Issues 18: Oh, no!!!

OH, NO!!!

THERE’S NOTHING like bad news for attention-grabbing headlines. You’d think it’s all we want to read. There’s something very reassuring about bad news, when it affects someone else. Even better when it affects everyone else.

PVC-U windows, long ago, were as good news as we could get - the answer to all our prayers. Something like fifty million homes, mostly in need of them. Who’d have thought that so many people would have got in on the act?

You’d think, with that number of houses to be done, the work would have gone on for ever. Far from it, as we’re now discovering. So, in this context, there’s all sorts of cliché expressions that come to mind: The End is Nigh, Times are Hard, Good While It Lasted, and so on. Try this cliché for size, then - when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

WINNING WAYS

DON’T FIX IT if it ain’t broke. In other words, lots of businesses believe firmly in not changing a winning formula. By listening to all sorts of people in the industry, one common factor comes through all the time. They all strongly assert how their company grew successful by developing a winning formula. No doubt it took a lot of effort and commitment. Having found the answer, these companies continued doing what came up with the goods.

What’s difficult to accept is that, whilst the formulae were possibly perfect for a particular set of market conditions, they have to change as those conditions change. Obvious, that. It’s called keeping pace with the times.

The trouble with keeping pace is lots of others are trying (and often succeeding) to do the same thing. When there’s only so much business to go round, keeping pace is not enough - it only delays the inevitable.

You won’t find anyone, these days, who’s daft enough to say the replacement window market is buoyant. “New starts” are mostly either senior employees having a go on their own, or phoenixes arising from the ashes of their own failures. Where there’s hope, there’s life.

WHERE THERE’S LIFE...

TRY IT THE OTHER WAY ROUND, then: where there’s life, there’s hope. The good news is that there’s enough creativity and ingenuity in this world for new solutions to be found to problems almost daily.

All we have to do is accept that something needs to be done. That’s the hard part - and, by the look of things, the most important part.

Looking at the big picture, for a moment, with twenty-five million homes to aim at, all you needed was a decent advert in either the local paper or the Radio Times. Either way, the odds were you’d get a slice of the action. When twenty-five million is down to, say, four million, it’s time to start getting very picky about what you do.

If the market’s shrunk to only 20% of its original size, one hundred newspaper readers are down to twenty, as far as you’re concerned, because the rest are no longer interested in your advert. Doesn’t that make it rather an expensive advert?

STOP BOTHERING ME

Ask anyone who spends all day at home, and they’ll tell you they get lots of telesales phone calls, few of which are actually welcomed. Ask anyone who works from home and they’ll tell you they’re enough to drive you batty - cutting an important call short, because the other phone’s ringing, only to find out there’s an offer of free windows for the right home. Oh please!

The market moves in huge demographic chunks, with one sector all wanting the same thing at the same time. What’s overlooked are the demographics of the sector that sits on its hands and does nothing. It never occurs to some people to ASK these people why they didn’t do the same as everyone else.

Instead, companies stick to the old ways, because the old ways are winning ways . . . even when they clearly aren’t winning any more. Telesales has become such a nuisance that all we have to do is look up a number at the front of our phone book and ask for our name to be put on the list called Telephone Preference Service. No more calls, after that. Doesn’t that say something about how times are changing?

TIME TO FOCUS

DO WHAT YOU DO BEST. It’s the old Pareto Principle thing - 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers. 80% of the hassle comes from a different 20%. Conventional wisdom says it’s time to take a very close look at the 20%, and find out what those people all have in common.

Instead of thrashing around, at a lot of expense, trying to attract new customers, it’s better to focus on a handful whose needs are pretty much the same as your best customers. Drop the rest, if needs be. Leave the difficult ones to someone else.

Windowbase customers are, in some ways, a diverse bunch. What do they have in common? Well, for a start, a lot of them are recognised market leaders in their various sectors. Probably 80%, as it turns out. They take industry data and they use it. Those who take the data, and don’t use it, (well below 20%, actually) are less likely to renew contracts. Few of them blame the data, however.

THE KNOW HOW

WE ALL KNOW (or ought to know) who’s cutting the mustard, in these difficult times. By coincidence, a lot of them are the ones who make regular use of their data, sending out offers we can’t refuse, and so on. They want our attention and they want our orders - and they’re doing something about it.

Anyone who’s doing well is hitting a particular sector of the market, and hitting it hard. Since there’s only so much business to go round, they’re taking meals off other people’s plates.

So, if your company’s skipped a meal recently, it could be a sure sign that you should be doing to someone what’s being doing to you, before you go hungry. Or starve.

Windowbase can’t possibly know what sector of the market’s best for you but it can give you full details of who to choose from. Whether you’re operating nationally or just in your own quiet little corner of the world, there’s a data deal that’s aimed at you.

A 60% DISCOUNT

ROYAL MAIL have come up with the Know How. It’s a super package, a couple of top quality manuals and compact disks, offering just about all the advice anybody could possibly want on how to target a market sector, hit it, and keep on hitting it until you get a result. It costs £100 and Windowbase customers can get their hands on it for only £40. Royal Mail and Windowbase pay the rest.

The Know How shows you how to choose your target audience, and take it from there. Possibly start with mailing labels plus a follow-up list for phone calls, and move on to develop an active database, from which your new customers will no doubt come. No doubt? Well, yes, actually. Because there are only so many businesses out there, prepared to take the bull by the horns. They’re the ones who get attention and, assuming they learn from the pilot schemes, keep taking an extremely critical look at what they’re doing, and how they’re doing it, they develop a new (and much better) way.

All Windowbase can do is offer to point you in a different direction, if you’re not convinced your present course is getting you anywhere. The Know How hasn’t appeared out of the blue, just because Royal Mail wants you (out of the kindness of its heart) to do better. Obviously, there’s business in it for them, if you send more mail. Alternatively, you can find people to talk to...

BIG BUSINESS

MILLIONS OF QUID’s worth of windows are being made every week by a handful of companies who’ve specialised in commercial work. It’s all very well believing that New Build is where it’s at, but there’s some big players signing some very big, long term deals. House builders are an obvious source of new business, so it pays to get into bed, if you can.

What’s strange is how little, relatively speaking, attention is paid to local authorities and housing associations. What’s astonishing is how easy it can be to get in touch with these people - fifteen hundred of them, with millions, MILLIONS, to spend - and that’s without taking the DLOs into consideration.

Windowbase offers data on specifiers and DLOs. Instead of being daunted by the difficulty of finding the right contact, even the right phone number, surely it makes sense to cut straight to the chase - literally in this case - and get in touch with them all (or those nearest to you, if you don’t operate nationally). Half the time, the biggest problem is figuring out who to talk to. What to say comes easy.

BROWNIE POINTS

THERE’S AN AWFUL AMOUNT of business being done with specifiers, and some of it can be like money for old rope. They’re always on the look-out for interesting new products, and their tender lists could always do with a new name or two to tag onto the end, in place of So-and-so, who are far too expensive.

PVC-U systems suppliers, to encourage more profile sales, can’t ignore the chance to help fabricators win a slice of this work. Anything that helps sell more and more profile has to be good news. Information from a database of 1500 specifiers can be just what half a dozen fabricators need. The cost of hard information, when it’s put to good use, especially when it’s divided by six, is negligible. The Feel Good Factor that it generates, from active support, is such a bonus.

It’s just like Royal Mail, with their Pull-Through policy, of trying to help people become more successful while helping themselves at the same time.

SAY £150

PULL-THROUGH, when you can use it, has to make sense, especially when it’s probably seen as Customer Support. Somebody’s got to be out there selling. If fabricators can be selling to specifiers, everyone’s a winner, but they can only do it with hard information. They need their hands held. That’s why so many profile suppliers run seminars on how it’s done.

Give them some names . . . and phone numbers, addresses, and tell them exactly what these people are looking for, whether it be internal glazing beads, quality assurance, mechanical joints - whatever. Give them something to go on. That’s the beauty of Windowbase data - it’s FAR more than a list of names. It eliminates cold-calling by giving you as much background on your prospects as you could reasonably wish.

Either someone with a decent national operation budget needs an entire specifiers database, or someone with a more local operation needs to kick-start off into a new direction with some mailing labels.

With prices starting from as little as £150, top quality data is within EVERYONE’s reach. The business is still out there, if only you know where to look. Windowbase knows, because it’s looked - and found it. If the Gold Folder doesn’t point you in the right direction, hit the website:

www.winbase.co.uk

and you can use it to see all the various options - fabricators, installers, DLOs, conservatories, windows, PVC-U, timber, aluminium, Ireland, specifiers in local authorities and housing associations. Or ring Mike Davis on 01706 644308 and he’ll point you in the right direction.