The problems are many. The change is vast. This will be our life-defining period of time.

For the UK fenestration industry, this is the toughest challenge it has ever faced. How we would appreciate a regular recession instead of this!

But in and around the mess that was the economy, there is one huge angle that our installation companies can use to keep people interested in our products, and that is the home. We’re all going to be spending more time in it, and we can use that to our advantage in our sales and marketing.

Your home has never been so important

That’s the headline we’ll be taking. Homeowner confidence is at a 12 year low, job losses are going to be measured in the millions, millions more will take pay cuts. All of that sounds terrible, and it is, but the one common factor that binds us all is our homes. We’re all going to be spending much more time in them, which means we’re more likely to want to look at what we can do to improve them.

We have spent weeks now looking through windows and doors, at our gardens, our roofs, walls and fences. A lot of us have probably looked and thought “that could do with changing”. Indeed, recent figures presented by ICAAL at the start of the week showed that enquiries to installers have been on the rise again after an initial dip. Installers should be tailoring their message to homeowners that their home, as if it wasn’t before, is even more important now than it ever has been. We should be looking to inspire potential clients with powerful imagery to get the creative juices flowing.

The data shows enquiries are there. The challenge then becomes turning that interest into orders. That’s the endgame. You can have enquiries and quotes all day long, but they need to turn into sales. That’s where installers are going to really need to work hard. More than they ever have done. People still want to spend money ultimately. There’s an emotional attachment to such things. It makes us feel good when we spend. Like booking a holiday, or buying a new car or kitchen. There is a sense of excitement when you do. But with the sheer vastness of the headwinds facing us, this is where we’re going to have to get really creative if we have any chance of turning that interest into cash.

That’s where the message of your home being even more important comes in. Whether its security, energy efficiency, aesthetics, lower maintenance or anything else, all of these aspects help us in the process of trying to gain a sale.

Use imagery

Social media traffic has spiked in the triple-digit percentages during the lockdown. There’s not much else to do, and people have been scrolling through Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram at record levels. All of these platforms are image-heavy, and that’s what we should be using to our advantage.

Images sell. Fact. You buy with your eyes as much as anything else, and that’s where installers should have the vision to make the most of that. Installers should be picking their best-looking installations and begin to post them regularly to social media platforms with a call to action. It would be wise to temper the message at the same time. Most people don’t want to be sold to right now. Not when worries about their own jobs, money and lives are at the top of the priority list. But if we can gently nudge them towards what we do, some will come to the decision to buy off their own backs.

We also have to assume that a great number of quotations installers will be giving out over the next few months will be slow burners. Homeowners will want to gather prices now to understand what their budgets need to be so they can save for them. Whilst that might not make for a quick influx of orders and cash now, the good news is that when there is some kind of stabilisation further down the track, there could be quite a strong uptick in orders, perhaps at the start of 2021.

The other good news for installers is that the route to eyeballs is largely free. Social media is free. Emails are free. Zoom and Skype are free. Use them as much as possible. It costs you nothing but time, and we all have a lot of that right now as well.

Installers who adapt to this new way of doing business will end up stealing market share from those still sat on their hands. I’m not saying records are going to be broken or there is a boom on the horizon, I think we know that’s not going to happen. But there is a chance to for installers who are not installing but still offering quotations and taking pre-orders to get a step ahead of their competition when we feel it’s genuinely safe and homeowner demand begins to rebound.

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