3 Steps for Product Manufacturers to Get More Builder Leads
Growing a successful building product manufacturing business is more difficult than ever, but our 3 step process for attracting more leads and winning more builder customers is designed to take your marketing and sales strategies to the next level.
As the country advances its climate goals, builders are under pressure to meet more rigorous code requirements, optimize construction practices to earn rebates from utility programs, and select more energy efficient products for their projects. This increasing pressure is coupled with challenges like supply chain shortages and the ongoing U.S. recession that is likely to hit the construction industry hard.
Building product manufacturers (BPMs) continue developing and launching new products to help alleviate issues surrounding cost, shortages, and efficiency. However, the problem remains that an information gap exists between product manufacturers and builders.
Builders continuously search for the right products to help them to build more efficient and cost effective homes. Concurrently, BPMs continuously innovate to create valuable new products, and work tirelessly to identify and engage with the builders that will benefit most from these products. But, finding the right match between builder and product, and running the analysis to ensure it is the right match, is time consuming, complicated and often feels impossible.
We’ve identified 3 areas that BPMs can make for huge strides for improvement:
Leverage the construction industry’s need to be more energy efficient as part of developing thoughtful sales strategies
Engage with high quality prospects that fit their ideal builder-customer profiles.
Demonstrate their product’s value proposition for prospects with comprehensive cost-benefit data specific to their home-building projects.
In order to develop a better understanding of the ever-expanding high performance home-building industry, it’s critical to stay up to date on the latest in energy news.
For example, are you aware that the DOE determined that the 2021 IECC is 9% more efficient than the 2018 IECC? In the 2021 IECC, the insulation R value requirements increased - significantly in some regions. Additionally, there are some new and modified mechanical ventilation fan requirements. For more information on IECC 2021, check out this article.
This is just one example of the plethora of code regulations and tax incentives that put pressure on builders. Without a dedicated regulatory team, builders are faced with the challenge of tracking constantly changing energy efficiency requirements. Most builders rely on HERS raters to help them optimize energy efficiency and rebate dollars in new home construction.
Ekotrope recommends subscribing to industry newsletters to help you stay ahead of changes that bring both opportunities and challenges. Here are our recommendations:
1. Subscribe to Home Performance Newsletters
The RESNET Newsletter: Get updates on standards, home energy and construction data, and resources aimed to enrich your understanding of the market.
EEBA’s High Performance Home Newsletter: Get news about the high-performance housing industry along with thoughtful articles on relevant issues.
Utility Dive Newsletter: Get daily or weekly news regarding the topics that affect utilities and how they run their new homes programs; such as grid management, regulation, and policy.
The Ekotrope Newsletter: As the #1 provider of energy modeling tools for home energy raters, we have a finger on the pulse of the industry. We share monthly industry updates and news regarding the home energy rating and new residential construction industry.
2. Become a Member or Sponsor Popular Home Energy Organizations
If your products positively impact energy efficiency, you should be aware of the home performance industry organizations. Many BPMs not only join but also sponsor these organizations to build awareness and reap the benefits of member events that are filled with top builders, HERS raters, software providers, utility companies, and other industry stakeholders.
The following organizations host conferences, provide useful insights about the home building industry, and are followed closely by home building professionals. If you choose to sponsor, you can get valuable marketing benefits such as:
Exhibitor benefits at conferences
Sponsored content such as blogs and whitepapers on their marketing channels
Promotions about your company on their website and social media.
Here are a few of our recommendations:
Whether you decide to become a member or sponsor any of these organizations, you not only gain a better understanding of the factors that affect the market but you also put yourself in a position to attract high quality construction leads and engage with builder prospects.
3. Embed Home Performance into Your Value Proposition
This may seem like an obvious recommendation, but are you effectively demonstrating your product’s impact on builder cost and performance during your marketing and sales processes? As we mentioned, the market share of builders that are building for energy efficiency is growing. Baking the specific factors that affect this growing portion of builders into your value proposition is critical to putting your product in more homes.
Many BPMs must rely on generic claims that don’t resonate deeply with builders, much less with their HERS rater partners who act as trusted advisors and give guidance on what products to use in their projects. In order to effectively engage builder leads, you need to speak to the specific factors that affect high-performance home builders.
Here are some of the key areas to consider when crafting and demonstrating your value proposition to both construction leads and individual builder prospects:
How does your product impact their ability to meet codes and regulations such as IECC 2021, the 45L Tax Credit, and local policy and performance-based utility rebates? Builders can earn up to $5,000 per home for meeting the 45L Tax Credit requirements.
Will your product help builders meet local utility - new construction program standards in order to earn rebates? Rebates can vary anywhere from $100 to $25,000 per project, so this is a critical factor for many builders.
Will your product improve a project’s HERS score?
Does your product improve the chances of a home meeting ENERGY STAR v3.0 or 3.1?
If you don’t already know the answers to these questions, your team is missing out on a huge opportunity to generate more leads and win over more prospects.
While the above recommendations are great strategies for improving your sales and marketing efforts, they are certainly not the only way to do so. Ekotrope has created a suite of data-driven marketing and sales tools that aim to help you achieve all of your sales goals.
In the market research and lead identification phase, our Market Intelligence Dashboard ensures you don’t miss opportunities in the market by giving you access to continuously updated data on how homes across the country are being built.
During the prospecting phase, SmartSearch Prospecting increases conversion rates by putting high quality clients at the top of your sales funnel. Simply select the qualities you need in a customer and let SmartSearch Prospecting find all the right candidates.
In the negotiation process, Scenario Modeling allows you to select any project or portfolio of projects for a given builder and get a comprehensive analysis of the financial and performance impacts your product will have on the project(s).
If you have any questions about our recommendations and data insights or would like to learn more about our solutions by contacting us at info@ekotrope.com today.
