They need everything yesterday and expect you to know their business inside and out. And if you have a crystal ball for projecting their needs ahead of time, all the better.

Demanding as they are as customers, contractors and construction firms have ranked among the strongest through the economic downturn, and remain an attractive target for industrial safety distributors.

At Heartland Safety, LLC, in Wichita, Kan., 20 percent of the company's customers are in the construction trades, comprising general contractors in upright building construction, HVAC and electrical contractors, and subcontractors. "We also deal with specialty contractors who are building process units for natural gas plants or refineries," says Ken Watts, company president. "For all of them we provide their home offices and job sites with product, service and training."

Watts says the top priority for the construction crowd is getting the product to the job site and the worker on time. "On the job site, so many requirements are unpredicted and come up suddenly," says Watts. He says pricing isn't far behind on a contractor's priority list.

Sometimes, providing low cost products in a quick fashion is where the challenge comes in for independent safety distributors. Heartland, for example, strives to be its customers' one-stop supplier, though Watts admits that it doesn't always meet that goal for every contractor.

In the past, Watts would sit down with contractors to create a list of jobsite needs before work even started. These days, he says many decisions are made at the last minute, making such preparation next to impossible. "There's always something that we can't predict," he adds, "or that we have to hustle to get for them."

Situated in Western Pennsylvania, Pro-Am Safety, Inc., of Warrendale is always on call for highway contractors. With terrain made up of hills, mountains, rivers and numerous bridges — and a climate that fluctuates from 10 degrees in the winter to 90 degrees in the summer — the region's roads take a beating year round.

That's actually good news for Pro-Am, which does 15 to 20 percent of its business with contractors, including heavy highway contractors and those working on bridge decking.

"It can go from 20 degrees to 50 degrees quickly here, so we get a freeze-thaw, freeze-thaw," says Jim DiNardo, vice president and general manager. "It just tears up the roads."

Pro-Am sells contractors a general mix of safety products, including standard personal protective equipment. And with falls being one of the biggest job site hazards, fall protection equipment is always in demand, as are engineered systems. Contractors erecting buildings with no support above them, for example, require job site-compliant engineered systems that allow them to work on the surfaces without falling through the superstructures.

"It's a very difficult thing to do," says DiNardo, "but we get into those types of arrangements with our construction customers." Pro-Am also sells its share of hard hats, safety glasses, respiratory products, fire retardant and disposable clothing to those customers, some of who work with lead-based paint when removing bridge decking.

"The opportunities for the safety distributor are pretty broad in this area," says DiNardo, "because these customers require a broad range of safety equipment in order to operate."

A few months ago Mike Smeaton was out on the links, golfing with a group of general contractors. Business is tough right now, they told him, as more contractors compete for the same dollar and margins get squeezed when they're forced to bid on projects further and further from their home bases. As president of Davenport, Iowa-based Quad City Safety, Inc., Smeaton listened and learned more about his customers from that day of golf than any market research or customer survey could provide.

"They want quick delivery times and our assistance with problem solving," says Smeaton. "They also want good, lower-cost alternatives to help boost their bottom lines."

The information proved invaluable for Quad City Safety, which sells about 24 percent of its products to the construction trades — from road and building contractors, to mechanical and HVAC contractors. The company services first aid kits and safety needs on site, and also sends its outside sales reps out as needed to solve products and develop safety solutions.

According to Smeaton, proper care and feeding of contractors requires an ample inventory and the ability to service, rent and repair equipment at the drop of a hat. "If the customer needs equipment right away and for a short period of time," says Smeaton, "they can rent instead of purchasing and we'll even train them on how to use it."

For all of the hoops that Quad City Safety jumps through for them, there remain some key challenges to working with the construction trades. The biggest hurdle, says Smeaton, is the industry's tendency to stretch payment terms to the limit. "Contractors have always been slow in paying, mostly because they're waiting for their own customers to pay," says Smeaton. "Getting paid and keeping the relationship on track requires good communication and the trust of both parties — especially right now, when everyone is paying slow."

Wayest Safety, Inc., of Oklahoma City, Okla., has different challenges when working with the 10 percent of its customer base that comes from the construction industry. A transient bunch that tends to move from job site to job site frequently, such customers sometimes require closer attention than others, according to David Rankin, company president.

"Suddenly a foreman you were dealing with across the street is now 50 miles away on another job site," says Rankin. "Unlike an industrial customer that's at one location, this is simply the nature of the construction industry."

To keep up with them, Rankin says delivery personnel are "all on the same page" and stay on top of the latest locations and movements. Accustomed to knocking on trailer doors until they find the right one, they've learned to work in an ever-changing environment.

The extra effort is worth it, according to Rankin, who says the firm is doing more business with construction companies because the sector "has remained very steady and isn't falling off like a lot of manufacturers."

Time is money for contractors, as DiNardo recently found out while working with a contractor who was working on a large bridge that spans a wide Pittsburgh river. The customer completed phase one of the project several days ahead of schedule and was compensated with a handsome bonus for its efforts. Pro-Am played a role in the success, providing the fall protection and safety equipment to the job site in a timely fashion.

"You get one company that has 15 job sites going in three states," says DiNardo, "and it doesn't take long to realize that these customers need a safety team that can deliver the right piece of equipment at the right time, all backed up by service and training."

Watts says the contractors his firm works with are usually focused on compliance and keeping workers safe. The safety supplier who can help them fulfill those needs will be the one who gets the business. "They're all looking for products that will put them in compliance, and that will also make the work site safer," says Watts. "That's what really drives them."

Knowing this, Watts says the more educated distributors are about a particular customer's applications, the better their chances of breaking in. "The more you can speak their language, the greater your reception will be," says Watts.