In another poll carried out on the DGB Twitter account, I asked people whether in a modern fenestration industry whether there was still a place for door-to-door selling and telecanvassing or not.

Previous polls had been a bit of a landslide, but whilst there was still a clear winner on this one, it was more of a closer fought vote than the previous ones. And on a matter that our industry has been grappling with for a while now.

Question and answers

Here are the results of that poll, including the question asked:

55% is obviously a clear majority win. But 37% of voters still believed that there was still a place for these old fashioned methods in our industry, only if they were done right. Only 8% said that they still firmly believe they have a place in our industry.

As was mentioned in some tweeted replies to that poll, if companies are still doing this sort of stuff now, it must be working for them otherwise why would they bother?

Personally, I’m with the 55% who said it has to stop. The chances that companies on a large scale are actually using cold-calling techniques in the right way are slim at best. Home owners tell me every week about their experiences with other companies who continue to use arcane methods to sell their windows and doors, and not a single one of them are happy about it.

On a B2B level I suspect the situation is a little different, as there has to be a degree of professionalism in order to try to win a chance to win new business. But on the B2C front, I can vouch that the sales environment is as bad as in some areas as it always has been.

DGB Brexit

Sell on quality, not price

For me, you will always win the better business if you sell your goods on platforms such as quality, good customer service, positive reputation etc. The minute you start to sell based on price, you enter the race to the bottom where the rest of the dross in your area are all fighting you to win the contract on the cheapest price, throwing away profit margin and quality just to make sure no one else wins the business. That’s a terrible long term strategy and generally leads to companies going to the wall because of it.

When you sell on quality it allows you to build up desire and emotional investment from the home owner. They become motivated to buy your product, knowing that what they are going to be getting at the end of the transaction is something of superior quality and will last. Importantly from a business perspective, it allows the company to make a decent margin. Once the desire has been built, customers are more likely to feel comfortable to pay more knowing they are getting more for their money.

The issue our industry has is that for decades we have been obsessed with selling everything as cheap as possible, with all other selling factors coming behind that. When you do that you create a situation which becomes very hard to shake off, and a mentality that is hard to change. Although there is a good chunk of the industry that tries to do things the right way, there will always be that portion of the sector that will always be happy to sell on price as the prime USP.

Over the next few weeks I will continue to run DGB polls on Twitter. They seem to be fairly popular at the moment, so may make it a bit of a regular feature. Thanks to those who voted.

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