October, 2004

One to One

Marketing at Morse Sash & Door

By Staff Report

Morse Sash and Door, a division of the Rochester, N.Y.-based William B. Morse Co., hosted its first hands-on building clinic, "Building With the Best, Presented by Gary M. Katz,” in late July. The day-long seminar covered topics such as installing historic casings, fabricating period mantlepieces on site, and installing crown molding.

Underwritten by lead sponsor Windsor Mill, based in Windsor, Calif., plus toolmakers Bosch and Stabila, both based in Chicago, and Cincinnati-based Senco, the program was free to Morse’s contractor customers, and included a continental breakfast plus lunch. Who wouldn’t want to take advantage of this opportunity to hone their skills, boost production, and ultimately make more money?

A lot of people, as it turns out— unless you present it to them in just the right way.

Especially in the Northeast where the building season is short, it is very difficult to get contractors away from their projects during the summer months. Pat Clancy, Morse’s vice president, says the dealer’s marketing plan included posters at the contractor desk plus flyers that were sent out via mail and fax. But he wasn’t surprised when the response was not very good.

"Plain old marketing just doesn’t work when (contractors) are so busy,” says Clancy.

It all has to do with the "food chain,” he explains. Like everyone, Morse’s customers constantly get direct mail pieces, faxes, and phone calls asking them to be somewhere for some event. They just don’t have time to pay attention to routine mass-mailed marketing.

So Morse’s sales and management team sat down to identify which customers they thought would get the most out of the program, and created a targeted list of builders who were not only loyal customers, but who they also felt were proactive enough to capitalize on what they could learn from Katz.

The next step was to get on the road and make personal visits to the owner of each company, to explain the seminar and personally invite their people to take part. "We want our customers to know that everyone in the company cares about their company,” says Clancy. To do that, "you need to invite them face-to-face yourself.”

It worked. The Katz "road show” has played in dozens of locations around the country, but the turnout at Morse—over 60 contractors—exceeded some of the recent seminars Katz has conducted in his home state of California. Moreover, attendees were so involved, Morse had to cut the one-hour lunch break back to a half hour because of the intensity of the "need to know” questions that arose.

Most important in the long run, it confirmed for Morse what makes marketing to contractors work.

Now, says Clancy, "We rarely do mass marketing—it doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of money if you don’t have a target in mind. If you want your big customers to be there, you have to let them know how important they are to you.”