I have mentioned this before when offering suggestions on how contractors can better market themselves. In this recessive economy, this is a most-important time to be self-advocating. I just had two new windows installed in my not quite ten year old house. Remember, this was the result on multiple water infiltration problems I endured after the 2004 hurricane Ivan enlightenment. Anyway, the mill shop that made the windows drew upon the services of a carpentry company. I was amazed that there actually was talent in Georgia. Yet, after the windows got installed yesterday I asked for their business card for future direct contact. Don’t have any. And while the majority of their work use to come from this custom mill shop, in this economy that is no longer the case. Ok, so no business cards. Are they a registered company? Yes, an LLC in fact. Good! To further my surprise, they are also slightly registered with LinkedIn, a professional social network. Again, good! Yet, no website that I can find at all. Seriously, they even do work for restoration and conservatory groups around Georgia yet not at all self-promoting. What gives? One can spend <$200 per year to register and host a domain name that would afford them emails, be able to put up [at least] a basic website, present images of their prior work, etc., and yet in this recessive economy its just not a light bulb being turned on. And these are two brothers born and raised in Georgia, dress the part, act the part, and apparently not yet made the psychic connection. LOL And while I be more than happy to recommend them in the future, and use them again myself, its strange they haven’t gotten this very basic concept down. Come on, LLC, LinkedIn, but no business cards and not website, nor an email address!?! They’re shooting themselves in the foot.
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NUke
This might NOT be the case with your supplier, but I've run into situations in the past, being in their exact line of work, among others.
It takes a long time to get established, tooled up, on everyone's vendor list, in the restoration/duplication type woodwork. To keep nonproductive hours to a minimum, I always tried to market to either home centers, contractors, or some of the larger renovation companies. Meeting with the customers, repeatedly, field measuring, samples of the old stuff, paint matching, etc., takes a long time.
To get around that, I just sold to customers that had at least, a sales tax license/#, with the idea that everything would be resold.
All too often, someone not in any of those categories would get wind of my location, and attempt to sidestep the system, mainly all the regular customers. In the big picture, that can't be allowed to happen. A one shot sale and possibly resulting loss of a long time customer isn't worth the risk.
Usually wasn't a big problem unless the stuff I was furnishing was extremely costly or intricate, and the buyer had no one on staff knowledgeable or skilled enough to install everything. So they'd call me, for additional cost to do this work also. Never failed, someone on site wanted my card also, and I didn't care to or dare to hand it out. Markups of 30-50% on my goods is pretty typical. Plenty of motivation for the situation you describe.
Dave
Dave, I was talking about the carpenters and not the mill shop. They have a business of their own, told me they do a lot more than just windows and doors ("everything"), been doing this for a while, but why bother promoting yourself on a professional social network (LinkedIn) and not have a business card?
How easy will it be for me to recommend someone if I have to go home, find the piece of paper I put their contact info on, instead of just handing a business card out. I just feel like I can't help them because they are not helping themselves.
I know the wife, and she'll want something else done haven seen their work. Must not lose that piece of paper. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to find them in the phone book (I tried that already).
Probably just don't want to
Probably just don't want to deal with homeowners. They are harder to deal with and a lot of times are a one shot deal, or a tire-kicker.
Nuke
OK, I understand the deal a little better now. The only thing I can think of is they are busy enough not to be concerned with additional customers.
We used to be that way, until 5 years ago (that's when housing started to tumble around here). Since then, we've lost 5 out of the 6 major customers that we had, and the last one is gasping a little. We now have to pursue every single lead for work.
Wasn't that long ago that we contracted for probably 7 out of every 10 jobs we bid. Now it's maybe 1 out of 20 !
NOT readily self promoting ourselves when we didn't really need/want any more work is coming back to haunt us now. When we can least afford to spend on advertising, that's the very thing we SHOULD be doing.
Ironically, we've had calls from as far away as Ca. and Fla., to do work, based on word of mouth. Can't see how that could be profitable, but the calls were nice to get.
The only thing I can add is. Not all tradespeople are business minded. A lot of them fail as a result.
Dave
Nuke,
Meant to reply to this two weeks ago but got sidetracked.
Guys with that level of talent seldom have to advertise for work. So the LinkedIN in thing is probably something they did a while ago and just forgot about.
I'm also betting they DID have cards.
They probably pick up a lot of work from that mill shop and have a "No Fishing in my pond" type agreement.
Meaning that they don't give out phone numbers or cards on jobs generated by that mill shop.
It's a common unwritten agreement in a lot of places.
assuming they generate 10 or so weeks a year thru that shop? Your work isn;t enough to make them risk the relationship.