Holy moly, we’ve got a lotta money tied up in this!

In building materials, your channel to market is one of the most important assets you have.  In fact, we’d probably argue it’s likely the single most valuable piece of your business.  

You’ve taken great strategic pains to define and select your go-to-market strategy, and then you’ve spent many, many years building it. Nurturing and maintaining it every single day is also probably where the majority of your sales team’s efforts are spent.

So it’s a massive investment you’ve made, and you’ve got to pay for the care and feeding of its upkeep.

To make things more entertaining, of course, your channel still has a choice.  They can decide to flip to the competitors’ products on any given project.  Even if you have exclusivity with them, they can always end their contract and move to the bad guys.

Daunting.  A big deal.  Vital.

OK, no stress here.  You’ve got a great sales team and good products; that’ll help.  Marketing pushes out good materials to help reinforce your value.

But wait.  We’ve got this marketing automation software tool.

Hmm.  We send lots of e-blasts out with that thing.  We’ve got architects on a drip marketing program about our products.  We’ve been trying to lure in new contractors and dealers by putting them on nurturing programs about how cool it would be to work with us. Click here to talk to your sales rep.  Check, check, check …

Wait.  Maybe we could actually do something with it for our existing customers!  Eureka! 

Thinking, thinking … how about trying on a few of these things for size, because I bet our current channel surely doesn’t realize how much we do for them:

• Create a monthly update on all the homeowner leads we’ve sent them
• Push a quarterly update of all the commercial projects in their geography where we’ve gotten specified to create an opportunity for them.
• Put our Platinum and Gold Partners into special promotional programs that we signal are only for them.
• Alert them to how many times they’ve been put in front of potential customers on our dealer/contractor locator.
• Remind them of the new product features we’re releasing soon
• Invite them to join webinars to learn new installation techniques that can make them more money
• Invite contractors to dock days at dealers in their area

Wow.  We could do many things with this platform we’d never thought of before!