Does Everyone Understand Getting Specified?

Specified Products are a small part of the total cost of a new building. The majority costs are in labor, management and overhead costs for the contractor and sub-contractors plus commodity ASTM-specified products such as steel, concrete, wiring, ducts, etc.

Perhaps only 10% of the building's cost are in products specified by manufacturer and product name. Yet the major focus of the selling and marketing to architects and specifiers revolves around this 10%.

I reviewed the 375 manufacturers exhibiting at the 2019 AIA Convention in Las Vegas. Almost every exhibitor had products in Division 03 to 14, plus lighting, fencing, air distribution and other components that are influenced by architectural considerations.

For almost all of the 375 AIA exhibitors the sales process has a common essential singular point -

being listed in the specification

- that influences the sales path and profitability of the sale.

Review our newsletter on What is Your Marketing Strategy? and ask which strategy is upper management directing:
(1) basis of design
(2) comparable product or
(3) substution.
Or perhaps no strategy - just "sell more product."

Running a successful construction products business requires understanding a wide range of components - finance, law, production and distribution to name a few. Does your company from upper management down to the office staff understand what it takes to "Be Specified?"

Our newsletter series on Getting Specified should be required reading and understanding.

Another quick way to understand the components of being specified is to read and understand the emails by The SpecGuy following the Construction Specification Institute's CDT program - Construction Document Technology.

SpecGuy's program - CDT One Day at a Time - has 60 emails that can be quickly read each day to add to your understanding of Getting Specified. Here is how to subscribe to the 60 daily emails. It is not necessary to take the CSI test to better understand the product selection process.

Questions, comments and suggestions are always appreciated.

Colin

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Colin Gilboy
Publisher - 4specs
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