Many of the field oriented tricks I've learned over the years are so much standard procedure within our company & with our competitors in the commercial market in our region as well, that I thought I'd share some other tricks (ideals) that have contributed to our success. One of the most important and basic essential tricks is :

Communication

Simply responding on time & honoring commitments should be considered the type of basic approach that will set you apart as a professional, so I won't expound too much on these. Potential customers don't always communicate well enough to help us sell them, much less subvert or eliminate potential problems later. Sometimes we must draw out the needs, wants, wishes, & ultimate expectations in order to properly affix a price, sell them on our abilities, & hopefully have the opportunity to present to them the professionally completed project they had in mind. Communication is a two-way exchange. It's not enough to simply attempt to sell yourself & your company, without first truly understanding what the desired result is to be. If the potential customer is only fulfilling a lease end contractual requirement to repaint the exterior of a warehouse (for example), there's no need to propose or attempt to sell an elastomeric application complete with a 10 year guarantee, when one coat of a good acrylic will do. At the same time you certainly don't want to find yourself the successful bidder trying to cover that dark khaki brown with bright lemon yellow! How do you know by stating you will patch, caulk & putty prior to painting the finish coat that the owner isn't expecting a complete resurfacing of the substrate, when all you'd intended was to provide a moisture proof , sound surface? We need to be cognizant that a times what we say is not what is heard. Or for that matter, what we heard is not what the real intended or complete context is. As professionals, it's paramount that we use our experiences to "ferret" out the true expectations, and relate to these situations as the true win-win opportunities that they most often times are. Trouble is, you might just succeed & have to communicate to your crew without deviating from context or client expectation......Oh No!!!!!!!!! Communication as a Forman's Tool (to be continued)

Dave "Sigco" Siegner
Siegner and Company

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