So you are a building material supplier, and you find it hard to market your products. You feel that your market is small and your competitors much bigger than you. And your customers, especially the consultants, are always busy, with little time to spare. And if you manage to get an appointment with them, after bypassing the vigilant gatekeeper, it’s like the Red Sea has just parted for you. Time to celebrate? Hardly! The real challenge has just started!
So, what do you do? Be prepared. Make sure you know your products inside out. Many a time, we meet a salesperson who acts as if they are just order takers. Big mistake.
The reason why the developers or consultants are prepared to see you (remember, their time is limited), is because they have a problem that they hope you might be able to solve: their existing suppliers might have botched up a previous delivery, etc. or just the fact that he/she prefers alternatives for their new projects. Either way, make sure you know your materials inside and out, even with one arm tied behind your back, and eyes blind-folded, literally.
Meaning, if you sell machineries, make sure you know how to operate them – at least theoretically. If you sell building materials, make sure you are able to do quick calculation for them, that is, you can do a quick ‘informal’ quotation on the fly, plus or minus, 10 % for contingencies, and explain what these contingencies are for clearly. And be honest with your customers at all times.
A case in point, recently I had my house’s ceiling covered with ‘rockwool’ insulation to minimise the heat penetrating through the ceiling. We contacted a major supplier that supply their products regionally in Asia and beyond.
If you are a user, make sure you count how many rolls the contractor take up to your ceiling, because once they have laid down the rockwool rolls, there is no way for you to be sure how many are used. Remember, they will cut up some of those rolls into pieces. They will charge you according to the number of rolls, at about RM50 per roll. And if you are the contractor, don't tell your customer to climb up the ceiling and count the rolls. You might think you are being smart, but actually you are reinforcing your 'dare you to catch me red-handed, but you won't' image. Make sure you have an 'honest' system implemented instead.
On the first day, a representative sales agent from the factory came, let’s call him Mr K, and did some measurement on the ceiling, and gave me a quotation of RM3132. He said, there will be a plus or minus RM100 (one hundred) for contingencies. A week later, a Mr H came to my house ready for installation based on the measurement given to him by Mr K earlier. I assumed he was the contractor, (he said he was the distributor). Before he left, (since he has to go somewhere, but his men will finish the job), he gave me an invoice for RM3,248, saying he did a recalculation, and based by the fact that these rockwool rolls are not to be cut, therefore the quotation has gone a bit up. I remembered Mr K (from the factory) had earlier told me the same thing, they will just overlap the rolls to avoid cutting).
But, a few minutes later he had the gall to borrow a knife from me to ‘cut’ the rolls so there would’t be any wastage! A classic case of ‘cakap tak serupa bikin’. And yes, I saw them cutting away at the rolls happily ! Grr!
After Mr H left, his men later (3 hours of working on the ceiling later) told me that they needed extra rolls of rockwool because I didnt ‘order’ enough to cover the necessary ceiling area! Those extra rolls were ready at the back of their lorry, and would cost me an extra RM1000! They said if I would not add those extra rolls, it would defeat the purpose of putting those rockwool on the ceiling in the first place. A classic case of ‘black-mailing’, if you ask me!
Of course I argued! They later admitted that they installed the rolls not as the sales representative from the factory told me how those rolls should be installed! A case of incompetencies! So I made them reinstalled those rolls as was promised to me. They still needed extra rolls, and in the end I had to pay RM 3,615-00 instead of the original quotation of RM3,132. Which was way less than the RM4,200 they tried to black-mailed out of me. And not including the broken ceiling or two 
Of course I was unhappy, even before I tried the product
We might have the best product in the world. We just have to make sure our team of people are just as good and trustworthy, else it will have the opposite impact on our customers. That would be sad. Really.
!
