http://bradleyassociatesdecisionaliferguson.blogspot.com/

The original poster on this contractortalk.com thread posts a useful question. The response from another contractor surprised me.

Folks, I've been struggling to get things going for 2-3 years now. My past experience has shown the contractors I've worked for had work coming in from architects and designers. I have hung on to S.M. (Service Magic) lead service for the 1 or 2 real jobs I land and the dozen or so tire-kickers and bad leads I process monthly.

While I approach all of them honestly, I can smell the bad leads for the 1st sentence of the e-mail. My feeling is simple: There has to be a better way!

I have mailed flyers and cards to 150 architects listed within 20 miles of my area. Now if you allow for 15 per cent bad addresses, 25 per cent for commercial and maybe 15 per cent for firms that aren't looking for additional contractors to work with, that still leaves 45 per cent that I should have some chance to look at their work.

Anyone with thoughts or suggestions on methods to get these firms attention? I'm
looking for jobs that are in the $25k to $250k arena. Yeah, its a crowded field but until we get a little more foundation (ehm), I don't feel too comfortable (yet) with the liabilities involved in $ 1mil+. work.