Review from the Summit: Industry Cautions

Day 1 of the Summit continued with a breakdown of some of the cautions and concerns that the home improvement industry is currently facing.

Brian Smith began with an overview of the issues and concerns which included:

• Traditional advertising sources are producing less leads per dollar invested
• Changes in lead sources require modification of the sales model
• Effective marketers reduce costs by implementing more creative lead distribution and instituting revised sales models
• Increased marketing costs are a major contribution to lower profitability
• A key ingredient in a successful home improvement marketing/sales plan is: The quality and quantity of leads generated measured against the quality and quantity of the salespeople who are issued the leads which were generated
• The cost of a lead is increased (or reduced) by the efficiency and sales ability of the person to whom it is issued

He then proceeded to demonstrate the efficiency of a sales organization in this economy who made some slight changes to increase revenue by over $2 million while decreasing marketing costs by over 4% (for more information on this case study e-mail brad@daveyoho.com).

David Alan Yoho then touched on the conditions in the marketplace that are having a direct impact on the failure of some companies including:

• Failure to understand the customer’s decision making process
• Misunderstanding between coaching and training
• Hiring the wrong people
• Confusing management and leadership
• Improper compensation

In the next posting the Lead Paint Regulations presentation will be reviewed.

Review from the Summit: State of the Industry

Over the next few weeks I am going to be giving a brief summary of the content from the Home Improvement Economic Summit for those who were not able to attend.

Keep in mind that you can contact us at (703) 591-2490 with any questions - - and if you have not already ordered it, we are offering the recording from our first summit on our website.

Day 1 of the Summit began with my presentation on the state of the industry. Some of the topics of discussion included:

• The common errors made by most home improvement companies
• How the industry recovered after the last major economic setback in 1982
• Relevant case studies from our clients, including a company that utilizes 50 lead sources, and another that is on pace to achieve a 42% increase in net revenue

The primary goal of this part of the summit was to reinforce the point that there are numerous success stories out there and what they have in common is that they all follow a sales system, but in regards to marketing they think outside of the box.

The next posting will cover the industry cautions and concerns for the year 2010.

The Summit Was A Huge Success!

I would like to extend a warm thank you to everyone who participated and attended the Economic Summit in Indianapolis.

We had over 25 presenters and 130 attendees who helped to make it our most successful program to date.

Keep an eye out on our blog and social networks over the next week as we plan to post pictures, videos and content from the event.