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A Lesson from the Art of War

"If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Hopefully, contractors don't have battles with their clients, but contractors would be well advised to adapt Sun Tzu's advice to their business environment. Contractors that better understand their clients and their own capabilities to deliver on those will enjoy a competitive advantage.

Too often contractors focus only on the technical aspects of the project, but that is the commodity portion of the contract. Since everyone provides what is called for on the plans and specifications, there is little room to create any significant differentiation between contractors. In order to maximize this effort there are six areas to evaluate.

  1. Obviously, since clients look at the contractor's past or historic performance, it's essential that you have a reputation of high performance and reasonable price. But it's just as important for you to understand the past history of the client. If you have a client that has a reputation of only caring about price, then a value approach will probably have limited success.
  2. What's the client's attitude toward your approach? Have they had a bad or good experience in the past? The reality is it may be difficult to overcome someone's bad past experience. So it might be better to seek out those prospects that have had a good experience with your type of approach, or are at least neutral.
  3. What are the client's needs and desires? This is where the greatest opportunities are hiding. The most successful contractors get past the plans and specification and focus on how the finished product can make the client's business more successful, by either reducing cost or improving productivity. Because these solutions can save the owner money for many years, the contractor can even create a situation where it saves the client more than the cost of the project. A perfect example is the Interstate 35W St. Anthony Falls Bridge in Minneapolis. Because of the rapid schedule that they were able to achieve, the partnership of Flatiron-Manson saved the community more in transportation costs than the cost of the bridge.
  4. What objectives should you anticipate? Contractors that have done their homework on the client should know what their concerns are about a project. Typically, most issues revolve around quality or performance, schedule or budget. These all add up to what risks the client cannot afford. The contractor that best addresses these and offers the best solution for minimizing those risks has the best chance of getting the contract.
  5. Communication. Are you dealing with the right people so that you understand what's important? If not, how do you expect to deliver on the correct desires and needs? The number one reason for a project's failure is the lack of a clear goal. Therefore, if you aren't communicating with the true decision makers, you are setting yourself up for failure.
  6. Understand how the decision-makers make their decision. This may not seem important to some, but it's vital to success. Unless you understand how the client processes information you are likely to miss the target. Unfortunately, most people tend to provide information to others like they themselves would want it. In other words, they focus on what's important to themselves instead of what's important to the client. Some people need facts and figures to give any explanation credibility, while others require an appeal to their emotion. Failure to provide the information in the client's preferred method might easily result in the wrong decision.

In the end, the more you know about the client in order to address his or her needs the greater your chance of success. The failure to follow Sun Tzu's advice and learn about your client's is likely to result in failure.

 

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