Chicagomonium, 2014, March 17th & 18th Come Create the Future with Us!
I heard a knock on my door Sunday night and went to answer it. It was my friend Tony, “The Snow Plow Guy”, as my kids like to call him. I’ve known Tony since 1996, but I hadn’t seen him since the previous winter. Tony’s a landscaper who came on our pond tours and eventually was installing a dozen or more ponds a year himself.
After exchanging pleasantries, I asked him how business was and he replied, “I’m hanging in there.” He then asked me how my business was going and I said, “Ok on the supply side and incredible on the installation side!” He looked perplexed and said, “Really? I haven’t built hardly any ponds the last few years. People aren’t asking for them anymore.”
How is it that Aquascape can’t keep up with the requests for water feature installations and a contractor one town over can’t get the phone to ring? The answer is marketing and sales. Bottom line: Ponds aren’t bought, they’re sold. People need to see them and they need to learn about them first to know they even want them before you can make a sale. And speaking of sales, if you’re selling water features like it’s 2005 when people had home equity lines of credit then, well, you’re probably in the same boat as “The Snow Plow Guy”.
Aquascape has figured out that sales and marketing circa 2014 looks nothing like sales and marketing did a few short years ago.
If you’re not on board with the NEW sales and marketing mentality – you don’t have an option – you need to be at Chicagomonium. If you’re on board you must certainly want to be here more than anyplace else. Everything with sales and marketing is changing and you need to change with it. Scary? Maybe. Exciting? Absolutely!
We’ve opened 100 spots for progressive contractors and retailers who want to take their business to the next level. Roughly half of them are open today. The one guarantee I will make if you make it here: Come and you will sell more water features in 2014 than you did in 2013… Period.
I told Tony, as we stood in my doorway, about Chicagomonium happening in his back yard less than two months from now. I could have guessed his reply almost to the word: “I’ll see if I have time.”
Guess I’ll be seeing “The Snow Plow Guy” next January, stuck in the same place, with the same concerns he has today…
To register for this event, please click here: Chicagomonium 2014.
Carpe Diem,
The Pond Guy