# Partnering with commercial electricians



## Elite-vdf (Dec 14, 2018)

Please forgive me if I am in the wrong forum section this is my first forum post.

This is by no means an advertisement or anything like that for my company. 

I recently started a low voltage structured cabling company with a business partner. I have done sales for the industry for a little while and I was wondering what in the world I was doing wrong. I have tried to call different electrical companies to offer to partner up on some of the low voltage bids since many of the companies I have talked to do not do that for themselves. So far, however, I have not had any luck on even beginning to form a work relationship with any of these companies.

I know there is money to be made by working with electricians but I am having a hard time getting past the "yea send me an email with what you do and ill get in touch if I need something" If I follow up with them in a month or two they don't remember me.

Any suggestions would be awesome.

What would it take for a company like mine to get in the doors?
What should I not say to avoid being cliche and generic?

If this is in the wrong location please let me know and I will move it to the right forum.


----------



## Dennis Alwon (May 9, 2009)

I think that I would find a job and then call and ask around if their company was interested in bidding the job of installation.

Most contractors, at least here, have plenty to do so they are not interested in doing the low voltage work. I would not expect them to partner with you but perhaps they would bid the installation.

IMO, if you are buying asll the wire and parts and I am just the laborer then it isn't worth my time. Maybe you can hire someone to do this and keep them as an employee.


----------



## MechanicalDVR (Dec 29, 2007)

Elite-vdf said:


> Please forgive me if I am in the wrong forum section this is my first forum post.
> 
> This is by no means an advertisement or anything like that for my company.
> 
> ...



Call around to the larger contractors in your work area and see what they have to say.

It never hurts to ask.


----------



## telsa (May 22, 2015)

I know of just one fella that went down your road.

He raced to hire a RME for his corporation so that he could be a C-10 himself.

Everything he wanted to achieve would be in direct competition with existing contractors.

In my area, it's common for the C-7 (datacom, etc.) contract to be bid separately from the C-10 contract ( the works -- includes datacom should the contractor want such action -- many C-10s don't want it. )

Most datacom projects are totally out of synch with tenant improvement contracts// shell contracts, etc.


----------



## catsparky1 (Sep 24, 2013)

We have a sister company that does low volt . When they need power , lighting , poles , under ground etc they call us we give them a number and they bid . When we need low volt we do all the work and then pay them to program . It works well for contractors and customers because they make one phone call . If it needs service one phone call . The low volt side has got us some rather large jobs . Our low volt bids 6 figures and up . They do some pretty big jobs . They are on a prison right now and have a courthouse coming up .

The thing with them is they have a C-7 but we have C-7 , C-10 , and class B general . Works out good . We are doing some power upgrades for a investor that They were doing access control for and needed power and a ton of pipe work . The contractor and I were talking and he asked me for a number . Now we have a city block downtown to work on . I guess it is like AA it works if you work it . YO


----------



## Tarpon229 (Jan 5, 2019)

Every electrical contractor is open to any edge that they can get on bid day. With that being said no electrical contractor wants to use a bid that will end up costing them money or make them look bad. 
Most electrical contractors have a couple of go to guys that they get pricing from that they know will be competitive and also make them look good at the end of the day.
If you don’t have a reputation of being low or at least competitive and performing good work people will be hesitant to take your proposal. 
So if no one will give you a chance how do you build that reputation? 
You could just start quoting the jobs in your area and sending the electrical contractors bidding these jobs your proposal. Most if not all will use your price and get their regular guy to just match it. 
Now we go back to edge on bid day.
Find that one electrical contractor that seems to win every job they want and make sure they do good work then talk to them on the next nice project and tell them that you only want to quote them on this project and that you will be low. So you buy they job (take it lower than normal)t hen perform perfect.
If you pull this off it will be money and time well spent. Everyone will be wanting your number from then on.


----------



## brian john (Mar 11, 2007)

We partner with commercial firms all the time, tried for years to get in the front door took time and patience and word of mouth. 

I also had the help of electrical inspection requirements they needed my services for a final on their switchboard once they started using us for switchgear finals, they would ask what else do we do and it just blossomed from there.

It did not happen overnight.

My friend worked for another company that did the same services we offer, when he left that company and went out on his own he had plenty of work from day one.


----------

