Understanding customer goals means being a partner, not just a builder
Each year, one of our primary goals as a company is to enhance and add value to our relationships with those we work with. Reflecting on our relationships with project owners, in particular, over the past year yields some interesting insights.
What our customers are telling us: We have some tremendous competitors. In fact, there are times when we find ourselves in a sea of providers that have few distinct differences. In that setting, who could blame the buyer for choosing based on price?
Over the past few years, we’ve put a lot of effort into extracting and examining the unique elements of the Granger Construction experience and DNA. We captured a portion of this with our Value Proposition: “We understand the owner goals and aspirations and seek to provide unconventional solutions.” For this post, I’m focused on diving deeper into understanding the owner goals and how doing so can help steer our customer support and decision guidance.
It is a requirement of every Granger Construction Project to have a published list of the owner goals. These are usually collected during an initial project meeting that includes the owner, architect and other key providers. Recently, I analyzed a sampling of 17 owner goal summaries from 2016. Here is what I observed:
Reviewing the list of goals for each project, I grouped them into categories shown in the chart above. Every project includes several owner goals that span multiple categories.
Truly understanding the goals of each project helps modify our approach, including:
- Regular attention to the areas of largest concern
- Focused efforts on team building to keep the relationship strong
- Use of software like Plangrid and exterior envelop commissioning to address deep concerns
- Thoughtful communication of key metrics with appropriate stakeholders
We are an extremely reactive industry. Part of our goal as a company is to be proactive – taking a step to gain an understanding of the items which are of paramount importance right from the beginning. Doing so not only allows us to gain a greater understanding of how best to complete the project at hand, but, more importantly, how we can best help our customer reach their goals.
