Building Great Client/Contractor Relationships
A 5 Step Guide for Clients
Building a long-standing relationship with your commercial painting company can pay off big time. Here are five tips to keep your relationship open, honest and good for business.
Step 1: Share Priorities
Share your priorities with your commercial painting company contractor. Communication is essential to building long lasting business relationships. Your contractor can’t read your mind. You need to lay out your priorities and expectations as precisely as you can – as early as you can in the process. Don’t worry if things come up – just make sure to communicate why and how they need to be changed and how that should impact the contractor’s process.
Step 2: Negotiate and Listen
A commercial painting company contractor can be a great planning resource. A painting contractor may be able to suggest an otherwise overlooked solution to a difficult project. Treat your contractor as an interested partner by soliciting opinions, listening to his or her recommendations, and adjusting your expectations and budget (if possible) to accommodate needs.
Step 3: Make a Contract
Establish a contract with the commercial painting company before the contractor preps a single surface or spray paints a single girder. Contracts help to define the business relationship and – in a sense – liberate it. If you and your contractor are not clear on the terms of your mutual arrangement, it’s easy for frustrations and bad feelings to spoil a working relationship.
Step 4: Touch Base
Schedule meetings to discuss progress. By putting a meeting on the calendar, you and your contractor commit to maintaining an ongoing dialog. Communication as a project develops is absolutely essential to maintaining a good working relationship. These meetings do not need to take very long, nor do they need to be face to face. Figure on fifteen minutes a week for a routine progress meeting.
Step 5: Trust Experience
Your commercial painting company contractor should know his or her business. Once you have found a painting company with the experience that your facility needs, stand back and let them take care of your projects. Trust your contractor’s experience.
Looking Ahead
Like a personal relationship, a business relationship evolves over time. Periodically review your relationships with contracting firms and outsourcing organizations and discover if there are areas that need touching up.
