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As more competition fights for fewer pieces of the pie, it will become increasingly tempting to lower your prices in order to stay competitive. I understand this completely, because I operate a decorative concrete company in one of the most competitive and hard-hit housing economies in our nation.
We all wish that we could tell our customers, “Screw you! I did the work. Pay me!” I know that in my career I have gotten just about every excuse in the book as to why I wasn’t getting paid for my work. By its very nature, the decorative concrete industry that we love so much allows customers to play with our money.
Our task had been to art-direct the placement of a new natural gray topping slab, and to subsequently patina it to simulate some 20 years of hard use. In other words, we were turning it from gray to “that special gray.”
Let me start by being blunt. Almost anyone can squeegee down a couple of coats of topping. But overlays and microtoppings are handcrafted, not generic flooring you buy on a roll. How do you go from doing what anyone can do to creating your own distinctive look and giving customers exceptional projects?
You don’t need me to tell you how tough today’s market is for contractors, and few will disagree that the ball is in our customers’ court. Razor-thin margins allow no room for error in one of the many things we used to pay little attention to.
Whether more utilitarian or more exotic, these are forms that every general contractor and every concrete guy is familiar with. We all have the tools and the formulae to produce these lines, angles and shapes.
Possibly one of the most-discussed topics in the concrete polishing industry today is managing the customer’s expectations. Many an instance has occurred in which the floor has been ground, honed and polished within a hair’s thickness of perfection in the contractor’s eyes, only for him to be informed at collection time that it isn’t what the customer had in mind.
In some cases, people were in fact looking to get a free application of sealer on their driveway, or a buff and wax on an interior floor within the warranty period of our work. However most were just interested in protecting the investment that they made, and wanted our help to ensure that the right products and procedures were in place.
Picking the right sealer. Teaching the client. Selling a plan. Contractors have several ways to make sure their projects — their calling cards — stay maintained, durable and looking great.
If you are truly committed to service, not just the initial sale, then you’re not through when you’re done.
