Evan Carmichael advises an aluminum door company to add a memorable qualifier like "best quality" or "best service" instead of competing on price. Focus on B2B relationships with builders and architects, then overdeliver on every interaction to generate referrals through wow-factor experiences.
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Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's episode, I'm going to answer a question from one of my newsletter readers, Surrender, who has an aluminum door company. He targets business owners with it, and he's sourcing it from Italy, and he's now trying to brand his company. And be known as the guy who provides aluminum doors and wanted my advice on how to do that. So, thanks for the question, Sarinder. First off, I would try to add an extra word, an extra qualifier on there, so you're not just known as the guy who provides aluminum doors, but the guy who provides the best quality aluminum doors, or the lowest price aluminum doors, or you provide the most options on aluminum doors, or the best service for aluminum doors, so that it makes it a little bit easier to remember. That way when people are referring business to you, they can say, "Oh yeah, he's the guy who provides the best quality aluminum doors." Now, you are not ideally going after the lowest price. It's the hardest competitive advantage to sustain over a long period of time, and if you're sourcing your product in Italy, chances are it's not going to be a low-cost type of product. So go for something like quality or service or number of options. That will help, you know, kind of make you stand out. Also, being the guy who sells B2B, can help as well. So when people are referring you, it's easier to pass qualified leads on to you, and they're more likely to think about you in certain situations because they remember that you're the guy who provides the best quality aluminum doors for B2B people. The next thing I would try to do is network with people who can make multiple or bulk orders from you. So if you go out and try to sell individual orders to individual business owners, you know, that could make some money, but it's a hard, tough road to do because a lot of these guys may never buy from you again, or if they do, they may buy from you in 5 years or 10 years. I don't know how often you have to replace an aluminum door, but you're providing quality product, so hopefully they won't have to replace it that often. Instead, I would try to target guys like builders who might be building big buildings and need a lot of aluminum doors, or guys like architects who may not be designing, you know, huge buildings but have a lot of projects on the go and can keep bringing you customers customers on an ongoing basis. So you want to try to go after those guys, and it's worth investing the time in the relationship and for them to get to know you and how great a product that you provide so that it can help boost business right away, bring cash flow in, and help you continue to grow your business. A lot easier to do that than to go after business owners one by one by one. The last thing I would try to do is overdeliver on everything that you do. So the best way to get referrals is to overdeliver and really wow the customer. So how can you go over the top to really provide a great experience for your customers? If you are targeting architects or builders, how can you provide such an awesome experience with them that they want to keep using you? So, you know, you're always early for the job, your guys are in uniform looking really nice, maybe there's a follow-up you can do as a process to make sure that the doors are installed properly and the customers are really happy with it. Think of extra ways that you can really wow the customer that they're not expecting or not used to. You give little presents every time that they order from you. Whatever it is, think of different ways that you can stand out with them so that you're, you're really blowing their mind and they really want to work with you again. They're going to tell all their friends about you. You're not just an average supplier like all the other guys they deal with. You're the guy who really over-delivers and does what he says he's going to do. So that's a great way to get referrals. Hopefully that helps, Surrender. If you guys liked the video, please give it a thumbs up below. I love seeing those thumbs ups coming in. And I'd also love to hear what you have to think. If you want to leave a comment under the video, please leave it for help, for surrender, or just to say what you thought of the video. So thank you, and I will see you in the next episode.
