Four Essential Steps To Developing a Healthy Construction Pipeline

By Lloyd Facen

One of the most important areas to think about when building your construction project pipeline (i.e. sales process) is your desired outcome.  Several things impact success in business development and if you truly want to have successful outcomes, then it is absolutely necessary to have successful inputs into the project pipeline.

Let me step back and properly set the stage by outlining my view on four very important steps in the Construction Business Development Pipeline that have a profound impact on developing a healthy pipeline:

1. Identify:

Good, solid targets that you identify and classify very early in the sales process by potential fit may increase your successful close ratio.  Bad targets with no construction budget or approved project on slate, or prospects that have just awarded a bid, can weigh on a healthy pipeline.  The quicker you identify a target as viable the more time you can spend qualifying that prospect.

2. Qualify:

Qualification is a critical stage of the sales pipeline.  In the qualification process, you verify need, as well as your value proposition, and determine your strategy.  It is very important to understand every prospect’s buying cycle and process for construction procurement and match them up with your organization’s ability to deliver.  If it is low bid, an invited short list, or negotiated opportunity, at this stage you define the most immediate synergy for your company.  The internet is an amazing tool to discover information on both public and private organizations, so leverage the internet and learn as much as you can about your prospect.

If you have not pre-qualified a prospect to determine if the right merits exist for a construction project, then more than likely they will not.  Why waste precious time and commit precious company resources for an opportunity that has not been properly qualified?

3. Develop:

At the development stage you have already identified a new opportunity and qualified the opportunity as viable; now it is time to understand and execute on timelines, communicate effectively via your proposal, and begin aligning the professional resources that will deliver the work–essentially shepherding all external and internal stakeholders through the various phases of bringing everything together.  This takes great listening skills to satisfy all the details of a new construction project, whether the project is with a new client or an existing client.  You also need to be attentive to ensure your company’s needs and expectations are also being protected.

4. Close:

Win the project, execute on delivery, delight the customer, and then start the process all over again with another well-identified, qualified, and developed prospect!  This will help ensure another high probability for a construction project win from a robust and healthy Sales Pipeline!

Never stretch the truth or be overly optimistic with your Sales Pipeline. Management is actively looking at your construction sales forecast and pipeline projections to make a number of strategic business decisions that have significant impact on your company’s success.   Happy Hunting for a Healthy Pipeline!

Lloyd Facen is Director of Business Development with Triune, a leading integrated design-build General Contractor founded in 1997.  Triune is headquartered in Dallas, TX – www.tmvllc.us

The Punch List is Triune’s proprietary blog for discussing issues and providing insights specific to the commercial construction industry. Copyright 2013 TMV, LLC (Triune).  Any and all rights reserved.