 I would say that, you know, most locators that are out there these days, you know, it's just a list of dealers, contractors, and, you know, at best the person's going to pick up the phone and call, but at that point, you know, are they going to say, hey, I, you know, got your number off of this website, or they're just going to say I'm looking for, you know, a roof, I'm looking for a deck, I'm looking for whatever. And there's, there's a disconnect there. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. All right, everybody, welcome to Smarter Building Materials Marketing, where we believe your online presence should be your best salesperson. I am Zach Williams, alongside my co-host, Beth Popnikolov, and today we're talking about the manufacturer and dealer relationship. It is a relationship that over the last, gosh what, 18, 20 months, almost 24 months has been strained because of supply chain, availability, pricing, et cetera. And so we want to tackle these problems head on. We want to talk about some things that we're seeing in the industry about how you can be more effective in your relationships, how you can build those bridges, and ultimately, how can you sell more through your dealer partnerships? I'm excited for our guests to join us today because they're going to be able to help us answer not just how do we build those relationships, but how can digital actually support it? Because often we come at it from the other angle where digital seems to hinder manufacturer-dealer relationships. So first, I want to welcome our guests. We have Joshua Rich. He is the president and CEO of Bullseye, and we're also happy to welcome Brian Baker. He's a digital strategist from Doe Decahedron. He's been working in the building materials industry for several decades. They both bring incredible experience and expertise to the table. And I'm excited for this conversation. So thank you both for joining us. Thank you, Brad. Thank you. Thank you, Zach. Excited to be here. Awesome. Thanks for joining us on the show today. For our listeners, give us the 30,000 foot view of what you both do. CEO of Bullseye, of course. And we've been building locator solutions for over 20 years. We started in 1998 and really worked in a variety of different industries, a lot of retail, a lot of franchise types of businesses. But recently, I'd say in the last four or five years, we've really started to focus on providing technology to support building materials manufacturers. And that's our focus right now. Brian, what about you? So I sort of help companies when you're dealing in the digital space and someone comes to you and says, I want, I deal with what happens between that and the outcome that they want. So that that can be designing a digital product or piece of software. That can be how do they reach their customers in a given channel? It could be how do they measure? How do they find the network and find customers that they want to reach? And really, we take a little bit of a holistic approach to realizing their sort of company's digital vision. That's great. And so I kind of teed up the show a little bit by talking about the relationship between manufacturers and dealers. And I'll just lob this question over there to both of you. But when you look at the relationship between dealers and manufacturers today, like we've had dealers on our show and like things have not been great recently for a lot of different reasons, like whether it's like I said, price hikes or things like that or price increases, excuse me. Or supply chain issues. I'd love to hear from the two of you because you've got a lot of experience, but a lot of touch points between both parties, both dealers and manufacturers. What are you seeing in relationship to the current state of the industry? And then secondly, what are you seeing that's working for manufacturers to improve those relationships as we look at 2022 and beyond? I know from the manufacturers side, a lot of people are trying to progress to e-commerce, right? And there's this huge fear of are we going to disrupt our channel? Are we going to disrupt these relationships that we have? And I think really a smarter thing for them to do is to take their dealer networks or their installer networks and bring those forward inside their own their own digital properties. If you if you are a manufacturer, right, there's nothing more valuable you can do for somebody who's selling your products for you than to create visibility for them and to drive business through them. There's this sort of path, I think that they that they could ultimately take to e-commerce that is really about lining up those channel partners, right, rather than trying to replace them or supplant them with some, you know, online service or an Amazon or something like that. And I think that it really comes down to this to how visible they're going to make those partners in in their website, in their website. So for example, if I have a foreign company and I have a network of installers, it's, you know, really about marketing them, right? I know they're going to sell my products and install my products, but how can I support them? How can I advocate for them? I'm going to drive business through for them. So and I and I see it, you know, a lot from the perspective of the manufacturer and even sort of how digital strategies are shifting because I think they're looking at the opportunities to leverage the the the contractors or dealers and the locations and get them more engaged in selling their products. So, you know, if you're a manufacturer and and and you've got a program to train contractors on how to install your product and you're able to give them different certifications and leverage those certifications to to to give them exposure through your website to give them the ability to to market and promote themselves, then they're going to be more and more engaged in selling your product. And so so we're seeing that with a lot of manufacturers. And of course, you know, the challenge is, you know, how do you get all of your dealers to participate in great point? How do you we're very interested to hear the answer? Because, you know, some dealers are a different level of technological sophistication than others. Some are, you know, they've they've been around for a long time and they, you know, they don't want to adopt new technologies. And so I think that as a manufacturer, you need to look at it as as, you know, there's there's a transition here and people are going to continue to adopt new technologies and laying investment into that now and encouraging those that are willing to participate in the technology. And of course, they benefit and they get the rewards of, you know, sending them new business and new opportunities. And I think that becomes a feedback loop, a positive feedback loop and and is over time going to to be sort of the future. You know, you're going to be conducting those relationships through through an online experience. So Joshua, that leads me perfectly into my next question, which, Brian, you mentioned something important, which is, you know, how are we furthering what dealers are doing and bringing that into, you know, the digital ecosystem of what manufacturers are able to control? There is a lot of concerns or pushback that I know manufacturers here when they start to be more forthcoming with who their dealers are and those dealer networks on their websites. Just as one example, is there a way that you've seen either results or a possible solution for concerns where dealers start to say, well, we don't want to be driving that traffic to your website, that traffic should be coming to our website. Are they going to see a dip in traffic? Are they going to potentially lose leads that they would otherwise get? How would you respond to that? You know, if you're talking about in the context of a manufacturer's site, right, when you when you move through that website experience, right, somebody has either in there's a content marketing strategy there or there's a product catalog there, somebody has looked that up on Google. They've come through your website. They've read through all the materials that you've provided and your sort of bottom of the funnel is a lot of cases going to be go to here's time to go to a dealer or it's time to go to an installer. And in that, you know, in that case, it's not you're not really replacing those guys function. Their websites tend to be much more general, right? Whereas the manufacturer has an obligation to create a bias towards their particular product or their particular service. One good thing about that is you can start to create a chain where you're moving somebody down the funnel and it's like, OK, now I can actually see amongst my dealer locations. You know, who might who might have a showroom? Where can I go see these things hand on hands on? Or even who specifically should I talk to at a given dealer or location? So I've done work before in the roofing space. I know that, you know, if a roofing contractor goes to a roofing distributor location, right, they sell all the brands there, right? So how do I make sure that who I'm connecting them with is going to sell my product or going to sell my brand, right? And that's really what you want to make sure that you're doing on the manufacturer's website is you're creating a bias for your brand through your marketing efforts or through your product capabilities. And you need to make sure that you pass them all the way down the chain. So maybe that's actually going to fulfill that. Can can you give me an example, Brian, how to do that? Well, like, because that's the one thing we hear a lot is like as a manufacturer, let's say you connect the dots for whether it's a contractor, a homeowner, a builder, whoever it might be. And you get them in front of that dealer. What it what happens in the background to ensure that when that lead is handed off or that connection is made that the person ends up choosing that manufacturer versus going, well, I've got a better relationship with so and so. So I'm going to sell their product, even though that this other manufacturer brought me the lead. What are some of the things that you see that are working? Well, first of all, when somebody comes in and they they fill out a lead contact form or they they call a phone number that we're tracking, you want to sort of package that lead up that you're going to hand off to the distributor or dealer. And that means if you gather a little bit of information about their project and in some cases, things are less sophisticated in cases, things are more sophisticated. But you've got a little bit of information about their project, you know, where they came from, you know what they were looking at. Maybe you've attached an offer or some kind of a reward to them and you pass them off right now. You have an ability to follow up with that location once you've got that kind of person packaged. The other piece is you want to make sure that you're seeing them again to the right person at a given location, right? So you as a manufacturer, you've developed a relationship with a distributor or dealer. Who is the person that supports you at a given branch? You want to know who that person is. That's who you want the leads to be going to. And, you know, to someone that's going to be friendly. So, you know, you've completed a number of hands-offs here from, you know, we started out on a probably a Google Google search. They look at a few websites that came to your website. They went through, they picked a dealer distributor. They moved all the way down. You're always going to lose some, right? There's really nothing you can do to completely plug it. But I think you can create a high level of visibility in there and start to create just a little bit of accountability with partners. It's, you know, it's, hey, I'm dry. I drove all these people to you. I sent you 100 people and you sold one. So what's like what's going on here? And it gives you sort of a service area that you can go and work on your relationships with as well to improve them. I would say that, you know, most locators that are out there these days, you know, it's just a list of dealers, contractors and, you know, at best the person's going to pick up the phone and call. But at that point, you know, are they going to say, hey, I, you know, I've got your number off of this website or they're just going to say I'm looking for, you know, a roof. I'm looking for a deck. I'm looking for whatever. And there's a disconnect there because then it becomes much easier for the dealer or whoever is selling the product to recommend somewhere where they might have a strong relationship or maybe they're, you know, incentivized in some form. But when you start to look at an opportunity to capture that lead and that opportunity and for the manufacturer to participate in the handoff itself and make sure that, you know, there's sort of branding in the communication and that that person gets a confirmation email that says, hey, you know, and we just, you know, sent your information to this dealer. They're going to be following up. But in the meantime, here's some literature on the product that you selected. Somehow the dealer, you know, gets that lead and they know that, yes, somebody is requesting a specific manufacturer's product. And by being more involved in that handoff in that relationship, I think there's an opportunity for the manufacturer to influence the purchase. And that's sort of the beginning of that. And then, of course, there's the follow up and the tracking that, you know, you want to try to do to really understand what happened with the final disposition of that opportunity. Who do you think is doing it well? Like, when you look at manufacturers, you both interface with what manufacturers do you think are handling that relationship of both connection and follow through? Well, if I can put you on the spot. I can say that LG is doing a really good job in the HVAC space. They have a network of premium, premier dealer installers and and they're they're getting leads on a regular basis. They're following up. There's there's an integration with Salesforce on the back end that is providing information back to sort of the, you know, our platform bullseye so that they've got the reporting and can really see what's going on and how those leads were converted. So I think that that LG is a really good example of someone who's doing a good job. As we're at the end of the year, I can imagine that a lot of manufacturers are assessing their marketing collateral, their marketing tech stack, whatever that is, website, social media presence and obviously dealer locator. And frankly, Zach mentioned at the beginning of the show, we're hearing dealer locators be something that comes up in conversations more and more partly because it's become more apparent how frequently the channel is switching where they buy based on availability. So all that being said, if I'm a manufacturer and I'm assessing my dealer locator or frankly lack thereof, can you give me a checklist of, you know, a dealer locator for really to perform in a way that's going to make a difference for both you and your dealer from a sales standpoint, it needs to have these, you know, three to five to seven pieces. Otherwise, to Joshua's point, it's just literally basically like a list, which is I imagine like that was like a dagger to the heart of some of our listeners being like, oh, gosh, mine is just a list. That's me. It's me. So if you want to move beyond the list, what would that checklist look like? I love that. I love this. Like I'm about to take notes. I'm like, let's hear it. I mean, I think the first transition is you want things to be sort of rich and visual, you know, nothing. I mean, if you talk about creating, it's like, here's a list of business names and addresses, but you really want to create trust. It's oh, here's actually a picture of the location. Here's a picture of their showroom. Here's a picture of the guy that I'm going to meet. And there they are. Right. It really lets you know that somebody's home there, right? And they're alive on the other end of this connection. It's like, oh, I know who I'm going to meet now or so I feel a lot safer about talking to them. So that's one thing that I would say. I would also say that, you know, the if you kind of look at talk about just sort of the list analogy, there doesn't tend to be a lot of options for filtering or connecting to people to the right dealer location for their situation. So if I'm, for example, if I'm looking for a roofing contractor, it's like, oh, well, I need somebody that can also do gutters or I need somebody that can't know how to do slate roofing. And do I have to call everyone on the list and ask them? Or can I kind of, you know, can I kind of get down to that and make sure I'm making a good solid connection? Yeah. And along the lines of, you know, rich content and getting a feel for who's on the other end, I'd say that the accuracy of the data is really critical. Oh, man, that's good. That's that like needs to be retweeted. Yeah. And the accuracy and the depth of the data, which I know is challenging. But, you know, if you have accurate hours, for example, you know, when a contractor is available, when a dealer showroom is open, that's going to go a long way to, you know, developing customer trust and customer confidence. So that's a that's a big one. Another big one really is particularly now because of, you know, the demand issues or supply issues, you know, is a product in stock, you know, is their availability? Does this particular dealer carry the products that I'm looking for? And the more the more you can provide accurate data and and accurate information back to the customer, the more they're going to trust those and feel like they're in a better relationship as well. You know, one thing I've seen in doing with manufacturers or some of this just has to do with the history of their kind of how their websites came to be, right? It's they they were product catalogs, right? So that's what they did. They took their product catalog, they put it on line, and then at some point somebody said, hey, we got to add a list of our dealers. But because they weren't e-commerce oriented businesses to begin with, they weren't really thinking about, you know, how do I actually take a visitor and move them down a path to conversion? So one thing that's actually kind of an easy fix for a lot of folks is do we have clear calls to action on our website? So for a manufacturer, that's where to buy or, you know, get it installed if they have if they have an installer network. You'd really be surprised at how often, you know, those things you find missing from from their websites like, OK, great. I just I looked at your product. Where do I get it? Right. But like I said, they came from a cat sort of a catalog mindset and they really need to make that transition. That's great. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for coming on the show. If someone wants to connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that? You can contact me at JayRidge at the bullseyelocations.com or you can find me on LinkedIn as well. Yeah, I'd say find me on just to go Brian Baker on LinkedIn. I'll find you right away. Brian, we'll link to your email too. I will not attempt to spell the Odecahedron on the podcast. We'll try to link to that too. But for our listeners, you know, hope you enjoyed this show. If you I will say we are right around Thanksgiving. If you enjoy the show, go on to the podcast store on Apple iTunes. Give us a like. Give us a five star review when we welcome it. If you want more content like this, go to Venvio.com slash podcast to subscribe. Until next time, I'm Zach Williams, alongside Beth Popekalov. Thanks, everybody.