I’ve had a guy trying to quote me for K2 conservatory roofs recently.
Apparently, the company (Four Seasons) he works for are probably the largest fabricator of K2 roofs in the UK, and he’s given me access to their online roof pricing system.
Now, I don’t want to get into any more trouble with the guys at K2 or their largest fabricator, but I thought you might be interested in having a sneaky look at the deal they have on offer:
Click on: http://www.fourseasons-roofs.co.uk/logon.htm
USERNAME : 1346C
PASSWORD : 1346C
I haven’t even started negotiating yet, so I think it’s likely that I might be able to get an even better deal with the volume we could offer.
Whatever you do, if you ring Gareth at Four Seasons please do not mention that you’ve already had a look at the prices, and don’t mention me.
Tags: K2 Conservatories
I got a ’secret’ log-in code last summer so they are not shy of letting anyone know their prices. Can you figure out if this is a wierd form of marketing and if so how is it?
Also, they are as cheap as chips, how? why? discuss.
Hello RCG
What is your point about Four Seasons, is it that they are so cheap?
I have just taken delivery of the first roof from them today, fairly complicated job, shaped and angled box gutters, their technical guys seemed to know their stuff.
Global said they couldn’t manufacture it and Ultraframe were about 25% more expensive.
I didn’t even negotiate on the price as I was just trying them out.
I have had them price for an 8m x 4m orangery I am doing and they smashed Global and Ultraframe as well.
Maybe they are trying to buy their way into the market and then increase their prices.
At what they are charging, providing the quality is good, why would you even consider manufacturing your own roofs.
And I have been fairly impressed by their communications to date.
Watch this space.
Cheers
Andy
Isis Conservatories
Hey RCG
You have obviously looked closely at google and how to optimise your web site by making it relevant, encouraging links, ensuring your click through rate is good etc.
Have you done adword campaigns, and what is your experience of them.
Is your blog part of your campaign because you know google like that sort of stuff.
We are shortly about to launch our web site with the view to replacing a large part of our current lead source, Price engines, Leads to trade, Best Quotes, Quote me local etc.
The Idea is to spend the money and time required to ensure that anyone within our geographical area who is looking for a conservatory or window quotation finds us easily on line.
Can you share your experience with me/us and some of the pit falls.
Cheers
Andy
Isis Home Improvements
Hello again RCG
I am from the old school of window and conservatory salesmen, I worked with Brian Kennedy when he first came into the window industry.
I set up his furthest south branch in Leicester in 1992 when the company was called Glasnost before he bought Weatherseal.
Many of our top salesmen were hard and closed deals by intimidating customers the same as Everest, Zenith and the like (allegedly) although I never found it necessary to fall out with people if they didn’t buy as seemed to be the case with so many so called professionals at the time.
Before I became a manager with Glasnost/Weatherseal I was one of the top closers in the country, I won holidays and cars all funded by First National Bank, everything was sold on finance at crazy rates. but then as now I did it by making people like and trust me and my technical knowledge, not by intimidation, people buy from people they like and trust.
The days of the hard direct sales companies are numbered, there will always be a small number of punters that will buy from the hard sell direct sales companies, but with so much information available to everyone via the internet, it is companies that are genuinely offering a professional service, installation and back up that will flourish.
The formula for success in our industry has to be
Quality, sophisticated, target marketing.
Well trained, professional sales people.
Selling quality, energy efficient products.
Quality project management of installations.
Marketing to satisfied customers to ensure add on business and recommendations.
Please feel free to criticise my comments and give your own opinions.
Cheers
Andy
Isis Home Improvements
Hi Andy
Thank you for your comments about Four Seasons.
Regarding, Adwords / SEO question. Adwords is now central to our entire marketing strategy. It’s complicated to set up but worthwhile as we’re now generating 30-40 leads per day from our websites.
RCG is a very small part of our SEO strategy is every now and then I feed a sneeky link to pages on my sites. For example, this is a link to our new orangery page which I am currently working on:
http://www.conservatoryoutlet.co.uk/orangeries.php
This link will help Google index the page, and push it up the rankings.
We also buy from all of those lead sources you mention at the moment, and have found mixed results. One of my dealers referred to the leads as ‘cannon fodder’ as they’re great for keeping your sales staff busy, and occasionally there’ll be a good lead in there.
We generate more leads in our geographical area than all these suppliers of leads, and our conversion rate from leads sat is very high.
If you need to know anymore about this, or require advice, then please email me directly and I’ll try advise best I can.
RCG
Hi RCG
Yeah! your dealer is right about the leads generated from Price Engines etc, they can be of a very poor quality with little or no confirmation of real interest before they are sent to us.
We do make them work quite effectively but often find it just a price war, there is the odd gem in there.
That is why we have committed to building a web site that is effective enough to produce our own higher quality leads.
Thanks for your advice on Adwords, I will take you up on the offer to e-mail you for further advice.
You highlighted the Conservatory land web site a few weeks back, not too unlike yours in many ways and both designed as tools to generate enquiries rather than just looking pretty.
Thanks Again
Regards
Andy
With regards Andy’s comment (2) on this thred, I would like to say that fourseasons have supplied me with conservatory roofs for the last 3 years and we have a great working relationship! I agree with Andy their technical department is switched on. They have done roofs for me that other fabricators would not even touch.