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Building lasting relationships with main contractors

Your quick guide to attracting, maintaining and retaining clients
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INTRODUCTION
What is the value of a relationship? What do ‘relationships’ mean to you, and
how are they formed? These are important questions that span our entire lives
- from birth through to school and then into the workplace and adult
friendships. We have all experienced relationships that are strained and some
are so strong we will develop, nurture and invest in them throughout our
lifetimes.

Most of us, when thinking about the term ‘relationship’ will think of loved ones
and friendships, but workplace relationships are arguably far more complex
and potentially detrimental to our every day lives. The majority of us spend
appreciably more time at work than with our friends and families. How then, do
we ensure that the relationships we forge at work are strong, mutually
beneficial and productive? That’s the central question posed by this eBook,
designed to help those within the Facilities Management industry build and
maintain excellent working practices to work smarter and better with both
colleagues and clients.

Created by JCW Energy Services, experts within the Hard FM sector and in
building services compliance, this eBook strives to help specialist contractors
understand how to forge lasting and productive relationships with main
contractors. As well as working autonomously, JCW Energy Services also run
contracts under larger, main contractors providing specialist services within the
facilities management industry. JCW Energy Services are experts in the
building services compliance sector, a service of fundamental importance for
the facilities management industry.

In the next three chapters, you’ll learn how to build excellent rapport, right
through from procurement to implementation and beyond. Chapter 1 focuses
exclusively on the tendering process, smart working practices and setting
service levels that provide value to your customers as well as demonstrating
confidence in your own services.

Chapter 2 discusses proactive client relationship maintenance: the

psychological makeup of a good employee, innovations in technology to build
a better workforce and how to provide added value to clients.

Finally, Chapter 3 addresses the thorny subject of customer retention - how to

protect that client relationship from vulnerability and what loyalty factors you
should be considering.

If you’re keen to further develop your relationship with a main contractor, forge
new partnerships with larger organisations or just learn more about retaining
contracts and evaluating key business relationships, read on.
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BUILDING RAPPORT: 

FROM PROCUREMENT TO
IMPLEMENTATION
Starting a business relationship happens long before you even know a client could
be interested in you - the client will often be engrossed in your print literature, social
media and your website to understand who you are and how you operate. Ensure
that all the information you put into writing has a common ethos running through it
and that you truly appreciate what makes your business different from the rest. If you
have a clear understanding of your business, goals and motivations for working in
this industry, you can’t fail to be able to sell yourself to potential clients.

Once you have prospects interested, however, how do you make it clear that you
really understand their requirements? This is where excellent communication skills
are crucial.

How to prepare the best tender

A contract can be won or lost on the strength of the tender alone, so it’s important to
get it right. Make sure that the key information is all checked over by someone with a
keen eye for detail to ensure that no silly mistakes creep in. It’s easy to forget the
fine details when you’re thinking about the bigger picture.

If you have specialist knowledge that will save your potential client time, effort or
money, ensure you think about how you can demonstrate that in your tender.
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Think about selling the benefits of how you deliver your service, rather than just
outlining your service features. Carefully and subtly marketing yourself in a tender
is the most important thing you can do to win a bid, so think about what each
feature of your service actually means to each specific client. If you have
experience within their sector, mention it with clear reference to how that will
affect your prospect and make their working life simpler.

Whilst marketing yourself is essential, it’s best if you can do it in a way that’s
supported by evidence. We’ve all read literature that’s full of meaningless
statements and language that sounds good but means very little - these empty
sentiments are usually skipped over, never to be read again. Ensure each
statement in your tender is backed up with clear evidence and examples. Keep
the objective of the contract in mind whilst you write the tender - sometimes a
post-it note with their aims stuck to your computer is all it takes to keep you on
track!

Characteristics of an excellent tender

If you own a telephone - home, office or mobile - you will have experienced a
telesales agent who was clearly working from a script. Generic and - arguably -
insulting, these scripts stifle productive conversation between sales agents and
potential customers and they’re usually extremely obvious. Like the job seeker
who sends out cover letter after cover letter with the same tired cliches, it’s
obvious and ineffective. Make sure your tender is clearly tailored to the
organisation you’re seeking to engage. Show you can put theory into practice and
that you have a clear dedication to innovation, continual improvement and best
practice. What added value are you able to demonstrate? Why is it important and
why is your company uniquely equipped to deliver this contract?

Finally, ensure you have read and complied with any specific instructions. If you
haven’t included evidence of the qualifications or specific documents they have
requested, your tender won’t get very far.

Once you have won a bid, how do you maintain a good relationship with your
client and what should you be looking for to ensure that things don’t go awry?
Read on to Chapter 2 to learn more about proactive customer relationship
maintenance.
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PROACTIVE CLIENT RELATIONSHIP 

MAINTENANCE

“Predictions can be very difficult - especially about the future” said American
baseball manager Yogi Berra and, whilst for the most part, this is true, there
are ways to make a few predictions about how your business is working.

For example, it’s easy to predict that a customer who has had a bad
experience with your organisation will defect to a competitor at their earliest
chance unless you work hard to rectify issues and win them around. What can
seem like a mystery, however, is predicting the likelihood that a seemingly
satisfied client will be lost.

The modern customer is a tough

cookie
Customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy can be elusive for many service
providers as they fail to maintain and build more engaged relationships.
These days, customers are more easily frustrated and expect a better
service, more modern methodologies and fast resolution of problems. In more
transactional businesses, most disappointed customers will switch providers
after just one occurrence of a negative experience, but your clients are
usually locked in. Their annoyances will often not see the light of day before
your contract is up for renewal, making it harder to turn things around. You
may think your clients would be reticent in revealing their views on your
service and their loyalty, but the truth is that, for the main part, clients are
more than happy to tell you when things need improving, rather than
switching suppliers.
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The key part is identifying the best way to solicit the information and then acting on
it. Preventing defection and retaining clients is tackled in the next chapter, but this
chapter aims to help you understand your resources and make the most of what
you have.

Who works for you?

When hiring staff, what is it you are looking for? Best practice dictates that you need
the expertise and experience your clients expect, but you should be looking for far
more than years in a role and letters after a candidate’s name. Providing excellent
service is about more than just knowledge: it’s about the chemistry between your
teams and your clients.

Encouraging staff to learn the art of brevity in written and verbal communication -
and encouraging more frequent face to face communication - can be a very simple
way to forge better relationships and foster better understanding within your teams.
But what of new employees? How do you find the best people for the role in
question?

Identifying a candidate’s attitude is often difficult within an interview process - it’s

like a first date. Your candidate is on their best behaviour and they will often stretch
the truth to show themselves in the best light. It’s tempting to ask candidates to
detail their strengths and weaknesses, but these tired and obvious questions won’t
reveal much real personality. Competency-based interviews are the new trend in
hiring, asking your potential employee to detail a skill within context - “tell me about
a time you have dealt with conflict at work”, but these can often elicit long anecdotes
that only show you half the true story.



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Why not throw candidates tough, behavioural questions that ask people to
critique themselves and others - “how do you deal with personal problems
while at work?” or “tell me how you deal with people you don’t like in the
workplace?”. These questions will help you size up their real character and
attitudes as their reactions will tell you most of what you need to know!

Depending on your hiring resources, why not start with behavioural interviews
before placing potential employees with other existing team members to see
how they work together? Your candidates may impress your team or drop the
act and reveal another side that’s not so favourable. It may seem daunting to
do, but favour personality, sense of humour and proactivity over experience
and expertise. Experience can be gained and qualifications earned; but
temperament cannot be trained in.

Providing added value

Great relationships within business are founded upon expertise, experience
and personality - but when it comes down to it, you also need to provide
excellent value to your clients. However your staff behave and whatever
experience they have, if your service isn’t considered good value for money,
you will struggle to sell it.

To be truly competitive without offering your customers a price that hurts your
bottom line, consider what added value you can deliver. Innovation is an great
selling point, so invest in superior technology to make your business work
smarter. IT systems that allow your clients to understand your service better
or work smarter will always be a hit and can give you the edge over other
providers. For example, a portal that gives clients complete ‘at a click’
information they need to show authorities, like certificates to show compliance
with safety laws will give them peace of mind and instant transparency. You
can also use tracking systems to outline real time information on the location
and work done by engineers so clients can see at a glance what’s happening,
where and when.

JCW Energy Services use ‘real-time’ information to show clients where

engineers are and deliver instant confirmation that jobs have been completed.
Moreover, our CAFM systems give clients an online portal where they can
view all the relevant documentation pertaining to the services we provide.

Lifecycle asset planning

For a certain continued business relationship, your clients must trust that you
know how to help them - not only with proactive advice and continued
support, but also with knowledge of their continuing needs. Lifecycle asset
planning is key to ensure that clients’ business operations are not disrupted. If
you are able to provide information to save them money in the long-term at a
short-term expense, by advising replacement of assets rather than continued
maintenance, they are more likely to trust your expertise. Determining the
balance between the continued revenue of maintaining out-of-date and tired
equipment or advising a new purchase is a trade-off between short-term gain
and long-term contract renewal as well as building trust.
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The benefits of specialist

knowledge
Working in a niche industry has a world of disadvantages, in that your
audience is limited, yet carving out a specialism can reap massive benefits.
Focus your efforts on ensuring that your knowledge of a specific industry or
service is outstanding, to ensure that you’ll always win business in that area
over larger competitors who aren’t specialists. If you can prove that your
service is carefully tailored to suit, you’ll soon build your brand and reputation
with clients willing to pay extra for engineers who know exactly how to
manage important and complex projects.

How do you measure the efforts you have put in to developing and
maintaining that proactive client relationship? How do you ensure that the
steps you take are actually satisfying your client? Take a look at our final
chapter to discover more about client retention and ensuring loyalty.
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CLIENT RETENTION
Do you have a loyalty card? If you’re anything like the average shopper, you may
have an extra wallet just to contain them all. It seems that every store now offers the
ability to collect vouchers or points that all add up to money off at the checkout.
These retailers are pretty savvy: they realise that the key to a thriving business is
not necessarily winning new customers from their competitors. It’s about keeping
their existing customers on their side by providing extra value for money.

With that in mind, do you know how many of your clients are likely to renew their
contracts with you? Do you have any ability to measure their loyalty throughout the
life of a contract? Most businesses invest far more time, effort and money into
marketing and sales than they do into customer retention. Whilst marketing and
sales are hugely important to the success of a business, looking after existing
customers is absolutely vital. Ignoring those who already buy from you is short-
sighted and, essentially, harmful to your business growth strategy.



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Keeping clients on board: why

might they leave?
Customer retention issues can be discovered and prevented in advance - but
how? This chapter will briefly address the most common factors in customer
loss and then discuss a framework for preventing these danger factors from
losing you contracts. Your contract renewal process should focus on these
three crucial points so that everyone is forced to consider them. Along with
regular contact with your client, you should be ensuring you have a focused
and targeted plan to work towards a greater likelihood of contract renewal.

What are the three potential ‘client losing’ factors? The first one to address is
clear: the standard of service that you provide. Secondly, you must look at the
strength of your relationship with your client. Thirdly you have to examine how
competitive you are in relation to your service provision - price is always a
factor, regardless of how great your service is.

Contract evaluation: how likely are

clients to stay?
Assessing the vulnerability of your clients is crucial but so many business
owners avoid the reality of compiling a list of those contracts most likely to
defect to competitors. Compiling a register of the contracts that are in danger is
the first step to retaining them. Do this early to help you plan your retention
efforts and allow to make pre-emptive changes to secure renewal.

Start by asking yourself a series of questions to determine how much work

needs to be done to retain each contract and then prioritise them by
percentage of revenue lost in the event of non-renewal. Note the amount of
time you have left until renewal and try to identify the potential for growth -
what scope do you have for improvements and adding value with additional
services? Match your performance ratings, where available, to the staff you
have working on the account and identify team members who need retraining
or those who should be rewarded for their efforts.

The criteria you use should help you to give each contract a vulnerability index
score and aid you in your efforts to prevent them finding another supplier.
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Relationship scoring: what criteria to
use?
Many businesses use the Net Promoter Score to determine the strength of
relationship with their customer - “How likely is it that you would recommend our
company/product/service to a friend or colleague?”. However, this approach has
been criticised for not going deep enough into a customer relationship and the
question doesn’t tend to accurately predict loyalty behaviour. Relationships are
more complex than a simple recommendation to another person - they usually
hinge upon a few more factors. The four factors you should be considering when
evaluating your relationship with a client are: trust, capability, proactivity, and
chemistry.

Trust and capability are the two more important for ensuring your client is simply
‘satisfied’; if they don’t trust you, nor your capability to provide a service, it’s
unlikely they will renew, whatever you do. However, if you can surpass these two
‘satisfiers’ and move on to the next two factors, proactivity and chemistry, you
can really impress your clients. Make sure you and your teams recognise that
clients’ requirements are flexible - make the effort to ask the right questions and
really understand their business needs - for the time being and the future. Check
that your team members get on with your client’s employees: don’t be afraid to
move staff around to ensure that your account managers’ working relationships
with clients are productive.
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Characterising your client-provider

relationship
Surveying your customers is just one of the first steps in the quest to
understand and improve your relationship - to truly dig deep into the dynamics
between the two parties, you will need to start defining different levels of loyalty.
It doesn’t matter what you call each level of satisfaction, just that you have a
measure of some kind to help you understand where you are and where you
could be.

All businesses would like to have clients who rave about their service,
recommending it to all who need it (and even those who don’t). These advocate
relationships are few and far between but should be maximised for full effect.
These clients are far more likely to buy from you than others, regardless of
price, and the length of the contracts will likely be longer, too. However,
complacency with these clients will cost you dearly and they will do more harm
than good if they’re not treated well.

The second level of relationship is a client with an acceptable relationship with

you and who would rate you as ‘good’ rather than ‘exceptional’. These are the
clients who are typically predisposed to renewing with you, but could be swayed
if one of your competitors had an especially good deal. If you don’t make the
effort with these clients, you’ll soon see them voting with their feet. Use
satisfaction surveys to identify these clients early, before they start looking
around for a better offer.

The final level of customer, which is a real danger to your business and your
reputation - are clients who take the time to be vocal about your business - but
not in a way you’d like potential or existing customers to hear. Manage these
carefully and you can turn things around and turn them into a level one
customer; just as vocal, but keen to sing your praises for the turnaround and
efforts to improve.
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Preventing defection to competitors

Good service is simply not enough to retain key clients - it is essential for client
retention, but won’t be predictive of contract renewal. Going back to the retail
example, you might be happy with the service at your local supermarket, but if
you find your essential shopping items cheaper and the checkout staff more
cheery elsewhere, you’re likely to take your ‘bags for life’ there.

Many say that business is not about product, service or price - it’s about
people. They are correct, but they're missing an essential piece of the puzzle -
people buy from those they trust, not just those they like. If your clients trust
your judgement and suggestions, they’re more likely to value your service and
the chemistry that’s been built up between your teams and theirs. Being
proactive and bringing new ideas to meetings that demonstrate excellent
knowledge of your client is often worth more than a price drop - especially if
you can show that it will save them money, time or both!



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CONCLUSION
Business relationships are more important to the success of a business than many of
us appreciate. Rapport between businesses is not something that can just be created
from nothing - it’s an ongoing process that depends on co-operation, mutual
understanding and team work.

Good business relationships between specialist contractors and main contractors are
essential to providing an excellent service to an end-user. Smarter working practices
are essential for ensuring that relationships between team members are productive -
the easier processes are, the more time people can dedicate to the job to be done.
Chapter 1 of this eBook should have given you a guide to building a business-to-
business relationship from the beginning, starting with ensuring your message is right
and that tenders are effective.

Chapter 2, addressing ‘proactive customer relationship maintenance’ should have

helped you to assess the importance of choosing the right people for the job at hand.
Experience and qualifications are hugely important, but what’s usually overlooked, yet
far more important to your customers is your employees’ character. People buy from
those they trust and nothing forges trust faster than someone who is good-natured
and has at least a little natural charisma.

The final piece in the business relationship puzzle is the difficult issue of client
retention, covered in Chapter 3. Examining losses is essential to understanding how a
business can improve relationships, but rigorous evaluation is often neglected. Whilst
it can be tough to face up to areas that require improvement and perhaps to address
training issues with team members, it couldn’t be more important for the ongoing
viability of a business. Making positive change in processes can’t happen without
discovering the true reasons you might be losing customers. Relationships aren’t built
overnight and need maintaining, with regular contact to ensure the client is aware of
how you’re striving to retain their business. Chapter 3 should have helped you to draw
up an index to aid you in discovering which contracts are vulnerable and develop a
strategy to prevent defection to your competitors.

What to read next…?

If you’re interested in reading more literature by JCW Energy Services, take a look at
our eBook on reducing heating bills in public spaces. Providing readers with 10
innovative ideas on reducing heating bills in areas as diverse as shops, hospitals and
leisure outlets, it’s a must-read for anyone looking to make energy savings.

For more information on the specialist contracting services provided by JCW Energy
Services, visit our website at http://www.jcwes.com/

Read our testimonials here: http://www.jcwes.com/client-testimonials

We’re also on Twitter @jcwesgroup and on Facebook



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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

JCW Energy Services is a privately owned company with a turnover

exceeding £15 million. With 196 employees (of which almost 70% are
engineers), JCW Energy Services has a flat management structure and a
customer focused culture.

The company has expertise in multi and manned sites and invests a great
deal of its profits into IT control and reporting infrastructure to provide a
modern solution to its varied client base.

JCW Energy Services aims to partner with large facilities management

organisations who require more niche, specialist services. We strive to
further careers and develop our people, delivering excellent installation,
maintenance, energy management testing and commission of electrical
and mechanical equipment across the UK.

Our commitment to quality is demonstrated by the professional recognition

awarded to us by the following quality standards and bodies:

• Refcom Elite membership,

• Gas Safe Registered,
• Altius Assured Vendor status,
• BAFE accreditation,
• BESA accreditation (previously known as B & ES)
• Constructionline accreditation,
• Safecontractor approved

and many more, detailed here: http://www.jcwes.com/accreditations-jcw-

national-building-services-compliance-specialists

We have 6 offices and all engineers are within a maximum of 15 miles from
the locations of our retail and commercial clients. Our engineers hold valid
Engineering Services Skillcards and all our mechanical engineers hold
‘approved person’ status. Proactive and innovative, JCW Energy Services
are dedicated to providing outstanding service, quality and added value.

Head office

Unit 7 Saxon Business

Centre
Saxon Way
Melbourn
Cambridgeshire
SG8 6DN

Tel: 01763 264300

http://www.jcwes.com/