Issues 23: Direct Labour DIRECT LABOURNEW from Windowbase this month is a database of DLO’s. Every local authority with housing stock, plus all the large housing associations, with their own direct labour organisations are included.Whatever they’re known as - DLO, direct works, property care, contracts division, and so on - between them, they handle huge quantities of work on housing. Work that requires all manner of supplies and services from the outside world. There’s all sorts of almanacs and yearbooks that can tell you the names of local authorities but only Windowbase tells you the names of the actual people you need to contact. The people who are responsible for making decisions about buying in . . . the very people you might need to be dealing with. It won’t be the first time that someone says they’ve got reps, whose job it is to know all this. And it won’t be the last. Truth to tell, the only people who claim to know the names of the contacts are the reps themselves - apart from Windowbase that is. As usual, what you get is a complete database, verified with the date of each record. We don’t add in a couple of dozen good mates, who retired at least three years ago, but who are good for a round of golf on a Friday afternoon, or whose names can go onto the expenses claim at the end of the month. No. What you get is HARD information because it’s a hard old world. Every sales manager and director knows that reps spend more than half their time on the road. When they’re sitting in a traffic jam on the M6 or M25, they can’t earn their keep, no matter how keen they might be. Get in touch direct. Send them your mailings, your latest technical literature. Make the follow-up calls, make the appointments, take the orders, do the business. Start with Windowbase data, and you can add your own fields, to show when you last made contact, what the outcome was, when you need to see them again. Export the converts into a separate worksheet, so you can keep track of progress. And make money.
SPECIFIERSTHERE’S also a brand new update of housing specifiers. 1500 names of architects and surveyors - more people that reps are supposed to know all about. What’s so incredibly difficult is making contact with these people, because they tend to be out on site a lot of the time.So ask yourself, if Windowbase find it hard to talk to these people between 9:30 and 12 noon, 2:00 and 4:30 in the afternoon, how come reps are managing to do such a brilliant job? The odds are that anyone who’s trying to speak to a few hundred technical officers has exactly the same problem as Windowbase. It’s no good having the car, the name and the phone number, if the guy you need to contact is always out. The miles all add up, as do the overnight stays in hotels. And what exactly is the company getting in return, apart from bills? With Windowbase specifiers, you can at least be certain that your literature, your news etc will land on his desk. Tactical mailshots get attention sooner or later, as long as what you offer is what they want. It’s all a matter of timing. So, if your company’s attitude is still to hand some yearbooks to a rep and tell him to get on with it, you might do better to pour money straight down the drain. In the last two years, the details changed on almost 1200 records. Now that’s an awful lot of information to keep up-to-date. It’s also something that’s so important to your company that it really should be held in a central file. (Or not, if you say so!)
CONSERVATORIESUNLESS you’ve been living in a cave somewhere in the back end of Afghanistan, you’ll know that conservatories are BIG business.A lot of Issues readers haven’t latched on to the fact that Windowbase data isn’t just about window fabricators. You can have the same details of companies that sell conservatories. If there’s lots of money being made, and you want to increase your share of it, you could do a lot worse than ask Windowbase for details about conservatory installers. The easiest way to find out everything you need to know is to visit our website on: www.winbase.co.uk
FIGHTING BACKTHERE’S also a lot of talk about the Golden Days of PVC-U windows being over, and everyone’s changing to aluminium and timber frames. Maybe.The vast majority of enquiries and orders for Windowbase data are about PVC-U fabricators and installers, with relatively little attention being paid to those companies dealing in hardwood, softwood and aluminium. It makes us wonder if all this talk about fighting back isn’t just a bit of public relations, trying to persuade decision-makers to take another look at the options. Whether they do so or not, there’s an awful lot of the window industry not asking for anything related to that sector. Be assured, that’s an awful lot. If it’s true that the business is there to be done, everything you need to know about companies dealing in timber and aluminium is available from Windowbase.
MAKES YER FINK, DUNNITNOT a lot of people know enough about TPS and FPS. Little wonder then that even fewer people know the phone numbers have been changed.You couldn’t exactly say that anyone’s going out of their way to publicise F/TPS - hardly surprising when it’s not really in the interests of the phone companies to do less business. Telemarketing drums up HUGE amounts of revenue for the phone companies, so not much incentive there to look after someone who wants to register. Needless to say (as usual), Windowbase customers don’t have problems with F/TPS because they get their regular updates on who’s registered by E-mail. And it’s only when you start to think about things like F/TPS that you get a handle on how important data management is becoming - one mistake, and one fine for misuse, can wipe out an entire month’s profits.
IT’S A FACTSALES and profits don’t grow on trees these days, so it’s a full-time job keeping on top of what needs doing around your office. You haven’t the time to be messing about with who can’t be contacted by phone and so on. You’ve got product to shift, mouths to feed. If you could sit with your feet up, for a couple of hours every now and again, you’d find all sorts of interesting sources of useful information.You know, the sort of stuff that makes you sit up and take notice. “We should be doing that.” How true. To make life that little bit easier, Windowbase keep tabs on all these bits and bobs, then combine them into Fact Sheets. If you want them, just fax or E-mail Mike Davis (miked@winbase.co.uk), and he’ll gladly send them, whether you’re a customer or not. Alternatively, there’s nothing to stop you logging onto our website and downloading them. Just in case there’s something that tickles your fancy, you can have hints on how to make sales:
1. to window fabricators;
WHAT THE HELLSOME people take a lot of convincing that direct mail works. One guy, In Norfolk, called to ask for more information but expressed quite genuine scepticism about what he regarded as junk mail. When asked why he was contacting Windowbase, when we hadn’t mailed him, he said the letter had been passed on to him by a colleague in Yorkshire.And he didn’t see any irony at all! If you aren’t convinced enough about handling what might seem like “expensive” data, you won’t be the first to dip a toe in the water, and try a controlled mailshot with a target area of mailing labels. They cost next to nothing and, to judge by other customers’ experience, they generate enough heat to be worth another go. Some of our biggest customers started off with a couple of lots of mailing labels. The follow-up lists that you can have at the same time offer you enough to see that it works and, rather more important for your long-term benefit, HOW it works. Take a wander round our website and see for yourself. There’s bound to be something that’s just perfect to plug into your existing operations, or add on to what you’re already doing. What the hell, as they say, at that price it’s got to be worth a try. And, of course, it is. That’s why they keep coming back to us for more, until the day someone at the monthly sales meeting says it’s time the dog wagged the tail. |