Sales/Marketing : You Think You Need a GPS?

Home » Steel eNotes - Winter 2010 » Sales/Marketing : You Think You Need a GPS?

There is certainly no need for me to tell you how the market for cold formed steel trusses shaped up in 2009. It was a year with fewer and fewer jobs and many changes, to say the least. Most of you have told me that bid activities stayed rather solid most of the year. The vast majority of the changes in our market occurred with delays in projects starting due to financing issues, approvals not being returned in a timely manner, or purchasers waiting until the last minute to see if there was a better “deal” out there. Once projects were actually released, it often became a matter of “Oh, by the way, I need the trusses next week.” In a nutshell, all our timetables have been shortened dramatically.

Just as the market for our products underwent change in 2009, so too did the role of The Aegis sales representative. A song title probably tells the story as effectively as anything: “The Long and Winding Road” of where our sales folks’ time is spent. Although support of our fabricator partners remains our sales reps’ #1 priority, much of their remaining time on the road is spent educating. That is, educating members of the building team—architects, engineers, contractors, and developers—on the merits of pre-fabricated cold formed steel trusses.

We at Aegis Metal Framing believe strongly in the need to continually educate and inform on the benefits for of our, and our fabricators’, products and services. In 2009 Aegis representatives called on more than 400 different architectural firms, 210 engineering companies and more than 200 general and sub contractors. The team also performed nearly one hundred AIA accredited presentations.

Many of these educational activities were a direct result of our fabricators letting us know about projects with unusual or dated specifications, or specifications in which Aegis was not specifically named. We ask you to continue to feed us this information so that we can better do our jobs and, hopefully, help sell more work for our customers!

The Aegis sales team has also specifically targeted the top 250 A/E firms in the country as, according to the AIA, these firms appear to have maintained the highest levels of activity during the non-residential construction slump. We have already performed or scheduled 1 hour CEU presentations for many of these firms at their multiple offices around the country. And of course, we will continue to meet with large numbers of smaller and mid-size firms throughout the course of 2010. Again we welcome any feedback from fabricators and building designers alike that can help better focus our “grass roots level” marketing initiatives.

Our pledge to the entire building team is that we will continue to do everything we can to “Get There from Here” with regard to marketing cold formed steel trusses. We encourage any design firm, engineer, contractor, or developer seeking to learn more about our products and services to contact us for a personal visit.

Thank you for you support in 2009 and, as always, thank you for your business.

Steve Detter
National Sales Manager