Electrical Industry Article

How does a contractor pick his everyday products to bid? Which products are included in the database he picks from? How did they get there? Who's excluded? Why? If the contractor prefers your brand is there a way he can include it in his database? Where does he get his catalog information? Spec sheets? What about pricing? How does he prefer to get it? From who? How important is pricing anyway? These are just some of the questions that need be answered if you want to believe that you truly know your customer and how to position your products. To that end ElectricSmarts has done webinars and conducted meetings for partners throughout the channel because they understand that if they don't know the answer to these questions, they don't truly know how to position their products with their customers.

You've heard it a million times before that the Internet has changed EVERYYTHING and it truly has. Strategies such as favorably "positioning" your products in a customer's database, and the real time information that we can gather now, was only fantasy a few short years ago. If you thought you knew your customer before, it's time to reexamine. Change is happening fast and furiously. Meaningful customer-supplier relationships are forming around technology because the "time is money mantra" you hear from you clients about your products is no less applicable when it comes to the many steps of preparing a bid.

Needs:

• Finding products quickly and completely (spec sheets, accurate descriptions, videos, etc.).
• Complete and mistake free selection.
• One click pricing.
• One location catalog collections uniformly formatted.
• Mobile Apps for instant field information.
• Easy importation of products into the customer's bid database.
• Trust!!
• Electronic list building across many brands.
• Electronic transfer of orders directly to the distributor's ERP system.
  
  

This is what's important to today's contractor. Yesterday's contractor had a lot more leeway. Today it's about speed and precision. Your products are still important but equally important is all the information that modifies it, how correct it is and how simple it is to access. Recognize that the product itself is just ONE aspect of the purchase. Wrapping it up with the correct information makes the contractor's life easier and therefore makes that product a simpler choice when it comes time to purchase.

Tell us what you think. bfloyd@electricsmarts.com