That's your biggest challenge and your biggest opportunity.  

Once your strategic decisions are made about the company and the markets you choose to compete in, the next thing you must do is find the customers and projects in those markets. 

Out of your total amount of potential customers, the ones you do business with likely only make up a very small portion of that total. In other words, they are the top of the pyramid.  

The next group is much bigger, about 3-5 times larger than your current customer group. These are the people you know and who know you but that you haven't done business with.  

The biggest opportunity is in the group of potential customers that you don't even know about and who don't know about you. That group is easily 10-20 times larger than your current customer group.  

Know These Four Facts:

1. The majority of the market doesn't even know who you are.
2. You likely don't even know who a fraction of your potential customers are.
3. Many of these won't be a good fit for you at this time and that's OK. 
4. Facts 1, 2, and 3 are your biggest opportunities.  

As you are assessing your market, you should spend some time looking at every aspect of your market strategy and your business development processes.   

• Can you work directly for the project owner, if you aren't already?
• Can you self-perform any of the work if you are a GC?
• Can you perform any other scopes of work that are closely related to yours?
• Can you expand your geographical reach without overreaching?

What would have to be true to answer yes to all of the above?  

• Can you set up a systematic process of research to identify prospects?
• Can you improve your outreach process so that you are connecting with 2X as many new potential customers each month? 
• Can you improve your outreach process so that you effectively vet out the "Bad Opportunities" early?
• Can you improve your proposal and interview process to be more effective? 
• Can you add significant value to your customers through preconstruction and project delivery processes?
• Can you actually put projects together for customers that they didn't even think possible?

What would it mean for your business if the answer to all of the above were yes?