Sprung on employees one Monday morning after a weekend of physical transformation at each of the firm’s 21 branches, the program included new uniforms for truck drivers, gussied-up entrance carpets with logos in all stores, and a simultaneous, company-wide video presentation from then-CEO Bill Kern introducing the launch. The makeover was so pervasive it infused employees with newfound excitement and gave customers a point of differentiation to latch onto. More important, the program spurred a 50 percent leap in sales since its launch, and continues to drive the company today.
“This year, we’re projecting 15 to 16 percent growth again over last year,” says Hal Look, senior vice president of marketing and business development at ORCO. “And that’s at a time when the market’s only growing at about 6 percent, so those other 10 points are coming from increasing our market share.”
At The Lumber Yard, an 18-unit operation based in York, Pa., and a division of Wolf Distributing, marketing did more than boost sales—it helped expand faltering margins. While the 163-year-old company’s annual sales were approaching $200 million, it was feeling pricing pressure from competing in a commodity industry. In 2005, the company launched a new marketing effort to enhance its brand in the minds of clients. It held an intensive series of focus groups with customers and turned an eye internally, too, conducting a company-wide S.W.O.T. (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis with executives and employees at all levels of the company. What came out was a new emphasis on something contractors couldn’t buy at The Lumber Yard’s competitors for any price: the firm’s inherent, time-tested reliability, embodied in a simple new slogan: “Count on It.”
Geoff Brown, the firm’s president, attributes the now-expanding margins at the firm to that campaign, as customers have again placed value on the experience and reliability that The Lumber Yard brings to the table. “You’ve got to figure out what differentiates you from everyone else. Otherwise, if you try to fight this battle on price alone, you’re going to lose,” he says. “For us, it was the confidence in our customers’ eyes that we’re going to be there and take care of whatever comes up. But it was a matter of making sure that message was getting out there. It was really just pure marketing.”
At TW Perry, a four-unit operation based in Gaithersburg, Md., and another past PROSALES Excellence Award winner, marketing has been a central focus of the company’s overall business strategy for several years. “The business is what drives us,” says Rich Cortese, president of the $148 million firm. “That old saw that says, ‘We’re in the lumber business, we don’t do marketing,’ just doesn’t work anymore. If you’re doing the kind of volume we’re doing, you’d better have everything together, including a well thought-out marketing program.”
Background Check Of course, getting to that kind of well thought-out marketing strategy takes more than just handing out T-shirts and ball caps at your next sales promotion, and successful dealers like Contractor Express, ORCO, The Lumber Yard, and TW Perry know that research and strategic development are key starting points for any branding effort. One of the first steps, experts say, is to research and understand what your existing brand is perceived to be in the market. After all, if you don’t know who you are, you won’t be able to effectively articulate what sets you apart from the competition for your customers. The process for finding that existing brand identity can be as simple as sending out a customer survey or as involved as setting up formal, structured focus groups with clients and vendors. Whatever the approach, the key is to ask your existing customers what you do well, and what you need to do to improve. You’ll likely be surprised by their answers.
“Focus groups will tell you why customers buy at your lumberyard,” says Tom Rothrauff, a vice president and general manager at Dublin, Ohio–based developer Epcon Communities and a marketing expert who’s run marketing programs in various industries, including construction, for more than 25 years. “It won’t be a million different things. It will be 10 things that you hear over and over again. You’ll consistently start to hear a pattern, and that’s your brand.”
Once you’ve identified the characteristics that define your brand, you need to sell it internally first. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that marketing is an externally focused effort, it’s critical to get your own people believing in your brand from the start. That’s why ORCO used the shock factor of rebranding itself that Monday morning with employees first. “If you can get your internal folks excited and passionate about the promise that you’re making, you’ll be much more effective in servicing your customers,” says Christina Raes, ORCO’s associate vice president of marketing. That means getting everyone on your team, from the CEO to the delivery driver, to buy into your firm’s message, using whatever method it takes. Whether it’s the drama of ORCO’s weekend makeover or the introspection of The Lumber Yard’s company-wide S.W.O.T. analysis, you need to take it to your employees first. “If all your employees are not on board, you’ll be shortchanging yourself,” says Brown. “Your employees are your brand in our industry.”
With your message firmly identified and sold to your team, it’s time to take it to your customers, but not just from a selling standpoint. Good marketing programs develop and strengthen relationships with customers, making sure the firm “touches” them in as many ways as possible, reinforcing the brand behind the boards and giving them more to think about than just price when making purchasing decisions. Beyond appreciation events such as Contractor Express’ cookouts, that might take the form of special trips for your best customers, who will be accompanied on the junket by your best salespeople, of course.
That’s the approach at Kent, Ohio–based Carter Lumber Co. and its Kight Home Center subsidiary, which recently flew 300 of its top customers and their spouses to Hawaii, as sales reps happily tagged along. More than just exorbitant corporate outlays, these events help develop and strengthen relationships with customers, bonds that can go much further than a $1 board-foot discount from your competitors. “People buy from people, and they buy from people they like,” says Carter’s vice president of marketing, David McCafferty. “So we’re actually all about marketing ourselves to build the relationship with that customer.”
