How many times have you or your team gone to the job and you find out you are missing something necessary to do the work?

Imagine you finished a large kitchen addition remodel project last year and the client has a party with several high income friends over, oohing and awing about the project. Several hours into the night, after a few martinis, one couple says to the client, we need to talk to company who did this. The client replies no problem just call Smith Remodeling at 1-617-456-7891. Of course the couple says thank you, write it down on a napkin and lose it the next day. Then they get busy and forget your name and number and never call, or worse call someone else.

Over the past four weeks we attended many trade shows and spoke with over two hundred remodeling contractors. We volunteered to work the JLC trade show in Providence and the Residential Design Conference in Boston for the Eastern Mass NARI chapter as well as attended the NARI national business conference. We acquired over two hundred business cards from contractors at these events and had the good fortune to meet outstanding remodeling contractors who are at the top of their game and a few who are not. 

Last night I attended a great contractor networking event at EM NARI in Natick. Ten contractor coaching clients and friends joined me and the 120 plus attendees. The featured speaker was Adrienne Zoble. She is a nationally known networking expert for the remodeling contracting industry. She was fantastic and shared excellent ideas on how to obtain great results by networking effectively. She also offered strategies on how to maximize results from your existing customer base and the importance of staying in touch with all leads. Everyone I spoke with said they were very satisfied that NARI provided a great speaker and the networking topic was perfect considering the current economy.

Recently members of my Linkedin network formed new business networking groups. The quality of the individuals and companies represented are stellar. Members of the groups include architechs, designers, kitchen and bath contractors, general contractors, remodelers, manufacturers', and other professionals with ties to the residential construction industry.