Folks who do things right
In a past post, I noted that you “can’t assume your competition is standing still” and that we are always looking for ways to add more value. One of the ways we identify opportunities is to look at others and see what we like and try to replicate that in our way. Perhaps that is not the classic marketing way to approach product and channel development, but for us it is cheap education and usually a sound way to go.
I don’t want to name the companies I really respect because I do business with a lot of folks and some companies are just way too big for us to emulate. But I want to share a couple of observations we have seen and thought were neat. If you are in those companies, you will probably recognize yourself.
The first company was going through some difficult times a couple years ago. They decided the best way was to develop a new adhesive which stuck to a much wider range of surfaces and papers. As you know with introducing a new product, it takes a long time to get sales traction. But they stayed the course, and promoted their new adhesive aggressively. As new papers and boards came out which had adhesion properties, they had the solution. So while many folks outsourced products and became more “me too”, they developed their own strengths which became a more valuable resource for us (because I can get the “me too” products anywhere). We also have some items which are unique to us. We fabricate them in-house and it furthers our internal knowledge of mounting and laminating. Like this partner, they take time to take hold, but we know that if you need to depend on us, we must make a commitment to these products and we do. So just like this partner, we think this builds trust with our customer’s and further’s our knowledge which is also a valuable commodity to our customers.
The second observation comes from a company which is really “tight” with their customers. They identify needs and have developed the resources to source those needs and satisfy their customers. As such, their customers have no where else to go. To communicate this, they put a lot of information on their website and are very generous with their knowledge with me and others. Knowing that they are forthcoming with information, makes me want to call them first when I have a need, and I do call them first. We try to replicate this by also putting a lot of information on our web-site and will help people secure what they need. As a custom house, we are often accused internally in our fabrication area of being like Burger King (”Customers, Have it your way”) and all the demands that puts on us. But without questions, it keeps folks coming back, focuses on value added and not price and is a good model. The company we took this from does this really well in their area and we look at them frequently to see if we can do something better.
There are a lot of other observations I like too but I do not have time enough to write about them. We do not hide who we do business with and will always tell our customers the adhesives, boards and laminate manufacturers we use. I think it gives us more credibility because we partner with some outstanding companies and reflects well on us.