CrossCheck Blog

CrossCheck Blog

Check Processing & Payments Information

The Importance of Building Materials Inventory & Payment Options

Posted by Tom Lombardo | Mon, Jun 16, 2014 @ 11:30 AM

building materials inventorySuccessful entrepreneurs experience great trepidation when they contemplate Will Rodger’s famous adage that “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” The truth in that dogs them because it’s impossible to know which aspects of your business a prospect will notice first.

And if that first impression carries the power we think it does then nothing can be left to chance – especially not your inventory or the way you present it to your prospect. Your inventory – products and services – defines your business for your customer, and that defines you along with it.

As the world-famous motivational speaker Tony Robbins explained to Entrepreneur Magazine, “We all want to take our business and our lives to the next level, and your business is a beautiful vehicle for doing that” because your customers and prospects give you real-time feedback on how well you’re doing. The inventory you display takes your business to the “next level.” Training your salespeople does the same thing. Your business processes and payment policies do too. In fact, everything has the potential to create progress and expansion. Robbins explains, “The secret is, little things aren't little – they're everything.

For example, you and your customer know that consumer demand for green buildings and green building materials is expanding exponentially. Your customer knows how to build to LEED specifications, but he wants you to tell him which building materials he should use to earn additional points.

There’s too many for him to sort through, and he doesn’t know which sources to believe. He’s heard that one product is “the final frontier of construction technology” while a competitor insists that emerging wood technologies are superior. If you show him a third product line that you have in inventory you better know the back-story on the other two and have a compelling reason why the one you stock beats them.

Building Materials ConstructionTo your customer, this is not an abstract discussion. He needs to know what to use, and he’s staking his reputation on your recommendations. You get to have this conversation because of the first impression you made (if you’d made a bad one, he wouldn’t waste his time), but now is the part of the sale where you truly prove your worth. Not only are you educating him about your products, you’re teaching him how to sell them to his customer. And your business depends on his success.

The correct materials to present to a client in North Carolina might be different than the correct ones for Arizona, so to help you frame your thoughts we’ve collected some lists for you:

  1. Architectural Digest
  2. Building Design + Construction
  3. GreenSource
  4. Builder Magazine
  5. House Designers

The decisions you make will determine the impression you give, and the customers who respond positively may become long-term sources of business. And if you have the best materials on hand to make a hands-on, look-and-see point to your customer, then he will have the confidence to make the same point to his client.

Often it is the service part of your inventory that closes the loop from first impression to final sale. Since you’ve invested so much time and thought into making a good first impression, make sure that positive experience extends through the end of the sale as well.

Once your salesperson has the customer excited to buy the perfect set of building materials for his client, the worst thing that could happen is to introduce a negative experience into the payment process. If your check validation service declines their check anyway – and services that look at outdated or irrelevant sources sometimes do just that – everything you put into the sale might evaporate in an instant.

Your customer knows his check is good, so if you tell him it’s not he knows that wherever you got that information, it’s wrong. He might wonder if everything you taught him about your inventory is also wrong. If you won’t take his check, you may never see him again. Better not take the risk. Work with a check verification service that gets it right, and that guarantees payment for checks it validates. Make sure every first impression you make leads to a last impression that’s even better. Learn how here.

 

Check Guarantee Insider's Guide

Topics: Building Materials

Written by Tom Lombardo