This post originally appeared on INSIGHT2PROFIT.com
Welcome to INSIGHT2PROFIT’s 2019 Pricing Challenge! Each month we’ll discuss a common pricing challenge faced by businesses and provide some tips to help improve your profitability.
First up, let’s talk about price leaks. You’ve set your product pricing, but after considerations like discounts, freight costs, program allowances, rebates and payment terms, how much of that price actually reaches your bottom line? Today we’ll look at how just one factor – expedited orders – can dip into your profit margin and how you can quickly address that challenge.
Has this ever happened to you? Your customer calls and says they need their product in three days instead of the usual two weeks. You jump through hoops to make it happen – interrupt your production cycle, delay other customers’ orders, pay extra for freight, pay overtime – and you do it for free to keep your customer happy. You just offered your customer tremendous value; you should be getting paid for it. How might you go about making that happen?
First of all, ensure your customers have a clear understanding of what your standard lead time is. If they ask about expediting, and your production team says it’s feasible, let your customer know there will be an associated surcharge.
Based on our historical tracking of expedited order requests, one of two things will happen:
You’ll save money. When faced with a fee, about half of your customers will decide they don’t actually need the order that quickly and can deal with the regular lead time. You neither disrupted production nor incurred additional expenses to meet a need that wasn’t real.
You’ll make money. The other half of your customers will appreciate that you offer the option to expedite orders and will gladly pay the surcharge, because it’s a small price to pay for being able to meet their critical need.
What practices could you adjust to stop price leaks and have an immediate impact on your company’s profitability? Download our 50+ Most Common Price Leaks Infographic to identify other areas in which you might be leaving money on the table instead of putting it in your pocket.
Since the social media scene developed years ago, it’s become cluttered. There are accounts on all social platforms that sit, gathering dust for years. Do any of those accounts belong to you or your company?
Thanks to Marie Kondo’s recent popularity, we’ve become obsessed with decluttering and organizing, so we thought it might be a good time of the year for a little spring cleaning of your social media.
By now, most companies have several social media accounts that have been running for quite some time and even a few accounts that have shut down (Google+) or become less relevant as a social media platform (Flikr). It doesn’t take much time to conduct a quick audit of your social media platforms and get back on track, if you know what to do. Here are a few pointers to get you started. (more…)
Are you trying to increase your exposure, traffic and leads? Are you trying to provide insights to contractors and generate leads? If so, social media should be part of your overall marketing program.
Social media is a targeted way of getting your message out and letting prospective customers find you.
Social media benefits are:
Reach – get your message distributed to a broader audience.
Influence – both existing contractors as well as new prospects.
Conversions – marketing insights lead to engagement that leads to sales.
Here are some tips to maximize your social media efforts to the contractor market.
Reach – Use several different social media platforms, i.e. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, to reach contractors. Make sure what you do share is relevant, as you don’t want to waste contractors time. They want quality content, not quantity. Repurpose existing content that they may not have been aware of.
Influence – You may not have to impress your existing customers, but you do for potential customers. Here’s where you have to become a thought leader. Don’t push your company or brand, but communicate a solution to a potential problem. Develop thought leaders within your company (no need for marketing to bear all the responsibility). Tap seasoned customer service reps, your engineering department and sales force. They are the ones on the front lines that deal with problems and arrive at solutions.
Conversion – This is a hard metric if you want to tie it directly to sales. In many cases where products are either specified or sold through distribution channels, it’s nearly impossible to track sales results. You can, though, create landing pages with offers for white papers or other items that would help the contractor in their day-to-day operations. Be patient, and as you engage these contractors on social media, work at taking them offline and start a traditional relationship with them.
There are around 505 million blogs in the world today and not all are created equal.
So, how do you identify and communicate with the right blogs and forums to get in front of professional tradesmen? The first question to ask yourself is: are your products or services applicable to your end users using social media? If the answer is “yes,” then your goal should be to do comprehensive research to identify the right communities, monitor them and jump in and get involved in the conversations. As you get involved in these conversations on social media, keep this in mind:
Your brand can be affected positively or negatively. You don’t control the message.
Your brand depends on the “loyalists” who are passionate about your brand.
Key blogs or social media sites are authored by thought leaders from your industry.
Social media demands transparency, so be honest in your engagement.
Here are a few sites that may be of interest to brands attempting to reach and interact with the professional tradesman:
Marketing communications firm and One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning received a Silver Davey Award in the business-to-business integrated campaign category.
CLEVELAND – March 2019 – Sonnhalter, a communications firm marketing to the professional tradesman in the construction, industrial and MRO markets, received a Silver Davey Award in the 14th Annual International Davey Awards competition. Sonnhalter accepted the award in the business-to-business integrated campaign category for the “Shouldn’t We Be Talking?” personalized road trip campaign it developed with One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning.
Sonnhalter worked with One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning to create a personalized, integrated campaign to connect with business owners to discuss the potential benefits that they would gain from joining the One Hour franchise. With the objectives of gaining interest among prospects and softening the idea of becoming a franchisee, Sonnhalter used the simple concept of sitting down over a cup of coffee to broach a difficult topic with the theme, “Shouldn’t We Be Talking?” The theme was intertwined throughout all the touch points of the campaign and culminated in the salesperson bringing a thermos of hot coffee to the meeting.
The campaign consisted of several touch points that were personalized to communicate local market knowledge and insights and secure an in-person meeting. Communication tactics for the campaign included phone calls, emails, postcards, 3D mailings of coffee mugs and social media.
“Converting a business into a franchise of a national brand can be a hard and stressful decision, so the campaign’s goal was to make that experience feel more honest and conversational,” said Matt Sonnhalter, vision architect at Sonnhalter. “Both Sonnhalter and One Hour are very pleased with the rise in opportunities that stemmed from this campaign and are honored to be awarded for our efforts.”
The Davey Awards honor the finest creative work from small firms, agencies and companies worldwide. The Davey Awards are named after King David who defeated the giant Goliath with a big idea and a little rock. The story resembles what small firms do each year by deriving strength from big ideas instead of big budgets.
