As I look at Center City Philadelphia from my office window, it is clear something big is happening: Cranes are at work, hoisting materials to new high-rise buildings. From high-value commercial properties, mixed-use developments and hospitals to multi-family housing and luxury condominiums, there is more building and revitalizing going on in this city than in the combined 10 years that I have been examining this view. But the construction boom isn’t just a Philadelphia phenomenon—it is happening in metro areas all over the country, from Chicago to Dallas, New York to Colorado and up and down the West Coast.
I remember a different scene in 2009 to 2010, when investing and new construction in Philadelphia was literally frozen. Projects were abandoned and investors were frozen with fear. After so many years in a deep freeze, construction has thawed and now is piping hot. However, the significance for your businesses and growing your 2017 sales is not just in providing marketing services, print and promotional products to the construction vertical. In fact, you just may be too late to jump on that speeding train. Where is the true opportunity today? In the real estate and law firms that will put new tenants into this new construction, the businesses that will eventually inhabit the new construction and those businesses that provide myriad services to them.
Booms like this also raise a city’s profile as a great place to live and work, thereby increasing end-user populations. So, do your homework and start researching and prospecting for new business. If these cranes are, indeed, a signal of what is to come—a brightening economic forecast—and watching them, like mechanical birds in the skyline, is one of the clearest indicators of the state of our economy, then the time to seize the day is now.
There is no time like the fourth quarter to kick-start a great selling season, so join the boom
