Creating Opportunities

Howell says T & N Asphalt is a member of the Utah Apartment Association (UAA), exhibits at UAA trade shows, and advertises in the UAA directory. As a member T & N Asphalt also was able to obtain a mailing list of all UAA member apartment complexes and will be conducting a direct-mail campaign to them this spring. "It's relationship building," he says.

Howell says T & N Asphalt joined a new local association last year and he attended association events and eventually had an opportunity to bid some work through that association.

"We got called to bid some work because we are a member of that association," he says. "We had been at their event and a customer was looking for three bids, and if we weren't at that show I don't know if we'd even had the opportunity to bid those jobs."

But the key to joining organizations is to make sure to get involved. "Most contractors who belong to groups pay their $400 or $500 per year but they just don't go to meetings and they don't participate," Paradise says. "Or if they do attend meetings they sit at a table with all the other vendors ? people they know and are more comfortable with ? while a table away might be four or five prospects with an empty chair. That's the table I'm going to sit at."