9. Don’t beat up your trade partners
It’s important to remember that with the downturn in the housing market, many trades are suffering. When you ask them to change a building process, you need to remember that they are sometimes doing so with a significantly reduced staff, reduced capacity, and often at no additional cost. You can improve the chances of buy-in by showing a little love — perhaps even compensating them for the additional time required for the learning curve with the first few high-performance projects, while being clear with your intent for standard pricing moving forward. Always trying to get more for less may succeed in the short-term, but can backfire in the long-term.