For Utah General Contractors, referrals can help supply a steady flow of work. In order to keep referrals coming, however, contractors have to provide their best work every time. The story that follows is true and shows how inconsistency will hurt a company’s reputation and workload worse than obscurity.

If a general contractor is just starting out, than establishing a reputation will take time. If a general contractor develops a bad reputation, they may never be able to recover. A company that provides excellent service the first time but poor service on a separate contract with the same customer can quickly develop a bad reputation that can ruin the business.

A customer hired a local contractor to replace a roof on his home. He was very happy with contractor’s work, and the way his people conducted themselves on site. The work was done quickly and professionally, and the contractors cleaned up the site each day to make sure no one was injured on material left on the grounds. While they were at the customer’s home, the contractors were polite and professional, and made sure that the customer was happy with every stage of the project.

The customer was so satisfied with the work the contractor did he talked about it with everyone who came to his home. When he had another renovation project, the customer didn’t hesitate contacting this contractor again.

The second project didn’t progress as smoothly as the first one had. A project that should have taken only three months dragged on for over six months before completion. The contractor would disappear for months at a time and wouldn’t respond to the customers call demanding to know when the company would return to complete the work. When the job was finally completed, the customer wasn’t satisfied with the quality and unhappy with the contractor’s behavior.

The customer let everyone he knew how unhappy he was with this contractor. Both the contractor and the customer live in a small area where news travels fast, especially bad news. It wasn’t long before the contractor started having difficulty finding new contracts and ended up going out of business a year after his bad performance at the customer’s site.

Consistency is vital to continue receiving repeat business and to gain new customers. It takes a lot of effort to gain a new customer, but it is easier to keep a repeat customer happy, as long as the work is consistent. General contractors should make sure that they treat repeat customers like they are new customers to ensure referrals and to earn a positive reputation in their market. This will help provide an inexpensive form of marketing that can help guarantee a consistent flow of income with little effort on the part of the contractor.