[David Sisson]

I will admit, I’m a plagued by bad builders too. In my case, they are usually trying to do the right thing and failing. Either way it is difficult .

[David Sisson]

Well, I wouldn’t let this get you down – you don’t really want these clients anyway.

As part of your early conversations with the potential clients, you should tell a story, to feel them out, as to how the project should go. IE: do you want something amazing or something run of the mill? Do you want to be happy or merely satisfied or disappointed? It’s important for the builder to understand and respect my design, if you want to be amazed by the result, this is only possible if they are able to ask the questions before building, be a partner in the process and understand your goals for the project.

I do a lot of commodity level residential work – where the results aren’t so important. But when I’m doing higher end, it’s important to have this conversation early and establish yourself as the project manager – because if they don’t let you do the PM work, they won’t get the result they want. You can actually have this conversation with them and establish quality expectations.

[David Sisson]

Sorry, I should mention that I’m a bit behind the curve in terms of tracking estimates vs actuals in terms of time. In some ways though, it does not matter, better to value price the work then set deadlines/benchmark dates for your staff and let them figure out how to hit the deadlines. If your staff is on salary, the only point to time tracking is to have a database of time req’d for past jobs to refer to when pricing new jobs. If you decouple time tracking from profitability you stop putting your thumb on your employees, give them the tools to hit the deadlines and destress yourself from worrying about time. Efficiency should be about profitability, not about time.

[David Sisson]

I use QB for book keeping / accounting and Toggl for time tracking. Toggl outputs to excel, and has nice graphics itself. Not sure if it integrates with QB, but I love Toggl.

 

[David Sisson]

Really, just stick out your hand, shake theirs, say “It’s been good to meet you, I’m going to circulate around the room – I want to meet as many people as possible tonight.” Also, end the conversation by asking for their card, giving yours, and tell them directly that you need to meet other people. That’s the point of a networking event after all.

[David Sisson]

OK – I did the script. This was insanely difficult through the “interpreter” who kept complaining that SHE couldn’t hear me. Ultimately the call was cut off (??) but the client did give a verbal go ahead to a meeting. I will take it to email and see if I can complete. The script felt very long and I felt a frustration from the interpreter and couldn’t tell if the client was getting frustrated or not. I figure this will either reject a cheepo client (he did seem focused on cost above everything else) or get me a decent client.

 

[David Sisson]

… continued…

How do you recommend dealing with these 2 situations? Ideally all cold calls are taken when I’m ready to take them – perhaps when I get these calls I don’t talk with them right away – just tell them it’s a bad time and then schedule a follow up call?

And the folks with heavy accents are very difficult for me to deal with – the phone does not help – I’m often dealing with them via email (or even txt) initially and then a face to face meeting usually goes better because I can hear them better in person.

[Author]

Posts