After the Ontario General Contractors’ Association symposium at Blue Mountain (Collingwood) concluded yesterday afternoon, I said goodbye to Chase and writer Anja Karadeglija, who headed south on a two or so hour drive in a rented car to Toronto, where they could take the train to their respective homes in St. Catharines and Montreal. I decided to head home to Ottawa by the “northern route” — a windy drive through small towns, hamlets, and relatively unpopulated areas. In terms of time and distance, this route is probably shorter in kilometres/miles but slightly longer in driving time — even though the roads are sparsely travelled (virtually no transport trucks), you certainly cannot blast around the turns at 120 kilometres (70 or so) miles per hour.
However, I would be doing virtually all of my driving during daytime, the roads were clear of snow, and I reflected that the less-traveled road can sometimes be a much more enjoyable experience. I don’t regret my decision. In this case, the differences between the most efficient and most adventurous choice may not be that great, so I chose the second option.
Iron Bridge at Bancroft, Ontario (Image is creative commons licensed via Wikipedia)
Of course, it didn’t take much prompting to decide to visit the OGCA conference, accept the opportunity to be a Gold Sponsor (by providing the association with significant volumes of in-kind advertising) and take what has turned into the longest time-wise business trip away from my family in years. We certainly knew from previous visits to the event that we would make connections, develop relationships and generate meaningful sales revenue; and this experience lived up to the expectations. We’ll start the lead tracking and measuring system we use for conferences, trade shows and events, but I expect our total revenue and revenue based on input cost will be at the more profitable end of the scale.
However, if I think of the results purely in hard-and-fast business terms, I’m missing some important things. When you reach a certain point (it can be quickly or it can take time) where your relationships and business reach a natural comfort level, the whole process seems almost seamless and you almost don’t feel you have to strain or struggle at marketing.
Any of us who have been in business for any length of time know this feeling; if we are fortunate, we have a significant (but not unmanageably large) group of clients and suppliers where trust is strong enough that hand-shake deals really count (though we will often validate the agreements with proper written contracts), where we can be confident that our relationships will be mutually profitable and, if we have a disagreement on specific points, we will work out the solutions amicably. Better yet, when these relationships either put you or your counterpart within respective centers of influence, you can easily and naturally extend the scope of
My point in architectural, engineering and construction marketing is to respect these relationships and dynamics — they are the building blocks for your future — but don’t blindly depend on them or fail to see how constructive pro-active action can extend and develop their scope without causing offense. When you focus on these building blocks and combine the right amount of systematization and metrics to the process, you’ll achieve results far above your competition. If you are fortunate, you’ll be travelling on beautiful roads where your competition is nowhere to be found.
