I’ve said it before: in business, we must expect the unexpected.

If you ask any successful person about all the projects they’ve worked on, I guarantee they can tell you about at least one that gave them a bit of trouble. This is just the nature of things. If you falter at every misstep, you’ll quickly get overwhelmed and this could cause major problems for your business. But if you understand ahead of time that things are not always going to be perfect, then you can prepare yourself mentally and be ready to take on those issues with confidence.

In any kind of contracting work, there are always going to be challenges.  For example, my company, Frontline Support Solutions, had been working on a project for several years and we were coming up on the end of our contract. We anticipated an extension with a modification of about twenty-five percent of the contract value. The job had gone incredibly well for us, so we were counting on moving forward with it.  Unfortunately, although we were led to believe it would happen, the contract wasn’t extended and the job is now being re-solicited to our competitors.

This type of thing is completely out of our control. We’ve done great work and the customer really liked us. They are just looking for a little more competition. And that means we will have to go after the job again. Competition is what drives our market place, but when you re-compete, there’s always the chance you’ll lose. There might be someone out there that is a little bit hungrier or who is willing to low-ball the project. It’s just a chance you have to take if you want the job.

If someone does happen to low-ball the project and take it from us, we most likely won’t get involved should the customer be dissatisfied with the results of the new contractor. When an insurance bond is pulled on a job, everybody loses. Most of the time, it’s the customer who takes the biggest hit. But many times the new contractor called in to fix the mistakes of the previous one has to fight with the insurance companies to finish the job. That can leave a bad taste in your mouth. Ultimately though, that’s what the bond is there for: to protect the customer. It’s never anyone’s intention for something like that to happen, but it’s good to know how you’ll react if it does.

As in the case I mentioned above, sometimes the rug is pulled out from underneath you. We truly expected to hear good news about our contract, but this time, it just didn’t happen. Does that mean we’re going to give up? Absolutely not! It means we are going to dig our heels in and push toward new successes. Bumps in the road will happen, but that doesn’t mean you should stop driving. If you’d like to get a hold of me about any issues you and your business are facing, you can add a comment below or contact me, Joe “VetBizMan” Perez, directly.

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