No matter what the industry, we all like to be the first to know, especially if you’re in the business of general construction or engineering.
Whether that be the next big manufacturing facility across town or the newest gas station on the block, fear of missing out on the next project is what drives most of us — even the well-networked professionals — to use a lead service.
A completely rational move, until you realize they’re often too late.
One of the US’s largest construction lead service’s website promises “an average lead time of 14 days before the bid date,” but fails to mention, by that point, it can be challenging to build a trusting relationship with the project owner.
While final price is important, solidifying trusting relationships with the right people in a business built on them defeats dollar signs any day.
And knowing that many projects (private and public) are required to go to a local municipal commission, committee, or board for discussion — a step typically a year before breaking ground — as well as knowing that those municipalities are required to post these discussions as minutes and agendas online, why settle for anything as late as mere weeks before the bid date?
By this point, the project has already been discussed at least once, if not multiple times, over several months by a local municipality.
So, turns out, your friendly old neighbor who regularly attends the city planning commission knew about it months ago when it was first discussed as “CSM #6172 to combine Parcel IDs 00500, 00501, and 00502.”
...But your current lead service just notified you about it last week as “South Central Recycling Facility” — leaving you wondering:
How did I just find out about this?
The upside is, you’re in good company. Fear of missing out on projects, particularly ones that don’t get a lot of press, afflicts the silent majority of construction professionals.
After all, nobody, especially in an industry that thrives on tight-knit networks, wants to admit they missed out on a huge opportunity for their firm because they were late to hear about it.
But thanks to the technology available today, there is a cure for this fear of missing out — this “FOMO.”
The cure is familiar and, most importantly, it’s simple:
Imagine sitting at your desk and reading snippets of discussions, like social-media status updates, taken verbatim by the cure from the most recent or upcoming local meetings in your firm’s geographical reach regarding all the upcoming projects your firm is interested in pursuing.
You’re able to know everything that was discussed by the individual representing a project in front of the committee, commission, or board members, such as how many units are planned for the 30,000 square-foot building to be constructed on land requested for rezone from commercial to multi-family.
You’re able to know all these insights months in advance because the cure is self-performing, not manual.
It doesn’t require other humans (i.e. architects, engineers) to provide the intel on all already-established projects, it targets only the projects your firm would want to know about as they come up in local municipality meeting discussions each week — all before you even feel an ounce of FOMO.
This cure is not a tough pill to swallow, but for your competitors it will be.
Curate sifts minutes and agendas in counties chosen by you to search for upcoming projects that make sense for your firm — click Get Started today.
Want to learn more? Read about our pursuit of a more effective lead service.