user, it has as little friction as possible so that there’s no disconnect there. And it could be labeling, stuff sits around job sites and it gets moved around. And if you’re using, if you’re labeling your stuff by writing with a Sharpie on stretch wrap plastic, it’s going to be gone, or you’re just tagging, hanging tags on there, expect that stuff to live outside for awhile. So start with the end in mind. And here’s one of my best pieces of advice would be if you want to find out what’s important to your end user, go ask them, just interview some, they’ll tell you what’s screwed up. Don’t guess you don’t have to guess. They’ll tell you what’s not going well.
Eric (35:49):
I think that’s the third point that you’re going to throw at me. So, the three, if the recap that I heard from you just now, and please stop me if I missed it to create a customer for life as the contractor, if in any way your product is, and, you know, being worked with by the contractor, which it is by the way, in all cases. Three things to think about one what’s the process and how could, when things get maybe a little messy or chaotic, how could you create a process that gets you directly to the contractor or how can they get directly to you for a solution that’s going to be on point and help them. Two is how are you packaging? How are you again, deconstruct, how are they going to be interacting with your product? And is it packaged? Is it tagged? Is it labeled? Is it going to help them in the process and three and probably most important take a little bit of time and do the, you know, the Sam, won’t kick the tires, talk to the people who are really engaging and interacting with your product and ask them what you could be doing to help them. What is it tha,t where is the opportunity? Because my guess is there’s some basic information they’re going to throw at you and you’re going to be able to implement it easily and it’s going to change your business.
Todd (37:27):
Yup. And there are a couple of different ways you can ask that question. You can go into that question, go into that conversation, looking for pats on the back and to reinforce how amazing you are by asking things like everything’s going okay. Right. You can lead the witness, so to speak and you’ll get, there’ll be like, oh yeah, this guy doesn’t want to hear it. So, or this girl doesn’t really care. So yeah. Everything’s great. Thanks. That’s probably how they’ll say it. But if you ask really calibrated questions, like what’s something we could do to make handling at the job site simpler, specific, what can we do to make this easier to get off the truck? What’s something we could do to save you 15 minutes a day, then they’re getting specific. I’m like, oh, well, if you did this, then, so those kinds of questions, we’ll get you answers that will help. And the fact that you’re asking those questions that helps build for life, even if you can’t solve them, because it shows that you care and that you’re empathetic. There’s one more thing I would recommend is to understand that most materials, if you’re most materials require this holistic approach of material, plus tech support plus training. So your, the cutting edge material is going to look like crap, if the $15 an hour guys in the field, aren’t installing it, right? And then you’re going to get blamed. So make sure that you’re going above and beyond at least with a new customer in the handoff process and the coordination process. If you’re doing something with building envelope materials, like roofing, windows, air and water barriers, things like that, your product in a bucket may be amazing or on a roll, may be amazing, but it’s only as good as the people putting it on. So go out of your way, create training videos. One of the best ideas I’ve seen in the last year is to create visual scopes of work specs, cut sheets, 2D CAD drawings are not that helpful. Take pictures of what it should look like. Take pictures of what it shouldn’t look like, but green check marks by what it should look like red X’s by what it shouldn’t look like, understand that not, everybody who’s installing your products, speaks English. So graphic, visual illustrations of what it should look like are much, much better. And you can communicate that stuff very easily. Videos, pictures are far superior than CSI type specs and tiny font installation instructions that nobody’s going to look at anyway.
Eric (40:42):
Great points. Todd I appreciate your time so much. And thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. And if anybody listening wants to get in touch with you, what is the best way for them to do so?
Todd (40:55):
Best way is to go to constructionleadingedge.com. If you want to know how business, how construction business owners think, then there are lots of interviews, dozens and dozens of interviews with construction business owners. And it’s a good way to get inside the head of construction business owners, if that’s who you want to sell to. So The Construction Leading Edge Podcast is a great place to go and get started.
Eric (41:26):
Thanks for spending the time with us today.
Todd (41:29):
It’s been a pleasure. Thanks Eric.
Eric (41:31):
Thank you, Todd.
Conclusion (41:36):
Thank you for listening to another episode of Constructing Brands. Your feedback is how we thrive, so please leave us a rating and review on your favorite platform. And if you want access to even more great information, go to constructingbrands.com.