A few years ago I helped a client with a speaker for their contractor trade show. We wanted someone who could present a value-added presentation … something to help them be more profitable. We hired Monroe Porter, Proof Managment, to talk about management and surpervision. Monroe conducts roundtables with contractors in many construction industries as well as speaks to contractors about how to be more profitable, how to be better supervisors / managers and how to become selling machines. To provide a different perspective, we asked Monroe to share his thoughts:
After 30 years of business consulting for contractors, this is not our first trip to the recession dance. What is unique to this recession is how it follows the longest upswing since World War II and faces some of the most daunting social and economic problems the US has ever encountered. Yet no matter how economically grim things seem to be, societies and small businesses find a way to continue. The challenge is not to predict the future but rather to position your company to work with the new emerging players.
Contactors can be categorized into four groups, the wonderers, new folks who are lost, blunderers who are busy but make no money, the thunderers who are very profitable and the plunderers, who are stale and set in their ways. The wonderers will simply work long hours or quit to go to work for someone else. The blunderers will suffer with many going out of business. Many of the thunderers will simply take their profits and quit. Others will reorganize and play a reduced role in the market. And the plunderers will fail to change, shrink and lose much of the money they made.
During this process, new contractor players will surface. In many cases, the more competent and better employees will start their own businesses. Many established companies will fade and smart manufacturers and distriutors should deploy marketing strategies to keep in touch with these emerging players. But isn’t that the distributor’s role? Possibly, but as demand soared during good times, many distributor reps had little need to open new accounts and hence are unpolished in presenting new opportunities on behalf of a manufacturer. One of our contractor surveys indicated that those surveyed felt 40% of reps who called on them wasted their time. Many distributor reps are adequate customer service reps but not as good at introducing new products to end users.
We did a lot of consulting in the 90’s in Australia. One manufacturer had us teach business and sales skills to 9000 of their contractor customers. I recently had a chance to go back and work with the current manufacturer sales team. The manufacturer was unprofitable due to high overhead and costly distribution. They went through a complete reorganization but the contractor program was one thing they got right. By helping up and coming contractors with their business skills, they actually grew sales during the reorganization. Such a strategy also allowed them to sell products in the big boxes and virtually had no negative contractor feedback. There is no way of knowing which contractor end users will make it through hard times but new contractor entrepreneurs will emerge from the carnage, they always do. Smart manufacturers and distributors will build programs that ensure they have relationships with these new players.
By helping your customers with sales training, management training, pricing knowledge or strategic marketing support, you can further differentiate yourself by showing them that you want them to succeed and are willing to invest in their business. For manufacturers, this can be critical to also gain brand allegiance as well as utilize the time for increasing product awareness or gaining product insights.
You can reach Monroe Porter at www.proofman.com.
Have you conducted value-added, non-industry workshops for your contractors? Have they been beneficial?
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