Most of us within this industry have expanded our offerings over the last couple of years.  This holds true for contractors, distributors, and manufactures alike.
 
Many manufactures within our industry have created innovative products that provide benefits to both the contractors and end-user.  As a distributor, REAMS has vastly expanded our offerings over the last few years to bring additional opportunities to our customer.  At the contractor level, many of you have expanded your service and product offerings to expand revenues.
 
At every level there has been an expansion of offerings of both goods and services with the purpose of expanding business, but this can only occur if someone knows about it.  So the real questions becomes: "Are your customers aware of it?"  There won't be any "expansion" unless they are.
 
I had a contractor show me a very nice tri-fold brochure they just created and sent to their entire customer base.  The brochure highlighted all the new, and existing, services and products this contractor had expanded into.  Calls started coming in within 24 hours.  
 
If you have a solid customer base, in many instances they are going to be thrilled to find out you have other services to provide.  They know you and they trust you.  You just made their life a whole lot easier by letting them know that with one phone call, invoice, and scheduling; they can get what they need done.  It's as simple as that.
 
Beware...keeping up awareness is a constant battle, it's more than a one-shot deal. Just last week I was standing at one of our counters when a customer asked, "Can you recommend a good place for fire-pit accessories?"  The location Manager gave him a bit of a quizzical look and said, "We sell fire pit stuff.  We have for over a year"
 
The customer thought it was great that we had it, but I was a little concerned that he wasn't already aware of the fact that we handled this product.  After a short conversation the customer did remember seeing the product at our vendor trade show and the information in the newsletters.  We had created awareness, just not at the right point in time.  (Thankfully the customer asked when the need had arisen.)
 
I share this story because I guarantee that you can send info out this spring to all of your customers telling them all you can do for them, and sometime later in the season you or one of your staff will be on-site and the customer will say, "Gee...I sure wish you did xyz."  (It will inevitably be something you already do, and have offered, multiple times.)
 
When this happens, smile, thank them for the opportunity, and enjoy the fact that they trusted you enough to even bring it up.  That's a true sign of customer satisfaction.
 
For more ideas on how to create or propel your own Awareness Campaign, give us a call, we're happy to help.
 
Thank you for your continued business.

 

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