Last week I attended the International Builders Show in Las Vegas, NV. I have attended the show for a few years now, even traveling back to Orlando Florida to see and experience all that the biggest construction trade show has to offer.
Our proximity to Las Vegas (about 2 hours away) makes it much easier to attend. Next year the show heads back to Florida, however, it will still be very well worth our time and effort to attend.
Why?
Where else can you go and have an opportunity to talk to over 100 of your biggest customers in one place? Where else can you go and see what your competition is up to and see how they are marketing themselves to the industry? Where else are you going to see the very latest in industry and technological advancement and have a chance to talk to the people who are developing these tools, products and services?
And last but not least, where else can you talk face to face with your former customers and find out where you dropped the ball or what communication breakdown led to their decision and have the opportunity to not only learn from that but hopefully regain a customer and friend.
I could tell that the overall attendance of the show was down again from previous years. This was not a surprise and I believe that many of the exhibitors I spoke with felt the same. However, there was a spirit of optimism among the companies at the show. Surviving the great recession we have been going through is in itself an accomplishment. Some large corporations that were exhibiting in past years were not only missing from the show floor but have gone out of business altogether.
With fewer people to talk to reps were able to have longer more in depth conversations with the builders and developers interested in their company. More personal attention, taking care of the customer and doing things right will never go out of style.
Like trade show attendance, building permit volume is down. We just will not see the volume that was happening in 2005. However, also similar to a trade show, there are some very key and substantial people and projects happening all over the Western US and it's worth it to put your company and yourself in front of those decision makers.
Lastly, before we go feeling too bad for the city and county governments out there for their cuts in budgets due to the drop in building permit revenue, consider this;
The single largest building permit issued in las weeks reports out of any of our 33 market areas was in the City of Las Vegas, for the City of Las Vegas. The new City Hall building permit was issued with an estimated wholesale value of $98,000,000.
That's correct almost 100 million for the new city offices. I hope the building permit department is nice!
Make it a great day!
Justin Harris - Business Development Director - Construction Monitor
I reviewed the results of our efforts in January looking for the top projects in the Western US markets and found some expected and also some unexpected results.
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