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AttiCat® by Owens Corning

In This Issue:

Sell What’s Hot

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to invest 20 minutes in paging through your local newspapers, listening to radio commercials, actually opening your junk mail (the old fashioned snail mail kind) and watching TV commercials. What you will discover is how the retail world is selling their products and service in this economy and at this time of year. These people aren’t dumb... they know what works... many retailers spends hundreds of thousands of dollars figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Let’s save the money and time they spent and go along for the ride.

So what’s being promoted right now that will fit with AttiCat®? Here’s what’s hot right now:

  • It’s getting cold... so sell comfort. I’ve seen several commercials for a fleece snuggly... increasing attic insulation provides more comfort.
  • Gas, oil and electric bills are increasing... so sell money savings. Check out Home Depot’s ads on all the things they can sell to your customers to save money. Yikes! Increasing attic insulation saves money!
  • It’s the end of the tax year so sell the Federal Tax Credit. You can’t listen to the radio for more 20 minutes before you year a window ad pumping up the urgency to buying NOW. Increasing attic insulation qualifies for the Federal Tax Credit.
  • No money... no problem! Sell financing. 12 or even 24 months delayed payment. Include it as a choice in every close. Offering financing on $2-3,000 jobs will increase your sales... and your income.

My friends, we have more benefits and more value than anything any other industry can offer. Make sure you’re offering them in a way that will get your customers’ attention... sell what’s hot!

Good selling.

Tom Piscitelli

Seeing is Believing

Want visual proof of the difference AttiCat® insulation makes? Take a look at these houses in Denver. They are all next door to each other. The house with the snow on top is an AttiCat® house. Why does it have snow on the top? Right! It’s because the AttiCat® insulation is holding the heat inside the house. It can’t escape through the roof and melt the snow (the garage does not have an attic portion and has no insulation).

Now look at the two houses next door. They do not have AttiCat® insulation. Look at the roofs. Why is there no snow on top of the houses? Right again! It’s because the heat (and the dollars!) are escaping through the roof and melting the snow.

Does AttiCat® insulation make a difference? You tell me! You can almost see the dollar signs floating through the roofs on the non-AttiCat® houses. And just for good measure, here is a photo of another AttiCat® house directly across the street.

Feel free to print these photos and show them to your homeowners (and your co-workers!). Seeing is believing!

Steve Curtis

 AttiCat® by Owens Corning

Fad or Future?

What used to be the new social media ‘fad’ is no ‘fad’ any longer. Social media sites, such as Facebook and YouTube, continue to grow as a source for media and advertising expression. Facebook has added 100 million users in just a nine month span. Facebook spokespeople have also announced that the site has reached over 350 million users. In fact, if Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s fourth largest. And there’s YouTube . This site hosts over 100 million videos, gets one billion views per day and is the world’s largest search engine. Seems to be that what experts coined as a ‘fad’ has moved into one of the world’s most successful communication and media meeting grounds.

So what exactly is ‘Social Media’? Social Media is a term that describes using social networks, online communities, blogs or any other form of media combining with internet for marketing, sales, public relations, and customer service. Common Social Media marketing tools include Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr and, of course, YouTube. Social Media is not just a website that provides information, but interacts with you while giving you that information.

Advertisers have noticed this new phenomenon. The New York Times reported that newspaper advertising was down 18.7% in 2009. Consumer magazine advertising dropped 14.8%, radio 11.7%, and television 10.1%. However, mobile advertising is up 18.1% and Internet advertising jumped 9.2%. We are seeing budgets begin to shift to where the results are showing growth.

To correlate Social Media with our industry, in the past and currently, many HVAC contractors will put an advertisement in a newspaper or run an ad on the radio with one message trying to reach a multitude of people. All who have different ideas and opinions. That one message, in your ad, may only connect with one out of ten people that receive it. Not to mention this one direct message may cost thousands of dollars and you never really know if readers even opened that page to see and read your pricey ad. Now, with social media, you have the opportunity to advertise the message to your ‘fans’ on Facebook or ‘followers’ on Twitter and get a number of comments and responses from people you know are seeing and reading your companies information. From there, you can generate an interaction and, more importantly, a relationship with that individual or group of people. You can also post pictures and/or videos at no additional cost where this would be a costly expense in a newspaper or magazine. You can receive feedback and accommodate the requests and comments. The opportunities and ideas are endless and it all comes back to a relationship with your customers.

The way people communicate has begun to change greatly and quickly from just a few years ago. Social Media is a tool we have got to begin to understand and, more importantly, take advantage of. And remember, social media sites are free. Other than time, there are no upfront costs to make a Facebook page or create a Twitter account. If you do not know where to start or how to create a Social Media account, you can contact your area trainer/consultant to find out how it can help your business and where to get started.

Taylor Siebert

Questions? Ask us!

Do you have questions about best practices, installation procedures, advertising and marketing, or anything else related to AttiCat®? We’re here to help!

We have setup a Question and Answer system in the protected Dealers area of our website, so login and post your question. You might just find some other useful info there as well!