This blog is moving.

Well, its final, I am moving this blog to www.trowelandhammer.com . All future content will be posted there. 

Thanks, 

Habitat- Giving Back

Habitat for Humanity is a charity that is very close to my and my companies heart. We support our local affiliate through donations as a company of materials at a deep discount and by acting as a resource throughout the construction process. I serve on the affiliates board, and many of our employees donate time to the groups efforts throughout the year.

I tell you this not to blow my own horn, or to show what good things we do, but to remind you that we as the construction industry have a unique gift to give back to the communities we do business in. Habitat is not the only way to serve, but it is the one that I have chosen, as I agree with the groups aims and methods. If Habitat is not a cause you believe in, or is not active in your area, find something to volunteer with. I do not believe that we as business people and entrepreneurs "owe" anything to our communities that anyone can take, but I do believe that service is a virtue. That service provides many opportunities, both directly through the chance that I have to network and in a more karmic sense. That doing good for other begets good things is not a new idea, and one definitley worth trying out.

With that I want to encourage you to go build something. Not just houses or buildings, but communities, homes and families. If you are passionate about something, go make it happen! Find people like you and by hook or by crook help to build something that will outlast any building that any one of us could build in our careers.

Make an impact that will outlive you!


Please check out Habitat for Humanity of Roswell at Facebook and hfhr.org

What are you really selling

Many of us in the construction business often forget what it is we are really selling our customers, or maybe to be more precise what it is that our customers are buying.

When you or I buy a burger at McDonald's are we really buying 2 oz of beef, a bun and assorted toppings. I know that I am not. I am buying a solution to hunger, and more specifically a fast solution to that hunger. I would rather be eating something else, but that doesn't always work. The construction business is no different.

Lets look at the roofing business. absolutely no one is purchasing shingles, or TPO or any other kind of roofing product because they want it, nor are they buying the time and effort that the roofer and crew put into the project. They aren't even buying a roof that won't leak and the warranty that guarantees that it will stay that way.

They are actually purchasing a dry floor.

If they spend more for it to get a job performed by a roofer they percieve to be better, or a material that guarantees better performance they are buying a dry floor in more conditions or for a longer period of time.

The roof is just one example of this. The same principle applies to a comfortable home and lower utility costs for an insulator, or a better environment to spend time with loved ones for a remodeler. Look at what benefit your customer really gets from using you and the products you use. This may not be the same for every customer but it is often similar. Craft your marketing and selling messages to this end rather than what you
think the benefit is.

Always, always, always remember that people purchase for their reasons not ours. find out what those reasons are and present the opportunity with the best reason for them.

Home Show How To

Spring will be upon us shortly and that means home shows for those of us in the construction and home improvement industry. My company participates in at least two shows every year and 2010 will be no difference. I want to share some tips tricks and info that I have picked up the hard way at home shows the past 5 or so years. 

Lets start with the marketing whys of a home show. Why would anyone want to go thought the trouble and heartache of building a booth and giving up their weekend for a show? There are a number of reasons not to do a show, so lets get those out of the way. If your primary customer is not the homeowner, don't bother. Contractors do come to home shows but not in a number that will make it worth the cost. If your a drywaller whose primary customers are builders don't bother. But, if you sell and install a product that has a genuine, perceptible benefit to a homeowner, then a home show is for you. Home shows are great for building your company's brand equity by getting eyeballs on your brand and products. They are also fantastic for lead generation, but they are not closing events. It is very rare that you will actually sell anything at the show. Mostly you will either be getting information for a future closing event, or even more likely be planting the seed of a future sale. I regularly get calls from people who saw us a at a home show months or even years before, and are finally ready to start on whatever project is in front of them. 

These show are opportunities to make a great first impression on many potential prospects in an environment you can plan for. with this in mind, lets figure out how to make that impression. First off, lets think about how we want ourselves and our employees to be perceived. T shirts and jeans are a massive mistake, but I would not dress to flashy for the crowd. If your community is largely blue collar and the attendees will be a t-shirt and jeans crowd, don't wear a suit, You will only look like con man. Try slacks and a polo short, or nice jeans and a collared shirt. Try to dress a little better than your prospects to show professionalism and respect, but don't look like you think your above them. As for a team, if you have a dressier uniform wear them, if not at least go for the same color shirts. A prospect should never wonder who is working the booth. 

When it comes to product selection and layout, think about how a great buffet looks. There are the crab legs, and the prime rib. Attention getter's, that whet the appetite and make people decide to give it a try. These are the "WOW" products that get people in to your booth. Whether this is a product related to a hot new trend, a great special, or simply something so visually appealing it demands a closer look. This could be the actual product, a demo (always a great conversation starter) or an installed sample, it has to look great and be visible. But every buffet also has macaroni salad, and deviled eggs, the old standbys that everyone wants at least a little of. This would be the product with mass appeal that is likely to generate short or long term leads. For us this is often a flooring item, that is a great value, and that has mass appeal. This has to be in the booth to convert the wow to green spendable sales. That said some people will want the wow items, and that is great. Also remember to tailor the wow item to the crowd and the market. Don't show off the next great decking item if none of the houses in your markets have decks. 

Education is another great reason to participate in home shows. If you can host a seminar that will be promoted by the show presenters. Not only will you get an audience, but you will get mentioned in the marketing materials. Don't use this seminar as a big sales pitch, actually add value to the attendees entrance fee. Bring in a local expert on a subject that you might benefit from tangentially, and give people a reason to come by the booth later. 

Home shows a re a great marketing tool for the right business, but are not a minor commitment. Remember that after you start to participate in a regular show, your future absence can and will speak louder than your continued presence. So don't make that decision lightly. Invest in the show like the marketing tool it is, and remember the WOW factor that your booth should have. Being an " And Ran" is worse than staying home. At least at home you can watch the game.

What is your business really???

What is your business really???-

I have been thinking a lot about my business lately, trying to put my finger on why we are successful and what I can do to continue that. We are company that has been successful, but the world is changing, and I am not content to be tossed about on the waves of a changing world. I would much rather we make those waves and sail past those swamped by them. With this in mind, I have been examining what I remember from marketing classes as our USP, Unique Selling Proposition. Basically, why would someone a customer or perhaps a vendor willingly pay or even just tolerate another link in the supply chain and the markup that entails. Why are we valuable at a basic undeniable, and especially unbeatable level. We manufacture nothing, build nothing. So the question is, if we subcontracted for every other function, what would be left?

I know that we are not really a logistics company, though we do have warehouses, trucks and forklifts. This is a critical part of our services, but these could be contracted out, and some in our business do that already. In addition, it is something that is easily duplicated. Anyone can hire truckers, or even trucking brokers. Warehouses are for rent everywhere these days, and forklifts are easily leased. That makes it to easy to cut us out of an equation if a customer or vendor decided we weren't worth our markup, so we cannot be a logistics company.

Financially we are strong and as such we do provide a service by financing purchases on a  short term basis, and carrying inventory on a long term basis. Banks do a much better job at financing business and consumer purchases and can do it far more profitably than we do. our customers could easily pay cash and we wouldn't operate significantly different than we do now. As for inventory, manufacturers are already carrying that inventory, so what is a few more months of carrying closer to a point of use. if our customers and vendors changed what they wanted from us tomorrow in terms of financing, they would have many, better choices than those we offer, so this of little durable value to our customers and vendor partners. 

Many people in the media space have been talking about journalism as curation rather than creation. By becoming curators journalists ultimately will serve the purpose of applying experience and training to the vast sea of content that is out there and sift out that which is valuable to those unwilling to dig for themselves. I see this as a part of what we do as retailers and distributors. We bring our experience in the trade, and with our current and past customers to bare on the vast monolith of products and decide which hold value. We bring value by helping our customers make better decisions and by freeing their time to provide value to their customers in the way they are best suited. This is something that only we can do, since ultimately experience can not be contracted out or bought.

Consulting is another service that we provide. By bringing our experience to our customers service we add value to our relationship. Many of our customers are very good at there respective trades, but may lack the right business skills to grow there businesses as quickly as they might like. We can and do offer those skills in the form of informal advice. Maybe by expanding and i some way formalizing this service, we could add an additional value tour our USP. In many ways this blog is a part of that effort, an effort to add value to the industry and ultimately to our clients. 

Many web 2.0 businesses have realized what it is that they really do. Google doesn't really provide search results, email clients, and document software. It provides marketers with data and with an audience. Google has realized this and will invest in any asset or venture that furthers it. In many ways my business is the same. Ultimately our business is the relationship with the builder, subcontractor or whatever customer we are serving. This relationship is funded by the sales of materials, but we will invest in a manner that increases those sales. 

So, consider what you really do, and what your value is. Are you doing something that is unreplicable, or something that is easy to steal and maybe do better? What can you eliminate without eliminating value, and what can you do to add value to your clients and partners? Ultimately what makes you worth your clients time, money and effort? The answer to that question is what you really do. Don't ever forget it, and frame every business decision in that light. Then you can be successful at what your business really is.   

Pre IBS 2010

Sorry for taking so long to post again. No excuse, just didn't do it.

I am getting ready to head to Las Vegas for the 2010 International Builders Show. This will be my second time going to IBS, and I am psyched!!! I am going with our Contractor Sales Manager and our other Outside Sales Rep, and we are planning on working to find the next big thing that will grow our business. I am also going to try and bring product news to you on Trowel and Hammer. In addition, this is the single largest gathering of builders in the world, and I am looking to get as many opinions and ideas from the construction community as possible. Expect product info posts this week, and at least one post based on Fridays keynote speaker, Dan Heath, coauthor of Made to Stick. This book is one of the best examinations of how and why some ideas gain acceptance and others die regardless of their merit.

Please follow me at @JustinEllisNM for regular tweets from IBS, and if anyone is planning on being there, pleas DM me or email me and we should try to meet up.

Justin

Wall of Trash

What in the world is this you may be asking yourself. This my friends is a Bucket Wall, the creation of a man from Capitan, USA. David Bradburn, a local contractor witnessed a neighbor having a fountain built of empty 5 Gal buckets, and realized that this would be a great building product. He researched the possibilities, and found someone else building a wall with buckets and sand using a method that David thought was far to labor intensive. Recognizing that nested buckets are very tough to seperate separate he hit on this as a posssibility and began experimenting with his options.

Dabid Invented a method of stacking buckets and compressing them with some of the bucket columns hollowed out and filled with with conrete to provide points that anchor the structure to the ground. This raw bucket wall is then wrapped with a metal mesh of some kind .

In this case, David has used Chain Link Fabric recovered from a neighbors re-fencing project, but I imagine remesh, garden fence, welded or woven stucco wire would also work. This mesh ties the structure together, and provides mechanical tooth for the plaster, and reinforces it to limit cracking. Rebar is also used as horizontal reinforcement and to minimize bowing (except where desired for aesthetics) This is tied to the buckets and the mesh as the stacks are erected.

After the mesh and rebar is installed The wall is plastered using a cement or lime based plaster like a stucco base coat, or a job site mixed product. David has also experimented with Cob as a filler material, although without the straw fiber, and says that it is a very good filler, but would not try it as a finish plaster. Here is a photo of a partially plastered wall section.

After the plaster fills up to the wire mesh, the wall is finished in a manner very similar to a traditional three coat stucco system with a scratch coat, followed by a brown coat. As for the finish coat, David is waiting to finish this project before he begins his finish coat. he could use either a traditional cementious finish, or a synthetic elastomeric finish. At the is point the wall will appear very similar to a traditional Adobe wall or even concrete block.

Needless to say, this is an extremely green method of building. Not only is David not increasing his carbon footprint and resource utilization by not using newly manufactured and transported materials, he is also reducing landfill by removing a product from the waste stream. Anyone with a Background in construction can attest to the sheer volume of buckets used and thrown away on a typical project, paint, roofing tar, drywall mud, adhesives and stucco finishes just to name a few are used in immense quantities.

If these buckets could be removed from garbage everywhere and put to use, the reduction in landfill would be  huge. This first fence will remove 12,000 cubic feet of waste from local landfills.

 

Anyone interested in contributing buckets, labor or anything else, or just looking for more information, please visit David at Recycledbucketwall.com

And the finished product.

Justin Ellis

justinellis3761@gmail.com

trowelandhammer.blogspot.com