John Sonnhalter's presentation from the Whizard Summit for building materials manufacturers. For more information on Sonnhalter and our B2T marketing communication services or to contact us, visit sonnhalter.com

1. BUILDING CONTRACTOR
RELATIONSHIPS

2. Why Would You Buy Something From Somebody?
• Know
• Like
• Trust

3. Where are Relationships Going Today?
• Moving from a relationship model to a
transactional one
• Only conversation is on price and availability
• No room for a value proposition discussion

4. Issues with Your Distribution Network
• No direct contact with contractor
• Distributors don’t like to share contractor
information
• Hard to establish loyalty
• They sell what they have and can make the
biggest margins

5. Relationship Selling
• Need to know and understand the contractor
(face time)
• Engage contractors with success stories
• Ask for feedback–good or bad

6. Contractor Profile
• Very loyal–don’t like change
• Day starts around 6 and ends around 5
• Multi-tasking from sales, to project
management
• Most of their day is spent in the field
• Biggest challenge – finding qualified workers
• Second biggest challenge – training them

7. What are Contractors Looking For?
• Contractors buy stories before they buy stuff
• Solutions to their problems – good content
• How to do it better in less time using new,
improved methods
• Access to knowledgeable factory people for
problem solving
• Manufacturers who do what they say they
will do

8. How to Connect with Contractors
• Send them referrals (Owens Corning)
• Have your sales force spend 70% of their time
in the field and 30% with distribution
• Special contractor, portal, hotline and email
• Online training for their staffs
• Responsive website
• Apps
• Social media marketing
• SEO – Google it

9. How to Connect with Contractors (continued)

10. 2016 Content Marketing Trends
• Subscribers, not leads
• Email, not social followers
• Less, not more
• Longer, not shorter

11. Social Media for Contractors
• YouTube
• SlideShare
• LinkedIn
• Blog

12. Looking at YouTube
• YouTube has 1 billion unique visitors each
month and sees four billion video views
every day
• Second largest search engine in the world
• Integrated into Google results

13. Opportunity for Quality & Engagement
• Not TV Advertising
• “It’s got to be 30 seconds?”
- Tell the story first
- Shorter is almost always sweeter
- Focus on first 15 seconds

14. Telling a Story
• Engage customers
• Educate customers
• Point of differentiation
• Entertain customers
• Be different

15. What is SlideShare?
 World’s largest community for sharing
presentations
 60 million monthly visitors
 215 million page views/month
 One of the most visited 200 websites in
the world

16. What is SlideShare? (continued)
 Upload: Presentations
– Documents
– PDFs
– Videos
– Webinars

17. What are Some SlideShare Benefits?
• Largely untapped SEO potential
• Improve your presentation skills
• Get invited to speak
• Ties together with Facebook and LinkedIn
• Grow your professional network
• Embed SlideShare on your blog

18. What is LinkedIn?
• Professional social networking site
• Virtual community for professionals
• The most under-utilized social media tool
for business

19. Why Use LinkedIn?
• 347 million members worldwide
• 84 million members in the USA
• 30 million company pages
• 1.5 million LinkedIn groups

20. LinkedIn Groups
• AMHA Home Improvement Industry – 14,000 members
• Commercial Construction Professionals – 10,000 members
• HVAC Professionals – 118,000 members
• Linking Construction – 155,000 members
• Friends of NAHB – 18,000 members
• Building Commerce – 6,000 members

21. LinkedIn Company Pages

22. LinkedIn Company Pages

23. LinkedIn Sponsored Updates

24. LinkedIn Sponsored Updates
• Companies can sponsor updates to appear in users’ feeds who
don’t follow the company
• Don’t get lost in the “noise” of sidebar ads
• Boosts your content across all devices
• Ability to custom target
• Title
• Job function
• Industry
• Company size
• Seniority

25. What is a Blog?
• A form of social media
• Websites that allow individuals, groups and
companies to share opinions and information in
long form on a regular basis
• Considered “owned” media

27. Key Questions
• Who is your audience?
• Who is competing for your audience’s
attention?
• What do you want your blog’s focus to be?
• What goals are you trying to achieve?
• How are you going to measure those goals?

28. Pros of Starting a Blog
• Establish your brand as a thought leader in
the industry
• Share your professional knowledge with
personality
• Creates a central hub for social media efforts
• Build relationships
• Can be used to support other marketing initiatives
• The size of your organization doesn’t affect the
quality of your blog

29. Referrers

30. Summary
• Know your audience
• Build a relationship
• Become a resource
• Help them build their businesses
• Make it a long-term commitment

31. Contact Information
John Sonnhalter
jsonnhalter@sonnhalter.com
216-533-7110
www.Sonnhalter.com
www.TradesmenInsights.com