Listen to the Market
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Contractors don’t struggle to come up with ideas for improving their business; they struggle to choose the right ones.
I’ve watched (and even helped!) plenty of companies build plans based on internal enthusiasm rather than external truth. The result is predictable. The plan feels inspiring, but execution grinds to a halt because the business is chasing a direction customers do not strongly want or one the company is not positioned to win.
That’s why market analysis matters.
Here’s the simplest way I know to frame it. The answers to two of your most important questions do not live inside your business.
Where are we going to get our work?
Where are we going to get our people?
If you want real answers, you must go outside with a mindset that resists confirmation bias.
Allowing confirmation bias to creep in means hoping to hear validation for a direction you already want to take. You ask leading questions. You frame the conversation to get agreement. And most customers will happily give it to you. They like you. They want bidders. They do not want conflict. Agreement is easy.
Insight is not.
If you want insight, you should ask questions that force clarity.
Where are you underserved right now?
What is the work nobody wants to do, but you still need done?
What is broken in your current vendor base?
Where do contractors consistently disappoint you?
What do you wish someone would take off your plate?
Those conversations reveal what the market actually needs and give you permission to walk away without making promises you cannot keep.
Then you should ask an even braver set of questions. Not about the market, but about you in relation to the market.
How do you experience us?
What are the three things we are not good at?
Where do we create friction?
Where do we miss expectations?
Where do we shine?
How do we compare to our competitors on speed, quality, and reliability?
What’s something our competitors are doing that you wish we did?
Feedback can sting. It can also save you years of wasted effort and make you a lot more money. But customer conversations alone still are not enough.
One strong opinion is a single data point, not a strategy. If one customer tells you there is a lot of work in a certain region, that is not a business case. It is an invitation to do deeper research.
Real market analysis includes economic indicators, political and regulatory realities, population trends, and competitive positioning. It forces you to ask not only, “Is there opportunity?” but also, “Are we built to win there?” and “What risk are we taking by concentrating too heavily in one place, one sector, or one pipeline?”
There is a cost to skipping this work. It shows up later as wasted effort, confused priorities, and teams that lose confidence because the company keeps chasing the next exciting idea without a grounded reason to believe it will work.
The companies that consistently win do something simpler and harder at the same time. They place many small bets. They diversify across sectors and relationships. They stay curious. And they refuse to confuse hope with evidence.
That is not pessimism; it’s professionalism.
The Spark Notes:
Contractors don’t have an idea problem—they have a prioritization problem, and too many plans are built on internal enthusiasm instead of external truth.
The real answers to where your work and your people will come from don’t live inside your building; they require honest market conversations that resist confirmation bias.
If you want insight instead of validation, ask tougher questions about what customers actually need—and how you truly perform relative to competitors.
The firms that win don’t chase hope; they place disciplined bets, diversify intelligently, and ground their strategy in evidence rather than optimism.
