Vary the Mix For years, Tri-State got virtually all the leads it needed from a combination of telemarketing and referrals. Having seen what didn’t work, Pompilli created a different telemarketing environment. “We wanted a room where you would want to come to work,” he says.
Instead of a drab windowless room filled with anonymous cubicles, Tri-State’s room is bright and lively, a cross between a nightclub and a gym. “A lot of my life is in that room,” Pompilli says. In fact, the huge speakers hanging from the ceiling came from a nightclub he once owned. The bright paint is similar to that at the gym where he used to prepare for bodybuilding competitions.
“Telemarketing’s a tough job,” he says. But if people are motivated, when there’s competition and incentives and they are managed through feelings of rejection, production goes up and marketing costs come down.
But with the advent of state and national do-not-call lists, Tri-State needed additional lead sources. Television and print seemed the easier, softer way, compared with face-to-face marketing methods. “We found it was a whole lot more work to do canvassing, events, and kiosks in the malls, but it is a lot more effective and cost-effective,” Pompilli says. “We can control the results by how hard we work. If you’re working hard, it’s almost impossible not to succeed.”
Tri-State’s approach has made events an important lead source. Rather than limit its involvement to the usual home improvement venues, such as home shows, Tri-State casts its net wide. Demonstrators work boat shows, bridal fairs, tennis tournaments, auto races, and baseball games played by the Norwich Navigators, a farm team for the San Francisco Giants.
“We go anywhere there’s a mass of people,” Pompilli explains. “We haven’t done high school football, but we’re thinking about it. A lot of these events have more turnout than a home show, without the competition and at one-eighth the cost.”
About 20% of Tri-State’s leads now come from events, 30% from telemarketing, 20% from referrals, and 10% each from canvassing and the Internet. Then there are the fishbowl leads.
Fishbowls are a technique that sales manager Chuck Montagnon adapted from his years at Electrolux. Junior reps get 10 bowls each with instructions to place them in local businesses — dry cleaners, muffler shops, gas stations, restaurants — wherever there’s traffic. A sign tells consumers they can enter to receive a $500 discount on a Tri-State project. Leads are collected once a week for warm-call follow-up.
The program accomplishes several things. Getting and working their own leads helps teach reps the value of a lead. Junior reps get 5% commission when an established salesperson sells a window or siding fishbowl lead. The program has helped cut marketing costs from 15% of sales to 7.9% in the past several months, a reduction Pompilli calls “awesome.”
“We probably did close to $1 million last year from fishbowls,” he points out.
The same deliberate, commonsense approach runs through the rest of the business, too. Every job passes through Thomas’ hands. He’s in constant communication with all crews, so problems can be fixed on the spot. Various quality control measures that run through each job and beyond lay the groundwork for referrals. These include, for instance, a customer satisfaction survey, as well as a post-installation walk-through, where the job foreman is required to escort the customer through the site on completion. If the customer isn’t home, the foreman returns at the end of the day for the walk-through.
Growth Opportunities Pompilli and Thomas have considered, and rejected, opening a second location. They don’t want to forfeit their hands-on style of managing. But that doesn’t mean they see Tri-State’s growth being limited anytime soon. They’ve hired Spanish-speaking employees — two telemarketers, a salesperson, and two installers so far — to go after that fast-growing demographic. “No one else [in home improvement] is calling them,” Pompilli says. The company can buy lists of Spanish speakers for telemarketing, and they will work events such as the Hartford Spanish Expo. Beyond that, Connecticut has sizable populations of Polish- and Russian-speaking immigrants that Tri-State may begin marketing to in the future.
“I think one of our secrets is that we’ve learned from our mistakes,” Pompilli says. “One of the mistakes people make in this business is to get greedy,” he adds. But at Tri-State, “when we implement a program, everybody is behind it, and when it succeeds, not only is it more profitable for Joe and me, there are always incentives for the employees,” he says. “When we introduced Gutter Cap, it was fun growing the line. Everyone pitched in. Everyone was rewarded. They felt part of it, part of the team.” —Jay Holtzman is a freelance writer in Jamestown, R.I.