There are three kinds of companies in the construction industry. There are those that are well intended and well managed. They’re professional in their attitudes, capable of taking on complex projects, and are interested in doing the right thing for their customers, employees and community.
What we say about our competitors reflects on the industry’s reputation
The second type is neither well intended nor well managed. In fact, they’re probably grifters using construction as a cover for crimes. They change their company names and they move from community to community. They are crooks and they obviously give the industry a bad name. This type is less common in commercial construction, but likely any of our readers who do metal roof replacements for homeowners has run into such a character.
The third type is the well-intended, earnest contractor who doesn’t really know what they are doing. Their companies are poorly managed so they don’t serve their customers or their employees very well. They also tend to get in over their heads on projects and think they can handle something beyond their capabilities. By my thinking, this group actually does more damage to the reputation of the industry than the crooks because the crooks aren’t really in our industry; these people are.
They’re helping to perpetuate the poor reputation construction has in some circles because business owners and homeowners don’t know the difference between a good contractor and a bad one. They really only know how to judge a contractor by what contractors tell them.
In my more than 30 years in the industry, I have been privileged to know a number of excellent contracting companies. They come in all stripes and serve all kinds of market segments. Some are huge, multi-billion-dollar companies, and others are little more than mom-and-pop operations that still provide superior service.
It is from within this group, though, that I sometimes hear something I find disturbing. They often bad-mouth the companies that are well intended but poorly run. Usually, the bad-mouthing is a story where they had to come in and clean up a previous contractor’s mistakes. I think excellent companies often get this kind of work because they are trusted and because they can handle that kind of work. As everyone knows, fixing a mistake is a lot more complicated than doing it right the first time.
By telling these kinds of stories, they aggrandize their own company’s reputation, but it has the unintended consequence of running down the industry’s reputation. They’re helping to perpetuate the poor reputation construction has in some circles because business owners and homeowners don’t know the difference between a good contractor and a bad one. They really only know how to judge a contractor by what contractors tell them.
So, when business owners and homeowners hear someone is a poor contractor or did crummy work, they assume that’s what happens in the industry regularly. Differentiating your company based on quality is a difficult task, especially in a cost-focused industry such as ours. But there is no need to demonstrate your abilities by running down someone else’s. Focus on the positives of your company, not the negatives of your competition.
There is another unintended consequence of this bad-mouthing. Are we really surprised that young people are not attracted to working in this industry when they constantly hear about the poor companies that may be prevalent in it? Does anyone want to work for a poorly managed company? If the industry is rife with them, that’s just one more reason to move on down the road to another industry, another company, another opportunity.
I’m not saying we don’t have earnest people who are incompetent in our industry. Unfortunately, we do and they do tremendous damage to our industry. My greatest hope for them is that they recognize their deficiencies and seek the education they need to improve. But constantly calling attention to the shortcomings of those companies doesn’t help the industry.
