Words of Caution Most contractors who have any experience with in-store marketing will tell you this: SFI should never be more than part of your lead mix. Somewhere between 10% and 20% is considered safe by experienced contractors.
Mark Curry, president of Appleby Window Systems, in York, Pa., says his company is about to enter into an SFI agreement with Sam’s Clubs and currently has an in-store marketing arrangement with Kmart. He says at no point would SFI or in-store leads make up more than “10% to 15%” of the lead mix.
Store leads set and close at a higher rate, but they cost more and there is the risk of retailers bailing out, leaving you at the controls of a crippled machine.
Making SFI leads a safe fraction of your total lead flow does two things. First, it shields your company from the disaster of suddenly having no leads in the event your retail partner reneges. Second, low-cost lead sources such as repeat and referral balance out the relative expense of in-store marketing to pull your overall marketing costs down to a manageable number, say to 10% of volume.
Home improvement companies “can only sustain those costs if they don’t put all their eggs in one basket,” says Todd Schulz, of Weather-Tight Corp. “They have to have other lead sources to keep the average down.”
But for many companies, the expense of SFI, affinity programs, or other in-store marketing agreements is more than worth it.
“So you have to pay more for a Sam’s lead or a Costco lead,” says EuroTech’s Statkiewicz. “I’ll pay 22% any day, if I don’t have any leads.”
Talk To Me What makes a good in-store demonstrator? A thick skin, says David Bacon (right), advertising manager for EuroTech, a Chicago-area window company that generates the majority of its leads from in-store marketing programs with Kmart and Sam’s Club. “Ninety-eight percent of the people are going to tell you no, all day long,” says Bacon, who started working for the company as an in-store demonstrator seven years ago.
Rejection, and especially rudeness, can be demoralizing. Managing demonstrators around and past that experience is a big part of the supervisor’s job.
“I forewarn them this is going to happen,” Bacon says. “I tell them all the negatives, all the situations. I put it on the table.”
Things generally remain civil. None of EuroTech’s demonstrators has ever been hit, though one was once spat on by a 6-year-old, an experience that prompted an immediate resignation.
The typical reaction of store customers to demonstrators, Bacon says, is skepticism. Eyes train on distant objects. Sometimes the hands go up, as in “Back off!”
Demonstrators are trained to handle a variety of situations. But incidents or just the daily round of rejection are a major reason why supervisors who manage in-store demonstrators need to keep in regular contact. “If two hours go by, and you haven’t written a lead, you have to call me and tell me what’s going on,” Bacon says.
EuroTech, which used to operate displays in stores, eventually removed them in favor of having demonstrators roam the aisles. “I don’t think it’s about the display,” Bacon says. “It’s about the demonstrator talking to the customer. That’s where the business comes from.”
