A Breakout Discussion on Natural Stone Sales Final

[Music] good morning and welcome to our webinar today where we are going to talk about uh sourcing leads communicating with customers and just discussing ways to combat common myths about natural stone and draw attention to some of the benefits of our beloved material that we all love Before we get started i just want to make sure that everyone has seen our upcoming webinars we've been doing quite a few of these on a more regular basis than in previous years so we hope that the content that we're presenting is things that you are interested in we

do have surveys that we share after the powerpoint or the webinar is concluded today and we Appreciate your feedback on that so that we can know if we're doing a good job or if there's other topics that we haven't tackled that you are interested in learning more about you can find this list on our website by going to the calendar of events my name is sarah gregg and i i'm the marketing director for the natural stone institute and today i've got A group of lovely panelists with me today to talk about their experience experience of

selling natural stone and i'm going to ask each of them to take a minute to introduce themselves jp acosta with delgado stone thank you sarah uh yeah jp acosta from delgado stone i've been with delgado stone for just under three years now um as we're all here to talk about Natural stone obviously we all have a passion for it and something we we're glad to share with the participants in today's call so thank you for joining us thanks jp jeffrey balo with artistic tiles good morning thank you um yes i have been with artistic tile

for a little over 10 years i've been in the Stone and tile industry for gosh um a little over 20 years good better otherwise and i'm the regional sales rep with the artistic pile for the southeastern state thanks jeffrey and mark barber with earthworks thank you sarah good morning all um my name's mark barber i'm our architectural sales rep i've been with earthworks since uh 2017 so about three years we are a courier Manufacturer and fabricator of natural stone and we sell nationwide and even into canada so uh glad to have you all with us

thanks guys so a little bit more about our agenda for today we're going to discuss common challenges in selling natural stone including acquiring leads sampling has been an issue this year Product knowledge understanding customer needs in dispelling online myths also a little bit about naming consistency we're going to learn from our three panelists here who have generously agreed to share their time and experiences with the rest of us we're going to find out what are some of the tools that sales people use in our industry to help them Be more effective at their jobs and

then finally we hope that by doing these types of presentations these discussion panels a little more regularly maybe the sales people in our industry can start to build relationships with one another and we can all learn and grow together we do have quite a few people on this webinar today so we have everybody muted by default To prevent any technology issues but if you have any questions and maybe something else that you want to add to the conversation please feel free to use the questions box that's located in the go to meeting control panel if

you're connecting via a mobile device that looks a little bit different if you're on a computer you see the questions box on mobile there's a Question mark that you'll click on to access that part but please throughout the presentation feel free to ask questions and also share comments that you have that are relevant to the discussion if we have time on each discussion topic we will address them at that time otherwise we have a question section at the end where we'll go through and make sure that we get everybody's questions Answered so the way this

will work is we're going to open up each topic with a poll so we'll ask you guys what you think about this discussion topic that is on each slide we have four different ones to talk about today once we see the poll results then we'll hear from each of our panelists about what their experiences have been with this topic So first our first poll where do you find new customers and we have three options for you and you can select more than one if you wish but research which is you know your own looking through

databases uh membership lists from aia whatever you need to do to find a list of customers potential customers website leads are you getting these through your website or other online Platforms that your company may have or be active in or you getting them right from other customers where are the main ways that you're finding these leads if you haven't answered yet please just take a minute to click on the screen which which sources are most relevant to you personally all right it looks like the top source for new new leads is customer referrals Which is

wonderful it means you're doing a good job as a sales person if other people are referring you referring you correct also website leads looks like it is in there at number two and the last one is research i i believe i could predict that maybe several years ago we would have seen the research be above the website leads but this is all where we are getting better Together here so let's hear from our panelists um starting with jp where do you find new customers and how has this maybe changed throughout the past few years sure

um let's start off by just first we have to define who our customers are obviously before we can actually go out and source new leads or develop relationships with existing leads or existing commercial uh clients excuse me um Anyway to answer the question uh we have a number of verticals we deal with the contractor mason market we deal with architects and designers we also deal with our whole sealed our wholesale distribution model which is our deal authorized dealers that are situated throughout the united states and then we have the end user so the individual customer

who's buying material so currently the way that we're Doing it a lot of our website leads are generated by the seo seo capabilities on delgado stone's website so we have four submission forms there where people fill out information whether they're looking for the estimate of on a job if they're looking for where they can find an authorized dealer there's a number of topics in which they can choose from in order to uh qualify a lead essentially so right Now each one of those verticals presents a new opportunity as for us to create new business so

it's it's a multi-faceted answer actually so it's it's not just one defined way and i think that's true of as you were saying before previously we'd use research as pretty much the only way now because of technology and everything that's associated with that we're able to expand our reach and That's where we're using multi-channels to to get new customers essentially great thanks a lot jp jeffrey how about you um well i will echo some of what jp just mentioned um our source for leads has really evolved quite a bit whereas um i used to do

quite a bit of research to try to find out who my target market was which for me has always been the amd Community and while i used to rely on lists from um asid chapter books where i would be uh members that i always sound like to be a really rich or a target rich source for leads that i would then have to actually cold call or review a particular design company's website to see if they even had a website back in back in those times to see if they would be an appropriate target for

me to Uh to try to schedule an appointment to show them uh my wares these days we have availed ourselves to the amd community and to the end users via on the internet and our website that's really kind of turned uh the tables for us in such a way that we have we now have folks that are able to review us and check us out and determine if our materials are appropriate for their Type of application great thank you jeffrey how about you mark anything different to add or maybe more of the same yeah a

lot of the same as what jp and jeffrey just said and i do uh agree with jeffrey the amd is a big part of what we structure as a company you know we we sell a lot through distribution so we rely on distributors uh to provide leads where We become more of the support system now website leads are a big thing you know uh social media is is bigger than it's ever been uh in 2020 so we have gotten a lot of leads from the website but a lot of ours with distribution is through email

to the amd community to uh going to the job site visits trying to figure out who the architect is working on getting the specs so uh That's uh you know to echo what jp and jeffrey said it's it's a lot same with us as well okay so just to kind of recap it varies based on the customer type okay we're talking about consumers we're talking about distributors we're talking about a and d community and you reach them all a little bit differently but over the past few years a lot of website leads People are coming

to you and being able to research and find out what your products and services are before they get to you it sort of brings you a better qualified lead by the time you are aware of them sound about right yes yeah okay all right so we do have a little bit more time on this one but we're going to keep moving i think some of our other topics may take up a little bit more of our time Here so our next poll what are the top ways of communicating with customers and this maybe more than

anything else this year has changed for us all i've i've heard a lot from the panelists here and from my conversations with other people throughout the last few months you know some of some of the different ways we're trying and then getting back to maybe the roots of Of how we communicate with people but you can select more than one options here here but what are the top ways that you are currently communicating with your customers please take a minute just to select your your preference what is working well for you right now and then

we will move on to the discussion phone and email almost every one of you Are choosing that um i can't tell exactly how many choose that and something else but definitely that's always been an important thing it's not going away virtual meetings not not as high as it would have been a couple of months i think um i think a lot of people were trying those and it didn't quite work out as well as we hoped so we're Falling back to phone and email social media is pretty big not as big as i would have

expected so that's an interesting thing the post office very few people okay so we're not using a lot of direct mail maybe we're sending samples in person meetings is getting getting to be pretty high again so that's wonderful to see so moving on to discussion with our panelists jeffrey i'm going to start With you this time what are the top ways that you're communicating with customers right now well right now for sure i'm with the majority of the folks that weighed in on that last uh poll via phone and email i find it to be

such a huge opportunity just to be able to connect with someone via telephone it's a little bit more dimensional than Uh than email i personally i mean we're all in we're all in sales and i so much of my time has been spent being in front of people and so in this post covid environment i've had to really um evolve in in in the ways that i'm able to uh conduct my outreach i too rely heavily on distribution i'm i'm the wholesale Territory manager with artistic kyle so i'm not just going out and visiting architects

and designers on my own and typically with the outside sales reps of of the companies with whom we have business relationships and so that has now been reduced to some zoom meetings or some microsoft teams meetings things of that nature and perhaps it's just uh I'm showing my age a little bit but i so much prefer to have that actual face-to-face human interaction which obviously for the time being um is has been has been uh shelved so i just really look forward to being able to at least pick up a phone and have a conversation

with an architect or a designer or certainly the sales people that i'm typically spending a lot of time on the road Uh going out and visiting with all right getting by on the phone for now but hopefully you can get back in their doors soon uh mark how about you how what are the top ways you're communicating with your customers yeah yeah i agree so prior to uh 2020 i think everybody uh to develop relationship meant i've got to go see him you know it's got to be in person Well 2020 is turn as everybody

knows are upside down in the way we communicate and you know we've had to adapt just like the countries had to adapt with all kinds of changes so the way you adapt is through phone email zoom virtual meetings anything on social media so you know i think a lot of focus from companies has become more on marketing so is our is our website up to Depart because now we can't see these people but they want to see us so do we have to focus more on our marketing how are we getting our message out to

the customer um i i'll be honest with you i travel three fourths of the year and you know i'm talking 30 weeks a year i haven't been on a plane since march and so i've had to adapt and it's been challenging it's been rewarded you know Because to keep and sustain your relationship it means constant contact you know you can't just forget about them just because you're not seeing them so you know we're doing a lot with our facebook page uh that we have set up our phone app and uh website so we put a

lot of focus into marketing in these changing times great so staying top of mind is is Always going to be key and it may maybe looked a lot different years ago but this year you know if we can get our websites up to speed maybe this is a good time to develop new tools uh do a little bit better on your social media so that's great thank you guys for sharing we do have some questions here that i'm going to address since we have some time the first one is how effective Do you guys feel

are large-scale email programs like constant contact mailchimp those those broad-based e-blasts oh i'll jump in here i just didn't i didn't get a chance to answer the the last question as well so it's okay not a big deal i'm gonna shed my light on it um very quickly here so actually when this all first started as as mark mentioned back in march The initial focus i think across the board was everyone was switching to virtual meetings but because everyone only has a limited amount of time during the day everyone has been focused on virtual meetings

being the new normal but to be perfectly honest there's only so many hours a day as i mentioned so that that was great in the beginning but everyone not only just in the natural stone industry but across All industries thinking the same thing so that hasn't been as productive as we initially thought it was going to be i think that may change over time when things normalize but we'll see what happens as both mark and jeffrey said phone and email remain the top way to communicate with people but the impersonal feel that touch the relationship

whether it's sharing a meal with someone going out to dinner having a drink whatever it is Having that personal time is invaluable you can't replace that it's never going to be replaced in my opinion and it's something that'll always be a part of the natural stone industry for us on the sales side um but the one factor that's really expanded our growth over the last 12 months has been social media for us instagram has been a driving force in getting brand awareness out There across the industry as well as you know the dm feature of

social social media in instagram people are reaching out asking questions depending on what pictures you're putting up or what products you're putting up or whatever projects you're working on currently people always have questions hey how did they do this how do they do that it's a great way to uh spread brand awareness and allow People to interact with you on a you know immediate basis you know everything now is i want it done here i want it done now that's be that's what social media platform allows for so i think it's it's yes phone email

maintain the top slot but social media right now in my opinion is not that far behind so it's it's it's been a great growth um a growth driver for us And uh it's it's something that obviously we're gonna be focusing on as we go forward but um as for the question that you're asking sarah you want i i what was that again i apologize the question was how effective do you feel large-scale email programs such as constant contact are um i'll just continue with it i guess for For us um we found that um email

blasts on the education side seem to have the most impact so if it's not not a situation where you're trying to sell to the consumer because selling sometimes has that negative connotation of your you know you're trying to impose what you want on the customer instead of taking the time to listen and hear what they want and educating on some options that they May have in order to complete their project or get the desired look that they want so from a blast standpoint education would be the most effective as far as a selling feature we

don't find that to be a a good medium to to to to send the clients at the moment not anyway i don't know how you guys feel about that but obviously let you guys share Your experience well i can uh jump in here because we had a sales meeting about a year ago and uh the the topic i brought up what about an email blast what we had was contact info what we didn't have is a way to read through like we weren't reaching out to them so what we've chosen to do here uh as

of 2020 is each month we do a uh a big email blast to everybody in our system So we pick a product of the month let's say it's a stone so every way that's applied through landscaping through veneers through cutstone we uh send to our uh base that has been built over the years and actually it's been really well received because now they got photos they can save of different products so actually we we've used that method as of 2020. kind of staying top of mind maybe Inspiring people seeing things that they might not have

have seen in other in previous times jeffrey anything to add about email at artistictile we have a weekly newsletter that we send out to gosh everyone that's on our mailing list which certainly includes all of our uh our our entire dealer base and architects and designers and i Try to stay in touch with the sales associates again with whom i i i sell to and um if it's going to be a targeted email blast it's got to be lean i've come to realize that even with our with our weekly newsletters we have so much information

that we want to convey i'm finding that the folks that we're Sending these things to maybe they'll have time to click on one or two items and that's it ever since we've all been uh ever since i've been turned into a desk jockey uh here since uh everything went sideways i've become three times as busy as i would normally uh be behind the wheel or in an airport or in transit somewhere So much of my day now has been consumed with following up on leads and outreach via email and zoom meetings and such i'm in

front of my computer as so many of us are gratefully i'm not it's not a complaint but i'm so busy with how we have evolved and availed ourselves to the market and to our own uh industry that if there's going to be some type of a Targeted email blast it better be specific it better be concise and it better be lean because if there's too much information that one wants to share i promise you only a small portion of it is going to be uh clicked on and and read and then from there one has

to question how much has even been uh retained so uh in this in in this uh environment and in this Climate we're all so busy with our computers and so much of our day is consumed by this means of communication and work if it's going to be an email blast it's got to be quick and it's got to be and it has and it has to be relevant because it's just so easy these days to just really have to triage your priorities and get to this and click on this and delete That or ignore that

and so um that's the feedback that i've that i've received from my own folks with respect to the type of email blast that we send out weekly great thank you guys i i think it's definitely refreshing um we're busy we're all busy you know and even if our communication styles have changed people still want the products and they're anxious to get their projects Completed so i think it's great that we can implement some new tools to to make things work we've also got a couple questions in here about social media i'm going to table those

for now and we'll address those later on in the presentation and i also just want to remind everybody we do have an upcoming webinar next month that's focusing on Specifically on social media marketing so we will have some time to talk about this later on today but we'll talk about it in much greater detail at that webinar in november so make sure that you get registered for that and one final question about the email just a quick one before we move on um mark what do you know offhand what the open rate on your e-blast

Is yeah actually um i think it's around 28 which doesn't sound high but you know as something that you're starting out with we we thought that's a good number so however we tweaked that uh to get a higher open rate is you know that's that's our next challenge jp jeffrey do you guys happen to know offhand Offhand no um i know we do get notifications about them being open but as as for the number i don't have that offhand knowing which i do not i'm sure i'm confident my the head of our marketing department has

a really firm grip on that that actual open rate uh however i don't i don't know off the top of my head i'd be shooting from the hip if i even provided a guess Yeah i i think that if you're in the high 28 you're doing really well average um we've got a chat here which is between 15 and 25 percent and that's been my experience too um if you get over 20 percent i consider it a success click rates you know those are going to be a lot lower of course than your open rates

but if you can get a quick grade of Even you know two three percent i consider that a good thing all right so let's move on to the next discussion topic which is what are some myths about natural stone that you wish would go away so we've got a poll open here and there it is the three options that we have is it's expensive It's difficult to care for and artificial stone is better and there's probably other myths in here but since this is a multiple choice question we're just going to focus on these three

for right now what is one myth about natural stone that you wish would go away all right so the number one answer is that it's difficult to care for and i think there's some of our panelists who are Definitely on board with that with agreeing with that answer and the second most popular is that artificial stone is better and the third is that it's expensive so going back to our panelists now um we'll start with mark this time mark what's one myth about natural stone that you find is is a topic of conversation regularly well

i do agree with the with the poll because you know our job in selling Natural stone is about sustainability about longevity so you know when somebody says well how do i seal the stone or what sealer should i put on stone that's not a topic depending on the use maybe come the topic but if you're using it vertically we typically don't recommend putting anything on it uh you know if you're using it as a Paper or other applications yeah then there are certain cases you may want to put sealers on it um i hear a

lot that it's expensive and i i think you know being a warrior and a fabricator um what we've tried to adapt is how can we reuse pieces that maybe didn't make the cut to become a dimensional stone so we've developed a line called the eco Series which has really taken off for us and all it is is recycled product from a fabrication machine it's didn't change the stone doesn't mean it's aggregate base it's still natural stone at the price you can buy manufactured stone four i wish that myth about it's expensive would become a new

point because i think you can afford to put natural stone depends on what you're looking for You want it to last a few years you want to last for a lifetime and i i think we all have uh our differing uh ideas on on how to how to make these myths go away and this is of course the i think the question that's being asked is going to be different too depending on what products you sell mark's selling exterior products um where they're getting that idea that they need to be sealed is I don't know

maybe they're getting confused with things that have been published about countertops because there's certainly conversations about that everywhere that i look uh jp how about you what's the one myth about natural stone that you wish would go away sure i i mean i think this all boils down to or comes back to the idea of education right us as sales people we It's incumbent upon us to um educate our clients um about whatever there may be whether it be an expansion an expensive claim whether it be difficult to care for the comparisons of manufactured versus

real stone whatever it is it's incumbent of us to explain to them the differences the nuances of each and explain that the gap in price is sometimes a short-term Short-term answer right so if it's a dollar a square foot less expensive or two dollars whatever the case may be you have to look at the long-term nature of whatever investment the potential client is trying to make so it's it's that education factor that separates uh separates us and and makes makes those myths actually be solved right so it's it's our way of addressing whatever Whatever question

whatever uh whatever idea that they have in their head it's it's it's on us we want to be a resource to our potential clients right in order to become a resource you have to not be steering them in one direction or another it's telling them okay let me address your concern uh this is what the solution could be and then be able to show them how it how it could Fit in their project essentially so it's it's not a matter of of anything other than education in my opinion and letting clients know that we're we're

there to not just tell them what they're saying to us is wrong but educating them on you know what is the what's the alternative or what's the right way of looking at it not right way excuse me what's the way of looking at it in a Different light that makes sense to them rather than selling them on something that's that's kind of the way i look at at dispelling the myths in in this particular case yeah so you know fortunately and unfortunately we don't always get the opportunity to have that conversation because so many people

now they go online they find the information that they're looking for And hopefully they're getting the right education the the right answers when they are doing those that research online because um i don't think that's always the case but that's definitely something we as the natural stone institute try to do for the industry is put out articles that dispel some of those myths and hopefully allow you to have those Those longer conversations to explain jeffrey how about you i'm in the business of selling luxury background finishes that people love i have a whole bunch of

stuff that nobody needs i like to address this question i'll tackle the last one artificial stone is better because i think it speaks to uh bullet point number two where it's difficult to care for I find that folks that even have the means to afford natural stone might opt for a porcelain pow that looks like natural stone because they don't want to be concerned with any perceived maintenance or how difficult it might be to to maintain i would very much like to address the fact that when people choose materials for their homes i'm trying to

Stress and and with the folks that i'm selling to who are ultimately selling to the end users to find something that you love if you have found your house that you intend to stay in forever or for us or a really long time a home isn't an investment in in in life and in time and of course and in your your hard-earned money if you are in the business of constantly flipping homes i can understand how Somebody wouldn't want to get so personal and and adorn that the interior with stuff that you liked personally and

perhaps that's when porcelain is a more practical way to go but when it comes time for that same person who's flipping homes to purchase their forever home that's when i think an argument can be made to spend up on the background finishes That you ultimately would love to be surrounded by your home is your sanctuary your home is your your castle and and your place of refuge and so to to speak to the idea that sona is expensive i can't sit here and pretend that 74 dollars a square foot is not inexpensive on a particular

material but if you consider for how many years that you would be in that home enjoying that material perhaps then it's A it's a it's an easier pill uh to swallow and so when it comes to is it difficult to care for or is artificial stone better i work for a company whose best foot forward is is is pushing beautiful background finishes that one could fall in love with and live with for the rest of their days but in this In this age of flipping homes or or purchasing homes for and but being concerned about

the resale of said home i think that if we could speak to people who could find a home that they would stay in for a considerable length of time and then the comp it might become an easier conversation in addressing how expensive is it regarding is it difficult to care for We talked about this um earlier in the week natural stone is one of the oldest building materials known to mankind and if you did nothing at all to it if you simply did nothing to maintain it it's still natural stone it still takes on a

patina it still takes on a beauty and a character that has life and depth and movement and character unlike an artificial uh material that tries to Look like the real thing so uh i wish i wish all three of these points would go away but um i think that i hear a lot of uh beginner sales reps in the showrooms that i visit can inadvertently speak uh talk someone out of getting into a natural stone if they approach the topic of maintenance uh concerns or maintenance issues in a way that's more Uh um cautionary than

than uh encouraging them to say maintaining natural stone is no big deal and even if you did nothing at all you're still going to have a beautiful floor you're still going to have a beautiful wall or a shower application or what have you so um it's a roundabout way of saying i'd like to expel with all three of these myths but if i had to concentrate on two would be the last two Great thank you um we have a good question here that i'm going to ask at this time from vincent merzida what do you

think about the role of the name game in stone sales when people rename stones to gain exclusivity advantages he thinks it creates real confusion in the market what do you guys think uh i'll go ahead and answer that because It is something that everybody in the stone industry has their own uniqueness uh they want their name to stand out whether that's through what you call the stone or who you get it from so you know something like the name game it is confusing to a customer even to a distributor because it's like well isn't that

the same product as what that is it sure Looks the same well it is in a lot of cases it can be uh because rock formations you know the earth is around for a reason these formations don't just stop and go uh that you know you can find the same formation in missouri in the midwest that you find in china turkey india you know um that it's it does become a name game and It won't go away because everybody's trying to win the spec when you win the spec it's a unique name that if you

can't match it or it doesn't uh if you can't find that name then you you typically can get the job if if that kind of makes sense sure sure thank you mark jp jeffrey anything to add to that if we didn't have the if if Specifications stuck and specifications were not substituted by someone else or or if if once the material was specified the person who went who did the work to get that material specified received the order for that material there would be no need for a name game when you have a commodity item

like crema marfil that's been specified for use on a project the chances of you especially if you're In a market like south florida for example the chances of that sales rep getting makes getting the opportunity to make that sale and to make some money on that particular uh product is really uh um is really thin unless you name it sandalwood or pacific sunset or something strange like that so that at a minimum a contractor would at least have to call you back and say what is this material Anyway oh it's it's creme marfield 12 by

12. i know i'll give you a really good deal on this on this product line and so the name game is essential for as a tactic at least from a specification standpoint so at a minimum one can at least receive a phone call back from uh contractors when a job has been is out to bid So that you have some type of chance at trying to sell that material so the name game is effective from a from my uh from a sales reps standpoint at least to it to have those some of those inquiries come

back to that um all right jeff i didn't mean to cut you off there um as as for delgado and and my colleagues i'd have to say yeah Um yeah the name game exists but if we had it our way we we let everybody have the same name and we'd be happy to separate ourselves on on the core principles of who we are you know we dedicate ourselves to the quality of our material the the quality of our customer service and the integrity of how we do business so from our perspective if you if that

were to be done away with we'd be all for it um yeah i do Understand that the reason why people do it is obviously because jeffrey and mark have alluded to you know it's for specification purposes but as far as as far as the question itself we'd we'd love to maintain uh a single name for all the quarries or or the individual stones and and we pride ourselves on the way we do business to separate delgado from any potential competitors essentially so In this case i'd have to agree with the person asking the question so

um leveling the the playing field would be uh would be um would be perfectly okay in our in our opinion that's great we've got opinions on both sides a conversation that we've had before and and we'll probably have again in the future and maybe Someday we'll all come to a conclusion but maybe not i can add this with with respect to the name the name game thing we don't market certain stones as being from different areas in other words our calicota gold comes from the tuscany region of italy we also import beautiful marble from turkey

but we don't refer to it as turkish calacatta Or or asian statuary or things of that nature i have to go out of my way to make sure that the sales associates that i cater to know the difference because sometimes i'll get someone that might say well gosh jeffrey i can't sell your calacatta gold because it's too expensive and they'll refer to someone else's material and at a minimum I need to make sure that those sales reps understand that they're comparing apples to apples versus apples and oranges turkish calacatta is somewhat of a an oxymoron

there's no such thing as turkish ferrari they come from italy and real authentic calacatta gold is expensive and therefore it carries a premium in price so the name game when i when i was when i sounded like i was advocating for the Name game yes that's for sales reps who get specifications on blueprints on a set of plans and you want to disguise the name of something so that you can have someone come back to and inquire about material for a potential sale but when it comes to we we import a lot of beautiful materials

from from china as well but we will market them as such we will not call Um a marble from china um asian calacatta we we have one that we call it pacific white for example and so the name game works form can work for you and can work against you if you are someone like me who's training people on the differences between one stone or another it's not a it's not a slam or a on on anything that comes from Turkey for example they've got a lot of beautiful materials but uh turkish calacatta versus italian

calacatta there's a big difference in price and i like i like the people that i work with to be able to at least bounce the ball on that topic along those lines so that they can at least have a conversation to be able to recognize the difference between the two make sense yes thanks for Thank you for that addition thanks for that clarification jeffrey well and just sarah real quick you know one of the biggest products we run into especially from an amd standpoint is you know everybody here's a wasabi black or china pearl you

know for granite bases it's it's really the same formation and that's where name gets confusing to some people it's like well They're specking china pearl so i have to go to china to import this it's not necessarily true it's it's all the same product but you know you you may have heard of black or wasabi or china pearl it's all the same rock formation it's just uh that's where a name and and architects use that a lot as base material because of the density of it So uh just one example of a scum that comes

up a lot that you hear that name kind of changed throughout the industry all right thank you mark we're going to move on now to our final discussion topic which is what is the most influential selling point for natural stone so when you're having conversations with people you've got them You know in the door on the phone what is the one thing that's convincing them to choose natural stone over some of the alternatives is it longevity beauty a connection to nature it's sustainability beauty 79 um think that beauty is the most influential selling point for

natural stone Followed by longevity connection to nature and sustainability so let's hear from our panelists here and we'll start with jp this time you know when you when you're getting customers what what's the reason that they're choosing natural stone um i think obviously uh all of us on this panel are biased and i think we're always going to Say that the natural form is obviously the best i certainly do i mean having having dealt with it for a while now and and seeing what it looks like on the finished products that we were able to

do throughout the country it's it's amazing what the finished product looks like so you can hear it in a consumer's voice when you're talking to them and they they mention natural stone versus the Magic manufacturer product um homeowners take pride in how their home looks right it's it's a place that they dwell out all the time it's it's somewhere where they they plan to grow a life or or build a life depending on what stage of their life they're in but anyway it always comes back to the sheer beauty of how it looks so um

when you put two stones and all of us can attest to this if you were to put Two stones next to each other in front of any of us we we could tell the difference really quickly um and that that plays such a role um but then you have other people that have different different uh different goals it's budgetary or whatever the case is but but hearing hearing the pride in a new homeowner's voice and on how their project has turned out is um is is clearly one of the most Influential uh pieces of of

their decision-making process that's uh there's really not a second one but that's just my opinion and i i'm gonna say this again i said it before fortunately and unfortunately sometimes we don't get the opportunity to get this in their hands so they can see you know when we look at an artificial stone and in the real thing There's no question about what the better material is aesthetically and also performance based a lot of times but hopefully we get that opportunity to to get the stone in their hands and let them see for themselves jeffrey what's

the most influential selling point for you unique uniqueness and beauty while there may be many other stones like it these stones Are mine every installation is unique to that particular individual you can have you can have many people having a porcelain tile that looks like calicotta gold and it's the same material for everybody it's the same 21 faces and repeats um that are cranked out of a factory whereas natural stone is unique no one else has that same material that is Yours that's a selling point that i think we can all there's there's always room

for improvement when it comes to the marketability of natural stone is its uniqueness and its beauty over time um natural stone will age and patina over time you just can't get that from uh from a man-made uh product and it and it is among the most unique And durable building materials and so yes i too am drunk on the company kool-aid that is natural stone but it's a sincere one because um there's just so much that you can do with this material and whether you maintained it so that it looks brand new as the date

was installed it did nothing at all to it it's still natural stone over time and um so i'm gonna i'm gonna Hang on beauty for uh for the most influential selling point for natural stone and i can i i can talk about that longer than people would care to hear i think we all could thanks jeffrey mark how about you what's the most influential selling point in your experience well i absolutely 100 percent have to echo jp and jeffrey there with uh the beauty of it you know take this for Example you know when you're

a kid and you're at grandma grandpa's house or uh if they had a farm or something and you were out playing in the creeks and depending on how you use product when you build your own house later on in life you're like you know what let's go down to that creek back on the farm and and find some rocks and use it for a landscape Uh bed you know because there's a connection to your family as well when it comes to the stone like that if you've seen grandpa and grandma build the house 30 years

ago and use stone then your mom and dad did it it really makes you want to replicate what what you grew up with and i tell you i i use a slide uh in my aia presentation at the end Where there's a kid jumping on rocks in in a forest park garden then there's a dad sitting there just watching the kid play and then there's a grandpa underneath the tree just watching it what i what i like to say and this goes to longevity stone will be used throughout a lifetime it's not something that comes

and goes it's not a You know uh here today gone tomorrow it's something that's been around i think jeffrey used this for a long long time and the way it's being used is a little bit different but you know basically all we're in the business to doing is digging up a product that's been buried and giving it a heartbeat and using it for another purpose so You know the in the beauty and longevity i have to agree with poll and the panelists here that that's uh by far the most important great thanks a lot you

guys we do have a couple questions related to this discussion topic the first one cut off a little bit here do you use astm testing results in your if so how interior exterior i consult on stone facades and insist on performance And traceability of custody from quarry to installation i am usually surprised by sales associates that are not versed in the performance characteristic thank you for that question vince so this is something that we haven't really talked about is the performance factors uh i guess i'll answer being a courier and fabricator uh which is a

big part of our business Our astm all our stone testing is done in california it's all published on the website mainly it's for the amd uh people a lot of our customers it's it would be over their head when i say customers i mean you know a retail customer saying how good is this stone i think maybe all they care about is you Know how dense is it does it suck a lot of water what's the water absorption but you know as far as uh test data we do publish that on our website but it's

never really a topic of discussion uh with a homeowner per se yeah i have to agree um when it comes to astm it's um the the ind community are the are the crowd that basically asks for That information the homeowner isn't usually interested in it but the but to kind of answer the question i don't personally use it in uh my selling process um but to mark's point we have the ast data on all of our materials so it it is accessible um but for us unless it's unless it's requested it's not something we bring

to the forefront of the conversation All of our products have a uh a product data sheet that we use as part of our marketing materials as well and i get into i don't get too technical with the with the sales people that i train but absolutely i bring it up in such a way that it's not overwhelming because it's very easy to have a discussion on the types of study materials that are recommended for Particular stones and then suddenly the people that you're speaking to you can kind of tell right away where their eyes are

beginning to glaze over and they're just becoming uh and they're just wandering off however when i train sales associates i've mentioned to them that we are in the business of selling luxury and selling luxury is not always about pushing high price points that selling luxury is an experience And one of the very first things that one sells to anyone is one's self and i like the people that i meet and the folks that i work with to be armed with a minimum amount of information with respect to the technical aspects of particular stones and study

materials so the end users don't have to my big thing when i train people is that you're the smartest person here In the showroom and the moment that an end user walks into your showroom the very first thing you need to do is reassure them that you came to the right place and you know more than i would ever care to know about this material and thank you very much it makes it that much easier for folks to feel comfortable about parting with the tens of thousands of dollars that They have for a remodel for

example so all of our materials have spec sheets and on those spec sheets we include some lightweight technical information at a minimum the types of setting materials that are recommended and i always make sure that i bring that up with sales reps that i've known for many many years and and and brand new uh sales people alike just so that they can have a minimum Amount of working knowledge and some new vocabulary terms that they can use on their own in their own sales presentation because again i'm not selling this material um other people are

on my behalf and so i like the folks that i that i train and that i work with to be able to root to be as polished and as up to speed as they possibly can Because the very first thing that they are selling to someone is themselves whether it's an architect a designer or an end user that they know what they're talking about and that they are are again providing the information necessary because this stuff is expensive and it's nice to be able to get it right the first time around so i'm a big

proponent of of trying to force as much technical Information as i can on folks without losing them completely it's oftentimes it's a it's a bit of a tap dance and we touched on this earlier too you know how you sell to people depends on who they are you know are they a consumer homeowner are they an architect designer your conversations are going to be different but yes i definitely agree with conversation It's very important for that technical information to be available and kind of ready when it when it's when it's time to deploy that and

we just had one final question which i think sums up this discussion topic well just a reiteration from cody what we hear a lot from people is that they had no idea how beautiful natural stone is i talked I could talk most customers out of man-made products if they make it to the warehouse to see the natural slabs all right so that is that concludes our discussion topics we do have some final questions in the questions box but before we address those um i just want to remind all of the participants today to please if

you have questions go ahead and type them into the Questions box maybe it's not a question maybe it's follow-up to something that was discussed earlier or something else that you just want to to have heard on this on this webinar now is your time to ask all of your questions so the first one that we have that hasn't been addressed yet is our company has been late to the Social media boom we started in the last month and a half what are good techniques to help boost social media communication that's a tough question yeah again

this is a this is a discussion panel for sales people um sales people are not always that directly involved with the marketing so we will be having an entire webinar about social media marketing in november but if you have any you know Quick tips to share that's what would be relevant for right now sure i think the most important part of it is is getting um getting quality content out there that uh represent your brand and um you know that can come in multiple forms it depends upon what type of material you're you're using or

what type of Material you're producing that's why i say it's a tough question it's not as simple as hey do this this or this i mean there's the there's the little uh tricks that trade on the different social media platforms whether it be hashtags or or follow buttons whatever it is but the most important piece of any social media venture i would say is Producing quality content that would be my my easiest tidbit to get out there have a young marketing staff make sure you have a friend presence on instagram and and and houzz and

pinterest certainly facebook and um you've got you you've got to have a presence on those uh on those social media outlets yeah i'll give you guys an Example we have and it was just done through facebook but uh one of our owners is a paraplegic and he has a young daughter so we used holiday so we used a mother's day took a short little video took him about you know 10-15 minutes to put this little watering bubbler together him and his daughter posted on facebook and had 5 000 likes By the end of the week

so you know it and we used a holiday for a reason but you know just something short that they're like man i could do this at home with my kids or you know so uh just that's just an example we did uh so it's it does does work and it was pretty easy fairly painless great five thousand i'm jealous are companies putting more of their Marketing dollars towards social media and online visibility well the beauty of social media yeah the beauty of social media is the majority of it is free so if you're using it

um in the proper way i mean i mean there is you you can buy the facebook ads and you can buy boosts for for various uh mediums but as a whole it's it's basically a free platform so In terms of dedicating marketing dollars to it if you want to use those other features i can say um delgado as a we don't we do we don't do that um and we've had a tremendous amount of success um using the platform that's available to you so can you spend money in that area sure um do we personally

we don't um but that's that's just uh Um we have some follow-up recommendations here in the chat box just start generating content weekly okay you gotta start somewhere and you'll figure out what what works better and what what doesn't next is sharing customers in promotion on social media do you find that this is a yes or a no i have started to reach out to designer to get them featured on social not sure i completely understand this When sharing customers and promotion on social media do you find that this is a yes or a no

and i have started to reach out to a designer to get them featured on social i think a little bit maybe what they're asking is maybe a feature product from a customer like maybe a building or a house they designed that they can share that photo or you know if if they're a company And you like and share that with all your friends could it lead to potential business because you once that chain starts you never know who it hits so it may hit the next person building that house or building a structure that you're

like i never thought about that or never really gave them and i thought to use them in that region area so i maybe that's what they're getting at here but uh you know Sharing a a highlighted uh project that they might have done we encourage designers to submit their um to submit their projects where they're using our materials and we will feature their projects and give them full credit on our website that's very effective at um and and and again like jp said it's it's it's free marketing it's free Advertising that's i i find that

to be a very effective means for um drumming up interest and and for folks to um share their work and to and to help get their own names out at the same time yeah without a doubt it's you're creating value there you know obviously by um by promoting uh those uh in our cases mason contractors Or or architects or designers what was actually using our material being able to use a platform to get their name out there we have a number of followers so it gets them into it gets them in front of a number

of eyes without them having to do a thing to be perfectly honest with you uh whoever's managing their social media page or just social media in general Um it's a good way of painting them back for using your material right it's it's a great it's a great um back to the whole idea that we've talked about is that the mutual beneficial relationship they're using your material you're featuring their material right it's it's a give and take that that that um investment in showing off the work that they do with your material comes back you know

What the multiple is four five tenfold i don't know but uh i will tell you it is very appreciated and those those um those masons are contractors that do see their work published on your page you usually get a thank you you get a phone call you hey thanks for featuring us thanks for you know uh taking the time to put our work on your page There it's it's always creates a general positive buzz between you and the you and the client great yeah i think that answers um the question for libby the next one

i have here is how do you qualify which players in the a d community to target and which medium do you use to market to them i like to research a company's website and have a look at if it's an architect or a designer Everyone these days will have a portfolio online i like to take a look at their projects and to see what kind of background finishes they use and what type of what types of aesthetics that they uh um go after and from there i can i can kind of make a decision and

and determine whether or not they'd be a good candidate for um for for from my kind of materials uh Quite honestly that's i've been doing that for for quite a long time some architects or or some designers might be way more furniture oriented as opposed to featuring projects where they've got a beautiful bathroom remodel or a kitchen remodel if they don't feature any any tiles on their website i tend to think in my own mind that maybe they're not so oriented towards Specifying those kinds of background finishes and they uh they they might not be

as high a priority of a new target for me um to pro for prospecting as another company that features more of the finishes that i have to offer anybody want to talk about using the ceu program to to build relationships with architects and designers Sure yeah um it absolutely works um sarah uh has been a great proponent for us she's helped help me figure out the program and how we can offer that so when you're when you're talking to potential clients right um obviously doing the research that jeffrey mentioned and looking at their website seeing

what type of portfolio they've put together that's always one thing another way to To have an impact or at least get the potential client on the other end to listen to your to your conversation um bringing up the availability to present ceu credits for their colleagues is an easy way of getting in the door to be perfectly honest with you um it's they're they're usually more receptive and it uh again mutually beneficial right so you're giving them something in return You're gonna get a piece of their time so it's a matter of uh it's almost

as if you're offering something and they're going to offer some something in return so ceus are definitely a um they're a good tool let's say sure i agree jp you know we everybody's searching for the next touch point how can i get back in that office with some kind of substance that they're interested in And just by offering a ceu because they need these credits anyway and you know if you're the company that can help get back in that door it is very powerful you know because it's another way that they can talk to these

architects again uh without trying to come up with an excuse hey you got five minutes for me a lot of times they'll Say no i don't have time so if uh like jp said you you give them something and and return we're given you know they're they're obviously getting something out of it hopefully if you want more information about that you know that's one of the benefits of membership with the natural stone institute is the ability to enroll into our ceu program which is a really great Tool for building relationships with the design community and

mark if i could ask you to plop a link to our ceu page into the chat box so people can follow up there if they're interested to learn more the next question we have is are you using cam cam builders exchange or similar databases for leads in following projects If so do you find this helpful for your sales team i'll make it kind of quick for us no we have not i'm assuming it's much like a dodged report uh but no we we uh have not used that up to this point yeah i'll echo that

that's um the majority of our leads are not generated through any petition potential database that We'd be buying or anything along those lines that's uh there's other there's other avenues out there that are that are much more pertinent to your field whether that be a social media site that will will lead you in that direction um we found those to be way more effective in in our industry for um for the uses of our natural stones so we don't use uh we don't use any of them Some not currently anyway um there's enough information out

there uh but it's uh yeah that's that's the bottom line we just don't and it's it's not something that we're looking to do at the moment it may be something down a few on the road but it doesn't it doesn't hold any value for us currently we've practiced we're we are currently Participating in a program with a company that provides a service for sampling that caters directly to architects and designers and this service pre-qualifies the the individuals that sign up for the service and they can click on and select a particular product and then it

will show up at their office at No charge in exchange for their contact information who their design firm is their name their email address their uh the project name and that has proven to provide a great deal of of of new leads uh for for for our organization and it's and it's really been effective at bringing a lot of business back to our district our our own distributors i was going to Say our our own dealer network uh throughout the country as well it's um it's provided a lot more busy work for us but it's

it's it's a it's been a wonderful way for us to become more engaged with design firms and architects that seek out our materials and express interest in our and our products and i believe that was materials bank is that right jeffrey That's correct materials bank for those who are interested to look further into that well we are over time and i believe we've covered all the questions so we're going to wrap things up i just want to take a minute to thank the panelists again for your time i think this has been a very valuable

webinar a good topic for our attendees and other ones who may be Accessing this on demand in the future just another reminder upcoming webinars we have november 18th is the one on social media marketing so we did have quite a few questions on that and i encourage you to register for that if you had if you were one of those that had the questions there after we wrap up the presentation today you will be getting an email it will Come to your inbox tomorrow it will have a link to the recording so if you want

to access that to to look back at it you're free to do that we'll also be including it in our natural stone university for on-demand access that'll be a week or two before that's available we also will have a survey that launches before you exit today i really appreciate you taking a few Minutes to give us your feedback so that we can know what topics you guys are interested to learning learn about in the future you