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Extend your core services


Our job as service organizations is to provide the greatest value possible to our clients, this includes services outside of our core capabilities.  These scenarios may shed some perspective:



  • Building owner, or manager and need a subcontractor | you may pride yourself on a fantastic relationship with the subcontractor owner, how do you know the qualification levels of the actual subcontractor workers?  Sure you'd like to always say "make sure you send only Bob".  This seems like a good strategy, especially considering the current velocity of change.  What you may consider is requesting the person with the highest qualifications for the work that needs to be performed.
  • Multi location contract which needs assistance in tertiary markets | there are no golden eggs. When service organizations procure multi location contracts often times the majority of locations are within our service territories. Yet, and this varies, a certain percent are way outside and require us to engage subcontractors. While vetting subcontractor workers may not be practical, consider facilitating a "before and after" practice.  Regardless of service call type requested, photographs when they arrive and leave are very powerful (create a posting site to make it easy for the sub workers). While on some calls this may seem ridiculous it will keep everybody honest.
  • Extension of core services | fundamentally I believe many service organizations would like to, or are already, extending the scope of their services to clients. Of course we need to be careful that the subcontractor will not steal our customers. In addition if you believe electrical is a good subcontract service to complement your mechanical work make sure that you qualify a few electrical subcontractors. Often, because of relationships, challenges with getting subcontractors paid, familiarity with workforce we choose to find one good subcontractor and stick with them only. Relationships are fantastic yet competition keeps you competitive.



As mentioned in a previous post; if you are still against subcontractors you need to pull your head out of the sand.



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Next post:  do rates really matter?

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