There are a lot of hard parts about the construction business. The labor. The hours. The fact that somehow at least one thing seems to get messed-up in every single material order…

Those things are annoying, but they’re not likely to take your business down. They’re just a reality of how our industry works. I’m willing to accept those as par for the course. The real problem in our industry is a bit harder to spot.

You see, there are two sides of a contracting business. You’ve got the quality of your work, and you’ve got the quality of your marketing and sales. You can picture your skill at each as weights sitting on either side of a scale.  Most businesses are tipped one way or the other – they either have great quality and poor marketing, or they have poor quality and great marketing. You’ll rarely find a company that is amazing in both areas, because the more time you devote to one sphere… the less time you have to devote to the other.

Now let me explain why this is a problem.

The tragic truth here is that a business that has great product quality but poor marketing is MUCH more likely to go bankrupt than a business with poor product quality and great marketing. Because it’s not product quality that determines profits – it’s the ability to consistently generate new sales.

You can see this in a lot of industries in fact. You’ve got restaurants like Mcdonalds dominating the fast food industry even though their “food” is honestly not very good.

You see this in the health industry too with all of the fat-burning supplements in fancy $80 packages that don’t actually work.

And you can find it all over the place in business advice and information products.

All of these businesses are about churning sales and minimizing returns. They don’t actually care about getting their customers results.

But they do better on average than the companies who have outstanding product quality, but are not great at communicating that quality to the marketplace. So these companies with great products get driven out of business by the companies with cruddier products but better communication skills.

And this problem is rampant in the construction industry.

Most of us who started our own businesses worked in the industry for many years and got really good at our craft. But we never really got the marketing and sales training we need to compete with the bigger companies. And this problem shows its ugly face the most in tough times like these. Times when the small businesses get hammered because the economy is so volatile.

Now I call this the greatest tragedy in the construction industry because it leads to a lot of problems. For one, I just can’t stand it that the true craftsman – the ones with real skill – are the ones who get shafted and go under… while the ones with crappy work but a salesman’s touch scoop up all the work.

It’s worse for the customers, and it’s worse for the contractors.

It’s also a large part of why people have lost faith in the construction industry. The good marketers and salesmen soak up all the leads, then build half-ass work that leaves the customers unsatisfied. All these customers tell their friends that contractors are scam artists, and the rumor spreads. Add that to too many people watching fake construction shows on HGTV that lie and tell them they can full-gut a bathroom for $3000… and you’ve got the recipe for a perfect storm of people who believe contractors are bad people.

I hate it. But I’m not sure what the solution is either. Because I have nothing against marketing and sales. In fact, they’re some of my favorite parts of running my own business. But I believe it’s immoral to lie to people, and tell them how great you are if you can’t back it up. After all, nobody faulted Michael Jordan or Kobe for running their mouth sometimes, because they could walk the talk. But if a business has a crappy product, I don’t think they should be allowed to deceive people into thinking it’s great.

And that goes doubly for this industry, where we have the responsibility for caring for a customer’s biggest asset – their home. And companies that misuse that responsibility shouldn’t be rewarded for it.

As far as I’m concerned, they’re not contractors. They’re just cons.